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Citizen Survey
On a historic night, DIY journalism isn't quite there yet
Both major U.S. parties made political history last week: The Democrats officially nominated an African-American for President, and the Republicans effectively chose a woman as a vice-presidential candidate. At a time when much of the convention coverage involves reporters covering reporters who are covering other reporters, let's look at how "citizen journalism" rose to the occasion ...
On Digg.com, the wisdom of crowds made the most popular story on Friday a "prickly" interview that Time conducted with Republican presidential nominee John McCain. The second most popular story – counting from noon on Friday – was an item about a hacker holding Soulja Boy's MySpace account for ransom. A bandwidth block by the Internet service provider Comcast came in third . News about Ron Paul, the candidate beloved by tech types who forget that the government created the Internet, came in fourth.
Over at ireport, CNN's citizen journalism project, the leading story was about how markets in Baton Rouge, La., are running out of supplies as people there stock up for hurricanes. It's a big story, but the first comment says it isn't true, so I don't know what to think. Many of the other top picks consist of on-the-scene reports, such as interviews with convention protesters, or opinion pieces about McCain's vice-presidential pick or Bill Clinton's philandering. Luckily, all this serious stuff wasn't popular enough to push out a story about "Cindy and Jen at American Idol Concert." The upshot: People asked this mother-and-daughter duo if they were sisters! The Times totally missed this!
Over at Wikinews, citizen volunteers did come up with one legitimate scoop: Obama and McCain staffers may be making dubious edits to their candidates' Wikipedia entries.
And who could have predicted that?
Robert Levine is the MOLI View contributing editor for Business and Technology.
On Digg.com, the wisdom of crowds made the most popular story on Friday a "prickly" interview that Time conducted with Republican presidential nominee John McCain. The second most popular story – counting from noon on Friday – was an item about a hacker holding Soulja Boy's MySpace account for ransom. A bandwidth block by the Internet service provider Comcast came in third . News about Ron Paul, the candidate beloved by tech types who forget that the government created the Internet, came in fourth.
Over at ireport, CNN's citizen journalism project, the leading story was about how markets in Baton Rouge, La., are running out of supplies as people there stock up for hurricanes. It's a big story, but the first comment says it isn't true, so I don't know what to think. Many of the other top picks consist of on-the-scene reports, such as interviews with convention protesters, or opinion pieces about McCain's vice-presidential pick or Bill Clinton's philandering. Luckily, all this serious stuff wasn't popular enough to push out a story about "Cindy and Jen at American Idol Concert." The upshot: People asked this mother-and-daughter duo if they were sisters! The Times totally missed this!
Over at Wikinews, citizen volunteers did come up with one legitimate scoop: Obama and McCain staffers may be making dubious edits to their candidates' Wikipedia entries.
And who could have predicted that?
Robert Levine is the MOLI View contributing editor for Business and Technology.
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