Colaborative news is trumping traditional media

"Without the internet, I wouldn't learn anything."

I just finished having a conversation with Little Bro Pete about the way news media is changing, especially with respect to young, net-dependent types. The emerging coverage of the Virginia Tech tragedy makes a good example.

One of the better Australian newspapers, The Age, provides patchy coverage summarised into reader-friendly article lengths, and run with standard post-massacre editorial clichés.


U.S. MSNBC provided slightly more insightful, relevant editorials:
10 Myths about school shootings
The psychology of mass murder

Also worth noting is that MSNBC highlighted new sections of text in articles which were updated during the day to help users follow developments.

The wikinews coverage has been even quicker to the get the facts online, taking contributions from locals and witnesses while still managing to keep a very high standard of quality through it's user administration system. The article pages cite their sources and are already linking up wikipedia bio pages of some of the victims, some detailing last movements and moments.

Overall, the collaborative online news coverage has been more accurate, better referenced, faster and more comprehensive than the mainstream media. It's very impressive, and deliberately vetted to remove biased voice and hype.

The key to it all seems to be the voluntary, open community. While news outlets beg readers to e-mail their eyewitness accounts and media it's a fair bet that potential contributors are already uploading, blogging, forum-posting and article-editing at a site where their contribution will appear with and be reviewed by peers, rather than below and by a centralised editorial authority.