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.

MySpace - instead of your actual website

Last week, i saw an ad for jeans on the back of a bus. Not so unusual. It had a picture of a bored and pasty youth, a Wrangler jeans logo, and a url. This one: http://www.myspace.com/wranglerjeans. Apparently, Wrangler is male, 101 years old and would rather not discuss his sexual orientation. His interests are a bunch of photos that, when clicked on, open the MySpace page again in a new window. Wrangler has a website: http://www.wrangler.com but it seems they want the kids to interact with them via their MySpace page. I think this comment (from Melbourne band The Emergency) sums up the success of this particular effort:

Hello there a pair of jeans!

I remember when I got Wranglers for $35 at Myer, just a few short years ago. They seemed to be made much better then.

Oh well, you're much more popular now, I guess being popular is the most important thing in the world.

Another comment thanks Wrangler for the ad. Now, businesses running ad campaigns in social spaces isn't unusual, but it is generally unpopular with communities. I understand that businesses are experimenting in this area and most haven't found ways to offer something of value to the community that also promotes their product. I'm just surprised that Wrangler chose to use its external poster advertising to promote this page. I'm guessing it didn't pay off.