The Wisdom of the Crowd Resides in How the Crowd Is Used—Jeff HoweHowe coined the term “crowd-sourcing,” although not initially in relation to journalism. In recent years, the idea has been widely embraced by news organizations and it has been argued that the practice allows for better reporting, reduced newsroom costs and greater connection with audiences. In this context, Howe raises the question of the implications of the practice. Howe argues that “there is a lot that the crowd can’t do or at least isn’t interested in doing.” Based on examples such as Assignment Zero and the Cinncinnati Enquirer, he argues that “crowdsourcing has limited applicability to journalism” but that the idea that readers know more than us is evolving into something that if used wisely”, has the potential to be “more efficient and useful than our first early attempts at this new form of journalism.” An example of this is the Off the Bus experiment. In sum, he argues that user generated content/crowd sourcing/ is complementary not competitive with mainstream media organizations.Questions: What do you think of his main argument? In what types of situations does crowdsourcing work best? Are there other ways to define crowdsourcing than the ways he suggests? Human search in China ?Exploring the Political Economic Factors of Participatory Journalism—Vujnovic et al.This article undertakes a comparative analysis of UGC use in ten European countries and analyzes the economic factors driving its adoption as assessed by journalists. They make the case that in the era of late capitalism, media industries have failed to “capitalize on the transformational power of information technology and are instead discovering the weaknesses of the traditional economic model with which they remain most comfortable.” They argue that participatory media channels do not stem solely from democratizing impulses but also from economic calculations as pointed out by Jenkins. The authors build on an older study of 16 papers and expand it to 21 papers. They state that although media cultures vary, similarities surpassed differences. Among the economic factors driving participatory journalism initiatives according to the authors are:- Branding as a loyalty building/audience retention mechanism in most countries- Increasing and retaining web traffic- Keeping up with or beating competition Conclude that while journalism organizations are adopting participatory models and seem them as a valuable, most admit a lack of clear vision about why and how to adopt it and do want to hold on to more traditional rationales.Questions: How would you evaluate the two different positions on participatory journalism? What do you think of the contention that in a networked society, “values central to democracy take material form in networked communication technologies?” How participatory is participatory journalism ? Why do you think journalistic motivations for UGC were more prominent in countries like Britain, Israel, Spain, Finland ? User Generated Content in Newsrooms—Paulussen and UgilleThe authors argue that though participatory journalism initiatives are being embraced by newsrooms, journalists tend to be resistant and that this resistance should beunderstood in the context of work practices, daily routines, organizational structures and newsroom perceptions. Participatory journalism is defined in terms of conversation, moderation and collaboration according to the authors but like online journalism, it has tobe seen in relation to contextual factors. In their view just as technology and socio-economic and cultural factors mutually shape one another in newsrooms, the same framework can be applied to participatory journalism This study is therefore an attempt toexamine how organizational structure and professional culture within the newsroom foster or hinder the development of participatory journalism.The authors observed a hierarchical structure inside the news organization with constraints on internal collaboration as well as tensions between departments notably journalists and IT. Also a distance between citizen journalists and those at the paper. Work practices—Tendency to see user generated content as background and not part of the daily routine/increased workload due to such content/tendency to create one person as responsible for dealing with reader generated content rather than making it part of the newsgathering culture. Also while journalists were positive about user contributions, they had concerns over quality and credibility over readers as news sourcesand also tended to stick to routines of newsgathering and standards of gatekeeping.Questions: Are the results of this study more widely applicable? Have things changed significantly over the last two years? What other constraints might apply? What about the view that participatory journalism is more effective in hyperlocal contexts to produce life oriented content rather than news/informational content ? Can what is typically produced be called journalism? Histories of Citizen Journalism—Stuart Allan Allan raises the question of when the term “citizen journalism” first entered the lexicon. While there is no consensus, he states that competing conceptions of the term have tended to revolve around crisis reporting notably beginning with the 2004 tsunami. Since then several terms have been used such as open source journalism, distributed journalism user generated content. Allan’s aim is to question technology-determined accounts of citizen journalism’s emergence as well as the notion of current citizen journalism as entirely novel. He cites examples of early “citizen” journalism such asaccounts of the 1994 California earthquake, the Drudge report, Kosovo in 1999 and Sept. 11 as well as more recent warblogs such as Salam Pax. Questions: Has citizen journalism changed over time? Are participatory journalism and citizen journalism and user generated content different terms similar or do they imply different things?Wikinews Reporting of Hurricane Katrina—Farida VisAccording to Vis, Wikinews contains articles based on a synthesis of media reports as well as those based on original reporting. The idea is to produce news articles that are “factual,” “relevant,” “collaborative” and written from a neutral point of view. Vis points out that during Hurriacan Katrina, Wikinews did not produce many stories containing original