I agree with your call for hyperlocal and citizen journalism to an extent, but don’t you think that if people are too focused on what directly affects themselves and their loved ones that the larger-scale issues that affect us as a nation or as human beings will be ignored? This is the problem I think journalism is facing by allowing users to tailor news homepages to their specifications. I think that it would cause disjunct in the population and hinder the promotion of helping others.

Imagine the quality of sports and stock markets if they lacked platforms where competitors could come to compete in places deemed as fair and open. Why should journalism be any different? How do stories compete now? Via ratings or subscriptons as part of news shows, papers, or websites? Or most viewed on some day on some website? Too embedded, too fragmented, not places where it’s story vs. story - it’s one-to-many instead of one-to-one.

If a journalist is like an athlete and telling stories is his game, then how does he become great if not required to overcome a series of competitions that culminate in the crowning of a champion?

So long as journalism acts like it’s unlike any other endeavor where the better the competition platform, the better the competitors, the prosperity of journalism will be needlessly limited.

Without “professionals” looking over your shoulder — news producers/journalists/bloggers can feel free to follow leads, hunches, tidbits, whatever — where they lead. And in this open environment, you know if you put information out there, people will challenge it - which to my mind surely acts as editorial oversight. Having been inside CBS News for many years, far too often, senior and executive producers did not want to hear where my reporting might be leading me, if it did not fit in with the “prescribed” story.

I also think the new news environment encourages people to become part of news - being a contributor gives them influence in their own lives because they are part of deciding what is “important or relevant” to know and to disseminate.

The story just broke about Tony Snow recurrent colon cancer in the form of metastatic disease in the liver. CNN mistakenly provides a link to liver cancer as a follow-up to this story.

(see graphic) http://billkosloskymd.typepad.com/lexicillin_qd/2007/03/tony_snow_annou.html

The future of news means a much faster pace, and the online journalist has to be up to the challenge.

But news or gossip or ads or blogs, the positive thing is that people read again and read more and like to read more.
And they are getting so fond of news that many have taken to write. That is the Magic of our time (and the Internet).
Giving opportunities to readers and to writers.
And with all this big writing and reading we won’t certainly lack news…

Americans’ willingness to stick their neck out and stand up for the truth makes for business opportunity — the single biggest reason why reporting will flourish going forward.

Do the opportunities outweigh the threats? Industry-wide - of course. But those opportunities will come at the cost of losing things we’re fond of, and inventing things we’ll take time to value. And that means pain for individuals.

Still communications as a part of what EVERYONE does is huge now - the British Interior Ministry has more people in its news management operation than one of the British networks (Channel 4) has gathering news.

Richard Sambrook, Director of BBC’s Global New Division: “News has always required eye-witness testimony, and increasingly, much of this will come from our own listeners and viewers through emails, texts, camphone pictures or video uploads. We have always enabled the public to participate in our services through phone-ins, letter and and so-forth. The arrival of user-generated content, blogs and much else will allow us to expand this involvement dramatically.”

Chris Ahearn, President of Reuters Media: “We now have a truly engaged audience model. The audience decides what they want to watch, arrange for it to be saved and pull it up with their remote devices at times of their choosing. They declare a desire for a specific kind of sport, news or comedy and demand that it be satisfied.

“It ought to be possible to integrate professional journalism with the insights of amateur contributors in a valuable way. News providers will still need to perform the traditional professional job of letting people know what is happening, but they have the opportunity to do more. They have the capacity to engage their viewers, listeners and readers more directly and put them in touch with the raw material from which news stories are derived.” He finishes: “News providers need to seize this moment and harness what technology can offer to engage everyone who wants to participate.”

By the way, these quotes from a very good little book called Global Voice about Britain’s role in international broadcasting.

I wonder if part of the problem is the persistent compartmentalization which journalists seem to indulge in.

Media 2.0 is here already. Ashley Highfield says “We are half way through the revolution. When it’s over the world will have changed forever.”

Isn’t ‘news’ just another genre within the Media 2.0 ecology? If so, then reporting, delivering and sharing the news - continuing the conversation - will be a wonderfully exciting on-going process. At least it will be for those bold enough and humble enough to embrace change.

We could have used the news before the levee breaks, too.

We might not need paper, until after the levee breaks and the power’s off and the cellphones won’t work and the battery on the transistor radio is dying.

And things aren’t just rosy on the supply side, they’re looking real good on the demand side. Previous generations of news consumers had to get by on two newsfeeds a day, one before work in the morning and the other after work. Now we can graze and forage on news all day long without becoming over-educated.

The challenge to news harvesters is in the construction of the apparatus that harvests raw news, processes it, and takes it to market. In previous generations, this process was most efficient when centralized in local news factories, but today and tomorrow the process will become more decentralized, sometimes even taking place on consumer premises under the control of news robots which sift, sort, organize, and filter according to consumer preferences. The process of moving these functions from central offices to consumer equipment is just beginning, although we’ve had working prototypes of the news robot for 25 years.

The revenue picture has never been brighter, as each feed is easily supported by multiple sources of ad and subscriber fees.

The key elements are understanding that decentralization is in fact multiple centralization, and that each center of news processing is a potential revenue generator. That’s all I wish to say at the moment, but you can do the math.