Thanks for the recognition of Justine Ezarik, (ijustine) and her lifecasting for iphone. She is making her internet mark, and her life literally.

Perhaps you would get a chuckle out of her lastest lifecasting event, if not for your profession, perhaps just for fun. It will give insight to how AT&T operates on a regular basis. It really does take texting to a new level.

Have a fun day and keep up the good work, I love to read your thoughts.

I think though that in discussions of the amateur future of media there’s an issue of risk management that usually goes unexamined. Traditionally, risk has been encapsulated in corporations (for profit or not), and individual reporters have been able to risk time, effort and potential liability because a corporation was both compensating and insuring them.

The Internet and cheap digital tools allow crowd-sourcing of news by amateurs, not just because the technology makes production and distribution fast, easy and cheap, but also because it diffuses risk through the crowd. So it makes any individual’s share of the risk small enough to be acceptable, and makes the small compensation (recognition, fun, etc) acceptable as well. In the same way, the net itself is made available for next to nothing by diffusing the cost (risk) through countless servers and routers.

But I think he question remains of how we make sure we still cover stories that require a lot of risk to be taken on by one or two individuals. The diffused risk model is fine - and may even be better in some ways - for reporting stories that can be covered from the outside, by amateur observers. For example earthquakes, riots, terrorist attacks, speeches, commentary, etc.

But some of the most important stories still require individuals to take on very large amounts of risk: months or years of time and potentially huge liability. For example financial crimes, political corruption or wars.

Put another way, I think risk analysis can provide another way of looking at the “buggy whip maker” argument - that you shouldn’t try to force your fellows to pay you for economically unproductive activity.

We might dismiss old ways of doing things, but we can’t just dismiss risk (I’ve noticed - and certainly been guilty of it myself - that when risk has been lost track of, hand-waving starts). In the new media world, some risks (such as printing costs) do disappear into the cloud. But only some.

Not all risks are financial. One possible outcome of the “amateurization” of news is that politically important stories stop being covered (and I’d say such a trend is already well under way as the unit value of news coverage drops). Not because only old-style experts can possibly report them, but because the risk isn’t being managed (including, I’d have to say, the risk involved in becoming an expert).

This could be a financially optimal result. It might also amount to democratization in some ways. But socially? Maybe not so good. It amounts to whether or not there remains a distinction between citizens and consumers.

I’m not saying “old ways good, new ways bad”. But I’m also not saying “new ways good, old ways bad”. As is usually the case, I think the new reality is likely to be complicated. And I think we’re going to have to find new ways to manage risks that will still be worth taking even after the old ways of handling them are gone.