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SXSW Panel: CrowdControl: Changing The Face Of Media Or Hype?
Panel: CrowdControl: Changing The Face Of Media Or Hype? (Twitter hashtag: #crowdcontrol)
Date/time: 12:30 p.m., Sunday
Panelists: Jason Rzepka (MTV), Joseph Kingsbury (Text 100), Lila King (CNN), Randi Zuckerberg (Facebook), Pete Cashmore (Mashable.com).
The gist: Big media brands (CNN, MTV) and new-media ones (Facebook, Mashable) are both utilizing the crowd for news coverage and to help shape the content it provides. In the case of Facebook, which has about 400 million users, the company used crowdsourcing to help translate its site into 70 languages. In the case of CNN’s iReport, the network is getting many new and different points of view from its iReporters than it traditionally offered. Less certain is how crowdsourcing can benefit labor-intensive efforts like long-term investigative journalism. In this over-packed panel, questions that have echoed through other panels at the fest (how will mainstream media survive? What will take its place if it goes away?) were brought up, but the answers were no clearer here than in other sessions.
Quotes:“You don’t need a printing press to be the press and create media anymore. If you’re on the scene, you’re a journalist, basically.” — Cashmore. “There’s always going to be a need for the person in the field… I can’t see that going away.” — King. “Everyone has an original experience to share with the world.” — King. “What a incredible world we live in!” — Zuckerberg on how open people are on Facebook, Twitter, etc.
Takeaways: Trusted brands are still important to get reliable information, but crowdsourcing can still play a role in the way news and entertainment organizations provide content. The mainstream media has failed to adopt practices that have become common in the blogging world (like linking back to sources), to their detriment. Sites like CNN are experimenting, but they don’t yet have all the answers; they do feel they’re going in the right direction. Sometimes the best solution is crowdsourcing for specific goals (like Facebook’s translations), or to supplement existing products or coverage (like iReports bundled with CNN’s staff news reports).
- Omar L. Gallaga
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