The Importance of MetaJournalism, Editorial Control in Social News

A piece of commentary by Li Evans, pointing out that Newsvine beat Digg in reporting the VA Tech shooting made the rounds 2 days ago. While people have largely been discussing the merits of socially driven news sites based on the speed with which they report the news, one thing is glaringly missing: an emphasis on the completeness and the accuracy of the news.

Judging the merits of a socially driven news site based on how fast news is delivered can be a very slippery slope. In the past, I too have made the claim that socially driven news sites are better because they are faster than traditional mainstream media. However, judging solely on speed gives you an incomplete measurement of what it means to be 'better'.

If you look at the examples I cited in the article linked above, you will see that both Digg and Netscape picked up the news from a wire story that had no substantive information apart from the fact that Donald Rumsfeld had resigned. The socially driven news stories didn't provide any background information and didn't answer any questions, they didn't provide a complete picture, they just mentioned that Donald Rumsfeld had resigned. This is a direct result of the people's perception that social news is a race.

What we tend to overlook is the importance of the completeness and accuracy of the news that is socially aggregated and presented to be consumed by the masses. The reason why I would much rather read a breaking news story on CNN rather than on a social news site is that CNN is bound to try and gather as much information as is available before publishing a story, and perhaps even more importantly, CNN will continue to update and provide more information as becomes available. More to the latter of the two points, we see the importance of MetaJournalism in socially driven news.

Furthermore, a piece on Wired once again proves that social news, in the absence of editorial control, can be dangerous.

In the absence of any official information from police on the identity of the Virginia Tech killer, internet sleuths claiming to be in-the-know have been calling attention -- on message boards and online aggregators like Digg -- to the LiveJournal blog of a particular 23-year-old gun nut in Virginia.

Allowing people to chose what news is important is one thing, but letting them decide what source presents that important news in the best and most complete manner requires a whole different set of parameters. Social News is not a race, and while social news sites try to address these concerns, let me suggest that you take a look at NewsTrust, an online social network that distinguish news based on the quality of the journalism rather than the popularity of the content.

**Disclaimer: I am a Netscape Navigator.

Enjoy the post? Here are some more that may interest you.

SES

Trackbacks (1)

WinExtra, April 18, 2007

“How the rest of us can add value to A-Lister’s” — In an all too common practice bloggers outside of the upper echelons of the influencers; and without the inside track to the big stories of the day, tend to rush to publish a quick uptake of a leading story. There might be many reasons for doing this ...

Reader Comments (3)

Mike D., April 18, 2007

Important note: Our breaking story on Newsvine did not come from a wire or other secondary source at all. It came initially from the user's wife who works on campus. It's also important to note that the user posted a full 35 updates to the article as the incident was occurring and simultaneously tended to his comment thread, which included people on campus. Interesting stuff for sure.

Brett Terpstra, April 18, 2007

I strongly agree with the general sentiment of your article. Digg users, and Digg itself to an extent, promote quick posting and even faster consumption of news items. If I want news, I read informative blogs. I don't even enjoy having articles of mine posted to Digg, the traffic rarely results in more readers of any substance and isn't worth the server load for a bunch of headline scanners.

However, I think it's amazing that "Citizen Reporters" can access the rest of us with such speed and efficiency. I just wish it wasn't a contest. If we could take away the urgency of being "first" and add to the urgency of being "informed", we'd see a new era in communication.

Muhammad Saleem, April 18, 2007

Mike you are absolutely right and that is what we need more of. We need links to good sources and we need these links to be updated as frequently (and accurately) as possible.