Most importantly, “asking experts” requires promoting humility and openness on the part of professional journalists – again, an extremely worthy task, and I commend Dan’s efforts in that direction. But it’s a matter of engaging with those in power, and saying they should be humble. There’s a potential for push-back there. Whereas “grunt labor” can have very dubious aspects of preying on ordinary people’s frustrations and powerlessness, for a marketeer’s benefit. There’s not much check on the down side of hype and overselling.

http://www.current.org/news/news0608skoler.shtml

Two market returns for readers:

- Each reader has the opportunity to get the information covered that they think is important. Especially for readers with causes, the benefits from coverage can be huge. Think: an article vs. paid advertising, ringing doorbells, gathering petition signatures, etc….

- Each reader who does get their information covered may personally benefit from the resulting fame (that classic greed/lust factor that motivates many people to action).

Social networks don’t centrally aggregate readers and information — there’s no MySpace user-produced news aggregation site, for example — because privacy and invidual connections are the focus. News organizations are in an ideal situation to fill this hole.

1) Asking experts to fact-check an article in their field – generally a small task, easily delegated to a grad student or similar.

2) Postulating huge number of people are going to work for free, doing somebody else’s slave labor.

I understand why #2 is great if you can make it happen – but really, it’s a lot easier said than done (and some of the ways to do it are ethically dubious).