Open source reporting?

I'm conflicted.

I don't know what to think. It seems as though this is a sad time, but also the precipice of something great.

My junior and senior year of high school, I worked for my high school's paper. I loved it - it gave me a chance to be a journalist, to talk to people, and to bring "news" to my local community. If it weren't for my love of music and desire to be a teacher, I would have gone into journalism. In college, I worked for Michigan State's student newspaper, The State News. However, I didn't work as a reporter or copy editor, instead, I worked for the production department that focused on shipping off designed pages to the printer as well as uploading content for the web version of the paper.

In short, I've been involved in the newspaper "industry." I am also still a subscriber of the Columbus Dispatch on the weekends. I'd actually much rather read the WSJ or NYT. I enjoy newspapers. I buy them, I sometimes read them... but, I'm not afraid to say they are dying.

In fact, I would be so bold as to say that papers who don't differentiate themselves will start to disappear in record numbers over the next year. With the financial crunch along with the transfer of news to the internet, we're going to see a big change in how we read the news.

Clay Shirky, a professor at NYU as well as a writer and proponent of open source work and social media, wrote a lengthy blog about this subject and published it today. I read it all and agreed with most of it, especially his statement: "Society doesn't need newspapers. What we need is journalism." I encourage you to read it as it is filled with facts as well as excellent, researched parallels to history.

News is a commodity. We can find it anywhere, and guess what? It can be argued that anyone can write and report news. As our social networks continue to spread and tools like Twitter become more and more popular, people will start reporting news events in real time for the whole world to read. We'll be able to customize it and when we do want more information, we'll be able to research on our own or through our networks. Instead of paying for news, we're going to report it ourselves. It will be "open-source" reporting.

However, journalism will stick and we will pay for it. Investigative reports (and no, not 5 o'clock-news investigative reports) will still be published and we will pay for it. Despite our ability and desire to report the events that directly affect us, there is a certain amount of comfort in knowing that facts have been checked, sources have been questioned, and there is a level of credibility behind potentially life changing information for us.

Having almost been a writer for a newspaper or magazine, I feel for the many newspaper and media-publishing institutions across the world that are feeling the pinch of a bad economy and a loss of readership. It isn't their fault; it is the fault of the business model they work under which has largely been stagnant over the past 60 years (or more?). Also, it should be noted, that in an increasingly open-source culture, career and job lines are blurring. We're all turning into reporters, and sooner rather than later, we might all turn into journalists.