Tapping in to Crowd Media

With the acceleration of the participation culture, enabling tools (cameras, camcorders, smartphones, software for media creation) and people that know how to use them, it was inevitable that some strategic, forward looking media organization would take steps to leverage the collective capabilities of crowd media (i.e., citizen media, user-generated media, grassroots journalism, et al).

Looks like Gannett may be stepping up to the plate as evidenced in this article in Wired News which states in part:

According to internal documents provided to Wired News and interviews with key executives, Gannett, the publisher of USA Today as well as 90 other American daily newspapers, will begin crowdsourcing many of its newsgathering functions. Starting Friday, Gannett newsrooms were rechristened “information centers,” and instead of being organized into separate metro, state or sports departments, staff will now work within one of seven desks with names like “data,” “digital” and “community conversation.”

The initiative emphasizes four goals: Prioritize local news over national news; publish more user-generated content; become 24-7 news operations, in which the newspapers do less and the websites do much more; and finally, use crowdsourcing methods to put readers to work as watchdogs, whistle-blowers and researchers in large, investigative features.