Community Journalism, Not Vigilante Journalism

Yesterday, Todd of OhmyNews posted a blog entry called Citizen Journalism Returns… He talked about the fact that they are different because they “edit every single published story.” He then quoted a piece written earlier in the day by Paul Bradshaw about Erik’s visits to journalism students in Europe going on now.

One of the things Todd mentions is the Steve Jobs false heart attach reports. We here at allvoices take a dim view of people submitting false reports.  At the same time,  we don’t believe that one person has he right to decide what should and should not be reported. Instead,  allvoices takes a different view of citizen journalism. We let you the community decide.  We don’t edit your pieces. We don’t decide what can and can not be posted on the site. You might say we are community journalism instead of vigilante journalism.

I talked to Sanjay Sood, allvoices CTO, about this and he offered the following:

While it’s true that allvoices does not have human editors accepting and rejecting user reports, we believe that the proper technology and community input can provide the necessary validation.  Just as journalists validate their stories via multiple sources, the allvoices system can automatically validate a users contribution against thousands of traditional news sites.  Just as you judge the news you receive by the reputation of the source and reporter, the allvoices system considers the past actions of contributors (if any) to handle and verify a new report.  The allvoices community, like your friends, helps you vet what to believe and what is just false.  allvoices is all about building perspective and context around the news that matters to our users without the barriers of the traditional media.

We have four mechanisms that let community members add their voice to the news: Flagging,  voicing up or down, adding 

Flagging lets you mark a piece as inappropriate for the site or the story. If you want to learn more about flagging, check out Flagging stories… Voicing up or down an item on the site allows you to share whether you think this piece belongs here or not. Try not to think of these two buttons as whether or not you agree with the item. Instead, think of these buttons as your “review” of the item. Is it a good item which others should view? Or, is it something people should disregard?

Flagging and using the voice up and down buttons are quick ways to express your opinion and help to validate information. If you have something to say about the item, comment on it. You can comment on a report from its main page. If you have a comment on a related item (blog, image, or video), you can click that item and then comment on it directly. Commenting on items keeps the conversation going and growing. It helps us all to learn from each other and validate what is being said.

The last way you can voice your news is to add your own news. This can be a related item like a blog, a video, or an image. Or – you can write your own news story and let the system link the two together.

No matter how you add your voice to the news, know that we are depending on you and your fellow community members to help us verify the news you read here. We believe that by taking down the walls that block your voice, we can all work together to make everyone better informed.