In a Wired report published last week, Rosen wonders if large groups of people can
work together on the Net, report on events in their world by dividing the work yet hit high standards for truth and accuracy.
At a time when YouTube is fostering free expression by
eliminating traditional barriers to entry, journalism is still dominated by professionals. Sure, there are bloggers, but their rise to prominence has similarly been limited to the oversight of small
groups, and in most cases, one person. Rosen's idea is to call upon the masses to do the grunt work--that is, the reporting--to generate a more comprehensive overview of a given topic. Journalists
would then be the editor-gatekeepers, fact-checking and editing for errors. It's a cool idea that's useful to the telling of a broad story, but what gets left behind--especially given the age of
instant information--is timeliness. How Rosen plans to get such a broad collective effort to deliver information quickly is unclear. It sounds like this would become a series of retrospective
thought-pieces.