newswire 2.0
i wrote the following as an ed note for Buletin Popek.
The blogosphere is an interesting space. Those who refer to it as an alternative to mainstream media are missing the point. We are a generation rethinking information networks, creating what in a few generations will be mainstream media, itself exposed to its own challenges and limitations, only to be rethought again and again and again… The redeeming factor is that we are collectively advancing society by ensuring that information finds more efficient ways of doing what it does best…. spread.
PopTeeVee will be one year old in June. Our belief that ‘information needs to be free, information wants to be free’, feels much stronger and relevant today than when we first thought it up almost a year ago. So much information lives within the blogosphere, and while it is free for the most part (ever heard of a subscription based blog?) - fulfilling the first part of the equation - the sheer volume of information out there (a lot of it rubbish too, we should add) is daunting. It can’t be so free if one has to work so hard to find it.
Thinking about it further, we start to see that the blogosphere is really a form of crowd-sourced news-wire. What’s really going for it is that there is more journalism happening on blogs than in news rooms. If it is indeed a news wire of sorts, why aren’t newsrooms accessing the wealth of journalism it generates?
And so we have Buletin Popek, an idea still in development. It’s about finding the best bits of relevant news items on the BlogWire and creating a weekly (eventually to be daily) news program of the internets, by the internets, for the internets.
We welcome any feedback (please add to the comments section below) and hope to crowdsource the production of Buletin Popek. Scouring blogs, creating copy, voicing the puppets (yes, more to come) are just some of the roles that can be crowdsourced.
Thanks for joining us on the journey so far.
Here’s to One Malaysia, wherever you are.
