Gert van der Hoek
In Memoriam - Editor, Senior Moderator
Interesting piece from the Reveres:
excerpt
If flu is one of our vital interests (substitute any other topic), what now is the best way to learn about it?
At the moment people who are really flu obsessed (or Iraq obsessed or health reform obsessed, etc.) use a hybrid model of professional journalists and citizen journalists (I know some professional journalists who don't recognize there is such a thing as a citizen journalist, but that's their problem).
Most of us who are not professional reporters but write about the flu depend on professional reporters to a large extent.
They gather the news. We don't have bureaus in Jakarta or Beijing or Geneva and depend on reporting from those places. We filter what they produce, often producing our own "mash-ups" from several sources that are introduced, interspersed and summarized with our interpretations.
It is a melding of experience and knowledge with the hard work (and often intrepid) shoe leather reporting of others, especially local reporters in places like Java or the Mekong Delta.
A small army of news sentinels at The Flu Wiki Forum, CurEvents or FluTrackers and next level news filters and commentators like Crof at H5N1 or Mike at Avian Flu Diary (see sidebar for more links) then digest and try to make sense of it.
The article we found wanting at Canadian Press is grist for that mill, too. It is like a mini Wikipedia, growing and transforming minute by minute in ways no newspaper could ever afford or accomplish.
The conclusion we draw from this is that if you really want to know what's going on in the flu world you shouldn't depend on newspapers as a source of information but go to the next (meta)level, where news, comment, the peer reviewed science literature and the gray literature of official reports, press releases, and rumor filters are done better (or at least different) than most any newspaper or wire service.
We can't do without the wireservices and newspapers. They are an essential part of the news infrastructure. But just as a bridge is necessary to get from place to place, it isn't the sole means for getting from one point to another. It is infrastructure.
In today's world a wireservice or newspaper can no longer be depended upon as a main source of news, either because it is is incomplete, presents only a biased fragment of the truth or has become a stenographic tool for official sources. The days when these were the sole source of news are over, anyway.
The internet has transformed everything.
http://scienceblogs.com/effectmeasure/2009/02/flu_and_the_news_business.php
excerpt
If flu is one of our vital interests (substitute any other topic), what now is the best way to learn about it?
At the moment people who are really flu obsessed (or Iraq obsessed or health reform obsessed, etc.) use a hybrid model of professional journalists and citizen journalists (I know some professional journalists who don't recognize there is such a thing as a citizen journalist, but that's their problem).
Most of us who are not professional reporters but write about the flu depend on professional reporters to a large extent.
They gather the news. We don't have bureaus in Jakarta or Beijing or Geneva and depend on reporting from those places. We filter what they produce, often producing our own "mash-ups" from several sources that are introduced, interspersed and summarized with our interpretations.
It is a melding of experience and knowledge with the hard work (and often intrepid) shoe leather reporting of others, especially local reporters in places like Java or the Mekong Delta.
A small army of news sentinels at The Flu Wiki Forum, CurEvents or FluTrackers and next level news filters and commentators like Crof at H5N1 or Mike at Avian Flu Diary (see sidebar for more links) then digest and try to make sense of it.
The article we found wanting at Canadian Press is grist for that mill, too. It is like a mini Wikipedia, growing and transforming minute by minute in ways no newspaper could ever afford or accomplish.
The conclusion we draw from this is that if you really want to know what's going on in the flu world you shouldn't depend on newspapers as a source of information but go to the next (meta)level, where news, comment, the peer reviewed science literature and the gray literature of official reports, press releases, and rumor filters are done better (or at least different) than most any newspaper or wire service.
We can't do without the wireservices and newspapers. They are an essential part of the news infrastructure. But just as a bridge is necessary to get from place to place, it isn't the sole means for getting from one point to another. It is infrastructure.
In today's world a wireservice or newspaper can no longer be depended upon as a main source of news, either because it is is incomplete, presents only a biased fragment of the truth or has become a stenographic tool for official sources. The days when these were the sole source of news are over, anyway.
The internet has transformed everything.
http://scienceblogs.com/effectmeasure/2009/02/flu_and_the_news_business.php