Steven Johnson writes about Technorati’s Breaking News service which tracks weblogs and compares it with the mainstream news sources. Johnson asks: “What happens to the general prioritizing of news when the editorial decisions are being made by the masses, and not editors?”
Conclusion: “No, Technoratis Breaking News isnt a replacement for the traditional front pages or nightly news broadcasts. But neither does it create the narrowing perspective of the Daily Me. Its more like an ongoing exchange between the top-down approach of traditional journalism and the bottom-up approach of the Web: Professional writers and editors generate the stories, and the Webs vast audience decides which ones deserve our attention. And this approach may well result in the best of all possible journalistic worlds. The last day of my anecdotal survey, the lead story on Technorati wasnt another item on Iraq or an expos on Madonnas new yoga instructor. It was a 3,000-word rumination from the Financial Times on the question of why humans cry, examined both culturally and biologically. It was hands down the most interesting article I had read all week. Somewhere I had an editor and a writer to thank for producing the story, but I also had another group to thank for finding this one among the clutter and sharing it: the distributed eyes of the Daily Us.”
