Adam Curry has an idea (similar to Rahul Dave’s Blog News Network):
Dave Winer once wrote about triangulation. The process of forming an opinion about an event or story by reading a minimum of 3 different blogs reporting the news. This enables bloggers who also read blogs the unique opportunity to form an opinion based on the ‘truth’ from different viewpoints. A luxury most news companies don’t have, purely due to cost.
Imagine a world where BigPubs could purchase triangulated facts from a single source, an aggregation of weblogs. Just like a news agency.
BigPubs are already used to purchasing news from agencies. If it’s from AP for example, a newspaper doesn’t care about the depth or truth. If it’s from AP, then it’s ok. It’s a valid source and is credited as such.
All the BigPub does is copy-paste the story, select an appropriate picture (also provided by the agency) and package it to fit their format and audience.
Here’s the beauty part: Thje money flow is already aggreed to. Either by subscription or on a piece meal basis.
If information from an agency is used (words pix or video), a payment is made. The agency takes a cut off the top and passes the rest on to the reporters.
BigPubs already scour weblogs for news and often copy-paste directly from those reports. Why not make them pay for it?
Weblogs are everywhere, and it’s easy to start a new one if a story breaks in a place where there isn’t one. All you need is feet on the street. Technology takes care of the rest, including photos, audio and video.
So what’s stopping us from creating this global blog news agency? Nothing at all.
Would be interesting to try this out for the Indian elections.
