More evidence that ideas are in short supply these days in media outlets

[bironic]

Wow. It's not bad enough that media producers call on their viewerships for free creative labor -- now journalists can poll their readers for story ideas in the publication in which they plan to run the story and state outright that the person with the good idea will receive nothing for it but the satisfaction of seeing the result in print? (And this particular example is not one of the new-media journalism concepts where people donate nominal amounts of money so journalists unaffiliated with corporate-sponsored publications can cover a particular aspect of the news, which is an interesting model.) Screw that. Coming up with a fresh story idea is hard, and it's not fair to ask your readers to do the scut work for you.

This is a crowdsourcing dream for the people doing the sourcing, but as a sometime member of the crowd, I am not happy.

Comments

[synn.livejournal.com]

that reminds me of the TV news where more and more it seems I see them asking/reading out people's opinions on issues that they get via email/twitter to show they are 'connected' to the people. It just makes me want to yell at them. That's not news.

[ignaz (from livejournal.com)]

sometimes it fills me with so much despair for the future of media/journalism ...

[recrudescence.livejournal.com]

And people will gleefully participate in these things, too. Doh.

[bironic.livejournal.com]

Oh, yes. As of last night, 6 of 7 comments were story suggestions. (the 7th was a follow-up hyperlink.)

[bironic.livejournal.com]

I take it back, gladly - there have since been half a dozen comments calling the guy out for unprofessional idea mining (and for claiming ownership of ideas too).

[recrudescence.livejournal.com]

That's relieving to hear. This is one of those times where it's good to be proven wrong.