The Washington Journalism Center blog, Ink Tank http://wjcblog.typepad.com/ink_tank/ carried a vision of the future of the press by Jim Jarvis, director of the interactive Journalism program at the City University of New York.
Its premise is that “the black box that used to spit out news for everyone” is being replaced by an “ecosystem” that is very flexible, drawing on many sources and information that come and go over time and create a story just for the reader/viewer. In this news ecosystem newsrooms will be organized around topics or tags (instead of sections). Stories and topics become molecules that attract atoms: reporters, editors, witnesses, archives, commenters, and so on, all adding different elements to a greater understanding. It may not be the editor or reporter who gathers all these sources, it could just as well be the reader creating his own story.
However, Alistair Croll, blogging at Gigacom, April 6 includes in his description of 10 Ways The Internet (As We know it) Will Die, a way that seems inescapable, “sucking ourselves into a black hole of our own making.” One such possibility, granulized separation that only allows what confirms what we know to enter our silo of credibility.
