To Wiki or not to Wiki, that is the question...

It is out. A few years ago, my friend Sanjit used to mock at newspaper features that ended with an impressive byline that went "So-and-so, with Internet reports"...those were the days when the Internet itself had an authoritative ring to it whereas the case was simply one of a harried writer in a hurry hacking a dubious source.
Now, the Internet is understood to be less-than-excellent, but its latter-day user-generated encyclopaedia, Wikipedia is often used by journalists, including yours truly. I confess that I use it, though it is a dubious source, but also add that I trust my own intuition, experience and cross-checking to know when to use it. Of course, I have never thus far "cited" it as a source.
Now comes an interesting article in American Journalism Review that discusses the issue threadbare.
As long as publishers don't want to spend (enough) on reportage and research, and as long as editors are not willing to cross-examine reporters and as long as reporters -- either out of laziness, ignorance or indifference -- use Wiki to meet deadlines faster or easier, the threat of information pollution is real.
Which brings me back to my favourite theme: Loser Generated Content.
Few people care to acknowledge that good journalism is both capital and labour intensive. If you are short of time or funds, reportage will tend to suffer. Somebody has to pay for it. Usually it is the reader.
Activists, well-intentioned citizens and affected parties cry foul about bad reportage, but few are ready to pay for good stuff.
I once asked a bunch of complaining folks: Will you pay 10 rupees to buy your paper?
The answer was silence, or some kind of fudging.
I used to like a lot an old VIP suitcase ad. Its punchline, based on an old Arab saying, was just right: You can't get a camel for the price of a goat!

Talking Technorati: How to make sense out of Loser Generated Content?

It is official! This blog has entered Technorati, which classifies blogs by tags and tries to promote them, and creates a floating chaos in which a combination of tagging by keywords, categories and "favourite" labels bundles content and shoves them around the Internet.
Phew! If this is an alternative to journalism, I am not sure if it will work.
Technorati is commendable for its work, but I do believe some kind of an organization of content going beyond tags and keywords and automated software will be needed. If academic PhDs and Nobel prizes need citations by well-regarded people, I presume the same might apply for blogs. Or at least, the better blogs will be paid for, either by subscribers or advertisers -- and there must be real "blogamediaries"
I am sceptical about a democratic soap box oratory on the Net passing off as "citizen journalism!"
I spoke to the Delhi Bloggers Bloc on June 7, and taking a media-centric view, wanted the men/women among bloggers to be separated from the boys/girls of the Blogosphere.
Why should a good blogger be different from a good newspaper columnist or journalist? In the end, I see good blogs as an extension of good journalism -- not an alternative. At the presentation, I referred to many blogs as "Loser Generated Content": if the blogs are useless, the bloggers are losers anyway; and if they are useful and not compensated for in a meaningful way, even good-quality bloggers must be losers!
I can't wait to see more credible organisational and business models to honour the better blogs. Of course, you cannot ban or ignore the mass of blogs anymore than you can ban or ignore random letters to the editor. But I plead for sense and sensibility. Surely technology and tagging must have their limits?