Are editors holding us back?

In a news environment, editors see the big picture. They clean up copy, help communicate the message and direct and guide news pieces.

Don Tapscott and Anthony D Williams make an argument in Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything that professional journalists cannot see past themselves. They argue that as journalists continue to assert the need for editors they are losing out on an opportunity to learn from the collective.

Any serious news organiation today should also allow its community of readers to join in the editorial conversation. The fact that all major media properties don’t already offer a parallel front page edited by readers is troubling. The technology has been available for a decade. A cynic might call it contempt for the collective intelligence of media consumers. In some cases, the cynics might be right. But in most cases the sclerotic pace of change reflects the cultural inertia of instutions steeped in the journalistic traditions of mass media.”

In this case, the authors believe in and trust the readers to choose the best stories. But, this was written in 2006. Since then we have seen on news sites that most popular stories are often about health, love and society, rarely about global politics or economics. That being said, social editing helps people find out what they want to know but not always what they need to know.

In Wikinomics, Judy Rebick says:

As long as the media thinks they know what’s right, they’ll never be in a position to harness people’s collective intelligence. It’s a completely different culture and a completely different way of thinking about knowledge.”

By this she means this hurdle is keeping journalists from innovating. In an older post, I argued that journalists could have and should have created services like Craigslist, Groupon, Yelp and Twitter. But, they didn’t. And because journalists did not look forward, or innovate, we the media industry are suffering for it and losing circulation and readers.

So, where then are we and is there a smarter way to blend what people want versus what they need? I want to find out.