On Jul 5, 2006, at 9:12 PM, Fred Bauder wrote:
On Jul 5, 2006, at 10:06 PM, Jesse W wrote:
CNN *is not* our competition! Not even of
Wikinews! We are
*tertiary*
sources, i.e. we summarize and coordinate what secondary sources make
of actual facts on the ground (i.e. primary sources). We'd be
impoverished and in trouble without CNN, the Stanford Encyclopedia of
Philosophy and all the rest of the "mainstream media" - We Don't Have
The Money To Pay Reporters - and even if we did, that's not our
purpose.
We are, in a sense, parasitic on them and other original content
providers.
Parasitic isn't the word I'd use... Dependent, maybe.
But they provide no significant opportunity for
participatory input. Besides, they don't cover Pokeman nearly as well
as we do.
Yes - those are benefits we provide, and they are important; but they
also have benefits we lack- personal/institutional authority and money
to hire investigators/reporters being big ones.
If you say that we should be aim to be a better first step in research
than CNN, I might agree with you - I think we can get to that; but we
certainly can't be a replacement.
We work best together.
Jesse Weinstein