I agree with some of @lessin's points, esp on lower cost of punditry.
However, if it's possible to be a freelance journalist, it's certainly possible to be a citizen journalist. The only difference is whether you need to be a "member of the community".https://twitter.com/lessin/status/1281627304947404801 …
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If it's possible to write the Great American Novel on your laptop, if it's possible to build a billion dollar startup in your dorm room, it's absolutely possible to break the story of the year as a citizen without any access to traditional institutions. http://archive.is/bgW6c pic.twitter.com/zJj3vw1tfA
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Replying to @balajis
So the great American novel is content.. yes you can do it alone. No one ‘builds’ a billion dollar startup alone, they ‘start’ things that grow into billion dollar companies with the work of large communities of employees or contributors
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Replying to @lessin
Well, as one example Minecraft was a solo operation for a long time and (I believe) valued near a billion. But to core point: I disagree that the defining line for what is “journalism” is high production values. Today it is more like “produced by recognized community members”.
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If the issue was simply cost of producing useful information, there are 1000 ways to bring that down. Eg pipeline to keep Google Maps annotations up to date. It’s more like “citizen journalism is journalism w/o license from institutions”. IMO that gets to core issue.
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It’s not just the cost of producing useful information. It’s that there are people or entities that are willing spend to exorbitant amounts of resources to make sure the public doesn’t have certain kinds of information.
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Replying to @kimmaicutler @lessin
You're saying there's some % of stories that only an established institution with $ can do. OK, let's stipulate that for argument's sake. Do you agree there are stories a citizen with particular expertise could do that an institution couldn't or wouldn't? https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/how-to-conduct-an-open-source-investigation-according-to-the-founder-of-bellingcat …pic.twitter.com/lJn7qBI9vG
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For example, how many professional writers had technical backgrounds in diagnostics or stats to cover COVID? My general premise is that billions of people around the world (a) do have real expertise & (b) cannot fully delegate the defense of their freedoms to media corporations.
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I would much rather have a statistical epidemiologist writing articles on Covid-19 than a non-specialized journalist. There may be something to what you’re saying here, the more I think about it...
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Oh I mostly agree on health issues. I mostly followed epidemiologists in Jan +
@HelenBranswell, a professional reporter. But Balaji is assuming that someone definitely exists for every one of these issues and has the money and resources to do this.3 replies 0 retweets 2 likes
There are also people like CJ Chivers, a munitions specialist who gets the budget and resources to do world-class military and conflict coverage at the NYTimes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C._J._Chivers …
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