How many times have you heard pro journalists complain that all this UGC is just a lot of talentless, ill-informed bunk. That in the end, readers are going to return to professional publications because they will miss the quality.
But according to a recent Deloitte & Touche study, UGC isn’t going anywhere. Some 51 percent of the online audience is a UGC audience, and among younger users, the percentage is even higher. (It kind of makes you wonder why a UGC site would delete all of its UGC content, doesn’t it, especially under the premise of “it just isn’t working”?)
Meanwhile, there is a firehose of new content to keep up with every day, even if you just narrow your focus to a niche or two to follow.
Social aggregators like Digg help address the issue in the tech news world combining human intelligence computer power to filter content, but in the general news world, nothing like that has really worked yet.
And from the pro-journalist perspective, a high-falutin attitude would say, “I don’t want no dang bunch of amateurs filtering my news for me.”
So, if you believe that finding the best news reports on the web can be difficult and that trained, professional journalists have a role to play in helping people sort it all out, then Scott Karp’s new venture should interest you. You can read more about it here.
If you’re a pro journalist, go help out. This could get interesting.
