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maandag 30 mei 2011

Wikipedia-based journalism: The painful future...

There are a large number of changes since the rise of the online and free encyclopedia Wikipedia. First of all, this encyclopedia is more up-to-date than the tangible version of an encyclopedia. When a soccer player moves to another team, Wikipedia will adapt it immediately. A break up between David Beckham and his wife Victoria? It will be edited in an hour on Wikipedia.

The principle of a wiki is quite simple: somebody posts a description of something or somebody on a website and everybody is free to edit the content of it. Wikipedia works on the same way: a person creates a text about somebody (say: the biography of world’s best soccer player Lionel Messi) and everybody who knows more about him is able to add that information.

However, there is a limit in the adaptations on Wikipedia. An insane person who thinks that it will be funny to adapt the contents of topics like World War II, the 2011 tsunami in Japan or the John F. Kennedy murder will be disappointed: these topics are protected and cannot be adapted.

What about journalism nowadays? Did the rise of Wikipedia affect the current world of journalists? Normally, everybody will say: no. A journalist doesn’t use Wikipedia as a source of information, at most to check some general facts.

There is an exception, people! Just my own employer, Algemeen Dagblad (a Dutch newspaper and I am working there as a freelance journalist) uses Wikipedia as a source of information. My favorite soccer team in the world, FC Barcelona, has a unique offense: the amazing Lionel Messi, Spanish striker David Villa and rooky Pedro Rodríguez. In funny circumstances, me and a friend edited the content of Pedro on Wikipedia. I made myself the discoverer of Pedro on the Dutch version of Wikipedia and advised FC Barcelona in 2004 to transfer him to Barcelona. In the week before the Champions League final between FC Barcelona and Manchester United, Algemeen Dagblad made comparisons between the players of both teams: Messi against Rooney, Vitor Valdes against Van der Sar and also: Valencia against Pedro.

I am proud that Algemeen Dagblad makes me part of the history of the ‘Blaugranas’, but I am also ashamed. Where are we going to in the current world of journalism? Please, please, please: could somebody stop this way of ‘copy-paste’ journalism and make journalism qualitative again?

1 opmerking:

  1. Interessante post. Wat was de reactie van de hoofd-redacteur op deze fout toen jij dit notabene als medewerker van de krant opmerkte?

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