A lot of what happens on the internet — when it comes to new sites, new services or the reinvention of existing sites — confuses me. I can read and understand the words, but I sometimes don’t get the potential or see the possibilities.
That’s where I’m at with today’s announcement that Topix.net is adding comments and citizen journalism to its aggregation of news. I read the news at a number of sites but this San Jose Mercury News article seems to capture it the best. (The article works for me because it has comments from Vin Crosbie and Susan Mernit, two of the people I read regularly in my attempts to understand this stuff.)
My initial reaction is that this is interesting but not earthshaking. It seems to me to be yet another entry in the community-building field that is already getting crowded and that seems, logically, to work best at a local level, or where content is more closely focussed. Those interested in commenting on and contributing articles about something like NASCAR (one of the Topix topics mentioned in the News article) are more likely to “gather” at a site more directly related to NASCAR.
At first blush the addition of comments and citizen journalism to a broad-based news aggregation site seems odd. Topix wouldn’t have my top-of-mind attention if I were looking for citizen reporting on something like a federal election, or something happening in my geographical neighbourhood, any more than I would first think of trying Google or Yahoo news sites.
But, as I said at the start, I may be missing something. Given the gloriously messy state of the media evolution, there may be aspects to this that aren’t immediately obvious, or potential that others see that I can’t.
UPDATE: Dan Gillmor has a little about this and his Bayosphere commenters have something to add, too.
TAGS: TOPIX, CITIZEN JOURNALISM
