Inspired by a number of recent events this past week, including:

1. Jay Rosen’s talk at the Berkman Center on Open Source Journalism (and Steve Garfield’s excellent interview with Jay),

2. Rebecca MacKinnon’s exploration into Journalism Education and the Internet, and

3. The CIS Presents podcast with Holmes Wilson,

I wanted to consider these conversations in relation to today’s NYTimes Public Editor piece titled, “Breaking News: Can Times Quality Be Preserved Online?”

Byron Calame talks about the challenges facing mainstream news organizations like The Times and their ability to deliver breaking news online with speed, accuracy, and completeness. He writes,

“These new constant and quickly evolving demands call for a new mind-set in the newsroom that could help determine the paper’s future in the world of instant information. So how is The Times handling this?”

He then takes a closer look at how the The Times is handling this and helps to provide a picture of what Rebecca MacKinnon’s students and future journalists may be faced with as they graduate into a world of fast-paced reporting for the web.

But what if we stopped to consider this challenge in the context of a rapidly evolving participatory knowledge-venting culture? A culture where Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia “is written collaboratively by volunteers, allowing most articles to be changed by almost anyone with access to the Web site.”

In Steve Garfield’s interview, Jay Rosen asks

“What if we asked lots of people to help us to get an answer to a single question or report a single story? Could we do it?”

Might this be another path towards delivering news as it breaks on the web? Would it be so terrible for the The Times to ask their readers for help? Could we - the people and mainstream news outlets - do it together? What might this look like? These are some of the questions that Jay Rosen’s NewAssigment.net and other citizen journalism related sites and projects are asking.

(More on the challenges facing The Times) Calame writes

“As top editors ponder how best to deliver the full range of Times articles to the Web 24 hours a day, it seems clear to me that the reporters nailing down important breaking news stories on their beat will continue to need some time to report and think.”

Could The Times at least experiment with creating a citizen journalism forum on their website to allow readers to contribute information as their beat reporters take this time “to report and think”?

While mainstream news outlets are reporting and thinking, citizen journalists are also reporting and thinking. And if some reporters are searching blogs for answers to important questions, why not ask their employers to provide spaces on their sites to help them find answers to these questions?

Like educators learning how to use new media tools in the classroom (as Rebecca MacKinnon discussed), could mainstream news outlets become open to the idea of a participatory digital newsgathering process? Is there room in J-school curricula to begin exploring what this world might look like?

Whether it’s in the classroom or in a mainstream news outlet, opening ourselves up to a little experimentation - and trust - may reveal some exciting surprises. It might also allow others, who already have a voice in our participatory culture, to contribute to something larger than they have, and they are, on their individual digital publishing spaces.

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