Salon’s Katrina Timeline: The Bigger Brain Works
Notice in the paragraph below, Salon’s nod to how it expanded its brain power by tapping into the blogosphere and the wiki folks to build its timeline of the Katrina disaster. This should help the news media to understand the power of the people:
Salon produced the following timeline of the events through Tuesday, Sept. 13, focusing on the period between Friday, Aug. 26, and Saturday, Sept. 3, after an extensive (but obviously far from comprehensive) examination of the public record. We looked at news stories, TV interviews, public proclamations and blog posts, and we conducted interviews with the officials involved. We’re especially indebted to the work done by Think Progress, Josh Marshall’s readers, the anonymous hordes who power Wikipedia, and reporters who assembled timelines for newspapers and wire services.
This timeline is a hell of an informative read. Want to know about Katrina and its effects? Then read it and follow its links. Those links illustrate how the idea of proprietary news without links, thanks to competition, actually limits the scope of truth that is possible to be told.
On the other hand, competition produces great individual reporting. Look at the great stories like this one and this one that the timeline links to. So let’s demand greater competition from the news media, but when it makes sense, as with this timeline, then let’s demand more cooperation ala links.
The individual media operations are still going to get their credit for excellent reporting, and we will appreciate their worth as we follow those links. Yes, I know we have to find a financial model, but that will come.
In the end, the bigger brain, plus fantastic reporting by the MSM helps us make sense of what happened. This timeline is a perfect example of how the greater consciousness works. It will be a model for the future.
