While curating will become an increasingly important skill for a journalist, as Jerry says, there is a level at which there simply isn’t enough connected individuals online to generate the information stream through which to sift.

In the city in which I live in England, there is a growing network of people out there, but it’s simply not strong enough to rely upon in creating stories.

And as Michael says, the journalist will still have to rely upon digging out and presenting stories regardless of what opportunities are presented using new technology.

I don’t know about your hometown paper, but in the one I work for, almost all of what you’d call “breaking news” (aside from the sports and arts coverage) consists of

a) Cops and courts — situations known only to a tiny group of private, deeply interested and unreliable individuals.

b) Political actions — city and county governments doing stuff, known only to a handful of deeply interested and unreliable people present.

c) Studies, findings and reports — released by governments, nonprofits and businesses.

d) Pseudo-events — announced press conferences, etc.

It’s hard to imagine online-only reporting being at all reliable in (a) or (b), and it’s hard to imagine it being much more effective in (c) or (d) than simply picking up the phone, firing up the Internet or going to the damn press event.

In situations like document dumps or earnings reports, many eyes can be an effective way of finding hidden gems or coming up with provocative questions.

But in almost every other local reporting situation, what’s really happening is that a reporter is synthesizing facts that haven’t been brought to light or widely shared, and explaining why they’re important. This is not a task that crowds do well. Unless they’re aided by large software programs, it’s not a task crowds do at all.

Anybody who thinks floods, fires and ferry accidents are what local reporting is all about needs to look more often at his or her local newspaper.

Secondly, this style of filtering of UGC is a passive form of journalism. It waits for events (and only that fraction of events that are ‘networked’ as above) and then starts filtering. It doesn’t seek out news. It waits for what the user thinks is newsworthy. That’s a big hole in the traditional model of journalism.

Thirdly, this style of ‘journalism’ won’t work for stories that aren’t being played out in real time in some networked space. It won’t work for discussion of climate change policy, for example. That requires traditional research and interviewng skills before the the journalist can then apply their filtering skills to the technical information of the experts. This is not something that you can twitter.

On another note, we need the traditional reporter simply because they do the tough work that UGC contributors generally don’t.
Generally, it is the old-fashioned reporter who investigates corruption in Washington, who covers the war in Iraq, who risks his/her life in Afghanisthan, who investigates child abuse in Rwanda etc.

Of course, there are exceptions – I’ve written about the “twitter revolution” in Moldova, Iran –
However, for the most part, it does seem like we need reporters to do the really tough work.

News media seem yet to pick up on this trend. Makes me think we need to re-examine old concepts of cyberjournalism and update them for today’s market.

Instead of relying mainly on sourced news, old media needs to place equal emphasise on sifted news – i.e. follow where the crowds are.

Old media pretty much ignores events like the man overboard, dismissing it as another false lead, rather than an opportunity for critiquing cyber news and providing context.

What a journalist needed to do is to make sense of the current story and related, previous stories, to have it all make sense to the reader.

For example, in the WSF example from above, repeating selected tweets is like copying the daily police blotter. At some point a journalist has to ask and answer questions:

* How is the report of a person overboard made on a WSF?

* How often are there false reports of a person overboard?

* How does the report of a person overboard affect those riding the ferry?

* How does a WSF respond to the report of a person overboard? Is the Coast Guard typically involved?

I’m sure the reason why cub reporters used to start out by working the police blotter was to educate the reporter to what was happening in the city. Only then could questions be asked for journalism.

A stenographer can repeat a story. It takes a journalist to place it into context and make it understandable.