As part of the Lab Book Club, I interviewed Jeff Howe, author of the very interesting Crowdsourcing. We marched through the book’s chapters in an hour-long session in the Nieman Foundation’s basement; here’s the second chunk, about 19 minutes. This excerpt was supposed to cover chapters 4 through 7, but Jeff and I talked too much, so we’ll finish up those chapters in another video later this week. Some of the issues we cover:

— What kinds of journalism the crowds can and can’t do well
— His aspirations for crowdsourced investigative reporting
— Why reporters get uncomfortable with comments on news stories
— The class implications of letting people do journalists’ work in their free time
— What crowdsourcing can tell us about how news organizations should be structured
— Could crowdsourcing increase the market value of writing skill?

My thanks to our own Ted Delaney for the shooting and editing. For more about the Lab Book Club, check here.