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Nov. 17, 2008, 9:35 a.m.

Lab Book Club: Interview with Jeff Howe, Part 2

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.

POSTED     Nov. 17, 2008, 9:35 a.m.
PART OF A SERIES     Lab Book Club: Jeff Howe
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