Wikipedia Post

Throughout grade school and high school, when writing a paper, teachers would always say "don't use Wikipedia, it's not reliable". Like anything that can be edited on the Internet, the website should be taken with a grain of salt. Just because it can be edited by anyone, doesn't mean that Wikipedia does not have the potential to be a source of accurate information.

Many people would argue that the Internet has it's pros and cons, especially Wikipedia. I think a pro for the website is the fact that there is a references section. With this being said, Wikipedia could be used for a fast source when researching. The person could take that extra step to verify the facts in Wikipedia. It can also bring people to websites or articles they may not have been able to find in a Google search.

A con for Wikipedia could be the issue of editing. Fortunately, there is crowd sourcing, but crowd sourcing could also be a problem. Crowd sourcing could be an issue because what happens if a crowd is biased, and the majority of people don't know their facts? Another problem with Wikipedia could be copyright issues. If I am looking something up, I will usually go to Wikipedia to get a general idea of the topic. When I find a more official website, I sometimes notice the same exact content on the website and on Wikipedia. If the source is cited, it has to be cited correctly.

A step that Wikipedia could take toward accuracy is to have scholars edit and review the articles. This was a suggestion in an article put out by "The Michigan Daily". This could be a problem because the scholars could be biased, although they shouldn't be. It would be very tough to select a certain group of people to let edit the Wikipedia pages, because everyone has a bias toward something, major or minor. The article published in "The Michigan Daily" was written in 2011, but it still relevant today because there is still no formal editing when it comes to Wikipedia.

ProPublica Post

ProPublica is a journalism website that prides itself on “journalism in the public interest”. ”Pro Publica” literally means “for the public” in Latin. This website has tons of news stories that can be republished by other news sources. 

To be able to be republished by other sources, ProPublica has a Creative Commons license. This license basically lets other people share someone else’s work, and also, the person who shares it, is legally allowed to build on it, meaning they are allowed to add information to it. ProPublica uses Creative Common licenses because they want to make people more aware of the issues going on around the world. The article states that they want their journalism to have an impact, they want it “to spur reform”. While maybe it doesn’t spur reform, people can still be aware of what is going on. With this license, news sources, like newspapers, can legally share these stories, but they cannot sell these stories under ProPublica's “NonCommercial” license. 

ProPublica benefits audiences by making their information available without legal hassle. Also, it could make the local news more interesting. In this article, I read that there are many news sources that use information from ProPublica, one source being The Trentonian, a newspaper right across the river. These stories are good content and they make people think. If the people think, then ProPublica may reach it’s goal of spurring reform. The articles on ProPublica are not articles we would see in mass media, and they reveal real problems, instead of the entertainment news people are so worried about today. 

ProPublica uses a Creative Commons license, which differs from tradition media. Traditional media uses copyright. Stories that are copyrighted cannot be shared, and if they are shared, the person who shares it must make it known that it is not their original content, or else they can be in major legal trouble. Also, I could not take a story posted by 6abc and build on it, like the Creative Commons license allows. 

I don’t think ProPublica will be the future of traditional journalism. While many people believe what they read on the Internet, some take the Internet with a grain of salt. Since ProPublica is a collection of news stories from different journalists, it may appear untrustworthy to someone who usually doesn’t look at these sites regularly. To me, their website doesn’t look professional, and it is unorganized, therefore, I wouldn’t travel to the site. If people are like me, I can’t see this being the future of journalism. Excluding the website set up, I still can’t see this being the future of journalism because people take pride in what they do, and many people want credit where credit is due. People probably won’t want to write a story, and have other people share it and possibly build on their hard work. I know I personally wouldn’t want that if I were a journalist.