Outsourcing journalism – how far can you take it?

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Seed.com, AOL’s venture in crowdsourced journalism, has just sent out a survey to its contributors, with some very interesting questions, notes Business Insider.

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Source: Business Insider

A few interesting thoughts coming out of the issues raised in the survey:

* Seed.com is considering outsourcing fact-checking and copy-editing – given finding the right talent and quality control systems this should be feasible

* Contests and ratings systems could be a significant incentive to contributing, notes New York Observer. This is because aspiring journalists, through this kind of reputation, could more readily move on to more attractive opportunities. In a similar vein TopCoder uses contents to draw in the best developers.

* There could be real value in building communities for aspiring writers, as well as providing training and development. Attracting talent requires more than just providing an outlet.

Seed.com, Demand Media and others are in the vanguard of doing what they can to attract talented contributors who are motivated by things other than money. We are beginning to discover how far we can take outsourced journalism.