That's fair, but I think I still disagree. If you are only looking at one source, sure, it can be confusing, but if you have a good collection of all of the first-hand sources really you are able to draw the same conclusion that any reporter might be able to. Right now we have basically outsourced the job of drawing conclusions from opinionated people to reporters. Given the right information I believe every person could do that.
But I recognize that's not a belief held by many people. I've just been able to watch all of the reports come in for a while and feel like that's enough, if not better.
we have basically outsourced the job of drawing conclusions from opinionated people to reporters
Yes, and this is economically efficient. Of course they get all sorts of things wrong at the outset - the fact that this is annoying is a reflection of how much we rely on them. But the fact is that in most cases we don't especially need to know these things immediately; I'm curious about this crash, of course, but it doesn't affect me directly and there's nothing I can do about it. It's actually better that I didn't check the news until a bit later in the day when some time had gone by and the details had firmed up - I'm a little behind the curve, but I've saved 2 hours of pointless and probably poorly-founded speculation. If it wasn't for the fact that my wife watches more TV than I do I'd probably go days at a time without checking, and just catch up Saturdays when the Economist arrives.
I understand being a news junkie - because I am one. But it's an unhealthy habit that rarely yields enough advantage to justify the time involved. I'll check out your startup but really, I suspect it would just be an endless time sink for me. I already find this a big problem with text-based news.
EDIT: I meant to say internet-based news.
To answer the reply below, I guess my question is 'what benefit is there to me in following multiple reports as they break? To be good at it requires doing it on a regular basis, but the economic benefit is questionable. I think it's a great idea, and if it can build up a sufficient community then it has the potential to function as a better news bureau than existing sources. The hurdle to climb is that the number of people who will be both skilled at analyzing breaking news events and have the time to put in regularly will be fairly small, and every time there's a major event the interested local population that joins in will consist largely of -first timers, whose contributions will amount to (Shannon) noise.
I mention a local event, because I see that while we're worried about this because many HNers are in the Bay Area, over on the East Coast near Maine a train carrying oil derailed and exploded in the middle of a small town, flattening the town center and with 60-100 people missing. So a plane crash with only two fatalities doesn't seem very important from a different perspective.
What I'm saying is that if you could use the aggregate cognitive surplus of the people trying to follow the event as it breaks, you could use that to create something cohesive and reliable. Then if you're not a news junkie and don't have any interest in following a story until it has settled down, you're welcome to do so.
[edit] In response to the question above: So is your question why would somebody follow something as it breaks?
It's not so much why do we follow something as it breaks - that's normal human curiosity/pattern hunger. But my question is how many people will do it consistently enough to be neutral, rather than because they're selectively interested in (but not necessarily informed about) a small set of stories. As I understand it this has been the problem for Wikinews - it can't function as well as Wikipedia because the number of people is below a critical threshold, so it lags breaking news by up to several days.
That's an excellent question. Wikinews doesn't function as well, in my opinion, because Wikinews feels like work - the people I've talked to that use/create Wikinews say they do it out of a sense of civic responsibility; it's not enjoyable, and a lot of the time they say it feels like rewriting the New York Times (from the couple dozen I've talked to).
The solution, I think, is in making following the news as it breaks exciting/interesting enough the average person would contribute. Our solution for that was to show you all of the social media streaming from different sources streaming in real time related to the event, making it more like /r/new (Reddit) than wikinews. Watching everything stream in and sorting out the good stuff is exciting; it's easy to get a lot of neutral eyeballs on it.
If you are only looking at one source, sure, it can be confusing, but if you have a good collection of all of the first-hand sources really you are able to draw the same conclusion that any reporter might be able to.
Not if you were a reporter on the ground. If you have multiple biased sources you can't get an unbiased view without squinting and inferring things you don't know.
I don't disagree that with the "right" information, people can make good conclusions. I just think that it's very rare for the "right" information to be available. This is an example of where it's more likely, as there is no "pro-crash" story to tell. That isn't the case with almost any politically sensitive story, though.
But I recognize that's not a belief held by many people. I've just been able to watch all of the reports come in for a while and feel like that's enough, if not better.