Craigslist founder stresses the need for citizen journalism

The folks over at Silicon Beat, a blog by the San Jose Mercury News, have a preview of an interview with Craigslist founder Craig Newmark where he talks about his plans to set up some kind of collaborative news site.

Recent scandals have shown that (especially in politics journalism) you can't trust the media anymore (case 1: Talon News; case 2: White House paid commentator; case 3: The CBS scandal). In an era where the political left and right are completely alienated from each other, the old safeguards that were put in place to ensure proper fact checking don't seem to work anymore.

"As a consumer of news, I've learned that there's too much important stuff which isn't printed or which is distorted on the way out,'' Newmark told the Mercury News. "One example being news out of the White House. We need to fix it."

"We, meaning the public, need to evolve a trusted institution with lots of fact-checking that we can trust and that we can prove does provide honest news," Newmark said.