Thank you for your response!
You know, I did find you and this blog through the Spot.us website but I went back again and saw that there are many more features than I’d realized at first. I didn’t realize that people could suggest stories and other people could fund them – what a great twist, a story looking for an author!
I am really excited by your concept.
The one ‘piece of the puzzle’ that’s still missing for me, looking at the options on Spot.us, is to figure out first which stories have the most potential (and which line up with my own interests) and second WHO is qualified to write the story. I would be more willing to pony up $ if I could examine a set of resumes online and pay toward the person I felt would be most qualified to write about a complex issue requiring a lot of deep background and, say, understanding of a particular industry. For example, I saw an impassioned reader pitch saying ‘someone NEEDS to write about this one particular aspect of the mortgage crisis’ – but it’s hard as a layman to sort out if this person really has something or not. I almost feel like there’s another level of vetting needed – sort of like the way that Spot.us. already will recommend certain stories, which is nice, but I want to know WHO are you, what are your qualifications, what stories do you think ‘have legs’ etc etc.
Please don’t take this as a negative post because honestly this project is mind-blowingly cool and I am thrilled by the success you’ve had so far! The most I can contribute to it is honesty And some $$ too once I get a few extra to jingle in my pocket — !

Two things.

1. In terms of talking about journalism – I am usually talking about the practice of journalism – not the profession. In fact, that’s something I discuss all the time. There is the industry of journalism and there is the practice of journalism and those are two different things.

In terms of the practice of journalism – I think we can argue that it has a “goal” – but you need to think of this not as a human oriented goal or what we might think of as a goal at all. I think journalisms goal is very related to the goal of education (again, talking about the practice, not the industry).

As for your second comment and idea. Have you heard of http://www.spot.us.

If not – please check it out and let me know what you think.

And now I really WILL stop cluttering up your thread, I promise… !!!

Thanks, we love you too, DigiDave.

Not to get try and deconstruct this all too much — I hope I’m not turning into a PITA

BUT … when you frame things in terms of ‘the goals of journalism’ — are you thinking in terms of what the industry wants, or what journalists want, or some mixture of both?

If you accept that people are now ethically responsible to participate in journalism — or even if you want to use that as a working argument — then maybe your initial question needs to be re-vamped. Journalism is an abstract concept — it’s a practice, an industry, an ideal. Can it have goals? (Do you get where I’m going with this?) The people using journalistic tools and the consumers of news have goals. Asking what are the goals of journalism to me invokes the fear of the current industry of becoming obsolete, bankrupt, irrelevant.

What goals do people have when they write or communicate, personally or professionally?
What goals do people have who read and follow any type of news?
Is there some larger framework that we all should be tied into? What do all these people have in common?

And now I’ll stop bothering you …

The argument I want to explore is related – but not tied to democracy but journalism itself. I want to stop and think: Is there a final goal (in philosophy called a telos) of journalism is to get people to engage with it.

I hope to write about this more soon.

Until then – I love you all

Interesting. I assume some ethical arguments for participation could be found in Mill’s “On Liberty.”