I'm interested in all these questions, particularly because I'm trying to wrap my head around creating a course that'll help students navigate the information landscape when I struggle with that every day myself. (Whether that course will ever happen is an open question, but anyway.)
The answer to the "why do we need news orgs/analysis" question probably comes down to the old idea that, put simply, we need help interpreting and making sense of the world, especially in an era of information overload. But, to go on a bit of a tangent here, I think you're getting at another core issue when you say "I just wish we had a broader definition (and therefore standards) for news that isn’t traditional." Not sure if I'm reading you right here, but I think you're pointing to the conundrum we find ourselves in when, on the one hand, non-traditional news creators offer new ways to produce and consume news (and an implicit or explicit critique of the limitations of traditional news creation) but, on the other hand, the modes of creating and disseminating are disorientingly new and therefore leave us struggling to define what the criteria are for quality and trustworthiness in these new news sources.
Maybe that's another reason we need news organizations (in the broadest conception of the term): because we need to collectively have a coherent conversation on what constitutes good practice and how to hold each other accountable. But this brings us back to your question #7, really: if the news "organization" is now, in a sense, all of us, then is it even possible to have a coherent conversation or create a set of standards? I'm not sure if I'm making sense here--it's kind of an overwhelming set of topics.
I'm interested in all these questions, particularly because I'm trying to wrap my head around creating a course that'll help students navigate the information landscape when I struggle with that every day myself. (Whether that course will ever happen is an open question, but anyway.)
The answer to the "why do we need news orgs/analysis" question probably comes down to the old idea that, put simply, we need help interpreting and making sense of the world, especially in an era of information overload. But, to go on a bit of a tangent here, I think you're getting at another core issue when you say "I just wish we had a broader definition (and therefore standards) for news that isn’t traditional." Not sure if I'm reading you right here, but I think you're pointing to the conundrum we find ourselves in when, on the one hand, non-traditional news creators offer new ways to produce and consume news (and an implicit or explicit critique of the limitations of traditional news creation) but, on the other hand, the modes of creating and disseminating are disorientingly new and therefore leave us struggling to define what the criteria are for quality and trustworthiness in these new news sources.
Maybe that's another reason we need news organizations (in the broadest conception of the term): because we need to collectively have a coherent conversation on what constitutes good practice and how to hold each other accountable. But this brings us back to your question #7, really: if the news "organization" is now, in a sense, all of us, then is it even possible to have a coherent conversation or create a set of standards? I'm not sure if I'm making sense here--it's kind of an overwhelming set of topics.