Reddit is far greater than the future of journalism ⇒

Phenomenal piece by Kevin Morris over at the Daily Dot:

As the popular consciousness of the nation and much of the world zeroed in on the tragedy in Aurora, Jones was doing something that no one else was: He was organizing the horrific mess of news, rumors, and panicked speculation bit by bit—correcting, fixing, managing as other redditors jumped into the comments, correcting him or chastising him or just helping out with news and first-hand knowledge.

In doing so, Jones instantly became the most-read news voice on a website with 35 million visitors a month, with the best live summary on the Internet. And he was a complete amateur, an 18-year-old getting ready to start his freshman year at Rice University whose journalism experience amounted to writing for his school newspaper and designing its website.

But Jones isn’t the future of journalism.

Great article that delves deep into the how and why of social news-gathering. If you know nothing of Reddit, or if you visit it and think it’s useless, read this.