Slate Realizes It Has A Valuable Community

from the take-a-hint dept

What will be the defining picture of today's economic crisis? The '30s had bread lines and the '70s had gas lines, but as Slate points out, "in many ways this economic crisis, despite its deepening severity, has been less visible than previous ones. You can't take a photograph of a collateralized debt obligation." So, like any smart media company these days, Slate is turning to the community for help capturing that iconic moment.

To do so, Slate has created a Flickr pool entitled Shoot the Recession that currently has more than 100 user-contributed photos in it. NPR's Planet Money has been doing this, too, but because Slate is more visual, it would seem that more people would be motivated. This is a smart move - it lowers the expense for Slate to report on the crisis and recognizes that people are motivated by things other than money (reputation being the big one here). But it is also smart because instead of reinventing the wheel, Slate loosely joins together another small piece of the web - Flickr. Though there is still a lot more Slate and its peers can do, this is a step in the right direction.

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