Indy Media Madness

March Madness, the NCAA tournament is in full stride. I'm not a huge fan of watching basketball, but I will spend sometime enjoying the game this month because of March Madness. It is my first year making a bracket, and the added element of guessing which team will win has definitely made things more exciting. It's just the beginning but I must say I'm not doing too bad!!

As I was creating the tournament bracket, I began to think of a structure within independent media that is very similar… This might seem like a stretch but bare with me:

Both the March Madness tournament and an independent media outlet have a goal that is to be reached. In the NCAA tourney, its the W on the final game. In the media outlet, it's a completed story with all the facts, sources and narrative coming together to report an issue or event.

Then comes the bracket or the teams competing for that final spot. Without the aspect of competition, the bracket within independent media is like crowd sourcing for a story.

Crowdsourcing is not only one one of the unique aspects that sets independent media apart from mainstream media, but it's also one of the most important features to keep independent media alive. Independent media platforms are more small scale and typically don't have the connections that corporate media platforms have. So, it must reach out to it's readers for either information, or for someone to attend an event that the main editorial board can't attend. This connection is not only outreach for places that the indy media can't attend, but it also forms a bond between the platform and it's readers. They feel more attached because they can be part of the product.

So the bracket is like the readers, sending in either facts, sources, tips, critiques, etc…. to the writers of the story which then can create a final product (which if the story is a great piece than in the indy world it is just as great as a victory in a championship game).

An example of an independent victory was when two bloggers posted evidence that "60 Minutes" used forged documents when reporting on President Bush's Air National Guard service. One of the bloggers said his secret was "open-source intelligence gathering… We've got a huge pool of highly motivated people who go out there and use the tools to find stuff."

*Blogger's edit:

After further conversation with Professor Cohen about liking independent media crowd sourcing to March Madness, he brought up another similar element:

I think an even simpler March Madness comparison is that in the old days, people just watched the games. But now, in the Internet era, people feel they participate by making brackets, debating, competing with each other about the winners.

Professor Cohen, brings up a good point. Not only are we watching the games or consuming media, we are participating, sharing, and in a way- competing (race to get the story first).