The recent news story about an Irish student’s fake-quote hoax/experiment on Wikipedia brought again to light the problem that has plagued the internet from the start, especially in academia: unverified, rapidly propagated, information taken as truth. A discussion about it on CBC Radio One right now brought up an interesting point to the discussion, that dovetails nicely with the recent conversations about the future of traditional journalism: the troubling ratio of sources of information versus the amount of people spreading information. (The fake quote rapidly spread around the world in media outlets and blogs.) Although the hoax reveals the problems inherent in an instant-news culture (and of lazy, internet-based research) it is, I think, the very ratio that will determine the survival of traditional journalism, as people need to get “real” information from somewhere and that need will not go away. Traditional, established media outlets have the infrastructure in place to ensure things like this happen as infrequently as possible, something that blogs and small indie sites don’t have. And although this is stark reminder that it is in no way infallible, original, traditional, shoe-leather-wearing reportage remains the best source of news today.

PS: I still can’t believe people use Wikipedia as anything more than a starting point to research (which is is great for). My friend was an educational-book editor and once told me that someone handed in a manuscript with entire chapters lifted from the site. How stupid do you have to be????