Crowdsourcing

According to Wired News, Gannett, the publisher of USA Today as well as 90 other American daily newspapers, will begin crowdsourcing many of its newsgathering functions starting Friday, November 3.

"Crowdsourcing" is a term coined by Wired magazine writer Jeff Howe and editor Mark Robinson in June 2006. It describes a business model akin to outsourcing, but relying sometimes upon unpaid or low-paid amateurs who use their spare time to create content, solve problems, or even do corporate R&D. Other times is based over the set of ideas and abilities than only can be found in a crowd.
Crowds targeted for crowdsourcing include garage scientists, amateur videographers, freelancers, photo enthusiasts, data companies, writers, smart mobs and the electronic herd.
Snippet from Wikipedia

Here are their Rules:

The Crowd is dispersed - they work remotely
The Crowd has a short attention span - they work in micro-chunks
The Crowd is full of specialists
The Crowd produces mostly crap (editor's note: Bear in mind that these rules were written by people who may be replaced by the crowd)
The Crowd finds the best stuff

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