My respect for news journalists hit a low point when I watched some big name anchor describing the Space Shuttle during one of the earliest launches. While Gene Cernan was occasionally turned to to give small insight here there, this bumbling anchor compared the Shuttle to a ‘living, breathing thing, pumping water and oxygen and shuttering when it takes off’…..

The image has, unfortunately, never left my head. Gene Cernan should have been the one speaking a majority of the time. Being a former astronaut he could have gone on for hours filling up the pre-launch time with insights to America’s space program and the astronaut corpes. But no, we got some strange vision from some strange talking head.

Which leads me to today. The Blogosphere has not so much harnessed anything as it has integrated the experiences and knowledge of Americans in a way that is just stunning. When Rathergate broke, we saw how experts in computers, documentation, printing, forensics, etc all applied their knowledge in a rapid, coherent assessment of the situation. The number and sharpness of minds brought to bear was incredible – and swift.

They worked together by consensus. No rules, no hierarchy, no office politics, no competition. This model has been repeated many times since on other issues the media just doesn’t have the brain wattage to apply. Plame Game and Able Danger are close to my heart because I can instinctively connect to the issues and the details surrounding them. I can explore a hypothesis with Tom Maguire, Ed Morrissey, Mac Ranger, the readers on this site – and work out scenarios and possibilities as an ad hoc, but integrated group. I have worked with many groups on challenging issues, but this is simply amazing how total strangers can coordinate and work together.

This also mirrors my career path, from big aerospace companies to small start up companies to my own consulting company – all at ages much younger than the previous generation would have thought possible. I can get more satisfying work by consulting for people who need my expertise for some temporary time period, than trying to fill in any old spot opening up in a large company. The experts become area experts called in to help here and there. It works out for both sides, and now consultants are a very common commodity in the space business.

Which leads me finally to where the media and blogoshpere might be heading. I felt for a long time media outlets could do well to harvest inputs (with referrals and payments) to bloggers who have collected a lot of information. For example, it is obvious to many that Tom Maguire should be called when anything is written on the Plame Game – even simply as a fact checker!

This post by Sophistpundit caught my eye (and my recommendation to the Watcher’s Council) because it presents the same vision I have of where the blogosphere and media could go, if the news media understood this one simple fact of life.

The ‘news’ has two essential elements: (1) collecting information and (2) synthesizing what is fact and what is reasonable or intelligent speculation from that information. The big name media houses have the market in getting information. But they are woefully inadequate to analyze much of what they get. People spend whole lives working to understand specific fields, a journalist cannot hope to grasp it in some fly by interest piece. That is why the blogosphere cleans their clocks on the interpretation side. We outnumber them, but more importantly the experience base could be up to 1000 to 1 against depending on the issue.

So the new model might be for the news outlets to harness the blogoshpere and do some bartering by trading expertise for bylines and pay.