OPEN

The Times yesterday carried an interview with Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia, the user-edited online encyclopaedia
(yes, there are still people in the world who have not heard of it). Three stories to note here:

1. Wales envisions hybrid media models

He held forth on, among other things, the future of professional journalism:

"In my vision of the future of journalism what
we will see is an increasing amount of citizen participation in the
gathering of news and in feedback and in reporting and analysing the
news….

"What we will see is a set of
hybrid models with an increasing amount of citizen participation in the
gathering of news and in feedback and in reporting and analysing the
news. And at the same time, we’ll have professional organisations
managing the process – basically being the core framework."

Yep. I buy that. Ties in with other credible visions of the role of professional news organisations, such as the BBC’s Richard Sambrook.

2. BBC Sport considering role of citizen journalists

Mr Wales also said that he’d done some work with the BBC, and that the corporation was looking at citizen generated media models for coverage of minority sports (we’ve covered the Beeb’s local news initiative here before):

"In the sport division of the BBC
they are very interested in thinking about how they can have better
coverage of minor sports. Sometimes they are criticised for focusing
only on major sports. They don’t carry coverage of every sport and
every local club around the country – they don’t have enough money,
it’s impossible.

3. Wikipedia considering carrying ads

It sounds like Mr Wales will have a tough time convincing the other revolutionaries at Wikipedia of the case for this, but he conceded to The Times that he is considering carrying ads on the site.

[Wikipedia] expects to record around 2.5
billion page impressions this month and traffic volumes are doubling
every four months. According to figures released this month by
Nielsen/Netratings, it was the ninth-fastest growing site on the web in 2005.

I would be amazed if Wikpedia wasn’t carrying ads or sponsorship by this time next year. A lot sooner, probably.