Dan from Xark wants to replace journalism with informatics. Interesting read:

On the other hand, the 2010 “story” is only a subset of a much more complex and valuable data set, which exists within a data structure that allows its information to be retrieved accurately and reconfigured in useful ways.

Quick critique.

One, invoking evolution as a guiding principle: please stop. Evolution goes down plenty of non-productive paths. Many adaptations are irrelevant or counterproductive. Just because a proposed system builds on the old is no guarantee of success.

Two, the situation used to illustrate the proposed new journalism form — covering a local home fire — is cherry-picked. Journalism as database-friendly fact gathering could arguably work in this case, but more complex stories — politics, culture, anything involving enterprise — would not likely lend themselves to that sort of codification.

Three, why do pay-for-content models amount to the creation of “artificial scarcity”? Reportage doesn’t grow on trees.