For any­one inter­ested in explor­ing the lim­its of cit­izen journ­al­istic enter­prise, and the eco­nom­ics of invest­ig­at­ive report­ing, there’s inter­est­ing news about whistle-blowing site, Wikileaks.

Wikileaks is plan­ning to drop the wiki model entirely. In the future, it plans to pre-release selec­ted doc­u­ments to invest­ig­at­ive journ­al­ists, then pub­lish them once a story appears. That gives the favored report­ers time to ana­lyze and verify doc­u­ments without fear of being scooped.

[Julian] Assange is even toy­ing with the idea of mak­ing his site a sub­scrip­tion ser­vice that pre-releases secret doc­u­ments to pay­ing report­ers. The report­ers would have the option of writ­ing about a given leak, or passing on it and get­ting another, if the reporter doesn’t find it useful.

The change is partly due to eco­nom­ics, he says. Aca­dem­ics and journ­al­ists are among the few who have time to spend por­ing over documents.

It’s also partly because people online seem more inclined to com­ment on some­thing that’s already been ana­lyzed, than ana­lyze it them­selves, says Assange. [Wired]

It rein­forces David Leigh’s point made dur­ing the Guard­ian’s ses­sion on cit­izen journ­al­ism at its Future of Journ­al­ism series:

“No cit­izen journ­al­ist or wise crowd is going to see the pro­cess of polit­ical decisions and take a photo.”

Leigh added that he was excited by the pos­sib­il­it­ies opened by tech­no­logy but he had been dis­ap­poin­ted by some of the res­ults so far. For example, Wikileaks, a site for whis­tleblowers to securely leak doc­u­ments, soun­ded great in prin­ciple but “didn’t work.”

Leigh said the prob­lem was that doc­u­ments would be uploaded to the site but no one knew what they meant because there was no con­text or ana­lysis. In another example, he put a call out for people to help with an inter­na­tional invest­ig­a­tion and all he got back were “some nut­ters and spam.”