Open Source Homeland

This model could easily be applied to predicting the news, rather than assembling it.

Knewsroom: A Look at the Latest Social News Site - ReadWriteWeb
What I find really interesting about Knewsroom is that the more you participate and the more the community appreciates and respects your participation, the more power you have to shape the Knews. This is a good way to incentivize regular participation and is the exact opposite of the way Digg treats its most passionate users. As you get more involved, you accumulate watts, a form of currency on Knewsroom, that you can ‘invest’ in proposed topics or created stories to show how much importance you attribute to them and how important you think it is to cover them in the next day’s paper.

 The NYT reports an increase in pay-per-arrest crime tipster hotline reports as the economy tightens.

As Prices Rise, Crime Tipsters Work Overtime - New York Times
To gas prices, foreclosure rates and the cost of rice, add this rising economic indicator: the number of tips to the police from people hoping to collect reward money.

The tip that I found most interesting was the most banal:

In some cases, the quality of the tips is lagging as people grasp for any shred of information that might result in an arrest. A woman in Macon, for example, recently called to report that a family member — who was wanted for burglary and whose name and address were already known to the police — was at home. His home.

Such a tip might seem worthless on its face, said Jean Davis, who took the call. But many police departments do not have the personnel to watch a suspect’s comings and going. In that case, the young man was arrested.

Pure outsourcing of labor.