The Economist went Crowdsourcing, too

Given the sudden crowdsourcing mania in the media world here in the U.S., who would have thought that the venerable Economist in the U.K. would be the publication pushing the envelope? Strangely, the stodgy magazine favored by fathers the world over is going the farthest to explore how far crowdsourced media can go.

"Project Red Stripe" has been soliciting ideas for months from their readers on innovative web-based projects for the Economist Group to pursue. (If you have an idea to pitch you have to be quick. The deadline for submission is March 25th.)

Despite little publicity--perhaps because The Economist is a established publication that doesn’t want to risk its reputation by launching fledgling ideas--the project has seen lots of interests as well as ideas coming its way.

According to a list on the Web site of ideas already covered, the topics include carbon credit, digital paper, decision making markets, e-learning, database building and Second-Life-type virtual worlds. Spamming and vandalism aren’t a problem--thanks to The Economist's well-educated reader pool.

The idea of a “prediction market” sounds particularly interesting and doable. In fact, a couple of Web sites in the U.S. are already dedicated to the prediction market, exploiting the wisdom of the crowds to predict events from next presidential election to which movie will win the Oscar. But The Economist probably has a better shot in the political and economic decision-making markets, considering what they cover and who their readers (or, let's say their community members) are.

As the idea evolves, it could even be possible that The Economist will end up running a virtual economy where people are using Economist dollars to bet on issues from global warming to the Middle East to the oil market. All things are possible. The imaginative media executives will save the gloomy news media. All you have to do is to think out of the box. (or, in this case, the paper.)