[zbentley]

I don't think the analogy holds. Organization-backed news is not to free/single-publisher news as corporate software is to free software.

Free, single-producer news is, if we want to try to adapt this analogy (perhaps past the breaking point) more like free software that only has a single developer/maintainer. We all know what those projects can be like. There are some diamonds in the rough, but overwhelmingly they're hyper-specific, difficult to modify, hard to question (file issues with), and often of dubious quality.

Edit: The analogy also falls apart: I'm not sure how going from single-maintainer -> multiple contributors has a parallel in the blogging/tweeting world that is doable for many writers. Some blogs have informal editorial boards and groups of publishers who edit each other, but most multi-writer blogs I've seen are just separate threads that happen to appear in the same place.