CraigsNews idea makes a big assumption

Hypergene reports on Craig Newmark's (the Craigslist guy) efforts to build a self-service, collaborative journalism hub.

Everyone seems to want access to this "citizen journalism" space, however you define it. But no one seems to draw the contrast between a Craigslist and a hypothetical CraigsNews.

Ask yourself: What is the motivation for people to post in, search or browse almost all categories of Craigslist?

Money.

They need to buy something. They want to sell something. They want new jobs. Only the personals aren't obviously about money.

Now ask yourself: What is the motivation for people to post in, search or browse a similarly structured database that's designed to contain community self-reported news and information?

Motivations to post: Interpersonal communication (better in other media), ego (not great anywhere), civic activism (fine but, honestly, rare), public relations (does this discipline need another outlet?).

Motivations to search or browse: Interpersonal communication (better in other media), civic activism (see above).

Neither the motivations to post nor to read this content are nearly as powerful in a hypothetical CraigsNews as they are in the very real Craigslist.

That's why I believe most community journalism efforts as currently conceived, minus an overlay of agenda-setting professional reporting by someone (I'm not presuming that's established media, just not occasional, amateur practitioners), will eventually fail one of two ways:

1. Drying up to become an empty world once the amateurs grow weary of the poor work/reward ratio.
2. Remaining robust in terms of quantity of content, but with a terrible signal-to-noise ratio.

I'm not sure I want to be right about this. Someone prove me wrong.