I think his conclusions are perhaps off - reddit/digg/etc aren't "wise crowds" in terms of how the book describes them. Rather than independently voting, it's a cascade - most people only vote on things that have already been voted up by a lot of people.
It's interesting reading the snippets of the article he quotes, though.
First, for his evidence he is using a study from the Project for Excellence in Journalism. Do you think the study might be biased? The crowd mentality threatens the entire profession of Journalism (I'm not saying it's going away, but they are less and less in control of what people read hear and see).
Second, he argument assumes the dividing line is "hard news" vs. "soft news" when it is really "I care" or "I don't." The problem is that nobody cares what's on the news. If we are to believe the study, the news is more consistent in what it shows. That means they are showing us the same thing over and over again. People care about things that are relevant to them or that provide some form of entertainment. Surprisingly, the mainstream news is just picking up on the fact that their product at the very best under-serves the needs of their market.
Third, the article paints the mainstream media as "informed" and everyone else as "uninformed." No bias there. Even if we assume they are right, it just points out that they aren't providing their customers with the information they want. If Google can target ads to me based on search, how come news can't be tailored to my desires.
Finally, the crowd based sites know the mainstream news exists. They don't have to cover the Iraq war for the 10,000,000,000th time. That's what the news is for. If you wanted to see information about Iraq you'd go to a mainstream news distribution channel. Haven't they considered that maybe there is no reason to rehash those stories already beaten to death in the mainstream media?
I have to beg to differ big time here. Just because people choose other interests than the media doesn't make the news dumb. For one thing, the reports of the media of allegedly important events are usually not that informative: usually they milk a subject for as much as possible, typically by endless repetitions of hollow facts. I doubt anybody would be able to understand what is going on in Irak just by watching the news, for example. Also, arguably many allegedly important topics don't bear any relevance to the average person at all. Like if some other state has been flooded, that information is pretty useless to me, unless I was just about to travel there.
Rather than concluding that crowds are dumb, perhaps the media should take this study as an incentive to rethink their program.
It's interesting reading the snippets of the article he quotes, though.