If you are looking for a strong example of reader-driver distributed news reporting, click over to Josh Marshall’s TPMCafe.com today. Under a post by Paul Begala, readers are filling in the details of Vice President Dick Cheney’s shooting a fellow hunter in Texas over the weekend.

Readers with hunting experience are blowing a hole (I know, really bad pun) in newspaper reports that Cheney stood 30 feet to 30 yards away from the victim when the vice president shot him. Based on the reported number of pellet strikes, the hit pattern and the number of pellets in a shell, readers are concluding that the victim may have been shot at close to point-blank range.

Another administration cover-up? Whatever the case, this incident may yet provide another example of how the Internet can connect thousands of sharp readers who, collectively, can find flaws in stories that a small handful of traditional reporters might miss.

Here’s another example of what can go wrong when you send your publication’s headlines to another website.

I was looking for a specific L.A. Times story on Yahoo News this morning. And on Yahoo’s L.A. Times headlines page I found the following link five stories down:

“Major Quake Jolts San Fernando Valley
Thu Feb 9, 7:55 AM ET”

What the heck?!? I didn’t feel a quake, and I’m in nearby Pasadena. Did I sleep through it? What’s going on?

I click the link in about 3 microseconds, only to find a story with the overhead “TIMES PAST: FEB. 9, 1971.”

Nope, I didn’t sleep through that quake. In fact, I remember it well. But it ain’t exactly news anymore. So why scare readers by including it in a daily news feed?

The LA Times’ Michael Hiltzik suggests today that the recently announced merger of the UPN and WB broadcast television networks shows “there simply isn’t enough compelling entertainment material to go around.”

(Hiltzik’s column appeared in today’s LA Times, and in another sign that Hiltzik is one of the more Web-savvy journalists in the newspaper world, he’s also posted it to his blog, where you don’t need to register with latimes.com to read it.)

He continues:

“As for the Internet, as a breeding ground of new entertainment talent, so far it’s largely barren. Companies from iFilm to Amazon.com have tried to make a commercial mark with Web-only film clips, but it wouldn’t be surprising to learn that the most popular downloaded moving pictures on the Web (outside of pornography) are snippets from ‘The Daily Show’ or ‘Saturday Night Live.’”

Harsh words, but I’d suggest taking a step or two to the side and looking from a different angle. No, there’s not enough *mass market* entertainment to support a sixth broadcast network, or even to densely populate another mass-market Web video portal.

But services like iTunes, and iFilm, can operate as both mass marketplaces and niche delivery systems. Look beneath the “top downloads” lists on such services and one can find compelling entertainment that appeals only to limited audiences. Music fans can find podcasts of genres rarely heard in most broadcast radio markets. Film fans can find intriguing student and independent work that would never find its way on screens in the average American city. But the limited appeal of such work, even when of top quality, assures that it rarely will show up on “top download” lists.

The Internet’s never going to generate enough mass market entertainment talent to support new mass market networks and studios because the Internet’s greatest strength is as an *alternative* to the mass market. This is where artists can go to distribute works that won’t generate enough money or buzz to get a major studio or network deal.

I’m awaiting the day that a “Freeks and Geeks” — any top-quality, quirky, low-rated broadcast TV show — gets the ax, but instead of shutting production, its producers start selling new episodes for a buck each on the Web.

Most TV shows fail miserably. But the lure of hitting it big keeps thousands of artists working on pilots every year. Perhaps, with the demise of one more network raising those odds, a few more professional artists might instead try to bypass the networks and reach out to their potential audience directly, via the Internet.