Slashdot Mirror
Open Source Journalism
jvm writes "Markos of Daily Kos wrote today of what he describes as the legacy of blogging: open source. Not software, but the philosophy. From the article: "When I'm asked about blogging's legacy, I talk about open source. Open source politics, open source activism, open source journalism -- the aggregation of thousands on behalf of a common cause." Relatedly, egoff writes "You might have seen some coverage of Jeff Gannon, a conservative reporter who lobbed softball questions during White House press briefings. It was discovered that he was using an alias to get past White House security. The language of open source development is used throughout their description of the reporting process. At Poynter Online, journalists discussing this story have compared the random blog readers who did the bulk of this research to "what Woodstein did back in the day.""
When everything is open and free, you have communism.
Think about it.
long live open source!!! YEAHHHH
In what way was the embaressing tale of Gannon related to open source journalism? From everything I've heard about it he was a completely deliberate right-wing plant.
About the only question he didn't ask was
Mr. Burns, your campaign seems to have the
momentum of a runaway freight train. Why are you so popular?
You know they call 'em fingers but I've never seen 'em fing. Oh, there they go.
I wonder what Darwin would think.
open government? I even like the sound of these words.
I, myself, watch the watchmen.
"Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former."
Open source journalism is to open source software what NYT registration is to Windows XP activation.
Open source is a method of collaboration. People come together and use the methods and tools of open source development to allow their disparate skills and goals to reach a common productive endpoint.
Blogging is a zillion people who disagree with each other on everything all yelling at the same time and hoping that they'll attract a big enough crowd to sustain themselves, and other people come in and selectively listen to just the yelling people that make them feel good about themselves.
Open Source and Blogging both approach the same point, the same goal: diversity, whether diversity of software usage or diversity of viewpoints. But they approach it from the opposite direction.
I also question whether Blogging is perhaps being a little presumptuous in comparing itself to the open source movement. The open source movement has left behind a series of useful and generally usable software programs which are continually improving, but which would still have some real utility if all new development ceased tomorrow. Blogging's legacy is pretty much just a series of articles on the subject of how important blogging is.
given current status of official journalism is no surprise that often you can have a better understanding of facts through a motivated volunteer instead of a professional no_time/budget_to_research_properly clueless professional
and I'm not necessarily referring to U.S. here
Actually, according to the WH:
"White House press secretary Scott McClellan said (James D.) Guckert (his real name)did not have a regular White House press pass but was cleared on a day-by-day basis to attend briefings and used his real name."
(parenthetic comments mine)
Cloned foods give the statement "We had that last week!" a whole new meaning.
What? It's HIS fault all you people are brainwashed morons?
well, susang and lots of other folks, but she drove the whole thing. that's the cnxn.
Because there is a very small chance that you are not trolling, and instead are simply stupid, here is a link to the "Carly Fiona Fired" article.
Whether you are trolling or stupid, however, it is my sincere hope you are voted to -1 in short order.
There's a few thousand people aggregated on behalf of a common cause at Microsoft's campus - I'd hesitate to call that Open Source.
Open Source isn't a particularly good word to describe journalism.
we need some kind of underground network, where everyone is unknown, untraceable and unaccountable.
I wonder if it exists.
Get your own free personal location tracker
That stupid post is perfectly exemplary of the rightwing reactionary, especially on Slashdot. Some lying jerk scams his way to a WH press pass, with WH backing, to produce WH propaganda. In the absence of any legitimate way to present this except as an exposed WH con, the Bush worshipper invents nonsense to attack a messenger who's not around to defend himself. Nevermind any dislike for the facts in the story, which would repel anyone with a conscience. And posted as AC, to boot.
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Big Media (NYTimes, etc) long term are in no better shape than record or film companies. They claim to be the arbiters of intellectual property but in reality we see that once you eliminate manufacturing and distribution costs, they are no better or no different than a guy in his basement. These firms were not in fact media firms but manufacturers and distributors.
This site champions open source concepts.
Why has there been no 'Carly Fiorna fired by HP' article here yet?
Has HP put 'the muscle' on the Slashdot owners, who put 'the muscle' on the Slashdot editors?
Everybody here fucking hates Carly. Why hasn't there been a place for us to discuss her firing?
Don't blame slashdot for your ignorance, go read the article about her firing on... uhhh... slashdot.
On what you mean by "communism". "Everything is open and free" is certainly how the communists tried to describe themselves. But certainly no communist government ever has been able to achieve that ideal when put into practice.
Open source achieves, in a very limited way, what communism advertised and failed to deliver, and it does it through essentially capitalist methods.
It's interesting how the definition of "open source" has changed over the last few years. It used to be that I only ever heard "open source" associated with software. After all, software is built from source code.
It seems like the phrase "open source" is being confused with the similar, but different, "free to use", "free speech" or "freedom of expression." We hear about open source journalism, open source biology, open source research and even open source beer.
I'm not saying that this is a bad thing... I'm just making an observation. It makes me wonder if in twenty years from now, when new countries are writing their constitutions, will they guarantee their citizens "open source rights?"
Haven't you noticed the five-day lag between when news happens and when it appears on Slashdot?
I fail to see the similarity to bloggers, who seem (at least the majority)to be more concerned about getting people to pay attention to them.
"A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming, is not worth knowing" - Alan Perlis
I would like to welcome Open Source Journalism. I can't stand it when I open a newspaper and the damn thing is in some proprietary format!
It ran 2/9, Genius. 800+ comments as I recall.
Do a search on 'Fiorina' at the bottom of the page.
(BTW, if this site is moving too fast for you, maybe you should consider an older, slower medium, like newspapers.)
> Haven't you noticed the five-day lag between when news
> happens and when it appears on Slashdot?
Haven't you noticed the slashdot piece about carly being fired?
Those people with sufficient expertise and funding are certainly motivated, too. There's only one problem: They're motivated to satisfy their agenda-oriented superiors. The objective truth, it seems, no longer pays their respective mortgages.
Do you like German cars?
Because you don't even read the Slashdot article "HP CEO Carly Fiorina to Step Down" from 2 days ago before posting? Now you are free to go flame ignorantly in the proper thread.
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make install -not war
And why said sources are often found drifting in the river the next day...
Half of the comments above mine will all agree; Markos is talking crap. What in hell does the "open source philosophy" have to do with weblogging? The weblogging community is just a big echo chamber of technological circlejerking over RSS, Trackbacking and other such tosh. Open source is all about, you know, making something useful and sharing it with others. Someone needs to tell Markos the difference before he spouts more misinformation.
Call it co-operative journalism, open jouralism, whatever, but open source isn't just another word for mass co-operation between loosely associated people. No one is licensing "source code" in a open source like license in a blog. Maybe this sounds like nitpicking, but I find tying the two concepts together via the term "open source" to be confusing to both concepts.
There is no source code to journalism (beyond raw data), and I don't see people licensing their words on blogs under an open source license.
AccountKiller
How do you open source journalism? Is there source code? Do you complie your reporter when there is a new upgrade? If you want to use some buzz words, how about grass roots? Seems to apply better than a far reaching attempt to "tech" everything.
So every day they had a chance to keep this clown out, but ushered him in, instead? Though McClellan has admitted he knew Gannon wasn't even his real name, so therefore no real background check had been performed? That sounds a lot like McClellan knew Gannon/Guckert was "OK" anyway - unless he was playing fast and loose with personal security of the president and the rest of the White House, including access to restricted CIA info. And his own personal security. This guy was a plant - let's see how long it takes to connect him to the journalist rental budget that various other two-bit writers have been exposed on in the past couple of weeks.
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make install -not war
The reason why we've rarely seen this effect in media before is that it used to be very difficult to get all of the interested parties in the same news room at one time. Usually only one or two journalists at a paper would be working on a story, and had limited bandwidth to check all the angles before meeting the deadline.
Now, the work can be distributed between large numbers of people who care about the story itself, more than the deadline and the paycheck.
I think the trick for blog media will be finding a Linus Torvalds who can bring it all together into one coherent pile at the end of the day. And a Richard Stallman to set the ethical tone to ensure that it doesn't degenerate into the gossip column nonsense that currently passes for TV news.
On top of this, there are elements of print news that blogging and wikis have not yet touched. I lay out news pages for a living, and the biggest problem that I've seen with blogging is the lack of consistent graphic designs that help make sense of the story. It's something that's difficult for one person to do on top of writing.
If you get fifty people working together on an open source wiki newspaper, it becomes easier for someone to pick up that baton, just as it makes it easier for journalists to have specialized focuses -- one focusing on politics, one focusing on entertainment.
The article mentions how Firefox has done well as a grassroots product. It has, and it's a solid product. However, as I've said before in open-source threads, there's a reason for that. They have their stuff together on both the marketing and the coding end.
Example: The fox logo is far more appealing to look at. The browser layout is clever and open-ended. The grass roots have emphasized how much better Firefox is with security.
Journalism's the same way. Infographics and strong designs can draw a reader into a story and narrow an extremely complex story into a short, understandable bit of information. Every time I see an open source product with undercooked marketing, I know it won't hit the mainstream -- word of mouth is helpful but can only go so far. Open source journalism is the same way -- if a group of people can do it right, it will work really well.
If they can do it better than most newspaper sites, even better -- most newspaper sites don't keep with standards, and therefore their sites aren't as appealing. It's a great field that could open up if a wiki project had all their ducks in a row.
ShortFormBlog: Writing a little. Saying a lot.
Maybe you could RTFA before posting. Just a helpful hint.
... I'm surprised that the submitter didn't mention the successes of the 'other side' of blogging...
But then again, maybe I'm not.
...that there's no accountability (and "other bloggers" don't count).
Bloggers - many with vicious partisan political and personal agendas - post "news" stories, and want all the visibility and rights of journalists, with none of the responsibility, and definitely no representation of the "other side of the story", as it were. Stories that are nothing more than glorified op-ed get passed around as gospel, and get read by many who are less discriminating about the sources for their information, and take it at face value, because if it's written intelligently on a decent looking site and a bunch of people are agreeing with it, it must be the complete truth.
This is what we want from journalism?
We need another way to bash Bush. I'd like to talk about this Gannon thing, but it has nothing to with technology.
Kos: Hey, I'll write an article relating it to open source.
Slashdot: Hey kew! Now I can list it on Slashdot and we can talk about this Gannon thing and make it sound like technology!
A fundamental tenet of open source journalism is being able to pass comment on it and to contribute.
If you try to sign up on his big "journalism" website, there's a 24 hour delay before you can post comments and a one week delay before you can post diaries.
Maybe I'm being paranoid here, but isn't it convenient that if you want to sign up and post a comment about a story that you want others to see, you won't be able to do so until the story (and so your comment) have dropped off the front page? Could it be that Kos isn't really interested in fostering debate at all and just wants an echo chamber for his buddies?
As corporate "news" services have become increasingly under the control of fewer people tradional news sources don't even feign objectivity and seem clearly to be propaganda arms of government and industry "open source" news distribution is the only way we will hear what is actually going on. The problem is these sources will also have their own agendas and will suffer from lack of accountability, oversight, and lack of ethics that are plaguing our current news structure. Without some form of independent, accountable, verifiable and objective entity to act as "watchdog" and transparently evaluate all news providers we will have no way to know who is telling more of the truth.
There is no source code involved in journalism.
If anything blogging is a "legacy" of open-source. Article author clearly has no concept of how long open-source software has existed.
l
The GNU project was announced on 27 September 1983:
http://www.gnu.org/gnu/initial-announcement.htm
Whereas the HTTP protocol became an RFC in May 1996:
http://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc1945.txt
Although it was in use as early as 1990.
Regardless, open-source software clearly predates blogging, as blogging could not have existed before there was a web on which to log.
Rant over.
Phil
I guess today is a passable day to die.
It was discovered that he was using an alias to get past White House security.
Uh, no. He was using an alias, but White House security requires you to give your name, address and social security # to get press credentials and access to CIA documents. They do a background check.
No, this guy did not "get past" White House security. He was a ringer, a shill, for the White House. A go-to guy when questions get tough.
How long had Talon news existed when "Gannon" got his press credentials? I just heard (have not yet confirmed) it was less than a week. And Talon News (Metatag: "Talon News is your source for unbiased news coverage and no-spin reporting. If you want the facts without all the slant, Talon News is the place to go for political, national, and international news.") is affiliated with who?
GOPUSA. How many of their 'no-spin' news stories were rewrites of GOP press releases?
Never mind that they've been paying off reporters to promote their agenda. Does anyone remember reporters Karen Ryan or Alberto Garcia from last year?
We can't trust the science. We are not told the truth until it's too late. Now we can't trust the independent reporting of what we think is the media.
Our country is in some deep trouble.
Why are those questions lowlights, but Helen Thomas' questions are celebrated by antiwar.com and others?
In a November 2002 talk at MIT, Thomas revealed: "I censored myself for 50 years when I was a reporter. Now I wake up and ask myself, 'Who do I hate today?'"
http://slate.msn.com/id/2080034/ Helen Thomas the Pundit writes a sharply partisan syndicated White House column about what she thinks--as opposed to Helen Thomas the Reporter, who wrote about what she'd learned.
http://www.commondreams.org/views03/0108-05.htm http://www.antiwar.com/comment/helen.html Helen Thomas Socks it to the White House
HELEN THOMAS: At the earlier briefing, Ari, you said that the President deplored the taking of innocent lives. Does that apply to all innocent lives in the world? And I have a follow-up.
MS. THOMAS: My follow-up is, why does he want to drop bombs on innocent Iraqis?
Because it's closed. Just like developing stories in traditional broadcast media. Bloggers share developing info, blur the lines between drafts and releases for early access, share across competing organizations. That's a lot like open source, where the source is the text of the stories, and the repository is the blogs themselves. It's certainly the "bazaar" to the traditional media's "cathedral".
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make install -not war
This is a classic example of why the term "open source" was poorly chosen. The forces that power what's usually called the "open source software movement" aren't tied to the creation of software. There's definitely strong ties between the blogging phenomenon and our software movement, but the term "open source" hides them. Lawrence Lessig would prefer that we call blogging an example of the power of "Free culture." If you think that's too grandiose, I'd offer "Free journalism."
You might have seen some coverage of Jeff Gannon, a conservative reporter who lobbed softball questions during White House press briefings. It was discovered that he was using an alias to get past White House security.
That's not true. Jeff Gannon is a pen name for reporter James Guckert. He didn't adopt his pen name to try to get past security, and even if it had it wouldn't have worked. Everybody in the White House press corps has to go through an in-depth Secret Service background check. That's not the kind of thing that can be bypassed using a fake name.
Gannon (or Guckert, if you prefer) resigned over links to inappropriate pornography. These links were uncovered during what basically amounted to a witch hunt. Granted, he had no business being involved with porn, and it's entirely appropriate for him to resign over it, but the links never even would have been found if certain people with a political agenda hadn't singled Gannon (or Guckert) out for negative attention.
From a Reason article:
A day after four American private contractors in Iraq were murdered, their bodies burned and publicly dismembered, "Kos" wrote: A screenshot of the post in question. I don't think association with this vicious hate monger is in the Open Source community's best interest. Is it?
...that CBS's failure of journalistic integrity in the "Bush Memos" case wasn't a "big story" anywhere except in the blogosphere.
Also worth noting that this "big story" had no functional outcome whatsoever. CBS was in no way held accountable for what they did, they in no way had to answer to the public, they never even admitted fault. Even in the blogosphere, the story really didn't serve any purpose except as a tool for right-wing blogs to distract people from the real evidence concerning Bush's possible failure to fulfill his national guard duty; I would estimate that the vast, vast majority of the people who are aware 60 minutes ever broadcast those memos first heard of it through the blog backlash pointing out the memos were falsified. The entire thing was just a self-referential tempest in a teapot, a media source reporting on a media source which ran a story which only gained importance because another media source then reported on it.
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
Case 1 is that BushCo got a hold of the original memos when they were purging Dubya's TANG records, and they prepared highly similar fakes to be released through controlled channels at the appropriate time. In this case, their main concern would be how to create sufficiently plausible fakes and how to get them exposed to the public by some suitably "liberally biased" channel, but they also had to make sure the fakes contained "proper" flaws that wouldn't be detected until too late.
Case 2 is that the CBS versions were accurate and real, not fakes, but were effectively recast as fakes using the rumor-mongering power of the Internet. In this case, Rove (or possibly someone working for him) may still have known about the original memos, but they had already researched and prepared a discrediting response if the memos ever surfaced in public. However, in that case, the timing was incredibly lucky for Dubya, and I have trouble believing in such miraculous coincidences.
The crack about "watch the watchmen" was especially hypocritical. Or does that mean you're a big fan of Michael Moore?
Nope, I didn't think so.
Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
Yo, folks. /. community. He appreciates the fact that a bunch of people come together bringing a variety of knowledge and fleshing out issues.
1) That Kos guy really appreciates the
What the DKos site has morphed into over the past couple of years is similar but different.
There is a diary part of the site where people can have their own blogs. This provides additional content to the site and often good observant posts are promoted to the front page.
The "Gannon" story was researched because someone started the ball rolling and asked for others to help out in answering questions. Other DKos posters pitched in and together they put together a story. They pursued something which the Main Stream Media hadn't done to that point. And, even if various outlets beyond the Boston Globe pursued it, they would have had 1-3 journalists interviewing, fact-checking and finding leads.
That "old school" process is slower though it often gets the story right and occasionally, like the 60 Mins II story on Dubya's Nat'l Guard papers, gets it wrong.
The open source angle is simple: a bunch of people who do not know one another get one another's back and fact-check using the Net and interview and do leg work to verify or discredit a story. With facts.
Like Reagan once said, Facts are stubborn things.
"Open source journalism" ain't perfect, does seem self-congratulatory and is a result of the Me-too generation. But, if New Media doesn't work like this occaisionally, are you going to rely on getting less information from the oldschoolers? Are you going to tune out to news when the Jesus Juice trial in Califonia takes up the Old Media's attention as they tell us everything which does NOT matter to our daily lives?
2) Kos helped set up the software for Dean back before the Scream. He was a consultant who helped develop the entire architecture for the blogging apparatus for the Dean campaign. That software is open source. In fact, everything on the DKos site is open source, both the constantly updated code and the content. Just scroll to the bottom of the main page to see that you can use anything on the page without attribution or paying royalties.
You could make your own blog site with diaries using that code. Or you can cite any content without rubbing anyone the wrong way.
Peace out.
I'm a liberal, but kos is such a shrill bitch it's ridiculous. This is a guy who's so blinded by partisanship that he thought Gray Davis would beat the recall election in california. His reporting of the Iraq war is so stilted it makes him seem like he's rejoicing in our every failure, because it hurts bush political as much as it hurts the Iraqis physically.
Kos will print any gay rumor about any republican wether or not that particular republican has an anti-gay agenda or not and claim it's an example of Conservative hypocrisy. apparently, if two conservatives disagree, they're both hypocrites. (conservatives do this with liberals all the time, and it's just as annoying).
And, if you complain about this on the site, you get banned.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
The election's over! Why did this even come up??? To all the Democrats: Yes, I'm sorry Kerry lost. But now someone even more liberal (Hillary) can run in 2008 and very likely win. To the Republicans ranting about Rather: You guys won! So why haven't you dropped it already?! We are all very strong in our opinions about the election, but we should be careful where we vent. Here is not the place, especially in a discussion about the open source philosophy.
Wah? They find out some obscure conservative journalist got past White House security?
Bloggers are relevant! They are fact checkers! They don't need training!
Whatever. Daily Kos is as worthless as most of the media is.
You want to know who isn't running Firefox 2.x? They spell it "definately" and "rediculous".
Hits the nail on the head. The blogging = open source is more of an analogy than a truism. Nitpicking the definition of 'open source' misses the point the article was trying to make.
Of course CBS should have admitted it was their fault they were so brilliantly scammed. So when are you going to admit it was your fault you got conned into voting for Dubya?
Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
Most of his "articles" were lifted word for word from White House Press briefings.
Check out the quality of his writing when he's not cutting and pasting from the whitehouse.
The fact that he had militaryescortsm4m.com registered is only interesting because it exposes his total hypocrisy, as he routinely bashed homosexuals in his "articles."
Hmmm ANYFUCKINGTHING about the vote of the Iraqi's?
No... ANYFUCKINGTHING about Eason Jordan? No... You wait for this story to post about how bloggers are kicking A in a distributed open feedback manner? Yes... because the other cases... oh that swift boat thing... oh the CBS documents... oh the bloggers giving us the other side of the story in Iraq when the MSM is all doom and gloom... goes down the memory hole on slashdot. Big Brother is VERY proud of you.
this idea that liberals "rejoice" in iraq failures is disgusting... but i think it's pure projection. republicans are ecstatic any time they "prove" one of their points... and when evidence of one of their points come out they harp on it for months.
i've never seen a liberal say "yessss, three more people died in iraq."
At least on Kos, people talk about the casualties of the War... both to our soldiers and to civilians. That doesn't happen in the right-wing world or main stream media.
A better example is the resignation of CNN's Eason Jordan. He said that U.S. soldiers were deliberately targeting journalists in Iraq -- a flat out falsehood. No one would have heard of the story except for the pressure from bloggers. After the story broke most of the mainstream meadia (Howard Kurtz) circles the wagons and defended him. Now that pressure from blogdom has lead to his resignation.
>> the bulk of this research to "what Woodstein did back in the day."
I think you mean _Woodward_ of Woodward and Bernstein fame.
If traditional big news media is the "Cathedral" then blog/community sites are the "Bazaar". Does that fit better than the phrase "Open Source Journalism"?
It's not like source code. There is not so much of the behavior of "submitting a patch" to some news story. Everyone just posts up some content or comment (or both in one).
Anyway, the "correct" term will doubtlessly fall to the "hip" term if they don't happen to be the same.
Start Running Better Polls
The trail Guckert left was a murky one and once the investigation gained exposure he (or whoever he was working for) set out chaning domain registration information, deleting sites, and placing misinformation. It was only through the ability of the blogs to pass along information quickly enough to solve this complicated puzzle before the evidence disappared. Actually, I'll admit Google Cache and archive.org proved quite essential as well.
There is so much more to this story that has yet to hit the traditional press. These bloggers are quite partisan, but that only pushes their dedication to seek out the truth behind this story.
The other side would like you to think its about a guy who registered some gay porn sites (such as militaryescortsm4m.com). It's a disinformation campaign...trust me...the real story is still to come....
At almost the exact moment this Kos suck-up story was posted, Eason Jordan, CNN News Chief, was resigning!
His resignation follows weeks of right-wing blogosphere activism over his comments that the US military was deliberately targeting journalists.
So what's a bigger story - left-wing bloggers busting an unknown right-wing "journalist" working the system to lob a couple of softballs at President Bush, or right-wing bloggers busting the freaking head of CNN news?
Good heavens Miss Sakamoto - you're beautiful!
Too damn bad we can't limit the benefits of freedom to those who appreciate the sacrifices made to keep us free.
What a dumb fuck.
That line is nothing more than an attempt to get around Texas law about fraud and defamation.
Kos isn't the first to discuss this concept, its actually been bandied around quite a bit in Journalism circles over the past few months. (Kos is a Political Blogger, not a journalist by trade.) Jay Rosen in his blog http://journalism.nyu.edu/pubzone/weblogs/pressthi nk/ has written quite extensively on the subject.
Markos is a piss poor example of anything other than an over inflated sense of self-worth and ego. A better example of what he's talking about would be the National Guard story that CBS shat out on the world. That's not to say the example cited isn't news worthy, but holding it up as an example without even discussing the other more worthy ones is a joke. Liken it to holding up the Mexican-American war as an example of how countries fight wars as opposed to WWII. Stupid, stupid, stupid.
*Fortitudo, aequitas, fidelitas.*
Most bloggers are of a generation that's growing up with the likes of Fox News and other such bastions of objectivity.
Stop intellectual property from infringing on me
As does Lynn Stewart and Ward Chuchill.
And Hillary win?!?!?! What planet are you living on? Hell, leftists are still bitching about 2000 in Florida and 2004 in Ohio, but the only fraud being found in elections is being found where Democrats won: in Wisconsin (closer than Ohio in 2004), and Washington, where after every recount the Dem candidate for governer lost, strongly Democratic King County managed to find just a few more votes - and as soon as the Dems were ahead by 30 votes they said "Hey, after losing three counts of the ballots - some by thousands of votes - now after the fourth count our candidate is ahead by 30, it's time to stop". Yeah, that's fair. Count over and over, "finding" more votes in Dem strongholds, until the Dems win.
What about those precincts in Philadelphia that had more registered voters in 2000 than the census said lived there? And where the 99% of those registered voters went out and 98% voted for Al Gore? Ole Joe Stalin would be proud.
Then Dan Rather goes on a mission to destroy GW Bush, and gets NAILED for it. Spin it all you want - the only ones defending Rather are the ones who were cheering him on to "get" the President.
Yeah. The whole world can now see how it works on the left. No wonder you guys are angry. Your days are numbered.
Amazing how the ascendency of the modern left parallels the domination of our media by a few TV networks.
So, if this guy Gannon was regularly attending press briefings on day passes, why didn't any of the Big Media Reporters there bust him? They knew:
1) he had been denied a permanent pass and
2) he was working for a right-wing organization and
3) he was lobbing softballs day after day
My opinion: they didn't think he was doing anything wrong.
Good heavens Miss Sakamoto - you're beautiful!
Yeah, right.
They just never showed any of it on their way to getting fired over using only the forged ones.
And what exactly was wrong with his statement?
Now, I won't disagree that "open source journalism" is just a buzzword that was created on a blog somewhere, but have a little patience; they're trying to describe something we don't have a word for yet. And the words we do have are weighted down with pos./neg. connotation. Really, what we're talking about here is non-corporate media, which can encompass anything from indymedia.org to powerlineblog.com to engadget.com.
I dunno about anybody else, but I'm tired of the negative, cynical, close-minded mindset that so envelopes slashdot about such issues. Open-source is an ideology, and it's an extremely important one. But let's not deride people whose interest lies outside of technological pursuits; people who (gasp!) use technology to do work rather than work on technology. Bloggers have different opinions and interests than you. Is that so wrong? Can they not be united in the struggle against the corrupt and fascist mainstream media/evil software companies? Do they not value their freedom, just as we do?
Furthermore, I've read many posts in this thread already, and even open-source advocates can't seem to agree on what open source is! Some say it's a way of working cooperatively. Some say it's simply not closed-source. Could I pry a few minds open here and suggest that it is both and much more? It is nothing less than the united struggle against tyrrany, the tyrrany that we all KNOW that those in power will impose if given the chance. Without our resistance ("our" including all who stand up for their rights), can you imagine the distopian hell we would live in? We only have to look into our recent history to find examples, and we only have to look to totalitarian states currently in existance to realize the importance of freedom.
Simply put, open-source is about freedom and openness (glasnost). Surely most of us here recognize the power of open-source, but we do not yet know it's full potential. Conversely, we do not yet know the power of blogging. Yes, "blog" is just a stupid word, but that doesn't matter. What matters is that blogging has the power to take down totalitarian governments. If, through the internet, people in a restrictive regime are enabled to communicate effectively the government no longer controls the flow of information. When that happens, a critical mass can be achieved and revolution is possible. Look at Ukraine's election for a recent example.
Blogging is not just ranting and boring shit (although that boring shit might actually serve as "cover" for the more explosive material), it's about communication, freedom and openness. Blogging and open source are going to change our world. Are they over-hyped? Well duh. Who do you think is doing the hyping? The mainstream media, because they don't know how to do anything else. And if you hate blogs because the media hypes them, well then I guess you're just buying what they're selling.
Just like on my blog, I don't expect anybody to care or read what I have written, but I feel a heck of a lot better for having written it. Mod me as you will.
Electric Monkey Pants
He's not worth the click through.
To paraphrase Kos, "Screw him."
is that if Kos is successful in binding his little political dynasty onto Open Source, it'll politicize the entire movement and water down what Open Source really is. (Not that it isn't already politicized just not in this way)
That is, source code is for everyone to see so that technological growth and insight can be shared by all. Not hoarded by the ordained few. Collaborative groups is a pleasant side-effect of this, but it's not the main thrust. Open Source is not anti-capitalist it is anti-monopoly.
Proclaiming that any activism is "open source" will just give more fuel to Gates and co that this movement isn't about technological freedom, but a move to instill communism on the US and abroad.
The whole Open Source concept is fragile enough that it's next to impossible for those of us who are "activists" in our workplaces to get Open Source accepted as a viable tool for building upon. Now Kos has gone and bound it to political "activism" typically a "leftist" trait (because everyone knows that right-wing "activists" are just hate-mongers) which means Open Source = Unionism which will still born the whole movement in tech based corporations almost immediately if these two memes get bound.
Shame on the Slashdot editors because they should know better.
Maybe Saddam didn't have a direct role in planning 9/11. That's debatable.
But "wasn't supporting terrorists"? What about the $$$ he paid to the families of suicide bombers in Israel? That's certainly "supporting terrorists". Unless maybe you think deliberately blowing up children isn't terrorism?
And here's what the BBC! of all people had to say about Saddam's WMD before they became an anti-GWB rallying cry...
That story has nothing to do with technology.
This story is about "Open Source". Y'see...
(And this is a story about MEDIA... not POLITICS)
'Coz it's Kew...
Open Source is keeping software source code "open" so that technological innovations and solutions aren't buried and turned into technological dynasties.
What Kos did is grass roots "activism" made possible in part by Open Source code but read mostly by people who use MICROSOFT WINDOWS and Internet Explorer.
They're not the same concept and they shouldn't be.
The "source code" in this case consists of information, facts, leads, investigations, opinions, arguments, etc. etc. All of these things are out in the open for anyone to read and critique, just as open source code is free for anyone to read and critique.
With open source software, the product is a program. With open source journalism, the product is a story. In both cases, the input to the development process is there for all to see. You don't have to rely on a source that won't let you see how their product is developed, whether that product is Microsoft Windows or the New York Times.
In the Gannon case, DailyKos is being used almost like a "Sourceforge" for journalism; an organizing site that acts as a repository for the output of the project. Leaders organize assignments, and create "diaries" that are used to organize facts uncovered so far. These leaders are not the people who run the site; they are just users who have stepped up and shown the ability to organize things, motivate people, and move things forward. Sound familiar?
I think it's clear that the parallels with open source software development are many. The people at DailyKos working on the Gannon case are not developing open source software, but they are using open source development processes.
I believe Markos is making the point that open source development processes are applicable to more than just software development; they work pretty well for journalism as well. "Bloggers and their opinions might be mildly interesting, but the ability to pool our efforts on issues that capture the collective imagination is what really gets me excited."
Some White House correspondent said he saw "Gannon" wearing a regular White House press pass. Of course, that's not proof, but the White House has lied before.
I'm a big fans of blogs and blogging. But Slashdot pioneered open source journalism - in all senses of the term - long before the blogs gained momentum. Tech journalists have been getting story leads from Slashdot for years. Now political reporters are getting story leads from blogs, and suddenly it's a revolution! The model for open source journalism exists, right here. The blogs are simply broadening the installed base of participants.
RichM
Data Center Knowledge
Quicktime
Windows Media
On the January 27th 2005 Daily Show (Christine Todd Whitman as guest), they played Jeff Gannon's softball question and made fun of him for asking it. Little did they know that he'd be "outed" a few days later. Perhaps the bloggers started researching this guy when the Daily Show put the spotlight on him?
Did he disclose that he accepted money to promote Dean as a canidate? Sure, KOS can talk about open source but so does Microsoft.
where were the bloggers when the tsunami in the indian ocean happened? Were they stuck at the airport when they were supposed to flock at the site?
Is the Associated Press, Reuters, Agence France-Presse going to disappear in the future by the open source journalists?
One should notice the difference between news gatherers, news reporters, and news analysers. As it stands right now, bloggers servers more like "honey-pot" news reporter at best, but mostly just analysers - i.e. only regurgitate what other news agency reports, and verify their legitimacy; or only report what's happening in their immediate surroundings.
Besides, if you were a journalist at the White House, is it your responsibility to question another reporter's backgroud, or ask question to the White House? In other words, would you publish/ print/ sell what Jeff Gannon has to say over what White House has to say?
While watching Fox, CNN, MSNBC, or other american main media outlet, it does seem that plain facts aren't reported anymore....and I can see how that can me construed as "not caring about the truth." Trust me, the journalism business relies heavily upon people's trust on reporting the truth (at least that's what our ethics dictate), even though popular media employ news as a form of entertainment. If we lose the ability to report the truth, we're reduced as a work of fiction - entertainment.
I find blogging important. Very important. But will blog replace traditional journalism? Not likely, unless a considerable amount of people in every community/ region actively report what's happening in their immediate surroundings. But personally, I'd be too lazy to sort through all the personal blogs (assuming they only report facts) to see what's interesting/ relevant to me.
A good example of "open source" or "free as in speech" journalism is Wikinews. Granted, organisations like the AP and Reuters provide on their wires every news story Wikinews will (probably) cover, but that's beside the point. The point is that there exists a news source that licences it's content under the GFDL which means that anyone can take the stories on Wikinews and do whatever they like with them that springs to mind.
:)
One might want to write a tool that analyses news sites and not want to worry about whether or not scraping the news content is legal or not!
Of course, many detractors will say that there is no way that a wiki news source could ever be accurate. The same thing was said for a wiki encyclopaedia. It turns out that mass-collaboration can sometimes be a more accurate form of editing than traditional forms. I don't want to mention Rathergate so I wont
In any case I think the whole argument about Wikipedia/Wikinews 's accuracy is pretty much irrelivant. This is a free information source that exists and if people don't want to rely on it they are more than free to do so. In any case there is a big push happening right now to improve the validation of articles within wikipedia. Check the comments of an article i wrote on this subject for more information.
P.S. If you live in Europe anywhere near Brussels or Berlin at all please try to make it to the protests against software patents! I'll be travelling from Amsterdam to Brussels on the day.. if anyone wants to catch the train with me please reply here and we'll get in touch!
He suddenly resigned today in response to criticism of some of his statements at Davos recently. Statements which probably never heard about if you read so-called "papers of record" or what his network (CNN). Coupled with Dan Rather's implosion last autumn, I'd say keeping the White House Press Corps free of any right-wing influence is pretty small in comparison.
First of all, there is no evidence Dan Rather or CBS forged these documents. There is a decent amount of evidence that someone did so though.
I don't agree that bloggers are even a news source at all. They don't check anything, they don't even try. Many, like yourself, will report complete falsehoods (Dan Rather forgeries) as fact. This does not help keep the populace informed more than rumor mongering does.
Bloggers may be right sometimes, just like a stopped watch is right twice a day. But they are useless as a news source.
Why is Kos getting so worked up over a reporter noone has ever heard of who works for a news agency that noone has ever heard of... ??? Meanwhile--in the real world--"open-source journalists" have held to account (forced resignation or retirement of) 2 huge media figures: Dan Rather at CBS and Eason Jordan, chief news executive at CNN.
I guess it's better to arrive late than never, but let's not pretend that "bringing down" whats-his-name Gannon even approaches the level of significance of Rather and Jordan.
The fact that the media chooses this particular incident to extoll the virtues of "open source journalism" betrays their true motives.
BTW, if I made any typos or weird sentences, no smarmy comments... its late.
Having him at the WH press conferences has to be much cheaper than having Helen Thomas there. After all, he doesn't need to be kept in Depends undergarments and have his drool cup emptied every hour on the hour.
Does SlashDot put a hefty left-wing spin on the stories they post? Undoubtedly. They missed one of the biggest Internet stories of 2004, and yet they cover this silly bit of drivel.
--Mike Perry
Graphics, layout -- that determines what the reader reads when he arrives at a page with no prior knowledge of what he's going to find there. That has some importance, I'll grant you; a top story is going to be highlighted on a page, and it should receive a high percentage of hits from those that view that index page.
But Google, Slashdot, the Daily Kos -- these sites don't care if a story is on the top of the page or buried in the boilerplate. If it's worthwhile, it will be found, disseminated, and commented upon, regardless of layout.
In short, search engine spiders don't care about graphics.
Sorry to thread-jump, but the following link of recent news deserved to be at the top:
OSPA formed
2/11/2005
Writers, publications to launch open source alternative press association
Someone had to do it.
First up, the group of bloggers that worked out that Jeff Gannon is a pseudonym deserve praise. Had he been fired for anything related to his activities as a White House plant, or because of the massive breach of White House security that his daily presence represented, then Bloggers should indeed be celebrating something great.
However, bloggers should not be celebrating. Rather than demonstrate any sense of morals, or display anything approaching professional levels of conduct, the bloggers involved went for the cheap kill. They got him fired for being gay.
What a person does in his private life is private business, and the right to privacy is one that bloggers of all people should respect. By ignoring this right, and indeed persecuting somebody because of their private activities, these bloggers are stepping over a dangerous line.
Some might call it tabloid journalism; it's the sign of a mob mentality. Pursuit of a goal through any means necessary - even the public exposure and humiliation of having a sexual preference cost somebody their job - that's nothing to be proud of.
Some advice to bloggers: think about what you do in your private life. Think about whether you want everyone with a web browser finding out about it.
No offense, but blogs are regulary of low quality IMO. A lot of brogs are. Hence, i'm not so sure how many of those blogs actually are qualified as 'journalism'.
Futhermore the text is often copyrighted but not in an 'open source' style such as CC og GFDL (of which i don't consider the latter 'free').
Now, i'm involved as techie in a local media project and one of our concerns is: How can we build up a mediapool while also having some kind of quality assurance? To explain it futher: people, or certain subjects or happenings who or which normally are ignored have a chance at our network. Basically we use 'karma' but we're trying to find a way how new people will have to proof themselves -- which makes it different than say Indymedia. From what i can say, its definetely not easy.
WE DON'T NEED NO BLOG CONTROL.
The only reason why this form of journalism exists is their common hate against Microsoft.
Plain old OSS-political-correct idiots. Go and kill yourself.
With this whole blogging beats established journo's and the Wisdom of Crowds, blink-malcolm gladwell stuff coming out lately does anyone think that this open source version of information gathering-blogging-works well because bloggers are inside the decision making cycle of the larger news conglomerates?
It's obviously one facet of blogging's effectiveness but the time factor in getting the news out en masse' matters. Bloggers Observe, Orient, Decide and Act faster than the news corporations decision making cycle. Technology obviously helps with this speed but the defining factor is the orientation process, that is, the coalescing of blogging minds with the same intentions all over the planet to bring their own niche opinions-sorta like the long tail concept- to the game. THat's something the large news corporations don't have.