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.""

Comments

Open source??

[CurlyG]

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?

Re:Open source??

[mcc]

Basically, the reason Gannon was exposed is because so many Bloggers (open source journalists) started writing about it, until there were so many articles about it on blogs that the mainstream media had no choice but to pick up the story.

Sounds exactly like how right-wing talk radio worked in the 90s.

Of course, the Gannon thing is actually true, as opposed to the stories about Bill Clinton shooting DNC chairman Ron Brown in the back of the head. But truth doesn't really matter here. What matters is that functionally, the exact same thing happened. A concentrated faction of non-mainstream media sources hammered on one specific issue until the very fact they were talking about it so much caused it to qualify as "news", at which point the mainstream media picked it up. The presence or absence of facts is entirely coincidental to the manner in which this mechanism works.

So is Rush Limbaugh "open source journalism"?

Re:Open source??

[_KiTA_]

It's important beacuse a bunch of Bloggers, who are mostly people working in their spare time, were able to do the investigative journalism and discover that not only was this guy a Whitehouse plant, he's a flaming hypocrite who has ties to the swift boat vetrans for slander people.

Journalism that NONE of the major news outfits were willing to do.

Re:Open source??

[pcidevel]

I'm very pissed at Kos for writing this today because for the last several weeks I've been intending to write in my dKos Diary about how the blogging of the Left has open sourced politics.

It's no where near exactly like right-wing radio in the 90s if you ask me, because right-wing radio still required a huge (and expensive) infrastructure that is no longer needed.

The real news behind the Gannon story isn't that bloggers blogged about it, but that it was mainly the work of blog READERS. It wasn't Kos or Atrios that really broke the story, it was the people who post comments and diaries at their sites. Those comments and diaries can be posted by anyone, so journalism is becoming much more open source. Regular people post comments, the best of those comments filter through to the site admins, the best of the stuff from the various sites filters through to the mainstream media.

I'm hoping that Dean realizes this is the OTHER legacy of his "sleepless summer", not only has he taken the Democrats back to real grass-roots fund raising, but he has also inadvertantly created the setup needed for open sourcing the message of the Democratic party. Instead of needing one brilliant campaign advisor with all the best ideas in the world, the Democrats now have thousands of relatively mediocre campaign advisors who each may have only one great idea. But if you can skim the Great Ideas from those people who otherwise have mediocre ideas the rest of the time, you end up with a deluge of Great Ideas, much more than any one brilliant campaign advisor will ever be able to give you. It's exactly the Cathedral and the Bazaar, but taken from the arena of computers and moved into politics.

Open Source Journalism?

[null etc.]

Open source politics, open source activism, open source journalism -- the aggregation of thousands on behalf of a common cause.

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.

Re:I'd say a better example,

[CRepetski]

In the page to which this writeup is linked you can see they do indeed liken this incident to the situation of bloggers exposing CBS.

But that's a valid point anyway.

Is this really open source?

[mrighi]

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?"

Re:No, I do not think so

[de1orean]

if you'd look at the DailyKos diaries, you'd see the unprecedented level of collabo among all the folks who dig the logwork... it's damned impressive. link

Re:I'd say a better example,

[OECD]

is the dismantling of CBS's attempt to flaunt the(obiviously) fake National Guard memos

No, although it's related. The Rathergate story exposed a weakness of journalists--they're mostly generalists. Whereas in any large group (Freepers, Rightwing Bloggers, etc.) you're going to have all kinds of experts in diverse fields (eg., TexANG memo format and terminology, MS Word.)

The Gannon story was fed by people (Kossacks, mostly) who were so interested in the story (originally, the Plame story, which Gannon covered) that they were willing to track down all kinds of loose ends. It's the other little secret of journalism--it's not hard, it's just time-consuming. This story was more about a distributed, self-organized approach to research--much like an FOSS project.

It's fascinating to watch the Media come to terms with these trends.

He used an alias for what exactly?

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Worth noting

[mcc]

...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.

Re:Worth noting

[rhysweatherley]

Also, the right-wing bloggers in the Rather case never dug past the surface. OK, the document was a forgery. Great. So who forged them? Well meaning friends of the person who supposedly wrote it? Karl Rove? Who? That's the story begging to be written.

The reason why the right-wing bloggers stopped is instructive: their goal was to discredit Rather so that the "Bush was AWOL" story could be pushed off the front page. They never intended to get to the truth.

In the case of Gannon, the goal wasn't to discredit him but to find out who he really was, who he worked for, etc. To get past the surface impression and do some real investigation. In the process, some salacious details were turned up. But they were never the reason why the investigation was started, or is continuing.

Eason Jordan better example

[Derling Whirvish]

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.

Why did bloggers have to break this.

[Kenrod]

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.