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??

[argmanah]

In what way was the embaressing tale of Gannon related to open source journalism?

To answer your question, you need but read the article linked to in the story. 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.

The Gannon story is just an example of the power of open source journalism.

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.

Re:Open source??

[MAXOMENOS]

If Gannon/Guckert, a reporter from an independent online non-mainstream news site, cannot get a White House press pass then no blogger/open source journalist will get a pass.

Well, certainly not with a website that's only five days old.

I'd say a better example,

[Hawthorne01]

is the dismantling of CBS's attempt to flaunt the(obiviously) fake National Guard memos as evidence of Bush's slacking off in the Texas Air National Guard. Whether you agree if Dubya did such or not, the way the various conservative blogs built off each other in chasing down that fraud and exposing the sloppy journalism of CBS is a model for future "open-source journalism" efforts.

I, myself, watch the watchmen.

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.

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.

Re:I'd say a better example,

[grcumb]

"First, they blew it because Mary Mapes was following an agenda, not a story."

Oh, for crying out loud. Can we please stop with this 'agenda' thing? The issue is not and has never been about agendas or bias. Why do we care for a second whether a person is a right- or left-winger? The only thing any of us should be caring about is THE TRUTH.

Were Mapes and Rather lazy when they researched the TANG story? Yes! They had lots of valid evidence but they allowed it to be tainted by an obviously forged document. This document completely discredited the rest of the work they did.

Is it unusual that a man with two weeks of training from a political 'think-tank', belonging to a news organisation that had only been publishing for a few weeks at the time, gets accredited to the White House under a false name? You bet is.

Does it seem even stranger that this neophyte is one of the first Washington journalists to find out who Valerie Plame is? Yep.

Can we say more than that? NO!. Nothing is proven yet. We have evidence of problems, and SusanG and company at DKos are looking into it because the mainstream media won't. That is at one and the same time a good and a bad thing. It's good because it's empowering to us that we can do it; it's bad because the mainstream media should have made a story of this two years ago.

We're only doing this investigation because the the media don't seem to care about the truth any more. This is a terrible thing, and we have the tools to fix it. I suggest, therefore that we stow allegations and innuendo, and allow the facts to speak for themselves.

Re:I'd say a better example,

[As Seen On TV]

None of the other members of the White House press corp attempts to conceal their identity as he did.

Mike Allen and Jim Engel both use pen names. There's another one, a female reporter whose pseudonym I can't remember unfortunately. And those are just the ones I can think off of the top of my head.

Gannon/Guckert is not a journalist.

So? I don't recall the clause in the first amendment limiting the freedom of the press to people with j-school degrees.

he doesn't work for a legimimate news outlet.

How do you define "legitimate?" More importantly, why do you define "legitimate," if it's not to exclude people you don't like?

His function at press conferences appears to have been to save the ass of Scott McLellan or the President by asking softball questions.

His "function," if you want to call it that, was to ask whatever questions he wanted to ask, just like every other reporter in the press room. The fact that he asked questions that you don't like doesn't mean he doesn't belong there. Hell, you'd be hard pressed to find anybody who doesn't think Helen Thomas spent her last few years in the briefing room as an openly partisan hack, but nobody called for her removal. Because we have a free press, you see.

No, I do not think so

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

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

Correction:

[NoseBag]

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)

"Questions"

[ortcutt]

It might be charitable to even call Gannon/Guckert's comments "questions". Here are some highlights--or should I say lowlights--from his distinguished career.

May 10, 2004: "Q In your denunciations of the Abu Ghraib photos, you've used words like 'sickening,' 'disgusting' and 'reprehensible.' Will you have any adjectives left to adequately describe the pictures from Saddam's rape rooms and torture chambers? And will Americans ever see those images?"

MR. McCLELLAN: "I'm glad you brought that up, Jeff, because the President talks about that often."

July 15, 2004: "Q Last Friday, the Senate Intelligence Committee released a report that shows that Ambassador Joe Wilson lied when he said his wife didn't put him up for the mission to Niger. The British inquiry into their own prewar intelligence yesterday concluded that the President's 16 words were 'well-founded.' Doesn't Joe Wilson owe the President and America an apology for his deception and his own intelligence failure?"

April 1, 2004: "Q I'd like to comment on the angry mob that surrounded Karl Rove's house on Sunday. They chanted and pounded on the windows until the D.C. police and Secret Service were called in. The protest was organized by the National People's Action Coalition, whose members receive taxpayer funds, as well as financial support from groups including Theresa Heinz Kerry's Tides Foundation.

MR. McCLELLAN: "I would just say that, one, we appreciate and understand concerns that people may have. I would certainly hope that people would respect the families of White House staff."

Feb. 10, 2004: "Q Since there have been so many questions about what the President was doing over 30 years ago, what is it that he did after his honorable discharge from the National Guard? Did he make speeches alongside Jane Fonda, denouncing America's racist war in Vietnam? Did he testify before Congress that American troops committed war crimes in Vietnam? And did he throw somebody else's medals at the White House to protest a war America was still fighting?"

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.

Worth noting...

[Ars-Fartsica]

...that last year's "big story" (Dan Rather falsification of Bush military records controversy), was broken by bloggers.

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.

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?"

Blogging != OpenSource.

[jericho4.0]

WTF? Opensource is a licenceing method, not a way for people to work together. It encourages people and companies to contribute to work others started because they know it will not be used for the benefit of one, but the benefit of all.

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.

Open Source Journalism

[BossMC]

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!

Re:Sounds like Communism to me.

[Soko]

Yeah.

I read all about that in our GNUspaper. Commrade Stallman would be proud. :-P

Soko.

Re:Thanks for the textbook example.

[Doc Ruby]

Actually, while the White House still hasn't answered questions like "which name was on Guckert/Gannon's day passes", he very clearly scammed his way in. You don't know the answer, either, unless... is that you, McClellan? Still trying to get those softball questions across the media radar, huh? I guess requiring questions in advance, and paying journalists to spin your press releases isn't enough - you're really putting in the overtime.

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.

Open Journalism

[Doc Ruby]

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".

Re:Thanks for the textbook example.

[Doc Ruby]

How about "I can disagree with *you* any way I please", you contemptibly conceited ignoramus? Get too original, and the cretinous ACs don't even notice they've been bitchslapped. Now YOU dance, Anonymous monkey Coward.

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.

Re:Marcos "Screw them" Zuniga

[ortcutt]

If you are a mercenary, you know what you are getting into. I don't think I'd say "Screw them." but they made their beds and they slept in them.

Re:McClellan Irregulars

[Doc Ruby]

We have this familiarity with "strawman arguments". It's when someone picks the argument they want their opponent to have, instead of the one they're actually facing, and argue with the "strawman". I haven't said that anyone should be disallowed to report or comment (even those with nothing but meaningless or stupid reports and commentaries, though I wish they'd shut up of their own accord). I do say that Gannon/whatever was a plant. Because he was let into WH press briefings, a necessarily selective group, in a unique scenario that has been detailed elsewhere. After being denied a Capitol Hill pass. Without a background check that could have dug up a lot more than this "gay" smokescreen, if he were dangerous - but that wasn't even performed. While the WH is revealed to be paying other journalists for similar astroturfing. They still have the right to report the "news". But they don't have a right to pretend they're not plants, shills for a complicit White House. Like I say, let's see how far this one goes.

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.

Hilarious! Eason Jordan resigns

[Kenrod]

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?

A piss poor example.

[Visceral Monkey]

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.

Re:That's completely untrue

[grcumb]

"Gannon (or Guckert, if you prefer) resigned over links to inappropriate pornography. These links were uncovered during what basically amounted to a witch hunt."

It's true that some people have crowed about the hypocrisy of an openly right-wing pundit being associated with gay sex sites. It's also true that some people have said that this hypocrisy is the story. BUT it's also true that the people doing the original research have decried this time and again. They've said repeatedly that this is not the story.

Of course, if you'd read the group's press release, you'd already know that there is not one word about the gay sex sites. Some cranks may be crowing about a photo of Gannon/Guckert in tighty-whiteys, but the people who are doing the actual research are deliberately not. They seem to think it's enough that a guy with two days' training, working for a news organisation that was four days old should be able to get a White House press pass using a false name. They also find it strange that on many occasions 'Gannon' wrote articles in which text lifted directly from Republican press briefings appeared unattributed. Most importantly, they worry that he might have been used to leak a story that resulted in an undercover CIA operative being outed. That last one is a felony offense, and is punishable by hard time in a federal prison.

For some small-minded people it's about the gay sex sites. For most, though, it's about the systematic subversion of the Free Press.

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.

So What About Slashdot?

[miller60]

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.

Rather (CBS), Jordan (CNN)... Gannon??!?

[smitth1276]

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.