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

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

"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?"

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.

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: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: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.