Slashdot Mirror
Mainstream Media To Start "Crowdsourcing"
guanxi writes "Gannett, one of the largest newspaper publishers in the U.S., plans to change its newsrooms to utilize Crowdsourcing, a new term for something Slashdot readers have been familiar with for years: \From the article, they will 'use crowdsourcing methods to put readers to work as watchdogs, whistle-blowers and researchers in large, investigative features.' Last summer, the The News-Press in Fort Myers, Florida asked readers to help investigate a local scandal. The response was overwhelming: 'Readers spontaneously organized their own investigations: Retired engineers analyzed blueprints, accountants pored over balance sheets, and an inside whistle-blower leaked documents showing evidence of bid-rigging.' Public service isn't their only concern, of course: 'We've learned that no one wants to read a 400-column-inch investigative feature online. But when you make them a part of the process they get incredibly engaged.' Is this the beginning of a revolution at major media organizations? Can they successfully duplicate what online communities have been doing for years?"
... Glad that's cleared that up then ...
Next article please.
Deleted
I can't wait to see the newspapers quoting things like "Our top contributer 'I3tospooge' reports..." and "Breaking news from ObiwanMcCartney..."
I keep telling myself I'm not the desperate type.
"You do the work, we get the ad revenue."
I tried to add "crowdsourcing" to the tags and the "handy" pop-down spellchecker replaced it with "crap" when I hit enter. What gives?
/ \
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They're not doing any work anymore and have convinced people to not only do their work for them, but pay the paper to read the final results. Is that what's going on here?
"I use a Mac because I'm just better than you are."
And if enough Citizen Researchers say so, by golly, we'll have a witch burning! I mean, if the crowd says so, it's got to be true! Also, the crowd can just edit the related entries on Wikipedia and make it true, with footnotes.
Um... or are we still using editors before we go public with this stuff? And, does that mean that we're still talking about having to check sources, understand the legal ramifications of publishing stuff, and all of that old stodgy professional behavior? So, really, this is just about making things sensational enough to get a lot of people to volunteer to do the basic research that staffers used to do?
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Yes, you can get some real information out of people ... but you'll have to wade through pure crap to get to it.
And every fool with an agenda (space aliens, government cover-ups, etc) will be spewing their own brand of "information".
It isn't that the mass of humanity is better equipped to provide this information. It is that the news organizations are now no better trained in journalism or research than your average TV watcher.
Like Slashdot successfully duplicated their FUD and even added a hated Politics section to generate more interest.
You also get the freely shared collaborative effort of other "investigators" who are interested in the same subject or subjects. That's your "pay", the information, access to data, the reason you even go to the newspaper website. That the aggregator-the paper-provides the structure and bandwith and pays for the full time employees is fair enough for them to get the ad revenue, doncha think? Certainly better than having to open a paypal account for every news website out there, IMO.
People have been tryng to figure out how to do this online thing for a long time, there just *aren't* that many options to pay for all of it. You have ads, or direct pay in some form, that's it. Everytime you can share, whether it is code or news or just learned expertise to answer a question on some help forum, it cuts costs for all of the above, including you, because we all can't be experts at everything, nor can we be all places at the same time to see what is happening. We have to rely on others, and no matter what, there is some expense to an online presence, especially if you are a host of some sort.
"And, does that mean that we're still talking about having to check sources.... and all of that old stodgy professional behavior?"
The old style media was so >good at that, right?
Where were you when the voynix came?
When I was a kid, we called this being a snitch, and it was the easiest and surest way to make people hate you.
...the newspapers tried to get away with half-assed research and now they're trying to get away with none at all? Really, will they pay this 'crowd' anything?
It's weird to me that people will jump on the bandwagon when they want to become part of some group investigation, but can't get off their lazy asses to vote or make decisions about their country. What's the motivation there? Not that voting *works*, but still...
'nuff said.
'Cause if they all say it's true, it has to be.
*snerk*
When it comes to crowd-sourcing the main stream media *should* win hands down. Established media, in particular some newspapers, have a better reputation when it comes to protecting sources compared to ISPs, for example.
So, with the masses doing your leg work... who needs to pay a smart reporter with contacts and experience?
And to think, they want to SELL subscriptions to Crowdsourcing publications? Yeah, right...
Recently, an organization with the goal of creating a discourse on changing election day has offered to pay people to do their dirty work.
http://www.getoutthewhy.com/weblog/
The will pay you $300 to ask a house representative why we vote on Tuesday, and $500 for a senate member or a governor. To get the reward, you must post a video of the transaction on youtube. Its a pretty cool idea.
First you animate. Then you SUSPEND!!!
I never said that they were perfect. But for every story like that you can find, I can link to 1,000 nut cases on the 'web.
Again, that's for making my point. Freedom of the Press means that the government cannot stop you from printing your fantasies about space aliens. But Democracy requires an informed public. And when newspapers stop funding their own research and turn to those space alien conspiracy nut cases for their material, the public is no longer informed.
Fortunately, there's still The Daily Show.
Gannett is also the owner/publisher of the various Military Times newspapers.
Tomorrow, the day before the US Congressional election, all the Military Times individual papers will publish a rare joint editorial calling for the immediate resignation of Donald Rumsfeld, the US Defense Secretary. I don't know that those military papers have ever called for a Defense Sect'y to resign before, and surely not the day before an election. That editorial is aligned with its military readers, rather than its Pentagon and military contractor "suppliers" who both support Rumsfeld, and often report to him.
It looks like Gannett is choosing to plug in directly to its consumers to survive the ongoing shakeout of plummeting newspaper circulation. The real question about the "revolution" at major newspapers is not whether these Gannett moves are the beginning, but rather whether they're an exit strategy, and whether to victory.
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make install -not war
http://urbis.com/ is a great example of crowdsourcing. Lets authors post work and get peer reviews. Good works get the eye of publishers.
This is probably one of the craziest ideas I've ever heard of for the mainstream media. I can handle bias and even the occasional factual errors and omissions, but having laypeople conduct your investigatory journalism for you? The problems are just too numerous: lowering of research and writing standards, dealing with too much or just plain unbalanced information, corporate red-herrings, conflicts of interest, fanboyism, private agendas... these are just a few of the reasons news corporations have private, [ideally] independent, eduated staffs of researchers, writers, and editors. And, not coincidentally, this is why blogging does not count as news.
Gannett already gave up doing its own news for the most part. We have a Gannett paper here and its full of recycled stuff. I read about things online and a week latter it shows up in Gannett as "news".
The "local" section is called "Your World" and it hardly has much local about it. I recently read about workers in Chile in that section. I gave up on it for the most part and never buy it. Most people who get it do so for the high school sports and obits. The rest is agit-prop with boo-hoo sob stories about illegals "suffering" every other day.
One kid working a deli got killed by an illegal after he raped her. Parents then protested the daily gathering of 200 plus men a couple blocks from their elementary school. Of course Gannett ran one weepy sob story after another story trying to guilt trip everyone into loving their illegals.
Another great story was about the new urban fashion "statement" of wearing 'grills" - the awful metal plates and fishooks kids wear on their front teeth. I think its pretty racist Gannett promotes such buffoonish style as legit. But this is how low they have sunk.
That's why Gannett is doing so poorly. Its McPapper doing McAgitProp with the only "fresh" news about dead people. This latest move is desperate. They gave up journalism a long time ago but pretended to have it with streams of agit-prop.
Looking at digg, what we can expect is the truth 80% of the time (without knowledge as to which 80% is the truth). Good stories 60% of the time. Old stories rehashed as new 25% of the time.
In other words, some sort of mob rule where the most entertaining and eloquent vocal opinionates dominate and influence. Let me paraphrase Socrates argument here: "Would you like your physician to be selected via their qualifications and learnedness of the art or would you like the physician to be chosen by election via their ability to influence people?"
And you are the perfect example of the flaw in your approach.
This has EVERYTHING to do with Democracy. It isn't whether any person or group of people considers him/themselves to be "more informed". It matters whether they ARE more informed.
Democracy depends upon the participation of informed citizens. When you take away that "informed", Democracy fails. That is why every totalitarian government first cracks down on the media. It is not a coincidence.
But feel free to keep arguing that uninformed people make better decisions than informed people.
Which is why the playground was a hell for many kids. The bullies and gangs could do whatever they wanted, and appealing to a higher power (teacher, etc) was considered wrong for some reason. Probably because of lackwit cocksuckers like you, who were either buullies, one of their lickspittle toadies, or just delusional.
http://mail.google.com/mail/a-w3do10dl3s-t0pdf8om3 2-0m3soe3d4b c d-dl30xl29sd s 8-fd0slce41o 4 f-95ed4ds325 n j-4s8x0f9r4d 4 g-3f5sc67w2f 3 d-7grd4sg68j 3 f-4dg3xg6k6f
http://mail.google.com/mail/a-g0dc4aq44f-d90cls2s
http://mail.google.com/mail/a-d8x03mxc83-gf84kf0c
http://mail.google.com/mail/a-c4df593sf4-df4d39fn
http://mail.google.com/mail/a-d3scg5d4ws-dr5fh5fv
http://mail.google.com/mail/a-e9f78f54d3-3d5fg5ed
http://mail.google.com/mail/a-b8uk824f3d-4rf5g0v9
http://mail.google.com/mail/a-eu768215f3-db6e9332
Democracy is about how the people influence government by voting, running for office, or participating in referendums. It is not about whether people argue about space aliens or not.
Totalitarians crack down on the media because totalitarians are very vain: they don't want anyone to say anything bad about them (whether or not anyone is "informed"). In fact, it has absolutely nothing to do with whether anyone is informed or not.
Also, there is a huge degree of subjectivity over whether someone is "informed" vs "uninformed". For one huge example, liberals think conservatives are uninformed and vice-versa. So much that we shouldn't make any government policy to censor media or decisions from one particular subjective view.
Informed people make better decisions than the uninformed. I never argued that they did, despite your uninformed straw-man attack. However, arguing about space aliens, and how the Titanic ( the big ol' newspapers) re=arranging their deck chairs has absolutely nothing to do with democracy.
Where were you when the voynix came?
There was the famous layoff at Wired News, where they laid off all the reporters and kept some of the editors.
Of course, what happened is that press releases took over. Wired Magazine is now a version of the Sharper Image catalog. Who needs reporters? Content is what fills in the space between the ads. And if you just use press releases for that, nobody notices.
Considering the ultra-conservative bias that most of the Slashdotters here have, I can't see this being a good thing in popular media. The right have their fingers in all the pies right now and you can't move an inch without being blasted with right wing lies and propaganda. The left is being incredibly squelched and this mainly has to do with one thing: right wingers are cunning. Note smart, but cunning. They know how to game the system to their advantage regardless of how small their numbers may truly be. The left, on the other hand tend to be people who are more cerebral. They don't game the system to their advantage, they make the mistake of trying to use the system honestly and as it was intended to be. So applying the same kind of approach to big media news is going to result in the very vocal minority of right wingers having even more control and shaping the news to their fantasies, rather than the reality that we actually have to live in. After all... some of us lefties live in the fact based world which is apparently a bad thing.
Add to this the fact that most right wingers don't like to think or persue more in-depth analysis of a topic. They instead prefer a digest that feeds them more "facts" to support their flimsy beliefs. Lefties, on the other hand like to analyze things to death, possibly to the point where their conclusions no longer apply when they're done with the analysis. By the time the left has the real facts and answers, the issue is no longer an issue and it's likely that the "stupids" of America have bought into the fast food "news" that tells them what they want to hear. So again, from this perspective, I expect to see lots of "in-depth" coverage of a story that involves EXTREMELY biased "investigation" by the amateur pundits with an axe to grind. (ie, not much reality based news)
Let's face it everyone. America is lost and severly damaged and it's all thanks to the citizens who don't want to think for themselves and prefer sound bites to dissertations. It's all thanks to the populace getting dumber each year and just THINKING that they're smarter. It's all due to this huge push to keep the average person stupid and happy. After all, what's a few thousand American lives lost in Iraq for a war based on lies, when you're fat stinking American asshole has a big cushiony SUV to sit in and drive anywhere? Who cares if the elections in this country are being rigged to satisfy the needs of the people who REALLY have control (people with lots of money and they really don't care about Democrats or Republicans as long as they can keep making more money) when you can go home after sticking an icepick in your brain, err... pulling the levers for the wrong (ie. Republican) candidates and watch it all in video game fashion with slick graphics as Fox news tells you what's REALLY going on and it jibes with what you think reality is? Who cares if you aren't going to be able to leave or return to the U.S. without the appropriate clearance this coming January and likely for good, when you can watch that stock ticker on you PC and feel like you're some kind of financial maverick which somehow makes you untouchable? Yeah... who cares about anything that matters as long as "number 1" is looking OK?
Finally, as much as many of you assholes will brand me as some liberal or commie "nutjob", let me make something completely clear to you numbnuts on both major sides of the fence (and you whackjobs in the libertarian camp too even though you're stubborn idiots). There are currently two major parties: Republicans and Democrats. The alternate parties will NEVER win anything other than some small seats here and there so they aren't worth discussing unless the voting system changes drastically. But the REAL key here is that there are also voters (that's most of you who are in reality completely powerless as long as you aren't working together) and there are also politicians (that's the jerkoffs who want to control you) of each stripe. So just taking the two major parties (Repugnica
-"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o
Free labor so newspaper corporations don't have to actually pay for investigative journalism? If I was a CEO of a news corporation, I'd think this was a brillant idea too. It's the equivalent of reality TV for newspapers.
It's one thing to contribute to a project with an free license that everyone can benefit from. This kind of cooperation might one day save the world.
I don't see any harm in being in a corpoation run community such as Slashdot and making some off the cuff remarks. It's a kind of social exchange.
It is something else entirely to spend time working for a corporation, sharing your expertise and time, that is then claimed as intellectual property of that corporation. It is the height of stupidty and shows you don't value your time.
It's a variation on the old formula used in academic publishing. Researchers employed by universities publish in corporate journals (a priviledge) and those same universities have to pay enormous fees to subscribe to those journals. Sometimes they pay the salaries of editors for these publications and for the time of people involved in peer-review. It's great for the middle man, but it is a rip off for the universities and their faculty - not to mention it actually stifles access to important research.
So, yeah. Let's all run right out and do this shall we?
"Considering the ultra-conservative bias that most of the Slashdotters here have"
Are you really serious? I've seen those on the left whine about right-wing conspiracies modding them down on Slashdot...and I've seen those on the right whine about left-wing conspiracies modding them down on Slashdot. I've also observed much of the modding behavior applied to overtly political comments: it goes equally both ways. Only a "nutjob" could see such bias in Slashdot. I did not brand you as one: your own conspiracy-theory comments did.
Where were you when the voynix came?
Ba Ba Booeey
Table-ized A.I.
They used to call these guys "reporters". They would do this thing called "research", to find a "story" and "blow the whistle" on people who were trying to "screw the public".
These days though, all the "reporters" are just going after stories that are fed to them by government or corporate press releases, and are totally uninterested in what we used to call "sticking it to the man". So maybe, this is a *good* thing.
"No problem. I have the capacity to do infinite work so long as you don't mind that my quality approaches zero."-Dilbert
"Where the hell do you get Salem witch trials out of asking the community to get involved"
This is in line with those who have commented in this item that having more people participate in "freedom of the press" is the same as having vigilantes going around enforcing the law. They feel that First Amendment free speech/free press rights should only belong to a special authorized few, and that letting the average person exercise these rights is just like having the average citizen enforce the law on their own (be they vigilante fake-cops or a witch-burning mob).
Seeing as how this idea is really angering those who think that freedom of the press should be for the authorized/approved few, I'm liking this idea more and more.
Where were you when the voynix came?
www.seconddraft.org/movies.php
at a concert. I lost my shoe and my wallet. Last time I did that again....
They are called "freelance writers" and "tipsters."
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
"at a concert. I lost my shoe and my wallet. Last time I did that again"
Oh. that was YOU??? I found the shoe and the wallet. I opened it and found your name and phone number alright, but I looked at the single shoe and considered that its likely came from a peg-legged man, like a pirate. And I was going to be damned if I was going to make the acquaintance of a pirate just to give the wallet back.
I quite enjoyed the remaining Seinfeld DVD boxed sets I bought with the cash.
Where were you when the voynix came?
How does having many retired civil engineers looking over sewer plans lower standards? A journalist would have to consult experts anyway. By having many look at it, its less likely to get fooled by some small group. A corrupt city engineer could probably fool most journalists in an interview. Maybe they consult another couple of engineers, and it sounds like a difference of opinions. Now if 90% of the volunteer civil engineers said it should cost half as much? It's not that hard to pick out most of the idiots and crackpots from the informed from a large pool of responses. See slashdot. In cases where it is hard to tell, real reporting comes involved.
It's too late to turn off the collective. ;)
Shh.
"Lynch" and "Mobs"
"Is there ANYBODY working in Lite-On's warranty department?"
You found me. I'm sorry, I've not been in the office. I went on lunch break at 11:30 on May 18th 2002 and have not returned yet. That explains while your phone call has not been answered.
I am quite happy to help you with your problem, however. Most problems with our DVD burners happen when you place DVDs inside them and/or connect them to an electrical source. In fact, both activites violate the warranty.
You did not know this? It was printed right there. In fact, it was etched on one of the white styrofoam packing inserts that your DVD burner came packed in....You actually THREW THESE OUT without reading the etching? We'll I'm sorry, but you are going to have to solve your own problem. Good day.
Where were you when the voynix came?
Stupidity at the speed of light
They have regular segments where they check in on the "blogosphere" and iFilm/iReport.
Why do I have a strange feeling that Faux News won't be doing this...
Don't think that a small group of dedicated individuals can't change the world. It's the only thing that ever has.
Great, now JoeBlogger will _really_ have his head all full. Look ma, I'm a reporter!!
http://what-is-what.com/what_is/text_editor.html
It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.
Newspapers are trying to get back some of their lost audience by allowing "citizen journalism" as corporations call it. They know the future of the newspaper is online, so they need to get people back to visit their website. Fact is unless they really start to tell the news and not censor it, it will never work.
They lost a lot of people and will never get them back, simply because we cannot trust them anymore.
In the meantime I'll stick to indy and underground news sources such as Guerrilla News Network. They tell the stories the corporate media wont tell and wont let "citizen journalists" report.
Can you say "GROKLAW"???
My wife doesn't listen to me either...
features of blogs. What are these people thinking?
Please, for the good of Humanity, vote Obama.
The writer Jeff Howe said:
Starting Friday, Gannett newsrooms were rechristened "information centers,"
So are Gannett's newsrooms actually Christian? Or should that really say renamed?
It's remarkable how much Christian mythology is used in common language. Stop and think before you keep promoting Faith over Reason.
That the aggregator-the record label-provides the structure and distribution channels and pays for the full time employees is fair enough for them to get the record sales revenue, doncha think?
"The problems are just too numerous: lowering of research and writing standards, dealing with too much or just plain unbalanced information, corporate red-herrings, conflicts of interest, fanboyism, private agendas"
Yes, the news corporations have managed all of this with their wonderful writers, editors, and other staff. It will be a difficult job for the bloggers to stoop down to these standards, but I'm sure they'll strive for it. So one day blogging might become so bad that it can count as (old style) news.
Where were you when the voynix came?
Sure, I'd agree they should get some, but not all of it, and as long as the over-all price isn't at a gouging level and the media isn't DRMed all to heck. Now what might constitute gouging is certainly open to debate, that would have to be looked at in more detail, but I think lately (the last several years), we haven't seen much in the cost of disks dropping, and now they seem to want almost as much for downloads as they want for physical media in a jewel case with the liner.
Several years ago, even the cheapest new computer was maybe around 1500 bucks, and music disks were 12 to 20 bucks. Now you can get a new computer for 3-500 dollars at the low end..and music disks are still around 12 to 20 dollars. It's like tech advances stand still for them guys.
Are people being gouged? Or is the computer industry just better at making use of new technology to become more efficient and diverse enough to where competition has resulted in better prices for the consumers?
I am forced to guess, and run the odds...OK, my assessment is.. I think the music buying public has been getting gouged for a long time. Tell them RIAA boys to drop prices down to around one third what they are now, and make the diff on volume sales instead. That's a recommendation of course, but I know at those prices, I buy zero new music, I stopped several years ago when I noticed disk prices never seemed to drop. they still haven't. I don't P2P pirate either..I just don't care that much about it beyond the abstract noticing of it, and I am annoyed they lobbied congress (paid bribes) to start us on this DRM hell sleigh ride. That part is annoying, and to be forced to pay top dollar on that?? I call gouging. If their expenses are just too great, they need to really take a look at where the waste is then, because almost all other industries out there have a steady double benefit of steadily cheaper prices and/or more features/quality, but for some reason, "entertainment" on plastic disks doesn't.
Now what this might have to do with being a volunteer online reporter to try and uncover scandals that might affect you from government or corporate shenanigans I am not sure, but I hoope I answered your question. When people notice the government isn't doing theirt job, and where government isn't even investigating crime because the government itself is part of the problem, then I think banding together to find out some facts and to share what you find out is a neat idea. If the central location that coordinates that, the online paper or hyper-blog whatever, needs ads for their infrastructure, then so be it. slashdot is both, ad supported and subscription. and I do not block ads online except for flash ads, for various reasons.
If the entertainment industry wants to be ad supported, they already have a model for that, TV and OTA radio. And frankly, the radio is where I listen to the bulk of my music, I just wish the government would make it easier for low power guys to get into the picture, so we had more diverse sources.
How much has the price of fuel changed since then? What about the price of bread? Has the minimum wage gone up since then? How much has the technical quality of production changed?
Long before the Web became World Wide, Howard Stern was sending his armies of listeners to investigate (and harrass) people who offended him.
Of course, it works much better in real time.......
The world would be a better, and I dare say safer, place if more people starting asking questions.
This is somewhat related to Microsoft releasing Vista early to let people beta test it for them. FREE BETA TESTERS!
It's a shame, because this is an exceptional article. It could have used a "I-sure-hope-so" dept line, and maybe some positive publicity would be directed at Slashdot when other sites link this story (when they undoubtedly will). This kind of "Slashdot is above all other news sources" thinking is ruining the site, and I'll say it right now.
If crowdsourcing is is rather litigious in its present approach it's because we still have to devise a proper decentralized process where facts and sources can be validated by peers. I believe technology now offers ways to work collaboratively and achieve what was previously unthinkable.
Once we have a reasonable process and platform, I can't wait for applying it to 9/11!
This sounds like Project Gutenberg Distributed Proofreading.
Every now and then, I log into Project Gutenberg Distributed Proofreading. There, I proofread a couple of scanned pages and then leave it at that for a few weeks. It's not much but that's OK; it's the power of numbers that kicks in.
8 of 13 people found this answer helpful. Did you?
already covered this phenomenon as CNN tries their hand at it.
Gannett has now taken the first step of their "Final Solution" for journalists. They have been slowly killing local journalism for years by keeping only human intrest or sports stories as the number one priority and picking AP or Reuters writers ahead of the ones that are actually in the community. As someone who was on the inside of one of the larger "malignant tumors" (newspaper groupings), I can tell you that there is no concern for journalism or being a community watchdog when it comes to Gannett. It is all advertisement dollars. Take all the ad dollars you can get, cover the cost of making the paper, and then send every red cent back to McClean, Virginia. Use it to buy, then kill, and competing paper in the market. It is truly the Walmart of newspapers. So next time you see a USA Today or your local paper, save your $.75 to $1.50 and support your community.
yet another sign of the death of the newspaper. Gannett has been attempting to mine the "local data machine" for a couple years now, stumbling every step of the way. Like most of their "initiatives," it will be too little, far too late. Innovativeness is not their trademark -- as a former webmaster and software engineer for Gannett, I can attest to this. They don't understand the technology, and beyond marketing demographics, they don't understand the general public. They understand margins and budgets, and that's where it ends.
... too bad Gannett has never understood technology people, much less the tech itself. It's tech staff are underpaid, and treated very poorly in comparison with newsroom-sitting reporters and editors. Tech staff have, typically, been segregated from the news process, their roles marginalized by an industry that sees the Internet as a necessary evil.
One Gannetteer is quoted by the article as saying the future of journalism will require more programmers than copy editors
I am, therefore you think.
I'm totally confused by the responses I've read to this article. Everyone is immediately jumping to the idea of vigilantism and the corporate newspapers outsourcing their investigations for free. Remember that saying about those willing to give up their freedom for a little percieved safety deserving neither? Well, people who are not willing to be involved with investigations of local government deserve to be financially raped by the same.
I've been a member of a church at several times that was transitioning from one pastor to another. For the non-religious, it can be any club or organization. Doesn't really matter. But when there wasn't a pastor, all the members would step up to the plate, things would get done, and the church did well. Then a new pastor would come in, everyone would say that it's the pastors job (for N number of jobs), and the place would start to fall apart. I've seen music groups do the same thing, and a democracy is no different. When people set back and say its the police/FDA/FCC/newspaper's job to expose corruption, then corruption is never dealt with, because there is always more corruption than any authority can handle.
The summary said that the newspaper got responses from architects and accountants. People with skills and knowledge that no reporter could hope to have. We all complain about reporters being idiots, and then we complain when they ask for help? If I saw something in some source code that didn't look quite right, I would take it to co-workers and ask for input. Why is it wrong for a newspaper to do the same for something in the government that looks suspicious? It is OUR government, after all.
A whistle-blower saw that there was a place to submit information that would possibly do something about the problem. He could call a 1-800 number and then suffer the retribution as the problem being reported is swept under the rug, or he can be a hero for exploding it into the light. Which is more likely to get people to come forward?
Is it vigilantism for people to band together and seek the truth? Where does it say that truth seeking must remain secretive till someone determines that the process is complete? The idea is ludicrous, because it only insures that the powerful know where to go to suppress inconventient truths.
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
"Vigilantism can involve speech"
There's the rub: it can't. Speech is speech, whether you call it free or "slander". Either way, it is not an action. Whether or not libel and slander are protected or prohibited, there is nothing in any definition of "vigilantism" that broadens it to include free speech that falls on the wrong side of a censorship divide. No matter how you cut it, insulting someone outrageously is not the same as acting like "self-appointed and unofficial policeman"
"That can't possibly be interpreted as slander or hate speech"
Kind of a subjective thing, isn't it? A quality that someone assigns to speech as to whether or not it is "slanderous" or not. A distinction that is never related to the definition of "vigilantism.". Even if the terms being discussed WERE slander or hate speech (agreed to by both of us), they'd still be no closer to being anything like vigilantism.
Yes, slander may very well be the "tool of the vigilante", but it is a different tool from vigilantism: an axe-murderer may also carry a knife, but that does not mean that "axe = knife." In the case of the original article, there was no vigilantism involved. That's the real problem: the word was used for some sort of intended pejorative effect without regard its meaning.
Before you go any further, you might want to look up the definitions of both "libel" and "slander" and notice the amazing lack of any sort of wording that connects either to the idea of "taking the law into your own hands".
The idea that libel and slander (as a subset of free speech) is in any way connected to vigilantism is a "no show" no matter how you look at it. Here's another angle. The definitions of vigilante have to do with acting like a policeman, or taking the law into your own hands, right? Now, while cops sometimes do this, using strongly insulting language (slander) is typically not part of a cop's law enforcement arsenal. So much for your idea that "the publication of blasphemous, treasonable, seditious, or obscene writings or pictures" (definition of libel) or speaking with "falsity and malice" (definition of slander) makes someone a fake cop or judge.
Where were you when the voynix came?