Open News Wire: A participatory news service

Tim Porter is riffing about the MediaMorphosis blog, too, and comes to the conclusion that, yes, he wants an editor after all. He ends with this thought:

I’m not saying bloggers themselves should be edited (although feedback from readers is participatory editing) – but I think I’d like someone to edit the blogosphere for me.

Anyone want to start a “we-news” service?

Last year Rusty Foster (founder of Kuro5hin), Matt Haughey (founder of Metafilter and proprietor of the PVR blog) and I were talking about starting a participatory news service, but got sidetracked by other projects. We planned to call it Open News Wire. Unlike other independent journalism efforts, such as IndyMedia, Open News Wire would not have a political agenda but rather serve as a source of independent news from grassroots contributors and from bloggers.

Such a project would require considerable time and effort to get it off the ground, but it could be done. Last I heard, Rusty was checking into obtaining funding for the endeavor from a journalism foundation, but I don't think he got any bites. He estimated it would take $20,000 to get it off the ground. I can email the correspondence that Rusty and I had to anyone who is interested.