On the citizen journalism front

Lots happening on the citizen journalism front.

Steve Outing takes a look at some of the early wave of such efforts.

Backfence just launched, as did the Rocky Mountain News' YourHub and Dallas Morning News's Neighbors, "written by you, for you."

Now comes Mike Orren of Pegasus News - Journalism 2.0, with some good coverage of the topic.

Citizens media weekend

Good news: We've just moved our citizens media social gathering to a larger venue on Friday. It's a two-day gathering, so here are the details:

Friday the 13th

Time: 6-9 pm

Place: Varnish Fine Art Gallery, 77 Natoma St. (between 1st and 2nd streets and Mission and Howard) in SF's SOMA. Check out their website.

Admission: free.

Free appetizers. Cash bar for wine or beer.

Dress: informal

Bring: Your smart phone, digital camera or camcorder (all optional, of course)

Theme: The remix revolution

Sponsors: The citizens media weekend is being underwritten by Topix.net and Knight Ridder Digital (thanks!)

Who'll be there: Dan Gillmor, Howard Rheingold, Craig Newmark, Mary Hodder and a long list of luminaries involved in various grassroots media efforts.

Book release: This is also the official book release party for Darknet: Hollywood's War Against the Digital Generation, which just went on sale at Amazon.

Who's invited: You are. We're expecting about 100 people to celebrate citizens media and grassroots culture. We originally asked folks to RSVP if they wanted to attend, but with this new venue, just come on by, and tell your friends.

Saturday, May 14

On Saturday afternoon, about 25 people will be gathering in San Francisco's Presidio to attend an invitation-only citizens media strategy session and to help spur Dan Gillmor's new grassroots media initiative. (Sorry, if we opened it up to everyone, we'd get much less accomplished.)

But: we really want to get your input. We have folks coming from such organizations as Craigslist, Grassroots Media Inc., Topix.net, GetLocalNews.com, Smartmobs.com, NowPublic.org, Downhillbattle.org, Knight Ridder Digital, the Bakersfield Californian's Northwest Voice, et al.

What collaborative efforts would you like to see come out of this? How can we join forces to create stronger grassroots media initiatives? Should everything be done at the local level (hyperlocal news), or should we try to build an organization, nonprofit enterprise or for-profit citizens media company with a national or international reach? We're thinking of holding a citizens media conference at a major university in the fall -- where should it be held?

Email me your ideas and I'll take them to the group.

Freedom of Information Act -- for everyone

Caught WNYC's "On the Media" on NPR yesterday. On it, online muckraker Russ Kick, founder of TheMemoryHole.com -- who was granted access to hundreds of official military photos depicting honor guard ceremonies for soldiers killed during the Iraq War -- explained how the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) applies to everyone, not just the news media, and not just U.S. citizens. Only 10 percent of FOIA requests are made by the news media. Fees are waived for news organizations, and Kick advises those who submit FOIA requests to state up front that they're willing to pay the $150 fee to cover research and copying costs -- that will save you several weeks between communications.

Bloggers, are you listening? This is a great opportunity for citizens journalism.

It's a good listen (mp3), and the transcript goes up Tuesday afternoon.

NowPublic offering cash prize

Michael Tippett, founder of NowPublic.com, passes along word that this week they will begin giving out cash awards to the best photographs they receive.

Our Citizen Photojournalism Awards aims to show the best news related photographs in citizen journalism. We've got a little blurb on the site that describes what we mean by 'news related'. Please pass the invitation on to anyone you know that has good material. We’ve got to give that $1000 to someone.

Spero News wants more news contributors

Robert Duncan -- a journalist in Spain, an ombudsman for foreign press in Spain, and a vice president for the Press Organization of Ibero-American Journalists -- passes along word of an intriguing new project:

It´s called Spero News and we are now live - fourth week in English, and soon to launch in Spanish. We´ve just been approved for entry into Google´s news aggregator. To get the ball rolling I contacted religion bloggers and writers, so the material is slanted [toward religion] right now.

I'm wondering if you might be interested in helping me balance the material out! Basically, I´d like to turn the news section over to people who are really interested in news, and who can write, and think. I´d like to create a global network with writers.

It´s possible that this could be a way for you to syndicate some of your material from your blog, not to mention links back to your site, etc.

I have around 80 collaborators so far, but they are mainly on the culture, society and religion news section. I want now to get news. I am also looking for a person who´d like to help out as a news editor.

My partner in all of this is a fellow called Clint Gillepsie of Houston, Texas. We designed the site, and put in a business plan, etc. Soon we are hoping to have the Spanish side launched (we have an agreement with quite a few of the Spanish journalists from ACEPRENSA, and we are talking to COPE as well), and once that is up, then we can work more on the syndication, and the advertizing, etc. and eventual goal of creating an editorial/publisher.

Certainly sounds like a worthwhile effort. You can contact Rob with questions here.

Backfence: Local citizens media

Backfence, a new grassroots media site, launched a few hours ago. The first Backfence sites, in McLean and Reston, Virginia, are at backfence.com.

Writes CEO Mark Potts:

Members of these communities have begun posting their local news, information, comments, photos and events to share with their neighbors. These sites represent our initial launch; over the next months and years we will roll out additional sites in the Washington area and around the nation.

Over the past few months, we’ve created a proprietary technology platform that supports our ambitious plan to blend together elements of user-created content, blogs, wikis, calendar functions, photo galleries, classifieds, DIY ad tools, Yellow Pages (soon), a registration system, backend administration tools and other features — all based on a clean, simple user experience.

We’re looking forward to watching these and future communities share information, make comments and generally put their personal touches on the sites. As we open the gates, more and more people will populate Backfence’s online communities and the information that they contain will grow exponentially.

Sounds promising. This could be big. Mark and Susan have more here.

OJR on Ourmedia

Mark Glaser in the Online Journalism Review: Search engines, startup media sites dream of becoming video hubs. Grassroots sites Ourmedia.org and Brightcove and search engines like Singingfish and Google try to bring order to online video chaos -- but big broadcasters are torn between Napsterization and 'The Long Tail.' Excerpt:

Of the grassroots video hubs, the veteran site would be Ourmedia.org, which recently celebrated its one-month anniversary in alpha. ...

"We believe there is an entire grassroots media phenomenon that's rising up alongside commercial media, but it needs some help, it needs some nurturing," Lasica told me. "We're an enabling technology to light a fire under the personal media revolution. Once people see what they can do with media, they get very excited about it. They want to be engaged and not be passive consumers of Big Media content." ...

The stand-alone journalist

Chris Nolan has a guest essay over at PressThink on The Stand Alone Journalist.

Paid video vs. free video

It's now Friday, and I still haven't heard from Google about the video I uploaded seven days ago and is waiting in their approval queue.

Meantime, Ourmedia's chief developer, Gaurav Bhatnagar of New Delhi, has some thoughts about the two services:

Just when Ourmedia started to make news, Google announced its own video publishing service. Google is basically going to let you sell your videos online. So though Ourmedia and Google have different goals, comparisions are inevitable. ...

There is a fundamental difference between Google Video and Ourmedia. Ourmedia is not just about publishing your media online, it also aims to develop a community around what people post there. We have forums, blogs, group blog, commenting, buddy lists etc. Ourmedia is a gathering place for media enthusiasts. It is less about selling, more about sharing. Of course, it is entirely possible to use Ourmedia to showcase your work and then sell it elsewhere. And that is great. But fundamentally, Ourmedia is not an e-commerce site. It is a social networking site. Soon, we will add groups functionality to Ourmedia. So, you can go and create a group for "Fans of Bollywood Dance-Around-Tree Songs" or whatever. The power of community is behind us. And if we can harness it, Ourmedia will be unstoppable.

Not much is known about the Google video service. From what I can make out, you can upload a video and it becomes searchable through Google search. There will eventually be a way to sell your videos online and Google will probably take a cut out of it. I don't know if they plan to have community features integrated with Google video. Google already has a thriving social network in the form of Orkut which they could use to match and exceed what Ourmedia has to offer. Even then, we have a couple of innovations up our sleeves, which will emerge with time.

Overall, I am excited to have Google in this space. It can only attract more attention towards Ourmedia. We would have to get real nerdy to be able to match Google in technology. It will be interesting to see how they handle uploads and embedding videos in web pages. We have discovered the hard way that supporting unlimited number of media formats is no fun. We recently fixed some huge upload issues we were facing. So things are running much more smoothly now.

I would be interested to know what Google feels about Ourmedia. In some ways, the two can complement each other - Ourmedia could be the place where people showcase their 'trailers' or clippings and then sell them on Google Video. On the other hand, Ourmedia provides free and unlimited storage with hardly any strings attached - something that Google might be unwilling to do.

So the next few months are going to be exciting times for citizen journalism and grassroots media. Will Microsoft and Yahoo take cue from Google and come up with something of their own? Will Ourmedia thrive along with or inspite of Google Videos? Will we be able to innovate enough to make Ourmedia stand apart? Only time will tell!

Roundtable of grassroots journalism leaders

Lots happening over at the Online Journalism Review:

- Virtual roundtable: Grassroots journalism leaders discuss the nitty-gritty. OJR editor Robert Niles gathers innovators of grassroots journalism to discuss what works and even what to call what they do.

(I've been using grassroots media and citizens media interchangeably, though Robert has now persuaded me that grassroots journalism/media is the superior term.)

- Washingtonpost.com might offer local, national home pages. Mark Glaser talks in depth to new washingtonpost.com chiefs Caroline Little and Jim Brady about their new roles and about the challenges of serving both local and national/international audiences online.

I met Jim Brady in Austin on April 8 and was impressed by his online savvy.

- OJR is also experimenting with wikis -- collaborative online work spaces -- such as this one on Ethics. Very cool.

Current TV meetup

I just got back from the first Current.tv meetup in San Francisco. About 45 or so folks turned out at a Haight Street cafe; it was so crowded, we walked down the street and took over the Red Victorian B&B. Finally got a chance to meet Robin Sloan, late of the Poynter and now a staffer at Al Gore's Current.tv (the former INdTV).

I found the same level of excitement and energy here as I found last year in the Dean meetups, only now it's focused into grassroots media creation rather than the political process.

I made sure everyone knew about Ourmedia.org -- a surprisingly large number of folks had heard of us -- and argued that the meetups should be about personal media creation and not about producing videos for Current.tv exclusively, and there seemed to be general agreement that while Current is the focus of these meetups, we shouldn't overlook the other synergies found among the extraordinary wealth of grassroots media organizations in the Bay Area.

Speaking of which:

The Rise Up! Network, a media collective that Josh helped create over the past few months, is having its next meeting this Sunday at 6 pm at the Speakeasy Cinema in SF.

Witnesses to news

If you missed this, Jeff Jarvis had a good short chat with Bob Garfield on NPR's On the Media (Real Audio). Jeff talks a little bit about how grassroots media will explode television.

Innovation and tactics in indy media

Mediageek muses about innovation and tactics in the indy media world.

Meetup's new fee structure

Sheila Lennon of projo.com deconstructs Meetup's new fee structure and posts news about an alternative: MeetIn.org.

Citizens media and Ourmedia

The most interesting thing about citizens media, of course, is that you never know what we're going to produce. What's apparent is that people want to take part in media -- and to take it apart, remix it, annotate it, recirculate it. Reclaim their place in the ancient craft of storytelling.

They want to turn media into a circle instead of an arrow.

They want to turn that one-way pipe back on the broadcast media.

Since Ourmedia.org launched two weeks ago, we now have about 9,500 members, with hundreds more joining each day. Something important is happening out there.

One of the things that's most interesting to me -- since I have a book coming out on the subject in one month -- is watching the dynamic between our media and the other media -- their media.

Sometimes we want to create our own work without much input from the culture at large. And sometimes we want to dip into the larger culture.

At Ourmedia, we've been wrestling with copyright and fair use since we launched (and well before that). Yesterday I wrote a long Forum post about where we've decided to draw the line: against the uploading of copyrighted music singles, television shows, movies and trailers, but allowing reasonable and legitimate borrowing of snippets of copyrighted works -- if it's done for personal creativity and only noncommercially. It's more complicated than that, so you'll have to read the post and see our attorney's thoughts as well.

In 14 days, we've had 14 copyright violations that we've spotted -- and promptly removed them. But we've also had several thousand legitimate uploads -- some of startling creativity.

We're only at the start of this, but the road ahead looks promising.

I'm programming new content for our home page now, and smiling as I'm doing so.

Whole lotta love from blogland

I was out all day at a wonderful digital storytelling workshop put on by Leslie Rule of KQED in SF, who happens to also be a member of the Ourmedia Advisory Board. (Photos of our board members should be restored soon; yet another alpha glitch.)

Michael Bazeley in today's San Jose Mercury News: New Web sites to store public's digital content. "What would you give to see video of your great-grandmother?" Internet Archive founder Brewster Kahle said. "I'd give a lot. These may not be the scholarly texts of the next generation. But this is compelling nonetheless."

The blogosphere also continues to throw a whole lotta love our way. Here are just two links:

Mike Davidson has an extraordinarily incisive post: Thoughts on Ourmedia, Day 2. "This is the most ambitious attempt at free media we’ve ever seen." Wonder if he'll join our effort.

Douglas Fisher at his Common Sense Journalism: Ourmedia.com online, NowPublic - and other sites.

A 'wedia love-in'

Pegasus News points out a trifecta:

Could someone in the "wedia" please take on the task of coordinating a master calendar of launches, so that we don't trip over each other's at-birth publicity?

Yesterday, Ourmedia.

Today, NowPublic.

Soon, Backfence.

NowPublic looks pretty impressive. Check it out.

And by the way, if someone wants to maintain a calendar of citizens media launches, we'll maintain it on Ourmedia and highlight it on our front page.

'Grassroots media site goes stellar from the start'

The UK's Journalism.co.uk has a (probably too flattering) piece by Jemima Kiss: Grassroots media site goes stellar from the start. Ourmedia triggers flood of interest.

Expert advice from Lawrence Lessig, Howard Rheingold and Dan Gillmor, among others, has shaped the site's guidelines on use of content. A condition of posting material is that contributors must share their work. Reworking or remixing content is permitted including the use of 'snippets' of copyrighted work, although 'infringement and illegal misappropriation' are not be allowed.

After you read the piece, check out their glam-packed staff page, which looks like something out of Vanity Fair.

'Ourmedia powers the long tail'

You'll pardon a little end-of-the-day marveling at the crazy day we just finished. Here are Ourmedia's referral logs from Monday:

10,000 hits via slashdot today
1,020 from instapundit (a friend)
965 from gizmodo
268 from boingboing
220 from my blog
132 from deli.cio.us
125 from scripting
100 from seth godin

And that's with the site down most of the day.

Ourmedia is also the No. 4 news story of the day on Daypop (Yahoo acquiring Flickr was No. 1.)

More interesting, though, is this assessment from the ahead-of-his-time Seth Godin, which (with due apologies) I've got to reprint in full:

End of discussion

A lot of us have been talking about this day for a very long time, but it appears to be here.

The end of FCC controlled content
The real beginning of the pro-am content revolution
The final straw for ad-supported media
and
The nail in the coffin for businesses that need selfish advertising to succeed.

Yep, that sounds like a lot of hype, but check out:

Link: Ourmedia Homepage | Ourmedia.

It is now supercheap to serve up media
It is also supercheap to make music and video and text
and
the big guys can't afford to make good stuff any more, so it's all reality TV and recycled music anyway.

What Ourmedia does is power the long tail.

There needs to be money in the system, imho, not to pay for it (as this site shows) but to serve as an editor and an arbiter and an assigner of value. In the meantime, if you're basing your success on the three local TV network model of the universe, this is worth a look.

(Sumner Redstone's daughter is the new heir apparent of Viacom. The question is: will she inherit anything at all?)

Is Seth a new media godhead or what?

Meantime, my pardner Marc Canter told me by phone from Scottsdale, AZ, tonight that a few members of the PC Forum audience were under the mistaken impression that Ourmedia is somehow in competition with Dan Gillmor's Grassroots Media Inc.

That's not only wrong, it's exactly the opposite of what Dan's efforts and ours hope to achieve.

First off, Dan is a member of the Ourmedia Advisory Board.

Second, Dan and I are spearheading a Citizens media retreat in mid-May in San Francisco, which may be held in part at his offices. We're in constant contact.

But most importantly, Dan is still working out a business plan for his for-profit citizens journalism project. Dan hasn't discussed his plans -- it may involve a web site, it may involve a television network, for all I know -- but we do know this: There is plenty of room on the Internet for grassroots media efforts. This space won't be controlled by the grassroots equivalents of Microsoft, Google and AOL divvying up the citizens mediasphere.

The days of the giants is nearing an end.

Months from now, Ourmedia.org will evolve from a destination website to an open registry -- a network of likeminded grassroots sites that freely share personal media with a global audience.

We expect Dan's new effort will plug into that network.

So, no, Ourmedia isn't about to compete with Dan's or any other citizens media effort. We are, however, out to serve as the glue that bonds many of these efforts together.

Ourmedia is here!!

Exactly nine months ago, Marc Canter and I met up at Supernova. I mentioned to him the idea I'd been kicking around with Brewster Kahle of the Internet Archive to create a grassroots media organization, site, and registry called Open Media.

Turned out that Open Media was, ironically, a trademarked name. But Marc jumped at the chance to dive in as co-founder of this new entity -- he's been a multimedia pioneer for 15 years, and this is the culimination of what he's been striving toward all these years.

Today, Ourmedia.org officially launched.

I'm pretty excited about it. I've put aside my freelance writing for the past half year to work almost exclusively on Ourmedia -- on a strictly voluntary, unpaid basis. Why? Because I deeply believe that citizens media efforts such as this are the wave of the future.

As I wrote in the site's Welcome message:

We are in the midst of the greatest boon in grassroots creativity in ages. Tools once available only to a professional elite are now being taken up by everyday citizens. Just as weblogs let millions of people become part of "the media," so too are new tools empowering individuals to create video, audio, playlists and other works of personal media and to share them with a global audience.

The personal media revolution is turning multimedia. Digital stories, video diaries, documentary journalism, home-brew political ads, music videos, fan films, Flash animations, student films – all kinds of short multimedia works have begun to flower. Alas, the most compelling ones are scattered across the Web or hidden away on thousands of PCs, laptops and closed networks. These works deserve a wider audience.

That's what Ourmedia is all about: Create. Share. Get noticed.

Marc and I believe that real change in the mediasphere will only come about when millions of us pick up the tools of digital creativity. The tools are now at hand. Let's go.

I urge you to check out the site. But be gentle. We're in alpha mode. That means you'll find lots of stuff that isn't working yet. We have a huge to-do list, and only a handful of programmers who are volunteering their time to make this all come together.

But I think they've done a top-notch job so far. I've never seen such a good-looking open-source project.

Some urls of note:

Ourmedia front page

Ourmedia Advisory Board

Ourmedia Project team

Mission statement

Press release: Spurring the citizens media revolution.

Ourmedia factoids.

I'm pretty darned proud. Thanks, especially, to all those who've helped us get to this point: Brewster Kahle, Larry Lessig, Parker Thompson, Michael Sullivan, Damien Newman, Stephen Downes, Gaurav Bhatnagar, Ashish Kumar, our talented moderator crew, metadata team, wiki members, and many others.

This could turn out to be something big.

Citizens media strategy session

Today a few colleagues and I began sending out invitations to a citizens media strategy session and social event.

We want to be as transparent as possible about this, so here's what's happening:

Citizens Media Strategy Session & Retreat
A strategy session to explore how various citizen media movements — open source software, free culture, grassroots journalism, digital/intellectual property rights, the commons, and media policy reform — can develop a more coordinated vision and begin sharing resources.

What:
An all-day meeting in San Francisco to bring together leaders of these movements to learn more about each other’s work and explore new ways to collaborate.

When:
• May 13 (Friday), 7-10 pm, social gathering and book release party (theme: the remix revolution) at a venue in San Francisco
• May 14 (Saturday), 10 am to 5 pm, agenda-focused sessions, San Francisco

Why:
Advocates of the various movements mentioned above tend to operate in separate silos, with little interaction, coordination or sharing of ideas and resources. There is untapped potential for fortifying everyone’s work, developing a more powerful public voice and tapping into a broad-based support system.

It’s short notice, but the time is ripe and we need the summer to plan for a large public event in the fall.

Goals:
• Plan a public conference to be held at a major university in the fall
• Improve the working relationships among citizens media groups
• Expand the grassroots media project spearheaded by Dan Gillmor
• Other projects, such as citizens television (please suggest them now).

Organizing committee:
- JD Lasica, author of “Darknet,” co-founder of Ourmedia.org
- Dan Gillmor, author of “We Media,” citizens journalism pioneer
- Jimmy Wales, founder, Wikipedia (waiting for confirmation)
- Craig Newmark, founder, Craigslist
- David Bollier, author of “Brand Name Bullies,” co-founder of Public Knowledge
- Mary Hodder, tech entrepreneur, founder of Napsterization blog
- Danny Schecter, MediaChannel.org
- Don Hazen, editor in chief, AlterNet, Independent Media Institute
- Scott Rosenberg, managing editor, Salon

The social event is open to the public. The strategy session is invitation-only (because of space limitations).

You'll be hearing lots more about this in the weeks ahead.

Apple wins ruling against online journalists

Breaking news: Apple wins legal dispute over published trade secrets. A judge on Friday ordered three independent online reporters to divulge confidential sources in a lawsuit brought by Apple Computer Inc., ruling that there are no legal protections for those who publish a company's trade secrets.

Mike Langberg in today's San Jose Mercury News pens an open letter to Steve Jobs: Apple should think differently about suit. Excerpt:

I strongly believe online journalists, including bloggers, deserve the same First Amendment protections as print and broadcast journalists, but you would hardly expect me to feel any other way.

Instead, I want to make a dollars-and-cents argument for backing down.

The lawsuits pose an imminent threat to Apple's most precious asset: the company's reputation as a hip underdog, a cool alternative to bigger and blander competitors such as Microsoft, Dell and Hewlett-Packard.

Absolutely. My trust in Apple has eroded quite a bit over this.

Bike Week in Daytona

Hog heaven: It's Bike Week down at Daytonabeach-live. Raven, natch, is covering the scene with his one-man personal broadcasting network.

Yes, they're still journalists

Terrific editorial worth pointing to in today's San Jose Mercury News:

... Are bloggers journalists?

The debate is not about who gets bragging rights to ink-stained wretchdom. It is about who is shielded under an important law that allows journalists to keep their sources confidential. The law is essential to a journalist's ability to gather information while protecting whistle-blowers inside government, corporations or other organizations. Ultimately, it's essential to a free press.

In the Apple case, the computer maker claims that the Web sites and blogs that published leaked information are not run by journalists and do not deserve the protections of the California Shield Law.

It's a puzzling and misguided argument. The Web sites -- Apple Insider, PowerPage and ThinkSecret -- have been writing about Apple for some time. The people behind them collect information that is of interest to the public and publish it for the consumption, primarily, of a throng of avid Macintosh fans. In other words, they perform a function that is little different from that of scores of trade publications, or even the business sections of major newspapers.

The fact that they publish online and not in print is irrelevant. After all, no one would argue that online publications such as Salon.com, Slate and CNet -- not to mention MercuryNews.com or WashingtonPost.com -- are not journalism.

The California Shield Law is clear. It covers, among other people, ``a publisher, editor, reporter or other person connected with or employed upon a newspaper, magazine or other periodical publication.'' If the Web sites publish periodically, which they do, their reporters and publishers are protected. ...

MediaStorm, a studio for multimedia storytelling

Brian Storm, president of MediaStorm, emails with this nosh-worthy tidbit:

I’m excited to announce the creation of MediaStorm, a multimedia production studio whose principal aim is to usher in the next generation of multimedia storytelling.

MediaStorm provides collaborative production support and an arc of distribution in print, broadcast and online, helping expand economic opportunities and reach global audiences.

Voices, MediaStorm’s flagship publication, will launch in the fall of 2005 as an eclectic showcase for multimedia storytellers - photographers, writers, radio reporters, and filmmakers - to connect with educated readers thirsty for well-produced, inspiring narratives. Our goal is to create epic productions, rich with detail, and timeless in their relevance.

We are now calling for submissions to the inaugural issue, with a deadline of March 31.

To read about the team, see the press release and review the submission guidelines go to MediaStorm.

Congrats. Grassroots media is where it's happening.

The Greatest Story Never Told

The winners of the Greatest Story Never Told Flash animation contest were announced Friday at the Punch Gallery in San Francisco. Here they are, including the Grand Prize winner. It's not CSI, but gotta start somewhere.

The gathering storms over speech

Dan Gillmor blogs on The Gathering Storms Over Speech. Dan echoes the concerns several of us have been raising over the past several days. Excerpt:

Apple Computer's disgusting attack on three online journalism sites, in a witch hunt to find out who (if anyone) inside the company leaked information about allegedly upcoming products, has taken a nasty turn. Too bad it's not surprising -- and journalists of all kinds should be paying attention.

A judge in California has decided that the sites don't qualify as "journalism" (AP) under state law and/or the First Amendment. By his bizarre and dangerous standard, I apparently stopped being a journalist the day I left my newspaper job after a quarter-century of writing for newspapers. (Note: At the request of lawyers for the sites, I've filed declarations -- here (104k PDF) and here (1MB PDF) -- saying that in my opinion these sites are performing a journalistic function. I haven't been paid to do so.) ...

We're moving toward a system under which only the folks who are deemed to be professionals will be granted the status of journalists, and thereby more rights than the rest of us. This is pernicious in every way.

Mass media journalists and their bosses should be leading the fight against what's happening to bloggers. I fear they won't, because old media typically refuses to defend the rights of new entrants until the threats against the new folks directly threaten everyone. But my former colleagues in Big Media should understand that when we distinguish among kinds of journalists, discriminating against some because they're not working for organizations deemed worthy (or powerful) enough, trouble will arrive soon enough for everyone.

In a world where anyone can be a journalist, we can't let government or Big Media decide who has the right to inform the public about matters of interest or urgency. The priesthood should be dissolving, not gaining strength -- yet rulings and legislation like these move things in precisely the wrong direction.

Apple confronts three bloggers before judge

The San Jose Mercury News reports on yesterday's court hearing in which Apple Computer is trying to wring the identity of sources from three blogger-journalists. Excerpt:

A Santa Clara County Superior Court judge heard arguments Friday in a case that ultimately could determine whether ``bloggers'' and other online publishers share the constitutional rights of traditional journalists to protect their sources.

Judge James Kleinberg did not issue a decision Friday after tentatively ruling one day earlier that Apple Computer was entitled to e-mails and other documents that might help the company determine who leaked information about an unreleased product code-named ``Asteroid.'' ...

Gillmor, Outing, others on the future of the blog revolution

From Shayne Bowman and Chris Willis's excellent Hypergene blog comes an encapsulation of this email interview conducted by Guillermo Franco Morales, a university professor and content manager for the newspaper El Tiempo in Colombia, South America, which is meant to be a primer on weblogs in a country where little is known about the blogosphere. Guillermo interviewed Shayne, Chris, Dan Gillmor, Steve Outing and myself.

The article is called "Re-blog-lution" (English | Spanish) and is running on the portal Terra.com, ElTiempo.com and El Tiempo's technology magazine. There are some interesting comments about recent issues such as Eason Jordan, Dan Rather, Asian Tsunami and Jeff Gannon. ...

As you may recall, Guillermo is who we worked with to translate We Media into Spanish. In its first month online, the PDF of the translation had 2,000 downloads.

Judge: Bloggers aren't journalists

Sometimes all it takes is one judge with no vision to set us all down a dangerous path.

Today, that judge is James Kleinberg, who in effect is drawing a nonexistent distinction between "real" journalists (who work for Big Media companies) and illegitimate journalists (bloggers, publishers of independent news sites -- millions of us).

From today's San Jose Mercury News:

In a case with implications for the freedom to blog, a San Jose judge tentatively ruled Thursday that Apple Computer can force three online publishers to surrender the names of confidential sources who disclosed information about the company's upcoming products.

Santa Clara County Superior Court Judge James Kleinberg refused to extend to the Web sites a protection that shields journalists from revealing the names of unidentified sources or turning over unpublished material.

Kleinberg offered no explanation for the preliminary ruling. He will hear arguments today from Apple's attorneys and the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a San Francisco digital rights group representing two of the three Web sites Apple subpoenaed -- Apple Insider and PowerPage.

The case raises issues about whether those who write for online publications are entitled to the same constitutional protections as their counterparts in more traditional print and broadcast news organizations.

Apple sought subpoenas in December against two online news sites that focus exclusively on its products: PowerPage (www.power page.org) and Apple Insider (www.appleinsider .com). The company filed a separate suit against Think Secret (www.thinksecret .com on Jan. 4. ...

The court earlier authorized Apple to serve subpoenas on the Web sites, seeking all documents related to Asteroid and information about anyone with knowledge of the postings about the product.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation fought the subpoenas, arguing the online publishers, like their print and broadcast counterparts, frequently rely on confidential sources to report on issues in the public interest.

``Compelled disclosure of journalists' sources would have a devastating effect on the free flow of information,'' said Kurt Opsahl, an EFF attorney. ``It's the lifeblood of a functioning democracy. Therefore the courts have to understand the vital connection between the confidentiality of sources and the freedom of the press.''

Once again, a large corporation is using the cudgel of trade secrets law in a way that threatens to do great damage to grassroots media. Whatever the merits of Apple's case -- and clearly it has the right to investigate the activities of its own employees -- what cannot stand is the idea that bloggers and independent news publishers are somehow second-tier citizens, not worthy of the press freedoms granted by the legal system.

Blog storm in the Midwest

Jan Frel in Personal Democracy via AlterNet:

At the end of January, newly-elected South Dakota Sen. John Thune briefed his colleagues at a closed-door GOP retreat in West Virginia about the importance of blogging in contemporary politics. Thune earned his bragging rights by defeating former Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle this past November, in a race where conservative bloggers played a small but important role. But the story that Thune has to tell isn't anything like earlier political blog successes such as the Dean for America campaign blog or DailyKos.

The blogging efforts on behalf of Thune's Senate campaign didn't cause greater civic participation or bring in piles of small donations. Instead nine bloggers – two of whom were paid $35,000 by Thune's campaign – formed an alliance that constantly attacked the election coverage of South Dakota's principal newspaper, the Sioux Falls Argus Leader. More specifically, their postings were not primarily aimed at dissuading the general public from trusting the Argus' coverage. Rather, the work of these bloggers was focused on getting into the heads of the three journalists at the Argus who were primarily responsible for covering the Daschle/Thune race: chief political reporter David Kranz, state editor Patrick Lalley, and executive editor Randell Beck.

Led by law student Jason van Beek and University of South Dakota history professor Jon Lauck, the Thune bloggers tormented and rattled the Argus staff for the duration of the 2004 election, clearly influencing the Argus' coverage. ...

Jon Lauck was quoted in the Washington Times last December bragging that dealing with "media power became a 21st-century updating of 19th-century Dakota populism" during the election season. He's blogged about reading Dan Gillmor's ground-breaking book about the potential of online citizen journalism, We the Media, and he framed many of his posts during the election as alternative journalism and civic action. Lauck stopped blogging on the Daschle V. Thune site at the end of November after a victory dance on Daschle's grave, and has since been co-blogging with Jason van Beek on the South Dakota Politics site.

Framing one's blogging as citizens journalism doesn't make these kinds of hit pieces any less offensive or excremental.

Yahoo opens up its search toolbox to developers

CNET News.com: Yahoo opens up its search toolbox to developers.

Yahoo announced Tuesday that its search network is embracing Web services and that its commercial subsidiary is taking a new name.

The Sunnyvale, Calif.-based company has created the Yahoo Search Developer Network, which co-founder Jerry Yang is set to introduce at the Search Engine Strategies Conference here. The network will allow software developers to create new applications (with the aid of application programming interfaces, or APIs) on top of Yahoo search, including images, video, news and local search.

My partner in Ourmedia.org, Marc Canter, has been talking with Yahoo about its new Media RSS multimedia search efforts and other initiatives. Yahoo is clearly ahead of the pack when it comes to involving the open-source community in search.

Dan Gillmor adds: "This is a boost to the emerging Web services arena, and potentially a big deal for grassroots media as well. Giving people some tools to make new kinds of Web-based applications, connecting this set of data on one site with that set of data on another, is part of a phenomenon that will transform the way we think of information."

Amen. Media folks don't get this yet. But they will.

Can citizens journalism resuscitate the media?

Danny Schechter in MediaChannel.org: Can Citizens' Journalism Resuscitate the Media? Excerpt:

A solution may be right in front of our eyes that only a few see. Perhaps we have to look for answers down on main street, not up on Wall Street. Popular dissatisfaction with the media -- estimated at 70% in some surveys that find similar disaffection inside the media -- suggests that its time to go in another direction.

I can sum it up in one sentence:

Democratize the media by allowing citizens to be more than media consumers.

It's called "citizen journalism, and it's the NBT (Next Big Thing.) Rather than think of audiences as passive consumers, activate them as participants. Replace an elite top-down model with a more populist bottom-up approach. Think this is idealistic or impossible? Think again.

Look at the growth of talk radio, and the proliferation of websites including search engines like Google that virtually replace libraries, There's the spread of the "be the media" movement led by IndyMedia. There's been the meteoric growth of the blogosphere and the emergence of thousands of video activists making programs for in public access or showcasing films and documentaries at festivals worldwide. Scholars and writers are contributing to first-rate publishing projects like the Wikipedia. Citizens' media watches are springing up. ...

Danny and I sing from the same songbook.

On BBC's DigiLab

Om Malik points to this posting by James Enck at Eurotelcoblog about what's going on with the BBC DigiLab, following up on an interview he had late last year with Euan Semple. (Unfortunately, there's no link to the DigiLab, so I don't know if it has a Web address.) Excerpt:

The second tool we put in is a social networking tool that lets users set up a page of info about themselves and can then be searched for particular skills or interests. It also allows users to establish interest groups which are becoming a really effective way of identifying and supporting various communities within the BBC. We are in the process of combining the bulletin board and the networking tool and once we have that I think things will really take off. ...

Getting a good RSS aggregator is going to become more important as the volume of activity increases. It is important to get what is being written seen by the right people to give contributors the oxygen that makes it worth continuing. ...

We'll have social networking and RSS baked in to Ourmedia, so I'll have to take a look at what they're doing over at DigiLab. Luckily, I met Daniel Meadows of Capture Wales last summer at the Digital Storytelling Festival.

'Podcasting is going to be freakin' huge'

John Markoff in the New York Times reports on a new startup called Odeo founded by ex-Google guy Evan Williams and Noah Glass. (Ev, a famed blogger, is a friend.) From the story:

The primarily amateur Internet audio medium known as podcasting will take a small, hopeful step on Friday toward becoming the commercial Web's next big thing. ...

In podcasting, there are already a number of small commercial efforts to create audio programs especially for listening to as mobile downloads. And there are both hardware and software systems that make it possible to convert over-the-air and Internet radio broadcasts for mobile storage and listening on MP3 players. One recent example is Radio Shark, a small device that sells for $70 and enables users of Macintosh computers to automatically record over-the-air radio programs and convert them to MP3 files for later, on-the-go playback. ...

While still too much in its infancy to be considered an immediate threat to the radio industry, podcasting does present the prospect of a growing army of iPod-toting commuters who take programming decisions out of the hands of broadcasters and customize their own listening.

Here is Ev today on How Odeo happened:

One day, Biz Stone and I were driving home from work, it all clicked for us. We were talking about how Audioblogger was great, but we didn't tend to actually listen to the posts much, when we came across them on the web. However, there I was, paying for and downloaded spoken-word audio from the web to listen to on my iPod. Why, we thought, couldn't you get the interesting, new audio-blogged posts on your iPod when you synched it and listen to them where it made sense?

Ding-ding-ding-ding! ...

The simple idea that, even though people had been putting audio on the web for years, a little piece of software on the client, some RSS, and the ubiquity of iPods (and like-devices, and broadband), could create a killer new distribution channel for a whole new genre of content was hot. ...

I'm super-excited to see where this goes. Podcasting is going to be freakin' huge. I don't have time in this post, because it's 2am and I gotta be on stage at 8am, to give my pitch for why. But it's the same story as blogging (with several unique charastics of its own), but in a whole new medium that is much bigger than people think. And it'll happen much, much faster.

It's about personal media, time-shifting, and the long, long tail. And I love that shit. Amazing things are going to be created.

Absolutely true. And it's the same driving force behind Ourmedia.org (coming very soon). I'll be talking with Ev about it next week, because Ourmedia is offering podcasters free storage and free bandwidth.

By the way, I registered the domain name podworld.org a while back, if anyone wants to acquire it for the right cause. :~)

Ohmynews turns 5

South Korea's Ohmynews, the pioneering citizens journalism news website, turned 5 today.

Thanks to Bill Doskoch for the reminder.

On grassroots journalism

Kpaul Mallasch on grassroots journalism:

I always thought journalism was about being a watchdog for the citizen, a helper in this, the crazy information age. And if journalism *is* about that, shouldn't the citizens be part of that process? ...

Bloggers as political players

Mark Tapscott adds this to the discussion of adding bloggers to the Freedom of Information Act: "I have been among a group of Left and Right folks advising (Sen. John) Cornyn on the problems with the current FOIA and suggesting solutions." Jeff Jarvis and I have written in the past that the FOIA applies to all bloggers, not just mainstream journalists, so perhaps the folks who administer the FOIA need a nudge from Congress (and the blogosphere) to that effect.

Mark also writes: "My passion is to see the Blogosphere transform government in the same way it is transforming media. But I don't think many bloggers realize the potential impact they could have on government."

Check out this post, GRASSROOTS GOVERNMENT: Here Are Three Ways to Start It. Among his suggestions:

* Post bills before Congress.

* Post the federal regulatory comment process.

* Contribute to judicial proceedings.

I'll suggest a fourth: Join CivicSpace Labs, a praiseworthy grassroots politics movement that came out of the Dean campaign. CivicSpace describes itself as "a grassroots organizing platform that empowers collective action inside communities and cohesively connects remote groups of supporters."

Will We Media save the newspaper?

At the Media Center's morph blog: Will "We Media" save the newspaper?

Mary Lou Fulton of the Bakersfield Californian is offering newspaper publishers some of the wisest advice in the land these days. For instance:

The "Do It Yourself" Revolution

One of the most compelling things about the Internet is that it has given people all kinds of new ways to do things for themselves. That include do-it-yourself content (citizen journalism, blogs, user reviews, forums) advertising (Google keywords), transacting (eBay, craigslist, travel booking) and so forth. Meanwhile, newspapers persist with "we'll do it for you." We'll tell you what news is important. We'll not only sell you the advertising but we'll design the ad for you, too. We may let you place a classified ad on our web site, but it won't appear online until the next day when the paper comes out. How can we bring more of a "do it yourself" ethos to newspapers so that we can be part of this revolution and not just watch it pass us by?

Bloggers at the gates

From Cox and Forkum:

Thanks to the Head Lemur for the pointer.

Knocking the gatekeepers off their perch

Steve Yelvington: Mark Cuban, the entrepreneurial billionaire owner of the Dallas Mavericks, has a provocative take on the battle between bloggers and mainstream media in a post-gatekeeping world. Excerpt:

I don’t know the number of political bloggers, or the number of pages posted, but I can tell you this, every single one of them with any aspirations of popularity is looking for a way to stand out. The way that happens is to knock one of the gatekeepers off their perch.

Whether it’s been newspapers, magazines, TV or radio, the opportunities to reach an audience has been limited to a finite number of local and national gatekeepers. ...

Its payback time . The bloggers are here, and they are ready to knock down the gates and get their pound of flesh. The traditional media has no idea what is about to hit them.

In every major conference, at every major speech, sitting at tables in restaurants, there is going to be a blogger or podcaster with microphone, PDA, Videophone, laptop or paper and pencil in hand. Listening. Taking notes. That information is going to be transmitted to and from a blog entry and placed in the hands of “the readers”. ...

All true. It appears that knocking the pros off their pedestals will be a goal of some members of the citizens media movement for years to come. Kill the media!

OK, fine, get it out of your system.

Personally, I believe that we'll get past that and begin to concentrate on what's really important: creating our own stuff without the intermediation of the pros and the elites.

The Times looks at Wikinews

Yesterday's New York Times looked at Wikinews, "the Unassociated Press." It's the latest offering from Wikipedia, founded by Jimmy Wales, at top.

Excerpt:

Central to Wikinews is its commitment to neutrality, said Jimmy Wales, a founder of Wikipedia and president of the nonprofit Wikimedia Foundation. In a community that largely sets its own standards, Mr. Wales's policy of a neutral point of view may be the single most important driving principle.

Ilya Haykinson, a Los Angeles software engineer and contributor to several Wikinews articles, said that policy set the effort apart from some other citizen journalism projects, like Indymedia (www.indymedia.org), OhmyNews of South Korea (english.ohmynews.com) and news blogs.

The system's primary check is its transparency. Inspired, in part, by the success of open source software development, the writing process is completely public. Anyone at any time can compose a new Wikinews article, edit an existing one and see an inventory of all prior changes. ...

Will a need for speed affect the incentive for volunteers to contribute? This is a concern of Erik Möller, a technology journalist in Berlin who drafted the original Wikinews project proposal. "Wikinews articles are short-lived, so there is a reduced feeling of contributing to a knowledge base that will last a lifetime," he said.

Erik is a member of the Ourmedia project, which will launch soon (Lord willing), and Wikipedia is one of our partners.

Reporter quits after bloggers' expose

Associated Press:

A conservative writer who attracted attention by asking President Bush a loaded question at a news conference last month has resigned amid questions about his identity and background.

James D. Guckert, who wrote under the name Jeff Gannon, said on his Web site that he was leaving "because of the attention being paid to me." He had been Washington bureau chief for Talon News, a conservative online news outlet associated with another Web site, GOPUSA.

Guckert frequently attended White House press briefings over the last two years and asked pointedly conservative questions. Called on by Bush at a Jan. 26 news conference, Guckert said Senate Democratic leaders were painting a bleak picture of the economy and he asked Bush how the president would work "with people who seem to have divorced themselves from reality."

The question prompted scrutiny, particularly from liberal bloggers. Guckert was linked with online domain addresses suggestive of gay pornography. Guckert, a former resident of Wilmington, Del., told The (Wilmington) News Journal newspaper that he had registered the domain names for a client while he was working to set up a Web-hosting business. ...

Grassroots media to go

In "On the coming mobileVideo revolution," Eleanor Kruszewski offers a brilliant post about the appeal of grassroots media in emerging technologies such as broadband cell phones and other mobile devices. That's just what we're shooting for with Ourmedia.

Podcasting as citizens media

USA Today has run three pieces on podcasting the past couple of days:

'Podcasting' lets masses do radio shows

Podcasting: It's all over the dial (with, above, a photo of Drew Domkus and Dawn Miceli of Wayne, Wis., from the "Dawn and Drew Show," whom I met at BloggerCon 3).

Radio to the MP3 degree: Podcasting

From the first story:

Patchett, 43, is among a growing number of people getting into podcasting, which is quickly becoming another of the Internet's equalizing technologies.

Less than a year old, podcasting enables anyone with a PC to become a broadcaster. It has the potential to do to the radio business what Web logs have done to print journalism. By bringing the cost of broadcasting to nearly nothing, it's enabling more voices and messages to be heard than ever before.

"It was just one of those things where you read about a technology and it clicks in your head: This is perfect and something I want to get involved with," said Patchett, whose podcasts focus on Christian and family programming.

For listeners, podcasting offers a diverse menu of programs, which can be enjoyed anywhere, anytime. Unlike traditional radio, shows can be easily paused, rewound or fast-forwarded. The listener doesn't need to be near a PC, unlike most forms of Internet radio. ...

From the second story:

Once upon a time in America, during the gilded reign of Johnny Carson, the rules were clear: Hollywood provided the candy, and people made time to devour it.

But this Web-based phenomenon puts the real back in reality programming, emanating not from slick studios but Anyhome USA, including this creaky 1800s farmhouse owned by performance artist Dawn Miceli, 28, and her Web-designer husband, Drew Domkus, 33.

Just after dinner three or four times each week, Dawn and Drew plop down in their Salvation Army-decorated living room and record 30 minutes of funny, inane and often racy husband-and-wife yakking — a show about nothing. But how they're delivering the program worldwide is quite something. ...

"Dawn and Drew are the new reality programming, two normal people communicating naturally, no scripts, no planning," says Adam Curry, 40, the former MTV VJ turned computer geek who is considered one of the godfathers of podcasting for helping design the digital tools that make it work. ...

At PodcastAlley.com, shows are ranked according to a site visitor poll. There are religious musings (Sup With Jesus), lifelong DJ fantasies sprung to life (Rock and Roll Geek Show), and ruminations of a drag queen (Yeast Radio). Crowning the top of the heap is The Dawn and Drew Show, with 9,000 downloads for many of its 70-odd episodes.

From the third story:

Big tech and media companies could not have foreseen this potentially disruptive hitch to their grand strategies.

But consider how easily a 20-year-old Briton, Michael Rundle, tapped into the raw power of podcasting.

The Cambridge University history student on Jan. 24 began hosting a 40-minute audio program — a podcast, or online radio program — in which he introduces original songs performed by British musicians, including himself. Rundle didn't need the BBC or any PR firm to help him reach an audience. He simply posted his show on the Internet.

Like the blogging phenomenon, podcasts have come out of nowhere to attract an enthusiastic grassroots following. They're being generated by a wide cast of characters — from professional broadcasters to rank amateurs. ...

Collaboration, profit, and fiction

Will Rosellini, a graduate student working on a joint JD and MS in Computational Molecular Biology, is doing some research on ways to encourage open source development in a way so that contributors actually receive an ownership share in the work they produce. "This of course has numerous applications in bioinformatics and scientific research in general," he says by e-mail. Adds Will:

Given that there are 90,000-plus projects on Sourceforge competing for qualified programmers, I wanted to explore a way that open source developers could own the end product. My proof of concept is a group using this ownership structure on a fiction novel I wrote but never published. The novel is complete, but right now authors are working on the novel in a Yahoo user group, such that they are rewarded for their contributions toward getting the book published. So, the basic idea is that they submit revisions or additions and if accepted (through a governance model called the Contribeuo Council) the authors get both a writer credit and a share of the end profits. The idea is working pretty well so far, 50 members, but is still in its infancy.

Check out the project page at www.outreachdental.com.

Citizens media from MediaCitizen

MediaCitizen, a grassroots media site from MediaChannel.org, launched a week ago.

Here's the latest:

Thanking Tinseltown for Four More Years. Right-wing activists at Citizens United have raised enough money to erect at least three billboards within walking distance of the Kodak Theatre, host to this month's Academy Awards ceremony. The billboards thank liberal Hollywood for driving voters to Bush. This stunt plays well into the right's concerted campaign to paint Hollywood as elitist and anti-American, and Hollywood stars as bumbling actors, out of touch with the red-state reality of the American political landscape.

Timothy Karr has put together a very impressive new media-watchdog site, which touts itself as "A Crash-Scene Investigation at the Crossroads of Old Media and New." Impressive blogroll, as well.

Q&A with chairman of BackFence.com

Kpaul Mallasch of J-Log does a Q&A with Mark Potts, chairman of BackFence.com, an open source journalism project based in Virginia that you may not have heard of.

'We Media' report en espanol

Quisiera compartir con ustedes la disponibilidad en español de 'We, media', de Shayne Bowman y Chris Willis. (Encargado por The Media Center at The American Press Institute).

http://www.hypergene.net/wemedia/espanol.php

Bowman y yo, Guillermo Franco M., el traductor, proponemos esta versión como una experiencia de 'traducción participativa' o 'traducción calaborativa'. Es decir, una versión que es susceptible de ser mejorada con los aportes de los lectores. Retomando palabras de Dan Gillmor, ellos "saben más", lo que "no representa una amenaza sino una oportunidad" para que todos aprendamos.

Reconozco que no fue una tarea fácil llegar a esta versión final y que en el camino se tomaron decisiones que pueden ser discutibles para algunos; por ejemplo, usar la palabra weblog en lugar de 'cuadernos de bitácora' para facilitar el manejo de todas sus derivaciones y tener un alcance más universal.

En otros casos, la versión en español de una palabra o expresión es acompañada del original en inglés, no solo para dar claridad, sino para señalar su carácter de propuesta o para resolver las diferencias nacionales en la traducción.

Estoy seguro de que este documento aportará herramientas valiosas y elementos de análisis y reflexión a aquellos que se mueven tanto en el campo de los nuevos medios, como a aquellos que lo hacen en los medios tradicionales, y las universidades, no solo en América Latina, sino en el mundo hispano.

Índice:

Introducción
por Dale Peskin, Co-Director de The Media Center at API

Prólogo
por Dan Gillmor, The San Jose Mercury News

1. Introducción al periodismo participativo
Armada con herramientas de edición Web fáciles de usar, conexiones permanentes y dispositivos móviles cada vez más potentes, la audiencia en línea tiene los medios para llegar a ser un activo participante en la creación y diseminación de noticias e información.

2. Contexto cultural: detrás de la explosión de medios participativos
Internet ha causado cambios significativos en el periodismo. Queda por ver exactamente cómo se manifestarán y cuánto del cambio veremos. La creación de Internet como la conocemos ayudó a crear vidas media-céntricas. Ha cambiado la dinámica de las noticias y convertido a los clientes en contribuyentes.

3. Cómo está tomando forma el periodismo participativo
El periodismo participativo usa el modelo "publico, luego filtro" en lugar del tradicional modelo "filtro, luego publico". Examinamos los procesos de autocorrección, las fortalezas y debilidades de los principales sistemas y formatos de periodismo participativo. Estos incluyen: grupos de discusión, weblogs (blogs), publicación colaborativa, sistemas 'punto a punto' ('peer to peer', en inglés) y sindicación XML. Se examinan las variadas funciones que la audiencia puede desempeñar y los tipos de formatos de periodismo participativo en que estas prosperan.

4. Las reglas de la participación
¿Qué motiva a la audiencia a tomar parte en el periodismo participativo? Son detalladas las necesidades sociales y cómo el periodismo las satisface. Como cualquier sistema social, el medio participativo ha desarrollado sus propias reglas. Se discuten estas reglas y se explica cómo trabajan.

5. Implicaciones para los medios y el periodismo
Las tendencias clave que están modelando el futuro de los medios y el periodismo y el impacto de Internet incluyen: la democratización del medio debido a las bajas barreras de entrada, los desafíos a la hegemonía de los medios, una redefinición de credibilidad -quién la tiene y cómo se crea-, el ascenso de nuevos expertos y perros guardianes, los cambios en los modelos económicos para las compañías de medios y las nuevas expectativas y demandas de los consumidores en el proceso periodístico.

6. Beneficios potenciales de 'Nosotros, el Medio'
Los beneficios potenciales para las compañías de medios y negocios que adopten el periodismo participativo en una forma significativa pueden incluir: incremento en la confianza, responsabilidad compartida en una democracia informada, creación de experiencias memorables, atraer a la audiencia más joven y crear una fuerte relación con la comunidad en general.

7. Cómo podrían responder los medios
Formas para que las compañías de medios integren el periodismo participativo en sus operaciones existentes incluyen: entender y construir sobre el concepto de que las conexiones equivalen a valor, hacer responsables a las redacciones de cambiar, dar al personal algún nivel de autonomía, acoger a los clientes como innovadores y compartir la historia, no apropiarse de ella.

Apéndice: Bibliografía adicional

Guillermo Franco M.
Editor, eltiempo.com
Gerente de Contenido Nuevos Medios
guifra@eltiempo.com.co
Casa Editorial El Tiempo (CEET)
Colombia

Ventura County Star's citizen journalism specialist

Howard Owens, director of new media for E.W. Scripps' Ventura County Star, posted this notice on the online-news list today:

Our online editor, Alicia Hoffman, will be adding the role of citizen journalism/user-content specialist to her duties. We see blogs, forums, photo blogs and other forms of citizen journalism as a significant part of the online news world. Our readers want to be part of the process of sharing the news and shaping the news. Technology is giving them the tools to do it, and as Dan Gillmor has pointed out, our readers often know more than we do. They can also be more places than we can. And, they also know what interests them and what news they want in ways that traditional, top-down journalism might miss. We need to give appropriate attention to this growing facet of our business. Alicia's primary duties as online editor do not change, but the focus of her job will be different. She will pay close attention to how we're interacting with our readers and the content and business opportunities that emerge, and help to shape our evolving strategy. She will guide us in the world of "journalism as a conversation" as we develop VenturaCountyStar.com as the online community center for Ventura County. Our current plan is to grow organically in this area rather than push any one big initiative. We have blogs, forums and photo blogs now. We will work to grow these and help promote citizen journalism in Ventura County.

Bravo! Under Howard's stewardship, it's likely this role will be a meaningful one.

Craigslist to launch citizen journalism site?

Internetnews.com: Does Craigslist compete with newspapers for ad dollars? "The bigger problems for the papers are trust," says founder Craig Newmark. Also: Craigslist may launch "something in citizen journalism."

TakeBacktheNews: another participatory journalism attempt

From CyberJournalist.net via Mitch Ratcliffe today:

Another participatory journalism attempt, TakeBackTheNews.com, has launched. (Yes, it's getting hard to keep track of all of them...)

This one so far seems to be mostly a blog summarizing mainstream media articles. But the site has more ambitious goals. Individuals are encouraged to participate in the following roles at TakeBackTheNews.com:

• General Content Contributors, who submit interesting news-of-the-day items covering various topics
• Topic-Specific Content Contributors, who focus on a particular topic or content area and submit news items relating to it
• Op-Ed Contributors, who submit original opinion pieces
Contributing Bloggers, who submit takes on the latest news and increase blog exposure
• Editors, established contributors who may apply for or be recruited to serve as volunteer editors

Editors will review all editorial submissions for purposes of appropriateness and clarity before publishing content online.

From the new site:

TakeBackTheNews.com is a grassroots effort enabling news consumers to determine for themselves which stories and topics are worthy of attention, to share that news with others and to have a say in specific coverage and news in general. TBTN serves not only as a rich source of news — with round-the-clock updates and live news feeds — but also as a meeting place for news junkies of all stripes.

Far too much reliance on mainstream news, but looks to be a site worth keeping an eye on.

An open blog, Christo, and Central Park

This from Andy Carvin, program director, Education Development Center's Center for Media & Community:

I just wanted to let you know about a new blog I've set up called The Gates @ Central Park.

The blog covers the upcoming Central Park art project, The Gates, by the artist Christo. For two weeks in February, Christo will decorate Central Park with more than 7,000 gates sporting saffron flags.

I've set up the site as an open blog and mobcast. It's an open blog in the sense that anyone can post to it; I've created an email address that anyone can use to post their thoughts about The Gates. They can also post photos as email attachments. It's also a "mobcast," which plays on the ideas of mobile podcasting and smart mobs. The site allows anyone to call a phone number, input the site's login and PIN, and post a voicemail directly to the blog, which is then made available as an podcast through its RSS feed.

I tried out my first mobcast a couple of weeks ago at the Berkman blogging conference at Harvard, and it worked well, so this time I'm opening it up to the public. I'm hoping people who attend The Gates will
want to post their ideas and images to the site, and add to an online dialogue about the event and public art in general.

Sounds like a great project. If I were visiting New York next month, I'd take part. But it will still be fun to peek in from afar.

Shafer disses the grassroots media revolution

I missed all the hullabaloo earlier this week about Jack Shafer's column in Slate, Blog Overkill, which declared the grassroots media revolution to be bogus.

Like Jack (who's a friend), I don't believe that the new kids on the media block will vanquish the old guard. But I think he underestimates the gathering force of the forces at the grassroots.

Ten minutes ago, we just did our first test of a video posted to Ourmedia. It worked. This -- and thousands of other efforts just like it -- will be bigger than anything Jack can envision, I sincerely believe.

Paper looks for greater reader involvement

The Business Journal, North Carolina:

News & Record Editor John Robinson says he wants a revolution. Online, at least.

He and other editors plan to overhaul the paper's Web site to allow far more interaction between readers and the newsroom. Some observers say the plans break new ground in journalism and the daily newspaper business, taking the Triad's largest paper into virgin territory in an attempt to transform its relationship with the community. ...

Another example of citizens journalism

I just posted a new entry at the Media Center's morph blog on Another voice in the mediasphere — a look at a new example of citizens journalism by Logan Darrow, who runs a conservative news outfit called the Lexington League.

We the military?

Gloria Pan at the Media Center's morph blog:

This week’s New Yorker magazine includes an article by Dan Baum, entitled, "Battle Lessons: What the generals don’t know." It talks about how information is shared in the military and how officers are using the Internet as a tool and resource in waging the Iraqi war. As I was reading it, I was struck again and again by its parallels with what’s happening in media today. Replace key words like "Military Brass" with "Big Media" and "junior officers" with "audiences," and you get basically the same story. This is a pattern that must be repeating itself over and over again as society transitions to the age of We Media. ...

Does big news trump copyright?

Fascinating discussion going on over at Don't Lose the Question: Can grassroots news sites ignore copyright during a big news story like the tsunami?

Citizens journalism in Santa Fe

I'm fairly amazed at how little time I have to post to any of my three blogs this week, as we ramp up to the launch of Ourmedia later this month.

Meantime, I'm guest-blogging over at Morph, the blog of the American Press Institute's Media Center, and have this update about citizens journalism in Santa Fe.

Reporting on the birth of triplets

Derrick Oien at user generated content writes about the recent birth of his triplets and how the mediasphere now allows him to communicate his family's news with others almost instantly. Excerpt:

As I waited in the prep room with my wife, I was armed with the same DVCam, a Sony Cybershot camera, and a Sony Ericsson P910. As we waited for the appointed time for the c-section, I periodically snapped pictures with the cell phone and immediately posted them to Flickr. I had told friends and family to look at my blog on the photostream section and they could see the event happen in as real time as I could provide. Periodically I fired up Opera on my cell phone and added some blog posts for commentary.

During the delivery we filmed a good portion of the time immediately after the babies arrived with the DVCam and then resumed stills with the cell phone and the camera. That night as I returned home I uploaded images from the camera to Flickr and then used the cross posting capabilities to post back on blogspot.

During this time period I had as many visits to my blog as I have had when I have had posts covered by Unmediated or Waxy or Dave Winer. Theses were not bloggers, rather they were family and friends sharing in a real time way an event that we wanted to share with others.

During the holidays in between feedings I reflected on how transformative this ability to use network connected personal media devices to create information to share with others. When you consider this type of activity and blogging and podcasting and a host of other activities, I think that we are clearly at the dawn of a period where media turns in on itself and we all become Real Time Media Producers and Consumers or Real Time Media Prosumers. ...

Wikipedia and the cult of anti-elitism

Clay Shirky at Many to Many:

Of course librarians, teachers, and academics don’t like the Wikipedia. It works without privilege, which is inimical to the way those professions operate.

This is not some easily fixed cosmetic flaw, it is the Wikipedia’s driving force. You can see the reactionary core of the academy playing out in the horror around Google digitizing books held at Harvard and the Library of Congress — the NY Times published a number of letters by people insisting that real scholarship would still only be possible when done in real libraries. The physical book, the hushed tones, the monastic dedication, and (unspoken) the barriers to use, these are all essential characteristics of the academy today. ...

Video blogs break out with tsunami scenes

From today's Wall Street Journal: Video Blogs Break Out With Tsunami Scenes.

When twenty-one-year-old Jordan Golson launched his Web diary, or blog, in early December, his conservative views on news and politics weren't exactly in demand, attracting about 10 surfers a day. But by last Thursday, he was struggling to keep his site named "Cheese and Crackers" up and running as it racked up 640,000 hits.

The difference: tsunami videos.

Mr. Golson's site -- at jlgolson.blogspot.com -- is just one of dozens of locations on the Internet hosting amateur videos of the Indian Ocean disaster. Many have been deluged with visitors eager to see more of the gripping footage than TV offers, or to watch videos over and over again on their own time. Some of these "video blogs," like Mr. Golson's, are pre-existing text blogs, which typically include commentary and views on current events.

Others have just sprung up in the last week. WaveofDestruction.org, created by an Australian blogger to host tsunami videos, logged 682,366 unique visitors from last Wednesday through Sunday morning, and has more than 25 amateur videos of the impact so far.

"The ease of putting something online is pretty much instant," says Geoffrey Huntley, the founder of Wave of Destruction. "At a media company, I'm sure there are channels you have to go through -- copyright, legal, editorial, etc. Blogging is instant."

Even before the tsunami, media watchers had predicted that 2005 would be a big year for video blogging, also known as vlogging. Jay Rosen, chair of the Department of Journalism at New York University and a media blogger himself, says the unique videos of the waves hitting shore could be a "breakthrough" event for the Web. ...

The rise of personal media

During the next month, I'll be guest-blogging on Morph, the weblog of The Media Center of the American Press Institute.

Susan Mernit recruited an all-star lineup to take part in this fete of group guest-blogging. Here's the lineup:

Mondays: JD Lasica (New Media Musings, Darknet, Ourmedia)

Tuesdays: Tim Porter (First Draft): Newspaper biz

Wednesdays: Tony Gentile (Buzzhit): The business of blogging and big company activities

Thursdays: Tom Biro (The Media Drop): Open media and transparency

Fridays: Susan Mernit (Susan Mernit's Blog): Tech watch, interesting new companies

Three out of five of us -- me, Tim Porter and Tom Biro -- are members of the Media Bloggers Association. Nice to be in such esteemed company.

My first post today talks about the personal media revolution, and asks how traditional media outlets can get in the game if they're to remain relevant.

Dan Gillmor on Grassroots Journalism

Dan Gillmor has officially launched his new life: Dan Gillmor on Grassroots Journalism, a new blog on TypePad. I've just added it to my blogroll.

For the first time in two decades I'm not on the payroll of a large media corporation. As of today I'm on the payroll of a one-person company, comprised of me, but media is still on my agenda. ...

For the immediate future I plan to use this blog to ponder the present and future of grassroots journalism; to begin to figure out what we might do together in this new world; and, in general, to have the kind of conversation that this huge topic requires.

Dan's last column in the San Jose Mercury News appears tomorrow. Good luck, Dan. Looking forward to collaborating on the participatory media front.

(A few minutes after I posted this, I spoke with Dan by phone. He has some interesting things lined up, including a possible grassroots journalism summit/roundtable coming sometime down the road that he'll announce.)

Publish your media to the Internet Archive

The coding whizzes at Creative Commons -- chiefly Nathan Yergler -- have finished work on a version 1.0 release of the Creative Commons Publisher tool, which lets anyone attach a Creative Commons license to his or her media for sharing it in the Internet Archive. Works on PCs or Macs. Congrats! This is a cool Web-based drag-and-drop tool that lets you avoid ftp and all that other crud.

I'll be meeting with Nathan and Mike Linksvayer on Tuesday to discuss adapting this tool for Ourmedia.

Zack's advice on open source journalism

Zack Rosen of Civic Space sits in at his uncle Jay's PressThink and offers some advice for news organizations in the age of citizens journalism.

Online video and Ourmedia

Video blogging has just busted out into the national spotlight.

Heather Green in the new issue of Business Week: Online Video: The Sequel. Video blogs are proliferating, thanks to improved distribution technology, and mainstream companies are taking notice. I managed to get a plug in there for Ourmedia:

Welcome to the latest Net phenomenon: video blogs, or what some folks call vlogs. Thousands of ordinary (and some downright nutty) people have begun posting a cornucopia of video fare online, from self-indulgent art clips and earnest citizen journalism to sly political commentary (see BW Online, 12/29/04, "Let a Million Videos Bloom Online"). Experimentation is the rule, and eccentrics outnumber serious practitioners.

But amid the chaos, glimpses of a commercial future are starting to emerge, including a revival of online video distribution, using vlogs to sell ads, and corporate sites designed to reach out to customers and suppliers. ...

The vlog phenomenon has stirred up a wave of creativity at grassroots groups and companies alike. Online video sites, such as Undergroundfilm, are adding blogging sections. Ourmedia, an online showcase for digital content, is expected to launch early this month [January]. It will provide free storage and blogging room for creative types such as New York indie musician Sam Bisbee, whose music video will be available for free. "You see video bubbling up all over the Web," says J.D. Lasica, who runs Ourmedia. "My thought was to gather it all in one place."

Here's Heather's companion piece, Let a Million Videos Bloom Online. The grassroots movement to post visual blogs makes astonishing viewing, and vlogs' rising audiences may give them an increasing impact. Excerpt:

In Boston, Steve Garfield is practicing his own brand of citizen journalism. His video reports at stevegarfield.blogs.com/videoblog are as local as they come, ranging from coverage of this summer's Democratic National Convention to a video of a downed power line on his street. At human-dog.com, run by Chris Weagel, a St. Clair Shores (Mich.) video producer, visitors can watch a spare, silent film showing an anonymous person removing a John Kerry yard sign from its metal posts after the Presidential election and taping an upside-down flag in its place.

Ryan Hodson, a 25-year-old film editor, specializes in videos that mingle the absurd with oddly touching insights. In one clip, she tours her house. In the kitchen, the camera focuses on a pot on a stove as Hodson describes the night her roommate tried to cook Dinty Moore Stew without -- as the camera pans up to recreate -- pouring the food out of the can. In another video, she created split-screen montages of her brother racing bicycles, showing him crashing, and then out ahead of the pack.

The trio are among the pioneers spearheading a fast-evolving grassroots movement. It's an amazing process to watch as creative pockets begin to interact around the country. Garfield, Hodson, and Weagel are all part of a Yahoo! (YHOO ) group dedicated to video blogging that was formed in June by Jay Dedman, a New Yorker who works at a public-access TV station.

In turn, that Yahoo group began working in late summer with Ourmedia, a new site backed by a who's who of bloggers and grassroots media advocates. Intended to be a showplace for digital content, Ourmedia is being given free storage space by the Internet Archive, a nonprofit digital library backed by the entrepreneur Brewster Kahle.

Ourmedia is also tapping into the publishing and copyright licensing tools developed by Creative Commons, another grassroots nonprofit founded by Lawrence Lessig, a Stanford Law School professor and one of America's best known commentators on intellectual-property issues.

The links among the various groups don't stop there. Yahoo, which unveiled a video search service earlier this month, is working with Ourmedia, Creative Commons, and commercial sites such as indie-film service AtomFilms to develop a video version of Really Simple Syndication, or RSS.

We'll see what Jay has to say, but you couldn't really ask for a more glowing pair of articles. (And Heather's the bomb.)

Citizens journalism tops the year's media news

Mark Glaser in OJR writes a year-in-review piece titled, "Bloggers, Citizen[s] Media and Rather's Fall." Mark writes, "2004 was the year the power started shifting, that the Little People, if you will, started to tell the gods of media what the public really wanted." Jay Rosen, Steve Rubel, Neil Budde, Robert Coxl and others hold forth on the year's most important developments in the media realm related to the Internet and technology. (Note to the OJR style gurus: it's citizens media, citizens journalism, not citizen.)

Leaving old media for citizens media

South Korea's OhmyNews has an interview with author, journalist and new media pioneer Dan Gillmor: What's Next for Dan Gillmor? The tech writer talks to OMNI about his plans to leave old media for a new media venture. Excerpt:

OhmyNews: OK, let's get straight to it: What's your media venture all about?

Dan Gillmor: That's what we're figuring out (laughter). I'm not saying this to be evasive, but it's so early that I just don't have the specifics in place. But I do know that I want to avoid "left vs. right" and I do hope to work on something that involves our economic system and how we can work out some of the problems we have. But it just feels to me like it's a trap to get into a leftwing-rightwing debate right now.

There are lots of people already doing that quite well, and I also want to bring, as (OhmyNews) did, the understanding that professional journalists have actually learned a few things over the years -- things that actually work and we shouldn't just throw out those things that work as we go into this new era of citizen journalism. We should apply the best lessons from professional journalism -- which is not to say replicate it - but to combine the best of the old with that wonderful energy and excitement out there in the grassroots. I think that would be wonderful if I could pull that off.

Student blogger scoops the media

Florida's Weekly Planet:

On Aug. 30, the Florida Democratic Party registered the domain name scottmaddox2006. com for its chairman, former Tallahassee mayor and gubernatorial wannabe Scott Maddox, to reserve that website name should Maddox actually make the race.Maddox paid the $35 registration fee himself, a party spokeswoman later told reporters. But the move raised concerns among Democrats about a looming conflict of interest. Might the chairman end up fighting for a nomination against others in his party?

This story hit mainstream newspapers statewide, but not because of the Tallahassee press corps' investigative prowess.

No, the fact that Maddox, other Democratic staffers and Lt. Gov. Toni Jennings had registered website names for future campaigns came from a Florida State University student named Mike, who broke the story in his blog, Florida News (www.flnews.blogspot.com).

"I'm really just an FSU student with no real qualifications," Mike said in an e-mail (he declined to give his full name or to provide more personal details about himself). "I just happen to read all of the Florida newspapers and a lot of books on politics and campaigns."

The domain story is the first major instance of Florida political blog news forcing its way into the mainstream news mechanism. It represents, to some degree, a breakthrough for Florida poli-blogging.

"He did a very obvious thing, just an obvious way of seeing who is laying [political] foundations," said Mark Lane, a columnist for the Daytona Beach News-Journal who follows political blogs in Florida and writes one, too, Flablog (www.flablog.net). Obvious, but missed by the Tallahassee press corps, Lane added. ...

A new community photo blog

I'm a big fan of online publications reaching out to their local communities in new ways to get them directly involved in the mediasphere. So it came as welcomed news when one of my favorite new photo-sharing sites, Buzznet, teamed up with the Venture County Star to create a new community photo blog (www.vcstar.buzznet.com).

The site offers local readers and other site visitors the ability to post and discuss photos of subjects in Venture County, giving them the abilityl to document their local community.

For those who don't know about it, Buzznet.com is an online community photo blog that lets people from all over the world communicate with each other through pictures. Visitors can even search for pics based on keywords associated with the photo. Tags are the swag, man.

Citizen journalism

Here's Wikipedia's ever-changing take on citizen journalism:

Citizen journalism, also known as "participatory journalism" is the act of citizens "playing an active role in the process of collecting, reporting, analyzing and disseminating news and information," according to the seminal report, We Media: How Audiences are Shaping the Future of News and Information, by Shayne Bowman and Chris Willis. They say, "The intent of this participation is to provide independent, reliable, accurate, wide-ranging and relevant information that a democracy requires." ...

Wikinews trumpets online revolution

Jemima Kiss in Britain's dotJournalism: Wikinews trumpets online revolution. Excerpt:

Citizen journalism is set to be a major force in online news and traditional news organisations better listen up, says founder of fledging open news project Wikinews.

Erik Moeller, journalist and open source software advocate, has ambitious expectations for Wikinews.

"I would compare its current state to the first days of the open source Linux operating system, which has been created by volunteer programmers from around the world," Mr. Moeller told dotJournalism. ...

Ourmedia as a podcast portal

I spent a half hour on the phone this afternoon with Doug Kaye, the brilliant and talented workhorse behind IT Conversations.

We'd like to bring you into that conversation.

Doug has been a longstanding participant in the soon-to-launch Ourmedia project (docs here) as a member of our wiki.

We agreed that while other forms of personal media like photographs already have a compelling home on sites like Flickr, there is currently no equivalent for Internet audio and podcasting.

Doug has lately been stretching IT Conversations into new directions, going beyond tech talk into other spheres. Says Doug:

The most popular content, for example, has been the Pop!Tech sessions (Malcolm Gladwell, Thomas Barnett, etc.) I particularly like giving a forum to these big-ideas people. My guidelines have been that the programs must be educational, inspirational or entertaining in addition to meeting minimum quality standards. But I'm producing programs such as "Voices in Your Head" (interviews with SciFi writers) and more.

It's all volunteer work for Doug -- a labor of love.

Doug pointed out that while Audiofeast.com (a site I'd never heard of) just pulled down $10 million in VC money, and the Net is abuzz with rumors of commercialized podcasting startups, there is no central hub and hosting service for podcasts.

Ourmedia offers that -- and solves the affordability problem with free storage and free bandwidth. As Doug points out, that can be a real life-saver, when bandwidth bills can ding you for hundreds of dollars if your podcast gets a push in the blogosphere.

Doug and I share the view that we need to help sustain a culture of free, open, accessible podcasting for all, with podcasts freely shareable under a Creative Commons share-alike license.

Ourmedia sounds like the logical place to house such an operation -- a place where podcasters can come, upload their podcasts (for free), form communities around them (for free), exchange tips and best practices, and obtain a full directory of available podcasts.

Who would like to help Doug and us help build out the audio portion of Ourmedia into a sort of podcast portal?

Podcast Central, anyone?

(Note: At this point, Ourmedia remains an all-volunteer, open-source media project. You'll be credited on our Credits page, get a dose of online fame, and receive lots of good juju.)

A home-brew iPod ad

Wired News:

School teacher George Masters has the marketing world abuzz with a homemade ad for Apple Computer's iPod that is rapidly "going viral."

To some experts, Masters' ad heralds the future of advertising. Homemade ads will play a big part in marketing, just like blogging is shaking up the news.

Masters' 60-second animated ad features flying iPods, pulsing hearts and swirling '70s psychedelia. It's set to the beat of "Tiny Machine" by '80s pop band the Darling Buds. (You can see the ad here).

Masters quietly posted the spot to his site a few weeks ago. It received moderate traffic until it was picked up by several blogs last week. In a matter of days, the ad has been watched more than 37,000 times, and is making the rounds on blogs and e-mail.

Gillmor leaving Mercury News

This announcement appeared in this morning's San Jose Mercury News about the dean of grassroots journalism:

Dan Gillmor, longtime technology columnist for the Mercury News, said Thursday that he will be leaving the paper at the end of this month.

Gillmor, an advocate for grassroots journalism, will be working on a start-up venture that aims to make it easier for the public to report and publish on the Internet.

``Something powerful is happening, it's in the early stages and I have a chance to help figure this out,'' Gillmor said. ``I hate the idea of leaving. But I'd hate not trying this even more.''

WestBerkeley.com launches

Yet another community site, WestBerkeley.com, launched on the Web tonight. (My, we're getting niche.) I met some of the founders at a party in Berkeley (CA) tonight.

Flickr a hit with bloggers

Wired News:

When bombs went off in Jakarta, Indonesia, in September, CNN.com readers weren't the first to know. Instead, members of Flickr, an online photo service, were among the very earliest to see pictures of what had happened.

"There were photos on Flickr before even any news stories," said Caterina Fake, a Flickr co-founder. "Within the hour, three Flickr users who happened to be in Jakarta had uploaded photos."

Flickr is a new breed of photo site offered by Vancouver's Ludicorp. It takes the online posting capability offered by photo printing sites like Ofoto or Snapfish and adds a palette of features that make images easier to share. ...

A participatory book project

Robert Scoble and Shel Israel are working together on a new blog book and doing it with the readers.

Will the Constitution protect citizen journalists?

Eugene Volokh, the conservative UCLA law professor, offers an op-ed piece in Thursday's New York Times, arguing that bloggers deserve the same First Amendment protections the press is entitled to. He's right.

Thanks to Steve Rubel for the pointer.

The future of digital media

If you missed this interview of Jeff Jarvis by Ernie Miller on Corante last week, you should check it out: The future of digital media. Excerpt:

Though I do believe that big media has a great deal to learn from citizens' media -- if they'll listen -- I also believe there are lessons old media can teach the new. Some bloggers may not want to hear that, but I think it is the responsibility of established media to share those lessons with those who'll listen.

Some of the lessons are quite practical: Journalism -- and legal -- experts should be teaching bloggers about protecting themselves in the arenas of libel and copyright. And it's important to add that big media should see bloggers as colleagues and help extend such protections as shield laws to them, for what happens to bloggers could happen to journalists and vice versa. Journalists also can teach bloggers how to use the Freedom of Information Act to dog government. I'd even say that some bloggers would benefit from learning how to write better headlines and leads and nut graphs, as we quaintly call them.

Are blogs the future of journalism?

Slashdot: Are Blogs the Future of Journalism? "Let's hope not."

Can wikis build a new kind of journalism?

TechNewsWorld: Open-Source News? Wiki Builds a New Kind of Journalism. More on the launch of Wikinews. Excerpt:

"Wikis encourage multiple points of view and have a strong neutrality policy," Jimmy Wales, co-founder of the Wikipedia, told TechNewsWorld.

"We hopeful that we will get a high quality synthesis of the news," he said.

That's quite different from blogs, he maintained, which are like the editorial pages of the Internet. "A blog is one person's analysis of the news," he said.

With a blog, people create communities around themselves, added Ross Mayfield, CEO of SocialText, a Palo Alto, California, maker of collaborative software for the enterprise Relevant Products/Services from Sprint -- With Sprint, business is beautiful., which incorporates Wiki and blog technology.

"Wikis are more about group voice than individual voice," he told TechNewsWorld. ...

"You have an open, collaborative practice for developing content that works because the barriers are very low for anyone to make a contribution," he added. "So you end up getting a more diverse body of participants."

Student journalist blogs from award show

Susan Tam, a student journalist in her senior year at the University of Southern California, is blogging live this week from the red carpet at the Family Television Awards at the Beverly Hilton in Los Angeles. The Family TV Awards, hosted by Lori Loughlin of The WB series “Summerland,” recognizes the shows, writers and producers who exemplify creative excellence in family friendly programming. The awards take place this Wednesday night but air Dec. 9 at 9 p.m. on The WB Network.

This spring, Tam will receive her degree in print journalism with a minor in Natural Sciences. She is planning on pursuing a career in photojournalism after graduating. She currently works on staff at the Santa Monica Daily Press and also wrote for and associate edited USC's Daily Trojan.

Thanks to Steve Rubel for the info.

The grassroots media revolution

Jay Dedman, a key member of ourmedia, blogs about FeedsterTV, a new site that offers one way to let us watch all that Internet video in the years ahead. Writes Jay:

Right now, the only way to watch videoblogs is to go to each individual blog and watch each individual video. As of November 2004, there is no way to see videos all in one place. It's as if when I want to hear a story, I got to run around town to each person's apartment to hear the story. I want a stage where we can all come together and tell stories to each other. ...

Bonus links:

Blogdigger, offering the latest posts with media "enclosures."

iPodder.net, showcasing the podcasting revolution.

Engadget: How to podcast (which I previously linked to).

Wikipedia does the news

Joanna Glasner in Wired News: The folks behind the open-source reference site that's challenging the encyclopedia industry decide to give journalism a go. Through the experimental Wikinews site, anyone can take a stab at being a reporter. Excerpt:

Alex Halavais, graduate director for the informatics school at the University at Buffalo, said in an e-mail interview that Wikinews has much in common with two other efforts at citizen journalism, Indymedia.org and South Korea's OhmyNews.

However, Halavais believes Wikinews' emphasis on neutrality places it a step apart from the Independent Media Center, which typically has a left-wing viewpoint, and OhmyNews, which allows authors to editorialize.

"Compared to these two models, Wikinews feels much more like an effort at traditional journalism, though the journalists may be amateurs," Halavais said.

Wikinews is here. I wish them well with the project -- it looks very much like the Open News Wire project that Kuro5hin founder Rusty Foster and I were discussing launching a couple of years ago -- with the difference that Wikipedia has a built-in user base to rely upon.

Blogging and journalism

Tech Central Station on blogging and journalism. Excerpt:

These days, enjoyable sport can be had observing the ongoing battle royale between the staid defenders of traditional journalism on the one side, and the young punks known as bloggers on the other. (Full disclosure: I am of course a card-carrying member of the latter, young punk, category -- or would be, if we had cards, which we don't). Old media journalists have spent many barrels of ink gnashing their teeth and decrying the barbarian hordes of bloggers, and equally as many bits have been spent in spirited rejoinders from the blogger camp.

Look closer at the two sides, however, and you'll find that there's far more crossbreeding going on between these particular Capulets and Montagues than you might expect from all the hue and cry. The reality is that the line between "blogger" and "journalist" -- and between "amateur" and "pro" -- is already extremely fuzzy. And if you think things are blurred now: well, just wait a little while longer, because soon enough, things are going to start to really get interesting. ...

Tribute to a teacher

Phil Shapiro offers a QuickTime tribute to a favorite teacher.

Portland Communique seeking support

The One True b!X has been plying the waters of grassroots citizens media for some time now, offering valuable insights and contributions to the conversation even as he's been covering the local Portland city scene for the past two years.

Now, he's looking for some financial support.

The local Portland newspaper Willamette Week has included b!X and his Portland Communique in their annual give guide (under "community").

b!X has already announced that he may have to shut down his Portland Communique weblog at the end of December unless it begins to generate some revenue. The Communique – an experiment in amateur journalism and hobbyist reporting – has become a fixture in the local media scene, read by City Council members, City Hall staffers, local political reporters and columnists, and general local political junkies. Willamette Week (and its readers in a separate poll) named it best local weblog, and The Oregonian published a front-page profile on him and what he does with the site.

He's not looking for Andrew Sullivan-type dollars. A few bucks here or there would help. Give, if you can spare anything, to support this worthy effort in grassroots journalism.

ourmedia: 'a free content sharing' system

Robin Good has some kind words about ourmedia on his Masterofnewmedia blog.

Under the Ourmedia flag a small group of brave and visionary independent thinkers, technologists and change agents has gotten together to create what will very soon be the largest public open access archive for all grassroots creative multimedia content.

This is very, very major news and it should be welcome with the best fanfare possible.

Not only we are deeply in need of such a free content sharing infrastructure, which must be tightly connected with the licensing options offered by the Creative Commons, the Public Domain and the traditional Copyright licensing scheme, but we have been missing the understanding of how much creative potential this Ourmedia creature may in turn unleash.

Ourmedia wants users to be able to create photo albums and digital jukeboxes by tapping into the content in ourmedia's databases.

For instance, a blogger who writes about film criticism might set up an area of his blog that lets users call up amateur or independent films culled from Ourmedia multimedia library.

The idea, in short, is to create the world's largest collection of home-brew media -- video, audio, photos, anything a creator wants to share with a global audience -- which people can generally freely share with each other. ...

Talk about disruptive? Get some thermonuclear seat belts brother.

If we accomplish one-tenth of what Robin is excited about, we'll really have something. The public alpha site's launch is taking longer than we imagined (surprise), but we're getting there, bit by bit.

Distributed reporting

Mark Tapscott, director of the Center for Media and Public Policy at the Heritage Foundation, has begun blogging, and has this thoughtful post on distributed reporting, following postings on the subject by Jay Rosen and Jeff Jarvis.

The news as conversation

Jeff Jarvis in Sunday's Philadelphia Inquirer: The news as conversation. In keeping the media on their toes, bloggers have changed the relationship between the public and those who provide the news.

With the election over, some have speculated - or perhaps hoped - that bloggers would fade away like a canceled reality show.

No such luck, folks. We're here to stay.

Blogging - or what I like to call, more broadly, citizens' media - is simply the product of history's easiest publishing tool connected to history's best distribution network, the Internet. Yet because it allows anyone to publish to the world, it changes the fundamental relationship of citizens and media, politics, government, marketing, academe and the world. Citizens' media give the people a voice and power and, most important, control. And once we have it, we won't let it go.

Akimbo breaks ground with Internet TV

Mike Langberg in the San Jose Mercury News: Akimbo breaks ground with Internet TV service.

Langberg concludes: "Akimbo, to me, seems destined to be one of those pioneers with a clear vision of the promised land, nevertheless doomed to die in the desert on the way there." I'm not so sure. As long as Akimbo doesn't rely chiefly on "content" from the major media companies and broadens its offerings to include compelling grassroots video, it should do just fine.

Quick update on ourmedia

Here's a quick update on ourmedia:

We're opened up our developer wiki, so a log-in and password are no longer required. Feel free to stop by or to  invite anyone you know in the tech, education, library and law fields to check it out and see if they want to help build the global home for grassroots media in conjunction with the Internet Archive.

If you're interested, stop by on IRC for a chat tomorrow (Sunday) at 3 pm Eastern, noon Pacific time, to discuss the project, including conversations about the site's UI, metadata tagging, the upload tool and more. Instructions here.

The future of citizens media

Ernest Miller interviews Jeff Jarvis, who shares his vision for the future of grassroots media over at Corante. At least I think he does -- Corante's servers have been down the past few hours.

They're back up now. Speaking of Corante, they have a much-improved new look, a number of new columnists, a new seminar series, and a new partnership with CNET/ZDNet, among other things. Congrats.

Grassroots media and international affairs

From Dan Gillmor today:

Daniel Drezner and Henry Farrell have written a well-reasoned piece in Foreign Affairs about the intersection of grassroots media and international affairs.

Blogs as participatory media

I'm quoted in this Dateline Alabama article:  'Blogs' Inject Mainstream Media with Public Participation.

Citizen journalist at a murder scene

Ken Smith points us to the latest episode of citizens journalism -- yesterday's publication of a photo of a murdered Dutch filmmaker taken by a passer-by with a camera phone who arrived at the scene before the professional photographers. He had the only photo taken before the body was covered.

Reuters has an article about this episode on ZDNet UK.

Newspapers and other media are starting to tap into the rich vein of information that can be provided by a public increasingly armed with camera-equipped phones

Twice in one month the biggest Dutch newspaper has published front-page pictures shot by amateur photographers using their mobile phones, showing how advances in technology can assist traditional media in gathering news.

The De Telegraaf daily newspaper, with a circulation of close to 800,000 copies, on Wednesday published a picture of the dead filmmaker and columnist Theo van Gogh, whom police say was probably killed by an Islamic militant.

Passerby Aron Boskma took a picture with his mobile phone at the scene of the crime in Amsterdam. News photographers arrived only after the body had been covered, leaving Boskma's picture the only one showing knives plunged into van Gogh's body.

"This picture was the story. There was a discussion if we should use it, but everyone who would have had this picture would have published it," Telegraaf pictures editor Peter Schoonen said. ...

We'll be seeing many, many more examples of this in the years ahead, so much so that it will soon become routine and the act of citizen journalism no longer newsworthy.

If anyone spots a link to the actual photo, please post it below.

Citizens Media: the Fifth Estate

From the fevered mind of Steve Rubel:

The Financial Times says there is a new player in the media business. It is staffed by millions of people all round the world, creates mountains of varied content, is highly trusted by its readership, is growing exponentially and has a zero overhead. It's called Citizen's Media or Consumer Generated Media and is the result of cheap, accessible digital publishing tools being available to a mass market for the first time.

Excerpt:

Citizen’s Media has gradually created a group of independently-minded critics who constantly publish their views to faithful audiences. They can be thought of as the '5th estate'. And if there is a story to tell they will publish and be damned. ...

It’s not all about blogs. Podcasting is the new audio cousin of weblogs which allows individuals to publish (podcast) their own DIY radioshows, on whatever subject they choose. It uses a combination of audio files and RSS syndication to create an audience. This means consumers can download shows directly to their MP3 players and time-shift their listening to when it suits them. And guess what ? There’s no advertising.

Actually, the Fifth Estate probably isn't the right term. Citizens media is about storming the walled gardens and sacred temples of the first four estates and taking back our democracy, our media, our right to be heard.

Weapons of Mass Seduction

Lie Girls: not-so-innocent "girls" telling dirty, nasty, shameless political lies. "Call now to enter our fantasy world of spin."

Citizen journalism on MSNBC.com on election day

Steve Yelvington in E-Media Tidbits today:

On election night here in the U.S., MSNBC will be wall-to-wall with bloggers and MSNBC.com will be wall-to-wall with blogs. In addition to its staff-produced blogs from Keith Olbermann, Chris Matthews, Joe Scarborough, and Dan Abrams, MSNBC will be hosting "Citizen Journalists," which it describes as "viewers and netizens helping us document this historical day through their own personal blogging."

Meeker: keep an eye on user-generated content

From Susan Mernit today:

Morgan Stanley analyiste Mary Meeker's issued a new report, and it's worth a long PDF download. An Update from the Digital World, October 2004 expands on the message that accessing information online is becoming easier. Meeker & company write:

"Three factors are combining to drive online momentum: 1) rising usage of RSS (Really Simple Syndication) by content providers as a standard distribution platform for online content; 2) ramp in creation of blogs and other user-generated content and 3) Yahoo!?s easy-to-use integration of RSS feeds with My Yahoo!."

And:

"We believe ongoing improvements in the following areas will be important to watch: 1) search; 2) personalization; 3) user-generated content (including blogs, reviews, images and audio); 4) music; 5) short- and long-form video; and 6) accessibility(including mobile devices and the PC desktop)."

And:

"Web-based user-generated content is at the heart of some of the most relevant and fastest growing applications we have seen on the Web (including eBay user feedback and message boards, Yahoo! movie reviews, fantasy sports game play, and blogs)."

As election nears, Web's grass roots still growing

CNET News.com: As election nears, Web's grass roots still growing. Excerpt:

Perhaps the most technology-centric efforts produced by either of the sites were the news feeds they created to serve as companions to the televised debates. Whereas in years past campaigners rushed to the fax machines during debates to send detailed candidate position statements and rebuttals to pools of journalists, the two sites offered direct feeds to voters in 2004. The Bush team created an online tool that pushed such information in real time to Web sites and Web logs, or blogs, that signed up for the news, while the Kerry campaign offered a similar service that provided e-mail responses to interested parties.

According to John Tedesco, an associate professor of communications at Virginia Tech and the author of "Changing the Channel: Use of the Internet for communicating about politics," the debate feeds are evidence of how online campaigns are circumventing traditional sources of campaign information, such as television or print news, a trend he expects to grow in future elections. ...

Tedesco says that in the future candidates will try to drive voters to their sites as a substitute for other forms of news media, which he sees the public increasingly labeling as biased. By encouraging people to get their news straight from their candidates, he contends, the Web will become an even more powerful campaign tool.

Bottom-up journalism busting out

Mark Glaser in OJR tackles a subject near and dear to my heart: bottom-up, open source, hyperlocal citizens journalism. Excerpt:

"We are the traditional journalism model turned upside down," [Northwest Voice Mary Lou] Fulton told me via e-mail. "Instead of being the gatekeeper, telling people that what's important to them 'isn't news,' we're just opening up the gates and letting people come on in. We are a better community newspaper for having thousands of readers who serve as the eyes and ears for the Voice, rather than having everything filtered through the views of a small group of reporters and editors."

Local news ventures will get $1 million in seed money

J-Lab: The Institute for Interactive Journalism today announced it will launch a pioneering program to seed community news ventures around the country with a new $1 million grant from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.

Over the next two years, the New Voices project will help fund the start-up of 20 micro-local, news projects; support them with an educational Web site, in collaboration with the Poynter Institute's News University; and help foster their sustainability through small second-year grants.

More info here. Great news for niche, local independent news sites — even one- or two-person operations, presumably. I spoke with Jan Schaffer, the J-Lab's exec director, about this last week, and we'll be exploring ways for the New Voices project to work hand in hand with ourmedia.

Creative Commons' new look

Creative Commons has redesigned its website. Nice! I spoke this afternoon with Mike Linksvayer, one of CC's master coders, who'll be helping us with ourmedia.

The Bush vs. Cheney Debate

Another grassroots media mashup: The Bush vs. Cheney Debate. Bravo! And thanks to Sim Sadler for contributing it to the soon-to-launch ourmedia.

OhmyNews goes global

Want to join the OhmyNews participatory journalism bandwagon?

Just under 100 OMNI citizen reporters send stories from such nations as Iran, Colombia, England, Japan and Germany. OMNI hopes to have built a global network of 1,000 correspondents by the end of next year. This web of citizen reporters will be the linchpin of a formidable news organization.

An introduction to podcasts

The LA Times offers an introduction to podcasts — blog-based homemade radio shows. More at Darknet.

A DIY political commentary site

An important new site went live today called p2p-Politics.org. I'd heard about it Friday at the Internet Archive.

The site, a cooperative venture of the Archive and Creative Commons, lets individuals post video spots for or against the presidential candidates.

So far, scores of clips supporting John Kerry (thanks, in part, to all those "Bush in 30 Seconds" MoveOn ads) and no pro-Bush or pro-Nader spots. Congrats to J. Christopher Garcia and Aaron Swartz for the programming magic and to Larry Lessig and Brewster Kahle for brainstorming the site. Larry has more here.

A spoof of media mendacity

Freepress.net has this animated spoof of the presidential debates — with the corporate news media coming off as the real losers for playing up triviality, ignoring the real issues and keeping the public in the dark. You can subscribe to Freepress here or sign up for their effort to reform the media.

Independent media tribes

Reason Online managing editor Jesse Walker in Chronicles magazine: Independent Media Tribes.

The Independent Media Center, as Indymedia is officially known, is one of the most successful publishing projects online, a sprawling network of radical amateur journalists that is open to virtually anyone with a keyboard. There are at least 135 local Independent Media Centers in over 40 countries; most are in the United States and Europe, but they have also appeared everywhere from Beirut to Bolivia, Nigeria to Jakarta, Chiapas to Thunder Bay. (As I write, the lead story on the IMC's main
site announces that its African affiliates just met in Senegal.) Its admirers often ignore its faults, while its enemies love to tar the whole network with the most galling activities on its fringes; whether you are an admirer or an enemy usually depends on whether you share the network's leftist politics.

It is useful, however, to strip away the ideological baggage and set aside what you might think of the IMC's content. Indymedia offers a radically different model for producing and distributing journalism,
with a very different hierarchy of standards from what you find at CBS or the New York Times. It has changed the face of the alternative press; and, just as important, it is rapidly being superseded by newer, more promising models. Its successes and failures should interest anyone who wants a more pluralistic media landscape. ...

'We Media' report gets a Creative Commons license

The American Press Institute yesterday released the 2003 We Media report under a Creative Commons license. That means you can freely copy, share, excerpt and translate the report about participatory media for any noncommercial purpose, such as teaching in the classroom, for free. A journalism professor at a university in Colombia is now translating the whitepaper into Spanish. Great news!

The Big Tail rules

If there was one overarching theme that came out of last week's Web 2.0 conference, it was the forming consensus in techland that the Long Tail -- the millions of bloggers and alternative media sources at the tail end of the mediasphere -- matters in aggregate more than the major publishers, even as big media continues to dominate in circulation, Web traffic and mass-market metrics.

What I didn't know (because I'm weeks behind on my magazine reading) is that Wired magazine editor-in-chief Chris Anderson has a brilliant look at this phenomenon in an article in the October issue titled, The Long Tail, subtitled: Forget squeezing millions from a few megahits at the top of the charts. The future of entertainment is in the millions of niche markets at the shallow end of the bitstream.

It's prescient, groundbreaking and important, so go read it.

WELL dissects 'We the Media'

The WELL, of which I've been a member for lo these many years, is discussing Dan Gillmor's new book We the Media. Christian Crumlish is leading the discussion.

More grassroots creativity

Remember Jib-Jab, the online duo who created a swirl of controversy when the EFF had to go to court to protect their "This Land Is My Land" political satire?

Well, Gregg and Evan Spiridellis are back with an equally inventive Flash animation, It's good to be in DC!, featuring John Edwards in a bikini brief and Dick Cheney giving the finger. The movie debuted The Tonight Show Thursday night. This time, the creators stuck to a song safely in the public domain, "Dixie." Besides selling the premiere rights to Leno's show, the brothers Spiridellis are also selling the two short animations on DVD for $9.99, hawking shirts and coffee mugs, and selling downloads of the two animations for $2.99 -- an interesting concept, given that they're already cached as a free progressive download (unless I'm missing something).

Both "This Land" (viewed more than 50 million times) and "It's good to be in DC!" can be seen online at Jib-Jab or at AtomFilms.

As Steve Outing writes, "It's yet another example of exceptional content bubbling up to mainstream status via the Internet."

Of course, it's the creativity that's the important thing; mainstream fame is a nice bonus, though.

Cuban bypasses big media with his own blog

In his latest article on OJR, Mark Glaser has a nifty Q&A with billionaire, Dallas Mavs owner and reality TV star Mark Cuban, who's using his blog to strike back at journalists, Donald Trump and people who don't get his TV show (like Mark). BlogMaverick is part of the WeblogsInc network.

I don't always like Cuban's courtside manner (hey, I'm a Sacramento Kings fan), but I've always admired his passion, honesty, contrarian vision and business sense that challenges the conventional wisdom. I'm sorry I missed his talk last night at Web 2.0, but Denise has a nice summary.

Brokaw, Jennings, Cronkite diss citizen journalists

CNET News.com: Network news anchors Tom Brokaw and Peter Jennings, perhaps sensing the day of reckoning coming soon for traditional network newscasts, lashed out at citizen bloggers and defended colleague Dan Rather in a spirited roundtable discussion Saturday about CBS News' mishandling of the altered Bush National Guard records.

"What I think is highly inappropriate is what's going on across the Internet, a kind of political jihad," Brokaw said during a panel on which he appeared with Rather and Jennings. "It is certainly an attempt to demonize CBS News, and it goes well beyond any factual information a lot of them has, the kind of demagoguery that is unleashed out there." ...

Jennings [added:] "I think the attack on CBS is an attack on mainstream media, an attack on the so-called 'liberal media.' To me, when you make a mistake, you apologize. You go back and review your standards."

On a similar note, Staci Kramer of OJR reports, Walter Cronkite told the annual Society of Professional Journalists convention:

"I cannot understand how the Internet should have gotten so entirely oblivious to the whole theory of libel and slander," Cronkite said. "How is it possible for these people to get on the air with any allegation they want to make, any statement they want to make, as if it were true, as if they were journalists, which they are clearly not? They are scandalmongers."

Let's hope it's the heat of the moment that prevents these esteemed veteran journalists from seeing the valuable role citizen bloggers are playing in this election.

ourmedia: a call for entries

We're about a month away from the beta launch of ourmedia.org. (See the item below.) The goal is to create a global repository of shared grassroots media.

We have a number of media items or collections in hand, but we need more to fill out the site.

Here's our first pass at material that have been suggested for the first iteration of ourmedia:

Digital stories
Original music
Photo galleries
Video diaries
Music videos
Digital books
Home-made video
Remixes
Independent films
Student works
Instructional video
Documentaries
Political ads
Animation
Editorial cartoons
News footage
Parodies
Artwork
Fiction
Non-fiction
Children's tales
Interviews (audio)
Book reading (audio)
Oral history (audio)

Please contact me if you have created any digital works that fall into any of the above categories (or similar topic areas) and would be willing to show them off to a global audiences. Creative Commons licenses are preferred, but fully copyrighted works accepted as well.

We especially need multimedia works: digital stories, original music, digital photo galleries/collections, video diary entries, home-made video, etc. You'll see how it looks (including title, credit, links back to your site) before it goes live.

Here's more information for content creators interested in ourmedia. And if you'd like to join our wiki, let me know.

ourmedia needs a tagline

We're only a few weeks away from the beta website for ourmedia.org, which I announced here when it was still called the Open Media project.

We've made remarkable progress in the past two months, working in a wiki to tackle issues related to the law, technology, and cultural values attached to content sharing.

We've made remarkable progress in lining up an open-source content management platform (Drupal) and in getting design help to make this vision a reality.

Now we need two last things -- from you.

First, a tagline. And second, more content. (See item above.)

Metaphors are important. From the beginning, those of us working on the ourmedia project have been describing it as a global repository, as a network, a library, etc. The idea, in short, is to create the world's largest collection of home-brew media -- video, audio, photos, anything a creator wants to share with a global audience -- which people can generally freely share with each other.

Many websites and companies have taglines to go along with their names, to help convey the essence of what the outfit does in a quick phrase. (Slashdot: news for nerds ... The Daily Show: the most trusted name in fake news ... Bounty: the quicker picker-upper. You get the idea.)

So, we are now opening up the floor for nominations! What should ourmedia's tagline be? It would appear beneath the ourmedia logotype in the main banner, now being designed.

The only requirements are that it should be short, memorable, original, convey the essence of our project, and shouldn't be under trademark.

Here are a few ideas to kick this off:

ourmedia
the global library for grassroots creativity

ourmedia
the global library for home-brew media

ourmedia
the grassroots media channel

ourmedia
the global library for shared culture

ourmedia
sharing grassroots media with a global audience

Other ideas? Post them here, or email me. If yours is chosen, you'll win fame and a free dinner at the next bloggers outing in your area.

Forbes on participatory media

Forbes.com reviews Dan Gillmor's We the Media. Excerpt:

What makes the CBS story [on George Bush's National Guard records] so tantalizing is that "lay people"--call them readers or viewers or just plain old ordinary Joes and Janes, anyone but professional journalists--were the truth squad. A few people who knew a lot about typewriter fonts began asking well-informed questions the online journals known as blogs. A decade ago, these people might have shared their musings with their friends or in a letter to a local newspaper. (The newspaper, of course, might have ignored it.) But these days, it takes no more clicks to reach a blog as it does to reach CBS's own Web site. And in a matter of days, the questions raised in those blogs forced CBS to 'fess up that it didn't have its facts nailed down.

In his timely new book, We the Media: Grassroots Journalism By the People, For the People (O'Reilly Media, $24.95), San Jose Mercury News columnist Dan Gillmor describes how blogs and other Internet technologies are changing the very nature of journalism. "Tomorrow's news reporting and production will be more of a conversation, or a seminar. The lines will blur between producers and consumers, changing the role of both," Gillmor writes. ...

Photos of Youth Media Festival

On Thursday night, Sept. 30, I trekked into San Francisco for the second annual International Youth Media Festival, sponsored by the SalesForce.com Foundation, which has done a masterful job of promoting digital creativity around the globe.

Here's a photo gallery of 11 photos I took.

The 90-minute program, held before a packed house at the Herbst Theater in San Francisco, showcased one outstanding short film after another, all created by young people ages 10-18. Each had the audience clapping rhythmically at the amazing music or sitting captivated for short documentaries on teenage cutting (by Girls Xpress! of London), gun violence (by the Downtown Community Television Center of New York), homelessness (by a San Francisco group) or life in an Israeli development that borders Gaza (by the Gvanim Association).

My favorites were the poignant entry by Girls Xpress! and the opening finger-snapping dance movie, "Inertia," done by San Francisco's Youth Sounds Factory. Both will doubtless win some additional awards.

Outstanding. You can see the movie clips online at youthspace.net.

We hope to talk with the good folks at the SalesForce.com Foundation over the coming weeks about collaboration opportunities with ourmedia.org, just as we've been able to work with other organizations involved with grassroots media, such as Youth Media Exchange, Undergroundfilm.org, OurTV and the Wikimedia Foundation.

Susan reports on today's X1 flight

Susan Kitchens headed out to the Mojave Desert to witness the 6 a.m. launch of the Ansari X Prize X1 private space flight. She has five pages of photos and commentary. Nice job, Susan.

Ofbyandfor and open source democracy

Ofbyandfor.org: Mitch Kapor on open source democracy:

In the last several years, my experience in learning about and working with the open source software community has taught me a few things that might be very helpful in revitalizing our politics. First and foremost the whole concept of open and equal access to information could do wonders for our politics.

Secondly, placing information in the open, allowing people to debate both general and very specific aspects of software, and then creating a process for decision making about implementation could be very important lessons when transferred to politics. It's neither easy not simple to do this, but clearly worthwhile. ...

I just came across Ofbyandfor for the first time -- a thoughtful, noise-free group blog worth visiting for Kapor's postings alone. They just had their first live event -- Kapor interviewing Joe Trippi -- and now author William Greider is on deck tonight. Impressive.

Just as interesting as the content, though, is the site structure. Zack Rosen wrote last Wednesday:

This site runs on CivicSpace, a Drupal based open-source civic organizing platform that I help create. We are assembling a killer toolkit for organizing and mobilzing communities through the web. It will do everything from multi-user peer moderated web logging to contact and donation management to meetup style event organizing. But the twist that will change the world is the ability communities will have to link their CivicSpace sites together (through web standard XML) and share user profiles, site content, and event information. The software is open-source and built on top of a proven and widely adopted platform, but will also be avaliable as a service much like TypePad and Blogger.

Blogs look burly after kicking sand on CBS

Christian Science Monitor: Blogs look burly after kicking sand on CBS. Bloggers enjoy a moment of glory after pooling their expertise to uncover the truth about the forged memos on Bush's service record.  Excerpt:

Blogs' watchdog role will continue to influence newsrooms, says Kelly McBride, a member of the ethics faculty at the Poynter Institute in St. Petersburg, Fla.  

"We have known that our credibility is eroding," says Ms. McBride. "We have been slow to change our practices, slow to eliminate or minimize the use of anonymous sources, to diversify our staff so that we accurately reflect the population that we serve.... It's possible that with this new uprising of criticism, that the mainstream media will react quicker on those issues."

ourmedia vs. commercial photo sites

In the Wall Street Journal the other day, Walter Mossberg had this: Logging On to the Family Album (subscription not needed, I think; I subscribe to the WSJ so can't tell).

So you got a new digital camera, you've been snapping away, and now you want to show all your great new photos to your friends and family. But the pictures live in your personal computer. So what's the best way to share them.

Soon, the answer will be: ourmedia.org. But good ol' Walt doesn't know that.

Storage is another vital issue. How many pictures will a site accept? Will your digital photos be erased after a certain time, or are they safely saved on one of these online sites? Shutterfly, Yahoo and AOL have similar policies: free, unlimited storage of photos that won't be deleted. Yahoo and AOL require that you sign in at least once every six months for your pictures to remain in the archive. Ofoto requires users to make an online purchase of prints or some other merchandise at least once a year after the first year in order to keep photos on its site.

Again, ourmedia (formerly Open Media) will let you store your photos for free, forever, without you signing on ever again, without you making an online purchase.

Stay tuned.

A changing of the gatekeepers

Belmont University blogger Dr. Sybril Bennett cites the We Media report (which Shayne, Chris and I worked on last year) in her commentary on the CBS News/forged documents affair.

In terms of gatekeeping and agenda setting, the information dissemination monopoly once enjoyed by the traditional media (television, radio, newspapers and magazines) has been broken by the virtual media (Internet, satellite and digital technologies). The virtual system of checks and balances, the Internet, is being used by millions of people including advocacy groups and webloggers (those who may cover stories or just react to them and provide substantive information, links, etc to support and/or challenge the information presented). Bloggers, for short, are creating an international system of independent information allowing the consumer to make an informed decision. Most state their personal biases so that the information is placed in its proper context.

Private citizens can now investigate a news story on their own. This participatory revolution in journalism is chronicled in a report called We Media: How audiences are shaping the future of news and information, produced by the Media Center at the American Press Institute. Here is a quote from the report:

"The venerable profession of journalism finds itself at a rare moment in history where, for the first time, its hegemony as a gatekeeper of the news is threatened by not just new technology and competitors but, potentially, by the audience it serves."

The blogosphere as editor

Gabe writes to tell me about memeorandum, a news aggregation site that presents an automated hourly synopsis of the latest online news and opinion (courtesy of Technorati), combining weblog commentary (from both the right and left) with traditional news reports.

Says Gabe: "You might be interested in watching how political stories are selected when bloggers become the unwitting editors."

Later, a correction: Gabe writes, "My software doesn't use Technorati. I spider and parse the blogs and news myself. I just meant the concept is similar to Technorati's but with some new ideas mixed in."

Iranian bloggers lodge protest

In Mark Glaser's latest article in the Online Journalism Review, he looks at the crackdown on bloggers and journalists in Iran, with arrests and reformist sites being blocked. Iranian bloggers have staged a major protest online, posting material from the blocked sites.

Key quote from Kayvan Hosseini, an Iranian journalist and broadcaster based in Prague: "I think the second revolution in Iran will happen with the Internet and many people in Iran believe the Internet is a good place to exercise democracy."

Don't praise the bloggers

Tom Watson has a thoughtful take on the blogosphere popping the champagne corks over the CBS bogus memos affair when we're losing sight of the bigger picture.

There's been plenty of back-slapping in the past few days among bloggers for picking apart Dan Rather's flimsy and utterly un-newsworthy story on George Bush's already well-documented abandonment of the National Guard -in my opinion, way too much self satisfaction.

All blogging has done that I can see in terms of this year's election is to help entrench the pathetic moral relativism that cripples mainstream media, especially the flavor found on television "news." The pro-Bush and anti-Bush bloggers that dominate the scene merely make the talk show hosts adhere to their cowardly 50/50 doctrine. And this allows for liars like the Swift Boaters to float untruths that are then portrayed - in terms of talking time - as at least half true. ...

The coming death of old media?

At ABCNews.com, former Forbes ASAP magazine editor-at-large Michael S. Malone writes that big media may be dying while the blogosphere grows in importance. (Warning: 7-second forced display ad that you can't close.) Excerpt:

This not the way the press is supposed to behave. The First Amendment gave us journalists unique and unprecedented freedoms — but those freedoms came with equally great responsibilities. I can forgive the story itself — I well know what it's like to be on a big investigation, and how the taste for blood can make you do crazy things — and settle for the censure of and an apology from Rather and CBS. But there's no forgiving the subsequent cover-up.

The heroes of this story are, of course, the denizens of the blogosphere. The Pajama Press has won. They have been the welcome counterweight to the increasingly unbalanced message being purveyed by the MSM this political season. I've written a lot about these folks in the last few months, mostly with admiration, but mixed with a little fear. Their power and influence has been building now for several years. ...

Rathergate is proving to be the apotheosis of the New Media. It was certainly unexpected, but these changings of the guard always are, as we in the tech world know well. And this, too, of course, is a technology-driven revolution in journalism taking place right before our eyes.

You are going to hear a lot about this changing of the media guard in the days and weeks to come.

Try years.

This is an important piece, for while many of us in the blogosphere have written about the ascendant power of citizens media, few in big media have acknowledged the trend.

Malone asks, "now is the time to ask if the Pajama Press can, in its present form, supplant — better yet, improve upon — the existing mainstream press?"

He also predicts -- wrongly, I think -- that within the next year the blogosphere will establish "professional standards and organizations" (not likely) and aggregate "into larger sites that can generate enough revenues to pay for permanent jobs and dedicated reporters" (if he means full-time jobs, that's years away at best).

Let's ditch Malone's cutesy phrase, the Pajama Press; that aside, it's not yet time to bury big media. Mend it, reform it, yes, but as we've said before, participatory media will rise up alongside traditional media, and they'll become increasingly dependent on each other. As Joe Trippi says in the current issue of Wired magazine, "The blogosphere has become fundamental -- the plankton of the information ecology."

Yes, brawls will break out -- usually occasioned by big media arrogance, as in Rathergate -- but few bloggers I know believe it will be a better world if newspapers, magazines and TV networks disappeared from the face of the earth.

Wikipedia and blogs

David Weinberger at Many2Many wonders: Why do all Wikipedia articles sound the same while every blog sounds different?

Gillmor on new media

Jay Rosen interviews Dan Gillmor about new media and We Media. Dan riffs a bit on new business prospects for new media:

Gillmor: I think that organizations like the Times are caught between two worlds. The Times' archives are behind this "pay wall." And that's a real moneymaker for them. But there are some sites that are pay-per-view from the get-go, like The Wall Street Journal, which for all practical purposes does not exist in Google. But at some point I think most news sites are going to say, "We can do better on revenue by making all of the archives available for free with perma-links, with the bargain being that we will have targeted advertising." When you do a search on keywords there will be things popping up in the story or alongside the story that are like Google's ad sense, or whatever comes along that is better than Google ad sense. And we may find out � I'm speculating, I don't have a model for this, that keywords and ads are a more profitable way for traditional organizations to monetize what is quite expensive to produce. ...

Hypergene on emerging media

At the American Press Institute Media Center seminar I attended earlier this week, the We Media report came up several times. And now I see that the report's authors, Shayne Bowman and Chris Willis, are back blogging up a storm over at Hypergene.

Chris or Shayne (I wish they'd sign their names :) ) writes about the CNN article I mentioned earlier this week, "Will cyber journalists turn the tables on big media?," and concludes that one premise the writer sets up is faulty: It's not a matter of which side is winning; it's really about participatory media forming a symbiotic relationship with big media, forcing the big boys to include us in the conversation. I think that's right, although the practitioners of citizens media can be forgiven if they get the impression that big media (a la CBS's response to the critiques in the blogosphere) don't really want to be part of any conversation, for that would imply a dialogue among equals.

In You Call That News? I Don't, the Hypergene guys point to Bryan Keefer of Spinsanity, who writes a smart, direct, and insightful open letter to big media about how it should be changing for newer, younger audiences. Excerpt:

The media’s obsession with getting the latest minutiae about John Kerry and the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, or the latest gossipy tidbits about President Bush’s alleged past drug use, is misplaced. The endless he said/he said reporting and the airtime given to questionable allegations highlight the reason why so many young people like myself are turning away from mainstream outlets such as newspapers and network newscasts. Instead, we’re increasingly choosing to get our news and analysis from the Internet and even turning to unconventional outlets like Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show” in pursuit of the straight story.

Dead on.

They also cite author Douglas Rushkoff talking about The Real Threat of Blogs to big media. Rushkoff writes:

I believe that the most dangerous thing about blogs to the status quo is that so many of them exist for reasons other than to make money. A thriving community of people who are engaged for free, to me, have a certain authority that people doing things for money don't.

And finally, they point to Jon Stewart talking about the role of The Daily Show and saying, "Anybody with a Web site is part of the real media."

Scamming the media

From author William Rivers Pitt at truthout.org today: Scamming the Media, Parlock Style:

Meet Phil Parlock. Parlock is a family man and a staunch Republican. Parlock has a very sad story to tell about how rotten Kerry supporters are. You see, they made his little girl cry.

Parlock was at a rally on Thursday to greet Vice Presidential candidate John Edwards, who was on a swing through West Virginia and Ohio. Parlock brought his three children and a Bush/Cheney sign to show support for his beloved President. According to him, a Kerry-supporting union guy wearing an IUPAT shirt ripped up the Bush sign his little girl was carrying, making her cry.

Terrible, right? A sign that our national politics have descended into these kind of brutish tactics, right? An embarrassing incident for the Kerry campaign, right? The media certainly thinks so, and has dutifully reported on the incident.

For the third time.

A report from the Charleston Daily Mail, August 27, 1996:

"The Huntington man said he was knocked to the ground by a Clinton supporter when he tried to display a sign that read 'Remember Vince Foster,' the deputy White House counsel who committed suicide in a Washington, D.C., park. His death has become the subject of much debate among Clinton opponents...Parlock said some of the crowd tried to make other anti-Clinton demonstrators feel unwelcome. He estimated that about 150 Dole supporters attended the rally, but their signs couldn't be seen for most of the rally."

A report from the Charleston Daily Mail, October 28, 2000:

Phil Parlock didn't expect to need all 12 of the Bush-Cheney signs he and his son Louis smuggled in their socks and pockets into the rally for Vice President Al Gore. But each time they raised a sign, someone would grab it out of their hands, the two Huntington residents said. And sometimes it got physical. 'I expected some people to take our signs,' said Louis, 12. 'But I did not expect people to practically attack us.' The two said they didn't go to the Friday morning rally to start trouble."

For the third Presidential election in a row, poor Phil Parlock has been abused by terrible Democrats while trying to support the Republican candidate, and while trying to introduce his children to the art of retail politics. Is this just a string of bad luck for Phil?

I doubt it. It seems a great deal more certain that Mr. Parlock is a serial disruptor who has managed to convinced the easily-duped mainstream media on three separate occasions that he was attacked by Democrats. Only a truly hard-core fanatic would pull a stunt like this, and Parlock certainly appears to fit the bill…

Carolyn Kay of MakeThemAccountable.com adroitly adds:

The manner in which this story came to light is a lesson in modern journalism. The mainstream fellows simply reported the Parlock perspective, but it was an intrepid band of online newshounds - bloggers Rising Hegemon and Atrios, who picked up on the work of one Rezmutt, member of the forums at DemocraticUnderground.com - who pieced together the strange coincidences surrounding these Parlock incidents. Once upon a time, stories like this would get missed. The internet has created a whole new phenomenon. If the mainstream media wants to avoid being embarrassed, they might want to think about paying attention to this brave new world of investigative journalism.

Grassroots culture, available to all

Jay Dedman, who started a video blogging mailing list and joined our ourmedia grassroots-media effort, has a posting today: Who the hell is Brewster Kahle (and why is he doing such extraordinary things for our culture)? Jay writes:

The concept is this: anyone who makes video/photos/songs can store their stuff for FREE on their servers FOREVER. Why? Because they believe that what we make is important to history or something.

Actually, we believe it's important to culture (as well as history).

Our open source group is working with Brewster and his team to create an even more intuitive and easy-to-use set of tools that will allow millions of people to share the personal media they're creating.

My partner in this effort, Marc Canter, is back from Europe this weekend, and then we'll be able to kick this into high gear. I'll be posting an update on ourmedia (formerly Open Media) soon. We hope to have our beta website up by the end of October.

Will cyber journalists turn the tables on big media?

Christine Boese in CNN.com:

I've been reading a new book by Dan Gillmor called "We the Media." Actually, I'm reading the e-book, but I already know I will pony up for the print version as well. ...

The main point of "We the Media" is ...: Journalism is a conversation in this era of the citizen journalist working in dialogue with other citizen journalists. ...

What happens when the audience talks back? The Howard Dean campaign was the first to harness that powerful blog energy as well as other online tools such as "Meetups." Campaigns at all levels have discovered how much more quickly small campaign contributions add up when collected online.

Gillmor could be anticipating the power of citizen journalists, rather than noting their arrival. I believe we are still deep in the power struggle between top-down message control and interactive reader/journalists getting to know their political candidates the way kids get to know the backwoods.

I'm still not sure which side is winning.

Bloggers key to uncovering falsity of Bush memos

In today's San Jose Mercury News, Dan Gillmor recounts the series of events that led to the blogosphere's unmasking of the apparent fraud behind the Bush National Guard memos. He says bloggers shouldn't pat themselves on the back too hard -- traditional media would have rooted out the fraud with time -- but correctly notes:

Regardless of what one thinks of the bloggers' politics, they advanced the memo story. And they did it fast -- no doubt more quickly than the mass media would have done. ...

Journalists have demanded more transparency of others. Now, thanks to the ability of large numbers of people to dissect our work in public and in something close to real time, they're demanding more of us. We'd better get used to it.

Here's more on the subject from Doc Searls, Jay Rosen and Chris Nolan.

Bush memos 'fake but accurate'

Breaking news from the NY Times: Memos on Bush Are Fake but Accurate, Typist Says.

Meantime, I attended a conference today where one of the participants (can't tell you who) predicted that Dan Rather will be out of a job within six months, a la Howell Raines, because of his intemperate response to bloggers breaking the news that the Bush National Guard records were forgeries. On CBS yesterday, he criticized those who were focusing on the bogus records rather than the underlying truthfulness of the accusations made in them about Bush disobeying a direct order. That's a pretty amazing stance: Ignore the evidence we provided -- ignore those pesky bloggers who insist on fact-checking everyone's ass.

This was a major coup by citizens media.

DivX CEO: the grassroots video revolution is coming

A few minutes ago, Engadget published my interview with Shahi Ghanem and Jordan Greenhall, the president and CEO of the innovative 4-year-old San Diego startup DivXNetworks.

Here's one excerpt that speaks to my heart:

What is the 10,000-foot view of some of the possibilities that codec technologies like DivX hold out for home entertainment? Will we see a grassroots video movement, for example?

Greenhall:  ... Compression makes the Internet economically viable. No matter how good your broadcast is, it only has the ability to deliver out a certain amount of content in temporal fashion. I turn on my satellite receiver, I’ve got 30 channels. But those 30 selections serve 10 million people, so they’re going to be very generic, and I don’t get a lot of control over the programming. If I start to use recording technology like PVR and TiVo, I can time shift that, but my selections are still based on the economics of mass media. But if you start layering in the Internet, you can do one-to-one communication. You don’t have to get out to an audience of a million in order to be viable, you can get out to an audience of six and be viable, depending on what you want to accomplish. So that signals the ability to deliver very narrowly tailored content out to individuals. People will be able to slice and dice what they consume - and somebody has to produce all that content. Now I have the ability to create and publish content at a very high level and deliver it to millions or to one person. So you’ve got hundreds of millions of potential publishers.

Archiving everyday life

From TrendCentral:

Young people are consumed with archiving their lives through various means, whether it be a LiveJournal blog or an old-fashioned scrapbook. But they’re not just keeping track of what happened on their summer vacation; they’re seemingly turning the events of last weekend, or even last night, into a type of history for themselves and their circle of friends. Half of a night out is often spent documenting it. The ability to capture a memory with friends onto a phone and play it back immediately has turned reminiscing into a party pastime.

Nokia is getting in on this trend with a new mobile phone program called Lifeblog that automatically archives and organizes all mobile communications (e.g. text messages, sent photos and videos) for users to save, edit, search, and browse. ...

When parody spreads like a virus

New on OJR:

Six Simple Steps (and One Hard One) For Grand Old Parody Online
by Mark Glaser
For those who can't take the news too seriously, parody sites have thrived. Here's a primer on how you can make your timely online comedy spread like a virus. Consider JibJab's "This Land Is Your Land."

Political Advertising: All's Fair in 'Wild West' Aura of the Net
By Mark Thompson
Web publishers would welcome a post-convention gold rush of soft money ads, but critics worry about unregulated mudslinging. Others take a wait-and-see attitude to Web ad reform.

Participatory media and Election 2004

The American Press Institute's Media Center presents "We Media: The Impact of Participatory Media on Election 2004," a public webcast focused on the impact of new technologies and participatory media on the Nov. 2 U.S. elections.

Jason McCabe Calacanis, founder of the Weblogs, Inc. Network, hosts a high-level panel of media thinkers and leaders in this exploration of the intersection of media, technology and society.

Webcast details:

When: Tuesday, Oct. 5, 2004, 2-3 pm Eastern

General registration fee: $95 until Sept. 27, $125 after then. Educators, bloggers, students and non-profits fee: $25.

For more information and to register, head here.

Seattle Times' experiment in citizens journalism

Via Steve Rubel:

The Seattle Times has started a participatory journalism blog where a dozen voters under-35 from across the region and across the political spectrum will share their election-season experiences. More details here.

Young want political news served with a side of irony

I'm quoted in an article by Erika Chavez in today's Sacramento Bee: Young want political news served with a side of irony. 'The Daily Show' tops the menu, plus blogs and e-mail.

Dan Bricklin and Moulitsas Zuniga, who runs DailyKos.com, are among the other folks interviewed.

Grassroots and big media coverage of today's protest march

The Los Angeles Times has a wonderful photo gallery of today's protest march in New York, which drew between 120,000 and 500,000 peaceful demonstrators.

The New York Times' account of the rally is here.

It's the biggest protest march in New York City in decades -- and not a word of it on Google News's front page until a few minutes ago.

Meantime, Matt Haughey rounds up some examples of grassroots media: people reporting on the event without the mainstream media's filter.

all Flickr photos tagged with rnc, rncwatch.typepad.com, Technorati search for New York City ("rnc" was too short to search), Buzznet's No RNC photostream, rnc convention bloggers, WeSeeRNC moblog, all del.icio.us links tagged with rnc, Indymedia's RNC coverage, and Google News search for rnc.

It's like rolling your own newspaper.

Wikipedia vs. the clueless reporter

Mike Masnick at Techdirt talks about the sad case of Wikipedia vs. the clueless newspaper reporter.

Photos of the Critical Mass protest

My friend Pascal Wassam has some great photos of last night's Critical Mass bike ride and protest in New York, which resulted in a number of arrests.

MoveOn and the politics of grassroots mobilization

Gary Wolf in Wired magazine: A quiet couple in Berkeley, California, got sick of being ignored by the system. So they built a new one. How MoveOn.org changed the face of fund raising, brought P2P to political advertising and reinvented grass-roots activism.

Iraq's soldier-bloggers face military scrutiny

Well, this can't be good news for citizen journalism. The Pentagon has discovered blogs.

From Sheila Lennon via NPR: Iraq's soldier-bloggers face military scrutiny.

A do-it-yourself political video

I'm a big fan of grassroots, do-it-yourself political videos, and just came across a new one (thanks to Jesse Walker): It's a lie, a Bush-bashing Flash movie with a solid beat.

Anyone know if the soundtrack is a copyrighted song or original music?

Olympic mistake: Banning blogging

Dan Gillmor has a spot-on item today: Olympic-Sized Arrogance.

AP: Olympians largely barred from blogging. Athletes may be the center of attention at the Olympic Games, but don't expect to hear directly from them online -- or see snapshots or video they've taken.

This is about greed, nothing more and nothing less. It is about the historically corrupt International Olympic Committee's desire to please the giant media organizations to which it has sold "rights" to tell and show the world what is happening.

The irony here is that the olympic officials are inadvertently telling us something about the future of journalism, though I'm certain they don't understand it themselves, in the context of their heavy-handed (and probably illegal) action. Because the more that regular folks -- OK, that's a stretch for the athletes -- put their own work on the Web or send it to each other by other means, the more they are becoming some of tomorrow's journalists.

I'm with Dan. The Olympic Committee -- also guilty of unparalleled commercialism during these Games -- needs to be brought down a few pegs by citizen journalists.

Gillmor in online chat

Dan Gillmor appeared in an online chat at the Guardian UK yesterday and discussed grassroots media, among other things.

By the way, I like the Washington Post's chat transcripts better than the cluttered Guardian transcripts.

Hurricane Charley up close

In Orlando, Buzz has some posts about his up-close encounter with Hurricane Charley.

Meantime, Raven at DaytonaBeach-live.com, the Internet's only around-the-clock English-language Internet TV station, filmed 55 minutes of Hurricane Charley ripping across Main Street in Daytona Beach on Friday night. Footage includes gas station roof and pumps being ripped off from the high winds. He's putting it on a loop that will repeat over the next day or two.

Bloggers, big media and influence

I have my second post as a guest-blogger over at The Industry Standard.

It takes a look at the amazing chart that tracks the influence of bloggers and media publications in the blogosphere.

And if you want to drill down deeper, I posted the raw numbers from the Top 40 sites with the most in-bound links here.

Harnessing 'hyperlocal' citizens’ media

"Hyperlocal Citizens’ Media: Connecting Communities, Improving Journalism, Building Democracy" is a new research & development project conducted by six master's students majoring in new-media journalism at the Medill School of Journalism.

Writes their instructor, Rich Gordon, in E-Media Tidbits the other day:

It documents their experience building GoSkokie.com, a website seeking to cover a nearby suburb by tapping residents to provide as much of the content as possible. Along the way, the students researched similar sites throughout the nation, most of which have launched within the past year. They also learned a lot about the challenges involved in turning site visitors into content contributors. But one of the main things they learned was that free, open-source software makes creating these sites practical even for people with only modest technical skills. Expect even more of these sites in the future -- whether or not media companies get involved with them. The report can be downloaded (free of charge) here (PDF).

Why some readers trust bloggers over journalists

An article I wrote for OJR about why some people trust bloggers more than mainstream journalists has just gone live:

Transparency Begets Trust in the Ever-Expanding Blogosphere

The openness of Weblogs could help explain why many readers find them more credible than traditional media. Can mainstream journalists learn from their cutting-edge cousins?

And don't miss this fascinating accompanying chart, with data supplied by Technorati, that hasn't appeared anywhere else on the Web: Who has the ear of the blogosphere?

(Wired magazine two weeks ago published a similar chart, with a different slant, but it's not online.)

Jeff Jarvis and David Sifry and Mary Hodder of Technorati are the main parties who preach the virtues of transparency, why it works in the blogosphere, and how mainstream news sites could benefit from the practice.

Excerpt:

"The Web is not chiefly about a library or a news stand," Sifry says. "You have to start thinking about the Web as this humongous event stream. The Web is a set of ongoing conversations that weave together into this new kind of omnipresent social fabric." ...

Jarvis agrees. "We are witnessing the growth of a culture of transparency," he says. "Bloggers are more trusted, I think, because they are human and too often news organizations are not. Bloggers tell you who they are (usually) and what their backgrounds and biases are and their readers can judge them and engage with them on a personal level. News organizations are big and often monolithic and are reluctant to admit let alone share perspective or agendas."

The craft of journalism itself is undergoing a shift as we move toward a more pliable online model. "Bloggers see news as a conversation," he says. "It's not over when it's in print; it's not fishwrap. News improves and the facts and the truth come closer when the discussion begins ..."

Well articulated.

Later: I was wondering whether to post the full text of the email Jeff Jarvis sent me, but Jeff saved me the trouble.

Also, see BlueHereNow's pointer to Richard Edelman's Trust Barometer (a Word doc), which shows people are more likely to believe friends and family than the mainstream media.

Tim Porter weighs in smartly:

The most important lesson mainstream journalists can learn from bloggers is that to gain trust from their readers they must put trust in their readers. Open up the journalistic process. Share the sources. Give the public more space in the paper (or, as the Bakersfield Californiann is doing with the Northwest Voice, let them write part of the paper themselves.)

Journalists saying, "Trust me, I'm a pro," doesn't work any longer. Saying, "I'm a pro so I'm going to trust you," just might.

Must-download TV

Farhad Manjoo in Salon: Must-download TV. The latest developments in TV-show-trading technology mean you don't need TiVo to watch what you want, when you want.

We're all journalists now

In Wired News, Xeni Jardin has a Q&A with Dan Gillmor, who argues in his new book We the Media that journalism is stronger than ever because of the Web. But Hollywood is strengthening its grasp on copyrights, threatening speech and freedom. Excerpt:

Gillmor: I'm worried, because the forces of centralization are winning almost all of the legal and political fights so far. Note the state attorneys general letter to the P2P folks -- full of misinformation and bizarre interpretations of reality, but part of the copyright cartel's war on all forms of media it can't control.

The problem, as Lawrence Lessig and others have noted, is that absolute control is contrary to what users/customers must have -- for example, to retain both some level of freedom and the ability to create new works that quote from older works. I hope this comes out right in the end, but I'm not counting on it at the moment.

I'm glad Dan is an ally in this important fight for citizens' digital rights.

Wondir: more than another expert site

Allen Searls -- son of tech rock star Doc Searls -- is the VP of community for Wondir Inc. Allen wrote, telling me about his really intriguing and praiseworthy service, which relies on a distributed network of smart people who chip in answers to users' questions.

I asked Allen how Wondir differs from the kinds of expert sites we've seen over the past few years, such as Abuzz and Google Answers, and he's got a good answer. Essentially, it comes down to this:

1. Wondir is free.

2. Wondir is live. ...

3. Wondir is for everyone. ...

4. Wondir is a cinch to use. ...

Sounds pretty good. I'll be stopping by regularly, because I have lots of questions.

Yahoo's push for push-button publishing

Earlier this year, Yahoo! began a really cool beta project that pulls RSS feeds into headline summaries on a Yahoo news page. Take a look.

To advance the cause of push-button publishing, they've created easy "add to my" subscribe buttons that are appearing all over the web. Says Yahoo biz dev guy Don Loeb: "We're trying to do everything we can to help bring RSS to the masses."

Here's the link to the page with the muy easy instructions on how to add the Yahoo icon to your pages so the millions of Yahoo users can spot it. (Mine is near the bottom of the right rail.)

Some Q&As on Open Media

Hey, Sheila gave the Open Media project a nice writeup -- and even finagled a blurb on the front page of projo.com. Way cool.

She asked me a few questions to elucidate the Open Media concept, and I replied, thinking I was answering her and not being interviewed. Luckily, nothing embarrassing in there.

Later: Marc has some better answers than I gave.

Vote for best Bush switchers ad

From the MoveOn PAC: Vote now for best Real People ad.

When we asked MoveOn members last month for their stories for a real people ad campaign, we got hundreds of responses from members – Republicans, Democrats and Independents – who voted for George Bush in 2000, but will be voting for Kerry in 2004. These stories of disaffection are the most powerful statements we’ve found about the failed Bush presidency. Academy award-winning documentary film director Errol Morris has been interviewing these former Bush voters on camera, and he’s cut seventeen ads that tell their stories.

Help us decide which ads to air during the Republican convention by rating them – and invite your friends to rate them too!

The servers are pretty busy now, but this is terrific grassroots political action, in the same vein as the Bush in 30 Seconds contest earlier this year.

I'm guessing it's still an open question regarding whether the broadcast or cable networks will air these during the Republican convention. How about it, Fox? Will you turn down good money and robust political discourse because of corporate ties to the Republican Party?

Thanks to Steve Garfield for the pointer.

Ready for the visual Web?

The late, great business magazine The Industry Standard (I wrote a couple of articles for them) was resurrected some time ago in the form of a weblog. Today I began guest-blogging over there.

In Ready for the visual Web?, I riff on the uptick on video bloggers, new developments in the space, and why it all matters. Excerpt:

What everyone seems to agree on is this: The visual Web will not be television but a new media form that takes its shape from its Internet underpinnings. There won’t be one way of telling stories, creating short-form movies, or capturing real life.

In a few years, when high-definition camcorders come down to the consumer level, we’ll be awash in startling new forms of video vérité as a grassroots prairie fire in participatory visual media sweeps through the land. By then, the tools will be as easy as point, shoot, upload.

Is the multimedia Web ready for its closeup? It’s getting there.