Blog people, Wikinewsies, and other citizen journalists

July 23, 2005 4:32 PM

Blog people, Wikinewsies, and other citizen journalists are coming together to provide new and timely sources of information in the continuing Digital Revolution. OhmyNews swung the election in South Korea, Wikinews published 9 stories on the London bombings, and NowPublic aims to combine murmurs in the blogosphere with a sleek, media-filled interface. Indymedia has been publishing citizen-written news since 1999 and in the same year Salon first penned the idea of Open-source Journalism. OhmyNews continues to be the mold-breaker, combining open-source with revenue. According to CyberJournalist, to the tune of $500,000 a month. Now hiring too.
posted by reflection (10 comments total)

Yup. Also check out this post, as well as all of the burgeoning podcasting sites. I've also since run across Popcast, Particapitory Culture, and I'm sure many, many more that I've forgotten. For the coolness of Wikipedia and growing coverage, check out the movie of how the London bombing entry page changed throughtout the day here.

And before the nay sayers come in saying that it's all crap, at least it's different crap. And since the cost of the content is FREE, big media is interested, since even a TV show with ONLY 3 million viewers can be a failure.
posted by rzklkng at 6:25 PM on July 23, 2005

Feh.

I WANT MY MOJO!
posted by soyjoy at 7:13 PM on July 23, 2005

And before the nay sayers come in saying that it's all crap, at least it's different crap.

my main complaint about "open" sources of information like wikipedia is the laziness it inspires in other people's research. people realize they can legally copy it, so they do just that. no original thought or research or perspective is put into the subject.

for example, google dug up a slew of sites that looked like they had some information on "urban survival syndrome," a topic which i was researching for a criminal justice paper recently. among all the other marginally relevant sites i found, there were a whole bunch of sites that did nothing but copy wikipedia's entry for the subject.

cases in point :: wikipedia : opentopia : 4reference : websign.sk : wikisearch : brainyencyclopedia : webstercc

so i'm left wondering, how exactly does open-sourced homogeneity digitally revolutionize anything? unless a computer-savvy person with new knowledge or insight on a subject bothers to contribute his information directly and specifically to wikipedia, you're still going to have all these sites reporting the same old *identical* information, which may or may not even be accurate in the first place!
posted by Ziggy Zaga at 7:15 PM on July 23, 2005

Please don't call what Indymedia does "news".
posted by docgonzo at 7:40 PM on July 23, 2005

Digital Revolution? Participatory Culture? 1990 called, it's wants its Wired article back.


---
comming up with a trendy terms for things does not make them new.
posted by delmoi at 7:53 PM on July 23, 2005

Ziggy Zaga: It sounds like impression whoring then lazyness. shysters trying to get rich off free resources.
posted by delmoi at 7:54 PM on July 23, 2005

delmoi: that's a damn good point, which i hadn't thought of. wiki-copying still irritates me though :P
posted by Ziggy Zaga at 9:14 PM on July 23, 2005

Ziggy Zaga: Wikipedia content is under the Gnu Free Documentation License, and they even tell you how to copy the database; the places that do so are, in fact, a Wikipedia article themselves. The Wikipedia even, naturally, keeps track of which sites are in GFDL compliance, i.e. displaying the appropriate credits and licensing information.

The problem you're finding is really more of a Google PageRank issue. Wikipedia content is meant to be free to repurpose.

This is all off-topic, though, as Wikinews isn't yet copied around freely -- although clearly at some point there's no reason it couldn't be.

delmoi, Wired wasn't published until 1993. And nobody was making $500,000 a month, let alone for a participatory website, back in '93. At some point you have to let predictions become news.
posted by dhartung at 11:25 PM on July 23, 2005

Those Koreans may larn the Yanks a thing or three.

Meanwhile...

"how exactly does open-sourced homogeneity digitally revolutionize anything? unless a computer-savvy person with new knowledge or insight on a subject bothers to contribute his information directly and specifically to wikipedia"

There are other issues to be considered, such as the viability of the Wikinews concept itself - that theory breaks down in inverse relation to political sensitivity.

Or - to put it differently - "Open Source" spycraft is about the most pronounced oxymoron imagineable.
posted by troutfishing at 7:34 PM on July 24, 2005

what indymedia facilitates is news. it's investigative. it's commentary and analysis. if it is often full of ludicrous, repetitive content, perhaps this is a reflection of its business model. if it is able to cover events no one with a 'legitimate' press badge would deem 'newsworthy,' perhaps that, too, is a reflection of its operating principles, as well as the operating principles of its cohorts.

All the better that we have some competition, among sources of information sprung from different principle$ in the 'marketplace of ideas,' no?

*cheers to live preview
posted by eustatic at 8:16 PM on July 25, 2005