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2005-10-02 Home Front: Politix

Condoleezza Rice's Princeton speech, and Associated Press Deficit Disorder

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Posted by .com 2005-10-02 05:52|| E-Mail|| Front Page|| [11126 views since 2007-05-07] Top

#1 I've proposed the creation on an independent "dry" news wire: simple, powerful and relatively easy to create. In essence, a Rantburg-style blog for original content news only. Submitted and vetted by its members.

Unlike a typical blog, it should actively solicit uncopyrighted contributions from news-oriented websites and other blogs around the world, while minimizing opinion to protect the integrity of the straight news. It would be for "reporting" news, not "journalizing" it.

All stories submitted would be under license limited to: "by-line and URL (from original source) must be kept with story when republished."

Each article would be open to member vetting, with some easy way to indicate problems that could result in the article being disqualified or highlighted, attached to a typical comment submission section, such as:

1) Previously copyrighted material submitted as original. (URL of original must be given.)
2) This article has been substantially re-printed as original material in a commercial publication.
3) This article has been substantially re-printed without attribution or URL.
4) There is substantial factual disagreement with this article.
5) Article contains misleading or deceptive content, or expresses opinion as fact.
6) Article has been sanitized with euphamisms.
7) Linguistic, grammatical, historical or editorial problem.

Doing so would both help to prevent abuse of original material, and help maintain quality control. Except for #1 above, which would be an article "death penalty", the other critiques would be for the benefit of the submitter and anyone who wished to use the wire item.

Members could be credibility rated based on both quantity and quality of submissions. This rating would be associated with their stories.

Again, the idea of this independent wire is for the rest of the world to be able to have its news heard, uncensored by the AP, UPI or Reuters. To actively solicit news from thousands of websites by email or direct submission, and to effectively prevent the wire from being mis-used.

In turn, the wire provides uncopyrighted news with editorial vetting and quality rating to the public for "fair use".

Posted by Anonymoose 2005-10-02 10:56|| 2005-10-02 10:56|| Front Page Top

#2 Moose, you might have something with the copyright idea. I believe there is widespread plagiarizing of blog material, including by the MSM.

I would add that the emphasize should be on first person reporting, i.e. reports by people who actually witnessed the event. firstperson.com?

As always the problem is getting initial traction. As an example of how to get started, you could have started with something like Katrina soliciting peoples stories on blogs covering the story.

Posted by phil_b 2005-10-02 16:51|| 2005-10-02 16:51|| Front Page Top

#3 Phil_b: There are several good formats out there right now, such as the regular text-oriented wire service format that is just item after item.

I see the story link format as follows:

date stamp(automatic)-contributer # and rating(automatic)-headline-(seven boxes for the aforementioned critiques)-# views-#trackbacks

As example:

1111051015-3257-AAB-H Clinton renews pact with Satan at Harvard speech -[1][2][3][4][5][x][7]-247-12

Translated: Nov 11, 05, 1015am-contributer #3257-AAB rating-(headline)-(comment added that calling Satan a "responsible opposing viewpoint" is too P.C.)-247 views-12 trackbacks.

The difference from the typical wire service format that is just most recent on the top, this would be oriented most likely to geography with major subject areas. And while is could create an RSS feed, it wouldn't use other RSS feeds for material, so there would be minimal redundancy that you get from typical wire service reports.

The Rantburg organization, cleaned up a lot, would work very well. That is, a bare-bones version of RB, with a login/password. Perhaps with a look and feel combination with http://linkdump.be as far as the look goes. It would also be of great help if it had lots of open source input like http://del.icio.us/ , that gets so much material it updates every two minutes.

Posted by Anonymoose 2005-10-02 18:41|| 2005-10-02 18:41|| Front Page Top

#4 I think it could work. Look how easy it is:

The NYT which is certainly not a world away from Princeton, couldn't be bothered sending a reporter, and printed the AP story. Worse yet, New Jersey's own Star Ledger did the same thing. CNN, Australian Broadcasting Corp., and the Miami Herald printed the story verbatim. Couldn't they have done at least like theBeeb's Pentagon Correspondent, who looked up the State Dept's link for his article?

Even a poorly written story can go a long way.

Posted by 2b 2005-10-02 20:34|| 2005-10-02 20:34|| Front Page Top

#5 Lex had a similar idea to you. I don't what you and I suggest as an either/or proposition. Its just that my background in internet businesses makes me ask what is the compelling value proposition. I think amateur reports and firsthand observers would love to have a forum for publishing that guarantees it will always be attributed to them as well as get distribution.

Posted by phil_b 2005-10-02 22:59|| 2005-10-02 22:59|| Front Page Top

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