A column by Eric Deggins (excellent all-around critic and editorial board member) of the St. Petersburg Times today alerted me to this item. To my surprise, I can't find any prior references on dkos albeit the search function is not very responsive right now. If I'm mistaken, I apologize for the redundancy and will delete this diary.
Back in November, Craig Newmark of the infamous Craig's List craigslist.com provided a talk at Oxford University about a new project. I'll make my first prediction for 2006: By the end of the year, we'll all know about his project and, going out further on the limb, I bet it will have an impact on some elections.
A succinct description per
Newmark's blogI'm working with some folks on technologies that promise to help people find the most trusted versions of the more important stories... and this is personal, helping out another group not associated with craigslist. This kind of technology is intended to preserve the best of existing journalistic practices, and should help retain newsroom jobs.
Just to make sure... it's NOT associated with craigslist, just me, trying to help.
It's intended to complement, preserve, and grow existing media.
Remember, existing news infrastructure, including editing and fact-checking, really big deal.
To cite cyberjournalist.net
He said he is working on a media technology project to help people "find the most trusted versions of the more important stories," he says. "This kind of technology is intended to preserve the best of existing journalistic practices, and should help retain newsroom jobs....It's intended to complement, preserve, and grow existing media."
He's been working with Dan Gillmore, of Grassroots Media and Jeff Jarvis, who blogs on buzzmachine.com. As Jeff Jarvis said,
Our goal is to create a platform to organize the world's news using the best of technology, community, and editors. We see an explosion of interest in and coverage of news from incredibly varied sources around the world and see a need around that. We plan to have a beta in the spring {2006].
Note: That time frame is VERY important.
An interview with the A/P reported
Newmark hopes the ideas take shape in time to supply voters with a "trustworthy" daily political report before the 2006 midterm elections.
As some of the stories note, traditional mainstream print media have taken notice of Newmark's efforts at craigslist due to ad revenue loss to craigslist's free classified ads.
Although traditional print media apparently are tracking Newmark's new project too, we shall see whether accuracy in traditional media reporting is improved. I am pessimistic that the new project by itself will have that leverage.
However, I believe this venture will be a good thing for two reasons: (1) Based on Newmark's blog writings and interviews and the fact that Gillmore and Jarvis are heavily involved, their goals for accuracy seem aligned with the dkos community's aims for accountability; and (2) the project will have an impact at the polling booth if its audience can mirror craigslist's demographics.
November will reveal the accuracy of my 2006 prediction!