posted by
LaminatorX
on Wednesday August 13 2014, @01:27PM
from the better-living-through-journalism dept.
from the better-living-through-journalism dept.
From the Kickstarter BLog is How I Became a One Man Intelligence Agency by Eliot Higgins
Eliot Higgins didn't start out thinking he'd become a one man intelligence agency, but once he started using his blog to track international activity through public social networks, that's exactly what happened. Now he's running a Kickstarter for Bellingcat, a platform for open source citizen journalism
bellingcat.com will unite citizen investigative journalists to use open source information to report on issues that are being ignored.
so what's keeping you from being a citizen reporter too?
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(Score: 1) by VLM on Wednesday August 13 2014, @02:18PM
"a platform"
I may be incorrect. But at a glance, its just a blog, isn't it?
Now workforce automation, queueing, moderation, metamoderation, embedded biz logic wrt processes, deep integration with other sites, classification, searching, automatic data gathering/spidering, extensive linking, what boils down to built in data mining, some level of security dare we ask that it be built in from the start rather than checkboxed after the fact... Now that might rise to the level of a "platform"
But "We gots us a wordpress and we're gonna spend lots of $ on PR" isn't really a "platform".
I like what they're doing and their goal. And the tools they're using are ... not cool, but appropriate. But I thought the description of their tools was kinda funny. Like describing /bin/ls as "an enterprise grade real time no-sql data mining and analysis dashboard"
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 13 2014, @03:10PM
Well, "platform" means just a place where you can present yourself. For example "TV broadcaster X gives Y a platform to present his political ideas" doesn't mean that broadcaster X now set up a web 2.0 site for Y, it just means that broadcaster X allows Y to present his political ideas on their TV network.
Oh, and "platform" may also mean the place where you wait for the train. But that quite obviously wasn't meant any more than anything web 2.0 was.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by strattitarius on Wednesday August 13 2014, @03:32PM
What this means is apparently journalism is NOT dead. Apparently if you do a pretty decent job of applying your expertise to the facts available via the internet, you can get paid to continue doing it to the tune of 50,000 pounds.
If he can get these contributors to subscribe, he will have done what newspapers have failed to do.
Slashdot Beta Sucks. Soylent Alpha Rules. News at 11.
(Score: 2) by GlennC on Wednesday August 13 2014, @02:47PM
Like many others, I have no desire to find out more than I already know about how some sausages are made.
To be honest, another issue is a lack of ability. That apparently hasn't stopped some people, though.
Sorry folks...the world is bigger and more varied than you want it to be. Deal with it.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 13 2014, @03:40PM
Willful ignorance as a way of living is tantamount to doing the misdeeds yourself.
(Score: 2) by cafebabe on Wednesday August 13 2014, @06:17PM
I would argue that it is worse than doing misdeeds yourself. As Plato said, "One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors."
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(Score: 2) by buswolley on Wednesday August 13 2014, @07:31PM
Oh? If I spent all my time learning everything in the world besides my profession soon I would be kicked out of my profession for not getting shit done.
subicular junctures
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday August 14 2014, @02:09AM
If you persist in a profession just to do shit, maybe that's a good thing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by crAckZ on Wednesday August 13 2014, @02:57PM
FTFA "If you donate £5, you will get access to content like this."
If it is open source then I should get access to it regardless of how much I donate if any at all.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 13 2014, @03:16PM
No. Open source does not mean gratis. It means, however, that as soon as you have it, you may give it to anyone else, without any further payment, which in practice means that Open Source will be available gratis. Nobody stops me to put a Linux kernel image on a web server and allow anyone to download it from there provided he pays me a million dollars. It's just that nobody will pay me a million dollars for that kernel image that he can get for free elsewhere.
(Score: 1) by crAckZ on Sunday August 17 2014, @01:58PM
i am by no means saying "free" but by being:forced: to donate is something altogether different in my opinion,.
(Score: 2, Informative) by cafebabe on Wednesday August 13 2014, @06:26PM
SlashCode is open source and that allows instances to run on intranets or in URL-spaces which require HTTP-Auth. And some instances run with adverts. Would you demand access to every instance of SlashCode without adverts because it is open source? No, because the license allows it.
This is another case where someone wants to develop an open codebase for journalism but wants to run a revenue generating instance of the code. Maybe there is some hyperbole involved but the intentions are more honorable than most.
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