Center for Citizen Media

Wikinews, the sister citizen journalism project of Wikipedia, has started an, “Interview of the Month,” which hosts original online chats with “people involved with current events.” This month, the interview comes via Brazil (January 11, Wednesday, at 15:00 UTC, 13:00 local time in Brasília):

Ricardo Serran Lobo is a Brazilian blogger who began writing about his famous neighbor: the politician Roberto Jefferson, head of the Brazilian Labor Party in the Brazilian Congress of Deputies. Jefferson has become a major figure in the ongoing Brazilian mensalão scandal revolving around corruption and bribery.

Vizinho do Jefferson [1] quickly became very popular among Brazilians, describing the routine of Jefferson, while providing information about politics and fresh news about the scandal. Lobo’s blog got third place in the Best Of Blogs contest run by Deutsche Welle International.

All interviews happen in the #Wikinews channel on the Freenode IRC server. If that’s gibberish to you, just click here to chat via the Web. See the main page for more details or to post questions and issues.

Wikinews contributor Amgine described the interviews as a way to, “enhance cross-language collaboration among the wikis to produce original reporting.”

“It’s also designed to allow outsiders (bloggers) to have the opportunity to participate in interviews with (we hope) newsmakers who might not otherwise be available to them. In short, the citizen journalist/bloggers equivalent of the press club.”

While Wikinews has had its share of criticism, this is one area that shows tremendous promise as a virtual and global meeting place for thoughtful journalistic discussion. Even when it’s not holding an interview, the IRC channel is a great place for citizen journalists to gather.

Andrew Lih is assistant professor of journalism at the University of Hong Kong.

It’s here.
Yay.

I want to point out Blog Safer: the anoniblog wiki, which is helping people learn how to disguise their tracks. I don’t generally approve of this, but there are circumstances — such as when telling the truth in public is dangerous to one’s life — when it’s essential. As the site says:

Across the globe, countries that discourage free speech have followed their citizens into the blogosphere. According to one count, in the last two years at least 30 bloggers (and there are no doubt more) have been interrogated, arrested, tortured and sentenced to long prison terms for the “crime” of speaking critically about their governments. Regardless of your culture, your country, your politics or religion, we believe you deserve to speak your mind without falling afoul of state power. Unfortunately, what you deserve and what you get are not always the same thing. So, for those of you who wish to speak out on your blogs, but who do not wish to risk imprisonment or worse for doing so, we have prepared guides that will help you to blog more safely by blogging more anonymously.

Michelle Malkin and a bunch of other right-wing folks are in Washington for a “blogger forum” courtesy of the Republican National Committee. She says:

The morning session will feature RNC head Ken Mehlman, briefings from RNC senior staff on races, polling, and blogs, plus live-blogging of Judge Alito’s opening statement. The afternoon session will be led by White House senior staff and will conclude with a Q&A hosted by Fred Barnes, who is coming out with a new book on President Bush. The RNC is providing bloggers with an Internet connection and brown bag lunch. Nothing more and nothing expected in return.

Meanwhile, Powerline’s Scott Johnson is also there:

at the invitation of the Senate Republican Conference to report on the Alito confirmation hearings today and tomorrow. I’ll be at the hearings this morning and hope to meet up with Senators Cornyn and Kyl, who are scheduled to speak with the other bloggers attending the hearings today.

Sounds like the Republicans are pulling out all the stops to get Alito confirmed, and bloggers are part of the mix.

If any bloggers are having their expenses paid — or receiving actual pay — but not disclosing it, then I’d have a problem with it. Otherwise, despite the fact that this is more of a Hallelujah Chorus than journalism, it’s an example of the opinion machine at work.

UPDATED

CNET: Create an e-annoyance, go to jail. Annoying someone via the Internet is now a federal crime. It’s no joke. Last Thursday, President Bush signed into law a prohibition on posting annoying Web messages or sending annoying e-mail messages without disclosing your true identity.

Update: Daniel Solove makes a strong case that CNET has this dead wrong.

TechCrunch: Toshiba to Push Blog Reviews to Mobile Shoppers. There is a report that Toshiba is developing software that will allow people to take a picture of the bar code label of many products, send it to a related service and quickly receive back information related to the product. The data the service returns? From blogs. Yep, Toshiba will send back summary information on how many blogs gave the product positive and negative reviews. Related product information will also be displayed.

This fits into the category of “every object can tell a story.” But it’s hardly a new idea — remember the infamous CueCat project — and it doesn’t sound all that difficult in any event.

Consider what Marc Smith at Microsoft Research was doing more than three years ago as part of their ongoing “Aura” project. As I recounted in my book:

Using what is essentially off-the-shelf technology, he’s equipped a handheld computer with a wireless Internet connection and a bar-code scanner that he uses to scan products in stores. His computer then connects to a server that collects data from Google and other sources, and shows him the results on the handheld screen.

Suddenly, far more than the price is available. Data about the product, and its maker, is available in a far wider information ecosystem. Was a shirt made by slave labor? Did the can of processed food come from a company with a record of poisoning streams in its factories’ backyards? Did the company have a reputation for being good to employees and the environment? Smith likes to show a supermarket scan he once did of a cereal box. The top item in Google reveals that the maker had at one point recalled the product because a significant ingredient wasn’t on the label. That might be interesting information to someone hyper-allergic to that ingredient. If every object can tell a story, Smith said, “One of the more profound stories is ‘If you eat me I will kill you.’”

Today, the top items in any Google search may well include blog items. But to limit the search to blogs is, I think, making the universe too narrow.

Nonetheless, Toshiba’s move is interesting. If a consumer products company is learning to treat consumers more as customers — being somewhat more transparent in helping customers learn more about the products — that’s worthwhile.

Shayne Bowman and Chris Willis: The Future Is Here, But Do News Media Companies See It? But the greater threat to the longevity of established news media might not be a future that’s already arrived; it might be their inability to do anything about it. Bureaucratic inertia, hierarchical organizational structure and a legacy mentality have paralyzed many news organizations from developing a meaningful strategy in this dynamic information age.

I’m slightly more optimistic; the media organizations I’ve visited are acutely aware that huge change is coming, and that they can’t avoid major disruptions. Like the authors of this report, I argue that they have no alternative but to adopt citizen media, to make it an integral part of the business. I suspect this will happen more quickly than many of us might expect.

Bertrand Pecquerie, at the Editors Weblog, says there are four kinds of citizen journalists.

One of America’s top law firms, WilmerHale, is handling the Center for Citizen Media’s legal affairs on a pro bono basis. WilmerHale is the result of the 2004 merger of Boston-based Hale and Dorr and Washington-based Wilmer Cutler Pickering.

The firm has a long record in public policy, among many other areas of expertise. Students of American history will recall the famous words of Hale and Dorr’s Joseph Welch, who in the 1954 “Army-McCarthy Hearings” challenged Sen. Joe McCarthy: “Have you no sense of decency sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?”

We’re grateful for the firm’s support.

Reporters Without Borders, an organization that wants to protect and encourage free speech around the world, asks a big question: “Do Internet companies need to be regulated to ensure they respect free expression?”

There’s a surface appeal to this proposal. But it gives me the shivers. The idea is impractical, for one thing. And if we ask for regulation of speech — even under the principle of protecting it — we may be inviting the wrong kind of interference later on.

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