creative identities

Jay Rosen on Open Source Journalism, Or 'My Readers Know More Than I Do.'"

The audience always knew more, but it didn't have a network for pulling its scattered self together. An atomized public needed the journalist to know for it. That's how we got a professionalized press. Now [Dan] Gillmor says his readers know more than he does. Open Source journalism builds on that insight-- which is foundational.

Jay gives a great overview of the ongoing emergence of community journalism "hubs" such as Slashdot, OhMyNews and generic community-blogs. It's clear that such structured communities are already adding great value to the social web in combining symbiotically with the primarily individual-centred Blogosphere.

Yet how much greater still will the combined value of individual and community-focused approaches to online publishing become when persistent digital identity networks start to allow individuals and groups to effortlessly syndicate their writing to each others' websites through mutual consent? In effect, this will allow users to participate in both their individual space (or "blog") and multiple open and ring-fenced community spaces simultaneously.

In other words, you could write a blog post, a blog comment, a wiki page, a Slashdot article, a review on a film (ahem—"movie" in American parlance) review site, post a photo on Flickr and so on, and have all those pieces of creative work seamlessly participate in your individual identity (appearing on your personal website and searchable on your name across the network) and the identity of the communities of the sites where that writing is (additionally) showcased. Truly multidimensional community, creative expression and digital identity—wouldn't that be fabulous?