A pilot implementation of PWGD's core principles, given shape (and timing) by the Knight Foundation's News Challenge call for proposals.
Leaders of many more organizations, local and national, are seeking formal organizational support.
In addition, Christopher Grotke and Lise LePage of iBrattleboro.com have expressed an interest advising or assisting the project.
John Schertow, Intercontinental Cry:
For quite some time I've been painfully aware of the lack of community-oriented or otherwise democratic tools online. There are many great sites like indymedia.org, oneworld.net, gloalvoicesonline.org, and moveon.org; all of which have been extremely successful in their respective purposes - but they are also extremely limited in topic coverage, organization, and accessibility.
I'm equally aware that the potential of the interent is still largely untapped. As far as democracy online goes, the best I've seen is the relatively new social bookmarking sites (technortati, digg), but they are more for mainstream and technology-related subject matter. There's really nothing for us.
I think this project answers both of these issues, and in the end will offer an example to other groups of how to utilize, democratize, and organize the internet. Personally I look forward to watching this project develop and seeing how I can help out/contribute.
John Schertow
http://intercontinentalcry.mahost.org
How an all-volunteer organization puts together a grant application.
* What makes this idea unique? * (no more than 350 words)
Inclusiveness, democracy, and convergence make "Community News Of, By, and For People Who Give a Damn" unique.
The goal is community news and information for everyone. We intend the pilot project for the ordinary suburban town of Natick, Massachusetts, where we already have a critical mass – but we could even launch pilots in parallel in New York City and San Francisco. Most exciting is growing into neighboring towns especially next-door Framingham, 'the largest town in America' and used in studies as an excellent cross-section of the United States.
What makes us think we will grow?
Inclusiveness: PWGD Community News will be technologically and organizationally open to everyone. Not only will we solicit news and information from existing sources and newcomers alike, but we will invite everyone to share the editing roles.
How will this work?
Democracy: Existing newspapers, town government, or the guy down the block can recommend stories. People can choose to subscribe to their own mix of stories, by 'editor' and by category. Everyone will also have the opporunity to comment on, criticize, and highlight aspects of the things they are reading. At the same time certain items can be considered so important by the participating community (through a petition and 'jury' vote process) that even people not presently receiving, for instance, Joe's newsletter on lost animals will get his alert about the rampaging elephant.
How will this support itself– and good journalism?
Convergence: PWGD News' model allows for all parties with a public interest, personal, or financial stake to come together for mutual benefit. Not only will PWGD be able to cover its own expenses through modest transaction fees (on local goods and services exchanged through the site, not information), but PWGD can help local reporting and investigative journalism be financially sustainable. Donations or advertising revenues, for instance, could be divided among content providers based on the number of people subscribing to or seeing the content through votes of importance– a method that escapes 'click fraud' and shields specific news sources from sponsors or advertisers trying to influence content.
Who else would want to use it, and why? *
(no more than 150 words)
People, organizations, and businesses in towns and neighborhoods (that may or may not be true communities yet) will use Community News.
People who want to blog about the night life or report on local issues will use this; people who want to get all their local news and information in one place will want to use this. Town governments, civic groups, businesses, religious and other organizations that want to reach their members through a source people will actually read – a person's own newsletter might include the senior center bulletin,
Organizations could further make use of PWGD's collaborative editing and democratic decision-making tools to actually produce their newsletter for members or general news.
A centralized place for community information isn't new, but the open, nonprofit philosophy and the sophisticated technology for enabling everyone to participate in both contributing information and deciding about it's level of distribution will be new.
[ your organization here! ]
[help us out– why, or why not, would you use PWGD News?]
We apologize for the lateness of this grant submission. We hope that the planning, care, and especially the partnerships we have forged proves Community News Of, By, and For People Who Give a Damn to be one for which you've been waiting!
We think the individuals and organizations already working with PWGD on this project are our strongest case for funding. Many of them can be found at http://pwgd.org/community-news-partners
Why are you the best person or organization to develop this project? *
(no more than 350 words)
If quality local journalism is to thrive in the 21st century, it will have to be in a mutually beneficial relationship with myriad other ways to share information locally. This coalition led by People Who Give a Damn is best suited to re-embed journalism in the local exchange of information.
A nonprofit dedicated to democracy is better suited for this task than a for-profit or even a nonprofit dedicated to any specific purpose.
We have an array of technical talent available that amazes us.
But the real challenge is bringing organizations that are just getting by with their current methods of communication and outreach to make the small changes needed to their practices in order for them to participate in a common on-line system.
This is where PWGD and our partners are so uniquely suited to build a vibrant on-line community that reconnects people to their physical community.
Common formats for what comes down to sharing news and information can be achieved on the local level in ways that have yet to be realized by the semantic web, metadata, and microformats. PWGD will be able to bring others to adopt open standards for on-line publishing because we can sit down and talk directly to the decision-makers (a nonprofit's communication director, a concerned citizen with a web site, a local newspaper editor, the town library director).
Our organizational and technical partners for the pilot project include Stephen Cataldo of SpaceShare, MyNatick.org, the Center for Information Awareness, and [your name here!]
Local news and information – increasingly lacking in many communities – will alone connect people to what's going on in their neighborhood (ask your local arts center, trying to compete with the television to fill the place every night), but planned PWGD enhancements such as community ridesharing boards and 'meet other people interested in _____' will explicitly encourage community-building in the real world. Amazing things can happen when most people in an area share a common space for information– especially, PWGD and an ever-increasing number of partners feel, if that space is fundamentally under nonprofit, democratic control.
You need a very clear elevator pitch. How do you get across the idea in fifteen seconds or less? I must admit, I'm not all that clear on what you are proposing.
* What makes this idea unique? *
Inclusiveness, democracy, and convergence aren't really all that unique. Most places at least give lip service to inclusiveness. More and more sites are trying to be more democratic, and convergence is a popular buzzword that everyone strives to attain. I still don't see what makes your site unique.
You talk about inviting people into the writing and editing process. What makes you think you will be successful in bringing people in? Many people simply want a better news source, without having to do any additional work themselves. What will make people want to write or edit for your site? As an aside, this gets to a problem with the title 'people who give a damn'. I suspect it excludes an aweful lot of people. Are there enough people in Natick or Framingham who really do give enough of a damn to work hard to make this successful? If not, how do you broaden the reach, or help get more people to give a damn?
In terms of cost, what does the $250,000 really buy? Your time? Developers time? What are the deliverables? Are there modules that will be developed for Drupal that will provide some sort of new functionality that facilitates inclusive democractic convergent use of Drupal? What would such modules be like?
Then, what happens when the money is gone? How does this become sustainable? Where does money come from after two years?
Notes from Stephen Cataldo:
SpaceShare has been looking to use community building tools for our ridesharing and festival-greening enthusiasts. We break this down into two categories:
1- Community-generated news. We hope for a mix of news generated by our organization, increasingly trusted news from regular participants gaining a reputation, and a place for anyone to post their views for at least a few people to see.
Our members particularly need a sane filtration of news. There are dozens of activist organizations producing the same articles on any giving topic. It is very hard to keep up with the organizations without reading and rereading the same news.
2- Organizing tools. As people are inspired by the news about our issues, we want to help them move into activism, taking on clear commitments. We've found that existing content management systems hint at task management capabilities, but are not yet ready. The technology would make this possible, but it hasn't been a priority in the open source community.
What is the huge budget for?
Two years in the web-world is an age... how do you make sure you don't wind up like ODB (the Organizers Data Base), which was a great idea for 1995
Why should this be grant funded, rather than a for-profit effort? By having grant funding rather than advertisements, we can share (for example, with RSS), helping other organizations use the news we collect for their own community building.
Brainstorm: what is your unique value?
There are many city-site and community forums popping up all over the place, all desiring center-stage, all carving out niches instead -- and in effect, preventing anyone from really getting a broad community site going (that rampaging elephant article will not reach everyone.) All these sites desire eyeballs. What you need is a two-way aggregator, opensourcing the content as well as the code. An individual posting a restaurant review on their own site (where they have their own google ads) can have it broadcast on yours, with links back to their site and their ads. A city-site with a restaurant review guide can pick up all the restaurant reviews and have them on their site, without needing to lose eyeballs to your site. You may have a direct interface as well, but by being nonprofit, you can be very open to people taking data and running.
I would love to see a complex definition of "peer's recommendations" that encourages reading across the political spectrum, possibly even in some kind of loose trade (I'll read some Ayn Rand if you'll read some Chomsky), or "If you like Ursula LeGuinn you'll get angry about this but it will make you think." type recommendations. I get the sense that the for-profit world is inching up on various peer-review issues, but their focus is always to create an inwardly-turned community. Tribe.net is a good example of something that should not get funded, niche-market focused and drawing a lot of similar people to itself, then keeping them there.
* What makes this idea unique? * (no more than 350 words)
Inclusiveness, democracy, and convergence make "Community News Of, By,and For People Wanting Greater Democracy" unique.
The goal is community news and information for everyone. We intend the pilot project for suburban Natick, Massachusetts, where we already have a critical mass – but we also have partners to launch parallel pilots in New York City and San Francisco. Most exciting is growing into neighboring Framingham, used in studies as a one-town representation of the United States.
People Wanting Greater Democracy (PWGD) Community News will be technologically and organizationally open to everyone. Not only will we solicit news and information from both existing sources and newcomers, but we invite everyone to share the editing roles. PWGD News is therefore inclusive of all sources, stories, and viewpoints.
Existing newspapers, town government, or the guy down the block can recommend stories. Readers can choose to subscribe to their own mix of stories, by 'editor' and by category. Everyone will also have the opportunity to criticize, highlight, and comment on aspects of the news content. At the same time certain items can be considered so important by the participating community (through a petition and voting system) that even people not presently receiving a particular topic or editor's news would receive the story voted to be vitally important. In this way, PWGD News is democratic not only in how the news is created, but in deciding what news is important to the community.
PWGD's news model allows for all parties with a public interest, personal, or financial stake to come together for mutual benefit. Not only will PWGD be able to cover its own expenses through modest transaction fees (on local goods and services exchanged through the site, not information), but PWGD can help local reporting and investigative journalism be financially sustainable. Donations or advertising revenues, for instance, could be divided among content providers based on the number of people subscribing to or seeing the content through votes of importance. In these ways, PWGD News will bring together writers, editors, and readers along with buyers, sellers, and investors.
Who else would want to use it, and why? * (no more than 150 words)
People, organizations, and businesses in towns and neighborhoods (that may or may not be true communities yet) will use Community News. This includes, but is not limited to people who want to blog about the night life or report on local issues; people who want to get all their local news and information in one place; town governments, civic groups, businesses, religious and other organizations that want to reach their members through a easily accessible medium; and organizations who could further make use of PWGD's collaborative editing and democratic decision-making tools to produce their newsletter for members or general news.
A centralized place for community information is far from a new concept, but the philosophy is – an open, nonprofit philosophy, combined with the sophisticated technology for enabling everyone to participate in both contributing information and deciding about it's level of distribution is what makes PWGD News radical.
Why are you the best person or organization to develop this project? * (no more than 350 words)
If quality local journalism is to thrive in the 21st century, it will have to be in a mutually beneficial relationship with myriad other ways to share information locally. This coalition led by PWGD is best suited to re-embed journalism in the local exchange of information. A nonprofit organization dedicated to true democracy is better suited for this task than a for-profit or even a nonprofit dedicated to any specific purpose.
We have excellent technical talent available. The real challenge is bringing organizations that are just getting by with their current methods of communication and outreach to make the small changes needed to their practices in order for them to participate in a common on-line system. PWGD and its partners are uniquely suited to build a vibrant on-line community that reconnects people to their physical community.
Common formats for sharing news and information can be achieved on the local level in ways that have yet to be realized by the semantic web, metadata, and microformats. PWGD will be able to adopt open standards for on-line publishing because we can talk face-to-face with the decision-makers, such as a nonprofit's communication director, a concerned citizen with a web site, a local newspaper editor, or the town librarian.
Our organizational and technical partners already include Omni-news.net, SpaceShare.com, MyNatick.org, and the Center for Information Awareness (COAnews.org), ArtForChange, and Amazing Things Arts Center.
Local news and information – increasingly lacking in many communities – connect people to what's going on in their neighborhood, and democratically moderated discussion areas will help people shape it. Planned PWGD enhancements such as community ridesharing boards and 'meet other people interested in...' services will explicitly encourage community-building in the real world. Amazing things can happen when most people in an area share a common space for information– especially, as PWGD and an ever-increasing number of partners feel, if that space is fundamentally under the nonprofit, democratic control of the people, by the people, and for the people.
Responses to the devilish advocacy:
The whole point is to *go to the people who are producing news and information already* and help modify their processes and software - especially if it's open source software - to enable them to effortlessly publish to the PWGD News site at the same time.
On PWGD, their content takes on a second life as it is seen by more people, can be contextualized (used in other ways with other content) by others, or can have ideas or actions associated with it.
fact checks, on both new and traditional sources, can be done by the community. Screeds and flames aren't censored, but will be rated below the threshold display level so most users will never see them.
Different viewpoints won't be isolated in news sources you don't read. And when you do come across a different viewpoint because it was voted important, it will be a little bit harder to dismiss as the view of a single reporter or editor.
The problem with a Digg-style system is that it relies on a relative few, privileged with time and inclination, to read through all the stuff that isn't voted on.
The result isn't a community vote of importance, but heavy users' view of what's interesting.
PWGD will use (possibly in addition) a petition for review process in which one person, or a person with co-sponsors, can propose that an item is important and should be on the front page or e-mailed to everyone.
This is 'time-share democracy' - we can't all decide what we all should see, because then we've all seen it - but we can divide this task among ourselves. A dozen people can make the call for 100 people, a 1,000 people, 10,000 people, a million people. This dozen is not an elite, but a random 'jury' drawn from the users for each quick "send or don't send" decision about how widely a message should be distributed.
There have been studies into democracy done by deliberative panels not of experts, but of citizens drawn from the population at random. Some people feel that this ability for a small number of people to study an issue at depth, without
The Zapatista good government councils similarly refresh from the population regularly.
PWGD News is not going so far as any of this, but it is a small step toward drawing people into participating in democracy.
We propose that one reason people are paying frighteningly little attention to news is because we are given many reasons to believe we can't *change* the news. Why spend time on something very possibly depressing, upsetting, or boring when the dominant message is that you can't change it.
The message may be the same - 'Town to cut library funding, hours' - but the context is different. You know you are able to immediately reach the thousands of other people already affected by this news.
Already associated with that article may be someone's proposal for gathering to discuss, or suggestion for action, with the ability for you to join that group that has a life of its own, rather than the only outlet being comments.
Another person may simply feel it's important to fill in the background of the article, with information on past budgets which may well come from another news article or town information already on the site.
Someone else may point out the access points people have to government to change this decision: town meeting, committee hearing, citizen initiative.
The same newspaper article that in the weekly newpaper might generate a few ineffectual letters to the editor could become a small campaign.
A company newspaper web site won't do this. Just as newspapers hardly ever post 'action meeting Thursday 6 p.m.' notices, even in letters-to-the-editor, so will most newspapers be resistant to hosting other people's agenda on their site.
More people may even subscribe to the paper-- because they know anything they read over their morning coffee will be a living (Some people may prefer the presentation on the newspaper's site to PWGD News, but similarly be more likely to use the paper's site because they know they won't be alone in reacting to the news.)
and seen by thousands more people.
The general goal is to bring most everybody into one communications framework. Even the stuff that does make the newspaper front page probably rarely gets to more than half the population. Very grandiose, but the idea is that if we go to the people who are producing content now-- rather than the typical internet forum case of 'come to me' we can get the ball rolling on what will become a dominant local communication media...
Democratic moderation will mean we can let everybody in, but that the longwinded, frequent poster (such as me) doesn't get his stuff in everybody's face.
Hey, Ben.
I apologize in advance for the pending sarcasm. Please don’t take it personally.
Okay, Ben, the longer you type, the less sense you make. Aldon made good points, but you don’t seem to have addressed any of them.
Also... What, did you get a vocabulary for an early Christmas present? You typed and typed and typed and still said nothing of any substance. For example: “The problem with a Digg-style system is that it relies on a relative few, privileged with time and inclination, to read through all the stuff that isn't voted on. The result isn't a community vote of importance, but heavy users' view of what's interesting.” Basically that means: ‘Most rating systems show popular stories as opposed to informative ones.’ Be concise. You can apologize for wordiness all you like, it still makes you sound like a bibbiling idiot.
And who coined the phrase “time-share democracy?” Who ever it was needs to be called to put down their creation.
Let me see if I’ve gathered the important parts. (I’m going to use a bulleted list, a simple, easy to read way to display just the pertinent information.)
You still need to make a list (note: list, not dissertation) of the things that will cost money and what you expect them to cost. Remember, I said LIST.
You also need to outline how your “jury” will be selected. Detail the process in words of fewer than three syllables. (Or possibly find an eight year old to write it for you.)
And you still haven’t covered how you plan to make this project sustainable. You can’t rely on donations.
Also, how do you plan to get people involved? Are you planning an advertising campaign? Word of mouth? Remember, eight year old. Get a three-line tablet and some of those big crayons if you have to.
Again, I apologize for any sarcasm, it’s not personal. I have a natural aversion to long-winded, wordy, pointless speeches.
Good luck.
-Diane
* There will not be anything resembling a panel of experts deciding what is informative.
* The problem with Digg (and Digg is great in itself) isn't that it is popular stories, but that it is stories popular with an elite user– the heavy Internet/Digg user. (Gordon Fowler suggests there is an additional filter to get to the front page, certainly the process isn't fully transparent, and relies on banning users: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digg)
* With fixed costs of only operating a web site ($60 a month worst case including a service plan), donations could support this once the software is developed. My original draft did talk of advertising revenue but I'm actually de-emphasizing that, since I'd rather avoid it if possible.
But mostly, yeah, I wasted everyone's time with that last e-mail. Sorry about that. Just wanted to get some thoughts down. And that was the refined version of my thought process. All my thoughts start out, on paper, as sentence fragments. I think we ADHD people should have interpreters.
Hi Ben.
PWGD is about keeping everyone in communication with everyone else, so I think the project itself it very much in line with PWGD’s basic goals. The only concern I have is that you haven’t clearly outlined a plan of action. What I mean is, you’re setting up a news access that sounds like exactly the sort of thing we need right now, but there’s no plan in place to “generate passion in solving local problems.” Since that, from our earliest communication on this project, seems to also be the primary goal of PWGD, you might want to clarify how this particular project works toward that. Knowledge sharing is all well and good, and it is definitely what the Knight Grant is all about... Perhaps I’m thinking more long-term than you are at the moment. We have to start somewhere after all.
I rather thought, when you first brought this up, that you largely intended to be nationwide, if not worldwide. While you do have to start with what you can handle and then expand, an idea that will work on a nationwide basis won’t necessarily work in a smaller group. Nationally you would have little trouble finding enough people to support the network, but locally... My home town has 429 people in it. Our version of this network is Mrs. Thompson, who’s the secretary at our City Hall/Firestation/Police Department. Maybe one in ten households have computers and maybe one out of five of those households have someone over the age of twelve who knows how to use it. Out of those, maybe one in three can use something other than AOL-style e-mail accounts.
I don’t know anything about the town you are proposing it for, but to get everyone online would be a ridiculous goal. Even a majority would be near impossible.
Maybe what you need is something offline, to reach out to the people who aren’t a part of the on-line community. Maybe work with the local community center or get articles into the local paper that summarize the highlights of the online community. Something like that, anyway. Something that will reach out to those who don’t or can’t use a computer.
As to the proposal itself, I have a couple of little nit-picky grammatical things to mention. Nothing important, just suggestions.
A centralized place for community information is far from a new concept, but the philosophy is – “ an open, nonprofit philosophy, combined with the sophisticated technology for enabling everyone to participate in both contributing information and deciding about it's level of distribution is what makes PWGD News radical.
You opened quotes here and then used the quote to finish your thought without closing quotes. That made you use the word “philosophy” twice in five words. If the quotes are supposed to close after the word “distribution,” then you need to change “is what” to “which.” If the quotes don’t close after “distribution,” then you need to re-write the whole paragraph.
A full news network, including movie and restaurant reviews, news stories, personal blogs, and all that is a fair idea, but is that really the goal you want to apply yourself to? I mean, those aren’t exactly revolutionary. The lack of censorship is a new angle – new outside of radical conspiracy theorists, that is – but this sounds primarily like a not-for-profit version of CNN.com, which would be novel, but I don’t think that’s the impression you were looking for. Although putting a little more emphasis on how you plan to encourage individual involvement might alter that impression; possibly alter it by a great deal.
If quality local journalism is to thrive in the 21st century, it will have to be in a mutually beneficial relationship with myriad other ways to share information locally. This coalition led by PWGD is best suited to re-embed journalism in the local exchange of information. A nonprofit organization dedicated to true democracy is better suited for this task than a for-profit or even a nonprofit dedicated to any specific purpose.
You should strike the sentence: “This coalition led by PWGD is best suited
to re-embed journalism in the local exchange of information.” It’s unnecessary because it doesn’t provide any explanation. Of course you think you’re organization is best, the Knight Foundation people want to know why. You could also list some sort of example of what ways information is already shared locally and what sort of relationship those ways need to form.
PWGD will be able to adopt open standards for on-line publishing because we can talk face-to-face with the decision-makers, such as a nonprofit's communication director, a concerned citizen with a web site, a local newspaper editor, or the town librarian.
Other people can’t? This is news to me...
Planned PWGD enhancements such as community ridesharing boards and 'meet other people interested in...' services will explicitly encourage community-building in the real world.
Where else would it be, other than the real world? Either add “online” after “enhancements” or scratch the phrase: “in the real world.”
Amazing things can happen when most people in an area share a common space for information “especially, as PWGD and an ever-increasing number of partners feel, if that space is fundamentally under the nonprofit, democratic control of the people, by the people, and for the people.
Skip the word “most.” You don’t want most, you want all, which “people” kind of encompasses on it’s own. Also, I don’t like the phrase “of the people, by the people, and for the people” here. I think it’s wordy, tacky, and kitchy. You also used it already in your opening sentence. It felt okay there, but here it seems forced. However, when I asked a friend her opinion, she thought you were just proving your point, so... Consider that last bit just my opinion.
Anyway, you wanted my opinion and there it is. Hope it helps.
-Diane
Off the top of my head:
* The domain "names" speak to where you're coming from, not where you're going. Because both are confrontational - "you don't give a damn", "news isn't democratic" you will exclude a lot of people - presumably ones you want to participate.
* My opinion is that one of the goals is not so much to explicitly make news democratic but to make the news creation process transparent - and as such the platform should support edited news models coexist with new ones.
* The need for an elevator pitch is important and needs to identify the problem grant solves.
* As for details, I'm not sure these are required in so short a pitch although there should be support for the moneys requested.
Other comments:
* Digg has a two stage filtering process. No questions the activists "prime" the story for the mainstream however it is my impression it is all mainstream once it gets on the "front" page.
Anyway, I'll read the feedback more carefully this evening.
Gordon
I think it's a great idea. Something sort of like digg.com, but where people can actually add content, rather than just vote on journalism already out there.
I'd love to add my support -- moral and otherwise. Community-building is so important in our modern world, where so many people feel that community is sorely lacking. TV-B-Gone, for me, is a community-building project. TV precludes community since it absorbs the watchers' attention, using up precious time that we need to interact positively with others in useful and enjoyable activities. TV-B-Gone gives people the opportunity to choose to do things they enjoy with what precious little time we have available in our lives -- and the more we do what we enjoy, the more the world becomes a better place. I don't have much time to put into writing much now. But I'd like to let you know that if there was a service as you describe in San Francisco, I'd use it, and I'd add content. I know so many people in town who decry the horrible state of the local commercial papers who would love to read content produced by people who give a damn. I know a few who would add content as well, some perhaps on a regular basis. I think this service would be really good for the many non-profit groups in town to write stories about their ongoing struggles and achievements, enabling people to network and share resources. It could also be a great way for people who want to volunteer to find volunteer opportunities with organizations looking for volunteers.
I think what you wrote for the grant proposal is very good.
What is the name of the project? That's something that didn't jump out at me while reading your grant proposal.
One other comment on the grant proposal: It might be good to learn what you can about Knight and who they gave money to in the recent past, and work in the kind of things they're looking for in the language of your proposal. Maybe you have already done this.
Please keep me posted on what's going on. And keep up the cool work!
Cheers,
Mitch.
* Project Title: Many-to-many Community News
* What makes this idea unique? * (no more than 350 words)
Democracy needs many-to-many communication. Without it, our self-government lacks something critical: us. PWGD proposes an information network in which people can 1) see peers' recommendations and make their own and 2) ask the network, represented by a random jury, to send an important item to everyone.
This answers the question of how everyone can have a claim on everyone's attention, how a mass media can be democratic. It also suggests how a democratic, open, and participatory media can be popular. People, after all, are choosing their own editors. They no longer have to choose a whole publication to do so, and the editorial role itself is opened to all. (Our partner Greg Coppola has a prototype at omni-news.net.)
The addition of the jury-voted important information for everyone to receive ensures a baseline common knowledge.
Significantly, this idea encourages full participation, while only requiring minimal participation to be successful. A handful of people stepping up to share editorial roles with established sources will provide a wider range information and interpretations. If everybody writes and recommends, it's even better. Likewise, a dozen people can handle a request for wider distribution to hundreds or hundreds of thousands. The community does not need the impossible time commitment of most users voting on most items to function democratically. If requests prove too numerous, a cosponsor or two could be required, but mostly with a new jury handling each request the work would be shared in tiny pieces by the entire community.
This simple approach lays a foundation of support for building physical community and supporting journalism. Content from diverse news sources will be side by side for people to choose from, and will help people form affinity groups. All this news and information will be in a framework that encourages comment, discussion, telling others, and proposing real actions.
* Who else would want to use it, and why?
People who want to blog about the night life or report on local issues; people who want to get all their local news and information in one place; town governments, civic groups, businesses, religious and other organizations that want to reach their members through a easily accessible medium; and organizations who could further make use of PWGD's collaborative editing and democratic decision-making tools to produce their newsletter for members or general news.
We will build plug-in integration for people publishing with open source software such as Drupal or Wordpress. We will go to sources of news and information (town government, local media, bloggers) and work with them to add this democratic space to their current sources of outreach. People will not have to log into our system to provide content specifically for us. Everything will be designed to make contributing as easy as possible.
Groups that do not even have a way to reach their constituents can use our tools: we hope of course these constituents would choose to follow other sources of information as well, in any case they would receive the important announcements and so join a community of shared knowledge.
Specific people and groups already want to use this idea: http://pwgd.org/community-news-partners
* Why are you the best person or organization to develop this project?
If quality local journalism is to thrive in the 21st century, it will have to be in a mutually beneficial relationship with myriad ways to share information locally. A nonprofit organization dedicated to democracy is better suited for this task than a for-profit or even a nonprofit with any other purpose.
A centralized place for community information is far from a new concept, but the philosophy is – an open, nonprofit philosophy, combined with sophisticated technology for enabling everyone to participate in both contributing information and deciding about it's level of distribution.
Key organizational and technical partners for the Natick pilot project already include Omni-news.net, SpaceShare.com, MyNatick.org, and the Center for Information Awareness (COAnews.org), and the Amazing Things Arts Center.
Excellent technical talent has already signed onto the project. Money is needed to pay these and other developers and to take on the critical challenge of bringing organizations that are just getting by with their current methods of communication and outreach to make the small changes needed to their practices in order for them to participate in a common on-line system. Our open approach, and the evidence of the on-line and physical communities we have already built, show us to be uniquely suited to build a vibrant on-line community that reconnects people to their physical community.
The software for this will be modular and open source. And we will adopt and help others adopt common formats for sharing news and information. Our open source software and open standards will give others' (and our own) future projects new ways to share information and news that we can only imagine now.
* Project Title: Many-to-many Community News
* What makes this idea unique?
Democracy needs many-to-many communication. Without it, our self-government lacks something critical: us. This project proposes an online community in which people can 1) see peers' content recommendations and make their own and 2) ask the community, represented by a random jury, to send important news to everyone.
Local groups and people already trying to spread information will have our help to use us, too. All the while, our project creates a platform on which prominence comes from community-chosen importance.
Full openness, transparency, and easy (even effortless) participation are reasons our project will be a central point of news, discussion, and action, but our moral and practical case to be a common meeting ground rests on the democracy of our methods.
Our approach shows how a democratic media can be popular. People choose their own sources. Meanwhile, the editorial role is opened to all. (Our own Greg Coppola has a prototype at omni-news.net.)
The addition of democratically-voted distribution to everyone ensures a baseline common knowledge of news and information. It is how we can each have a claim to everyone's attention– how a mass media can be democratic.
Our project encourages full participation, but only requires minimal participation to succeed. A handful of people stepping up to editorial roles will provide wider choices of news and views alongside established sources. If everybody writes and recommends, it's even better. Likewise, a dozen people at a time can handle requests for wider distribution to hundreds or hundreds of thousands. With a new jury handling each request the work would be shared in tiny pieces by the entire community.
This simple approach lays a foundation of support for building physical community and supporting journalism. Content from diverse news sources will be side by side for people to choose from, and will help people form affinity groups. All this news and information will be in a framework that encourages comment, discussion, telling others, and proposing real actions.
* Who else would want to use it, and why?
These partners want to use it already: http://pwgd.org/cnp
Many-to-many Community News is intended for everyone, and we have several reasons to more people than those already active in their communities will use it:
We will build plug-in integration for people publishing with open source software such as Drupal or Wordpress. We will go to all sources of news and information (town government, local media, groups, bloggers) and work with them to add this democratic space to their current outreach. People will not have to log into our system to provide content. Everything will be designed to make contributing as easy as possible.
Groups that do not have an on-line presence can use our tools to reach their constituents; their constistuents can in turn draw on and participate in the whole network.
* Why are you the best person or organization to develop this project?
If quality local journalism is to thrive in the 21st century, it will have to be in a mutually beneficial relationship with myriad ways to share information locally. While even competitors like Google and Amazon can have symbiotic relationships, a nonprofit organization dedicated to democracy is best suited to be the keystone in a flourishing ecology of news and information.
A centralized place for community information is far from a new concept, but the philosophy is – an open, nonprofit philosophy, combined with sophisticated technology for enabling everyone to participate in contributing information and choosing the scope of distribution.
Key organizational and technical partners for the Natick pilot project already include Omni-news.net, SpaceShare.com, MyNatick.org, and the Center for Information Awareness (COAnews.org), and the Amazing Things Arts Center.
Excellent technical talent is already working, as volunteers, on the project. Money is needed to pay these and other developers and to take on the critical challenge of bringing organizations that are just getting by with their current methods of communication and outreach to make the small changes needed to their practices in order for them to participate in a common on-line system. Our open approach, and the evidence of the on-line and physical communities we have already built, show us to be uniquely suited to build a vibrant on-line community that reconnects people to their physical community.
The software for this will be modular and open source. Even the two core democratic processes, peer subscriptions and voting on distribution will be separate modules that others can use seprately. And we will adopt and help others adopt common formats for sharing news and information. Our open source software and open standards will give others' (and our own) future projects new ways to share information and news that we can only imagine now.
generate passion in solving local problems
Maybe what you need is something offline, to reach out to the people who aren’t a part of the on-line community. Maybe work with the local community center or get articles into the local paper that summarize the highlights of the online community.
make the news creation process transparent - and as such the platform should support edited news models coexisting with new ones.
people not presently receiving, for instance, Joe's newsletter on lost animals will get his alert about the rampaging elephant.
grow into a national network where people may sign up because they are passionate about an issue, and find they have local allies
to take on the critical challenge of bringing organizations that are just getting by with their current methods of communication and outreach to make the small changes needed to their practices in order for them to participate in a common on-line system.
This simple approach lays a foundation of support for building physical community and supporting journalism.
The community does not need an impossible time commitment of most users voting on most items to function democratically. If requests prove too numerous, a cosponsor or two could be required, but mostly w
And above all: we're going to be doing this anyway. Funding will greatly
Democracy needs many-to-many communication. Without it, our self-government lacks something critical: us. PWGD proposes a network in which people can 1) follow the info recommendations of peers of their choosing, 2) write articles and commentary and make recommendations themselves, and 3) request that an item of information go to everyone in the network, to be decided by a random jury of people in the network.
Democracy needs many-to-many communication. Without it, our self-government lacks something critical: us. PWGD proposes two new, complementary ways to make possible mass communication from everyone and to everyone.
First, involves people in choosing their own editorial filters and in acting as filters for others
Second, items can be petitioned for general distribution. The request will be quickly decided by a random jury of people in the network, so no people have more than their peers.
rotated so that everyone may serve and people do not have weight any more than their peers.
Media - mass communication - controlled by a few is not just anti-democratic, it is itself inimical to democracy. The problem to be solved, in our view, is how a
We see solved is how everyone can have a claim on everyone else's attention.
PWGD Community News will establish many-to-many communication on the local level
unique because while encouraging the maximum participation in contributing to, using, and distributing community information,
The idea of a central meeting
First, we're go out to content producers, from town government to area media to local blogger, or the 'to everyone' important notices.
People do not have to log into our system and provide content just for us.
why us:
We want to *use*
technology developed separately, modularly, dividable
PWGD is an all-volunteer organization and will continue to be so.
open source
Natick is a town of more than 32,000 people including original proponents of this proposal. Natick is also the center of population for Massachusetts.
Framingham has a population of more than 65,000, and is known for being the largest town in New England and for the multi-generational longitudinal Framingham Heart Study.
possible experience watching our decision-making technology in action: my god, they're making every mistake every government has made in history!
* Project Title: Many-to-many Community News
* What makes this idea unique? 2,075 characters
Democracy needs many-to-many communication. Without it, our self-government lacks something critical: us. This project proposes an online community in which people can 1) see peers' content recommendations and make their own and 2) ask the community, represented by a random jury, to send important news to everyone.
Full openness, transparency, and easy (even effortless) participation will help make our project a locus of news, discussion, and action. Our moral and practical claim to be a common meeting ground rests on the democracy of our methods.
And it will actually happen because we're going to get out there and hustle. Starting in Natick (pop. 32,000), we will help groups and active citizens add our tools to their outreach efforts. One by one they'll join a platform on which prominence comes from community-chosen importance.
Our two approaches show first, that democratic media can be popular. People choose their own sources (in a network which, uniquely, opens the editorial role to all). Our Greg Coppola has a beta at omni-news.net.
Second, news that is voted to be disseminated to the whole community shows that we can each have a claim to everyone's attention– a mass media can be democratic. It also ensures a baseline of common knowledge.
Our project encourages participation, but only requires minimal participation to succeed. A handful of people stepping up to editorial roles alongside traditional sources provides wider choices of news and views. If everybody writes and recommends, it's even better. Likewise, a dozen people at a time handle requests for distribution to hundreds or hundreds of thousands. With a new jury handling each request the work is shared in tiny pieces by the entire community.
Content from diverse news sources will be side by side and will help people form affinity groups as they choose sources. All this news and information will be in a framework that encourages comment, discussion, telling others, and proposing real actions.
* Who else would want to use it, and why? 830 characters
These partners want to use it already: pwgd.org/cnp
Many-to-many Community News is intended for everyone. It will reach beyond our base of people already active in their communities for several reasons:
We will go to all sources of news and information (town government, local media, groups, bloggers) and work with them to add this democratic space to their current outreach. They won't have to log into our system to provide content.
Groups that do not have an on-line presence will use our tools to reach their constituents; their constituents can in turn draw on and participate in the whole network.
We will be turnkey free web and e-mail publishing for anyone, especially anyone who cares about any local issue and wants to be instantly plugged into a larger network.
* Why are you the best person or organization to develop this project? 2,075 characters
If quality local journalism is to thrive in the 21st century, it will have to be in a mutually beneficial relationship with myriad ways to share information locally. While even competitors like Google and Amazon can have symbiotic relationships, a nonprofit organization dedicated to democracy is best suited to be the keystone in a flourishing ecology of news and information.
If we accept advertising or add local trade, revenue would be shared with content providers. More important, our project gives a second life to news stories as a basis for community self-organization.
A centralized place for community information is far from a new concept, but the philosophy is – an open, nonprofit philosophy, combined with sophisticated technology for enabling everyone contribute information and choose the scope of distribution.
Natick pilot project team members already include Omni-news.net, SpaceShare.com (ridesharing), MyNatick.org, COA News, and the Amazing Things Arts Center.
Software developed will be open source - part of an evolving world-class CMS. The two core democratic processes, peer subscriptions and voting on distribution, will be separate modules, which could especially be used by large membership groups. A module to prevent overlapping subscriptions from duplicating content will be a third major contribution.
We will adopt and help others adopt common formats for sharing news and information. Open standards will let future projects share news in ways that we can only imagine now.
Excellent technical volunteers are already working. We are going to do this. We ask Knight to select any piece of the software and fund that, if the entire project including outreach cannot be funded.
Our team members have built online and physical communities independently. Together we will build an open, vibrant online community that connects people to their, and our, physical communities.
Pilot Project: Many-to-Many Community News (initially for Natick, a town of 32,000 at the center of population for Massachusetts)
$200,000
2 year(s)
Democracy needs many-to-many communication. Without it, our self-government lacks something critical: us. This project proposes an online community in which people can 1) see peers' content recommendations and make their own and 2) ask the community, represented by a random jury, to send important news to everyone.
Full openness, transparency, and easy (even effortless) participation will help make our project a locus of news, discussion, and action. Our moral and practical claim to be a common meeting ground rests on the democracy of our methods.
And it will actually happen because we're going to get out there and hustle. Starting in Natick, we will help groups and active citizens, one by one, add our tools to their outreach efforts. They'll join a platform on which prominence comes from community-chosen importance.
We will show, first, a democratic media can be popular. People choose their own sources (in a network which, uniquely, opens the editorial role to all). Our Greg Coppola has a beta at omni-news.net.
Second, a mass media can be democratic. Voting on news to be disseminated to the whole community shows how we can all have a claim to everyone's attention. It also ensures a baseline of common experience.
Our project encourages participation, but requires only minimal participation to succeed. A handful of people stepping up to editorial roles alongside traditional sources provides wider choices of news and views. If everybody writes and recommends, it's even better. Likewise, a dozen people at a time handle requests for distribution to hundreds or hundreds of thousands. With a new jury handling each request the work is shared in tiny pieces by the entire community.
New from diverse sources will be side by side and will help people form affinity groups as they choose sources. Everyone receives news voted important (rampaging elephant) even if not subscribed to the source (lost pet news). All this news and info will be in a framework that encourages comment, discussion, telling others, and proposing real actions.
These partners want to use it already: pwgd.org/cnp
Many-to-many Community News is intended for everyone. It will reach beyond our base of people active in their communities for several reasons:
We will be free web and e-mail publishing for anyone, especially anyone who cares about any local issue and wants to be instantly plugged into a larger network.
If quality local journalism is to thrive in the 21st century, it will have to be in a mutually beneficial relationship with myriad ways to share information locally. While even competitors like Google and Amazon can have symbiotic relationships, a nonprofit organization dedicated to democracy is best suited to be the keystone in a flourishing ecology of news and information.
If we accept advertising or add local trade, revenue would be shared with content providers. More important, our project gives a second life to news stories as a basis for community self-organization.
A centralized place for community information is far from a new concept, but the philosophy is – an open, nonprofit philosophy, combined with sophisticated technology for enabling everyone contribute information and choose the scope of distribution.
Natick pilot project team members already include Omni-news.net, SpaceShare.com (ridesharing), MyNatick.org, COA News, and the Amazing Things Arts Center. More: pwgd.org/cnp
Software developed will be open source - part of an evolving world-class CMS, Drupal. The two core democratic processes, peer subscriptions and voting on distribution, will be separate modules, which could especially be used by large membership groups. A module to prevent overlapping subscriptions from duplicating content will be a third major contribution.
We will adopt and help others adopt common formats for sharing news and information. Open standards will let future projects share news in ways that we can only imagine now.
Excellent technical volunteers are already working. We are going to do this, and more. How quickly is up to you. We ask Knight to select any piece of the software and fund that, if the entire project including outreach cannot be funded.
Our team members have built online and physical communities independently. Together we will build an open, vibrant online community that connects people to each other, shared goals, and courses of collective action in geographic communities.
[Links and emphasis were not captured by NewsChallenge web form.]
The Community News Project in real items of news and information from Natick, Massachusetts. This is nothing near the quantity of posts the project would have if funded, but these posts are important.
I am thankful to be living in a country with free speech. But I do not forget the one or two billion people in the world who live in poverty and cannot even dream of free speech. Though I appreciate my freedoms and comfort here in America, it does does not mean I am blind to her flaws. I cannot fully enjoy my freedom and comfort knowing that my government’s action is contributing to the world’s suffering.
My father and my brother were in the military – one in a good war, the other a bad war. I saw my father’s pride in having fought the Nazi’s and my brother’s disillusionment with Vietnam. They taught me that freedom is precious, that it did not come cheaply, that we make mistakes, and that freedom will not survive without constant vigilance.
I was against this war from the beginning: I have done everything from signing petitions, organizing public conversations, and working to get good candidates elected to public office. I have cried from grief and raged with anger, but knowing that violence begets violence, I have tried to act in a peaceful lawful way, and to respect those who feel differently about this war. Until the evening of Jan. 10th.
I thought of the soldiers we’ve sent into the hell of war and the innocent victims of our invasion who are waiting for America to stop the madness and I saw this administration disregard the will of its own citizens and try to provoke a new war. When I hear a co-worker say “I can’t do anything to end this war”, I want to ask her, “Who do you think started the revolution for independence from King George, who fought for her right to vote, who fought for the 5 day work week, who ended segregation in this country?” They were ordinary Americans who spoke up, sometimes breaking laws, getting arrested, beaten or killed, then more people joined them, and eventually their radical ideas became popularly accepted fact. If we can’t end this war, who can?
As taxpayers, we have a right to ask some questions. Have we been able to take care of our own under this budget? Will we be able to take care of the veterans when they return home? Judge Singer, I imagine you could think of ways to spend some of the 10 billion* that Massachusetts has contributed toward this war - perhaps to fund day care and early intervention programs, treatment and rehabilitation centers? Will our war on terrorism succeed in ridding the world of people who hate us? We know it will take compassion and understanding. And what will be left of our society here at home?
I cannot know, with absolute certainty, that I am right. History and hindsight will answer that question better than those of us here now. But it cannot be said that I was silent, when I thought I saw evil. I am sorry to have had to take this courts time, but I hope, in some small way, that in the long run, it will help us all. I thank you, I plead no contest and I accept the court’s decision on my sentence. Stop this war and bring them home.
Good afternoon, Judge Singer. My name is Judy Rich. Four years ago, I stood before you, in this same courtroom, having done a similar action of nonviolent civil disobedience at the U.S. Army Natick Labs. That action and my more recent arrest in Sherborn were both protests against our government’s illegal and immoral invasion and occupation of Iraq. At that time, I told you that I had an obligation to follow my conscience and speak out when wrong is being done. It’s hard to believe that four years later the war continues, with consequences more dire that we could even imagine at that time. The war was wrong then and it is still wrong. Today Iraq is a failed state, with ever expanding sectarian violence. We read about 655,000 Iraqis dead, a million refugees, a crumbled infrastructure, massive unemployment and view scenes of utter chaos. We call the other side terrorists. We need to remember that war and terror are not opposites; they are interchangeable. It’s a myth that U.S. war actions are not also seen as terrorism by others. My heart breaks over every American soldier who has been killed. The number of dead is now at 3,154. I know first hand what it is like for a parent to lose a child. Twenty-two years ago, my 19 year-old daughter died in a car accident and our family experienced the shock and terrible loss that so many families are experiencing as a result of this war. Another 23,000 men and woman have been wounded in combat, many seriously maimed for the rest of their lives. Other soldiers return emotionally damaged by what they have experienced. Peace will not come to Iraq through military force. War just brings more conflict, death and destruction. The road to peace IS peace. As one of the regional coordinators for Pax Christi USA, the national Catholic peace movement, I am active in promoting nonviolence and peace education. Pax Christi rejects every form of war and domination, and works toward a more peaceful, just and sustainable world. Currently, Pax Christi is circulating a petition that demands “all U.S. troops and military bases be removed from Iraq and that U.S. military spending be redirected to relief and reconstruction efforts overseen by Iraqis.” There are many ways to solve conflicts that are nonviolent. On the evening of Jan. 10, a group of us held a Peace Chain across Rt. 27, because we wanted to speak out against the increase in troops that President Bush was at that very moment announcing to the American people. Our message is end the war and bring our troops home. Thank you for listening and giving me the time to make public my reasons for being arrested. I plead no contest to the charges. Court Statement Judy Rich Natick, MA Feb. 27, 2007