Open-Source Journalism

Fourteenth in the News Commons series.

Craig Burton’s view of the open source ecosystem.

The main work of journalism is producing stories.

Questions following that statement might begin with prepositions: on what, of what, about what. But the preposition that matters most is with what.

Ideally, that would be with facts. Of course, facts aren’t always available in the pure form that researchers call data. Instead, we typically have reports, accounts, sightings, observations, memories, and other fuzzy coatings or substitutes for facts.

Craig Burton used to say that he discounted first-hand reports by 50% and withheld trust in second- and third-hand reports completely. In some cases, he didn’t even trust his memory, because he knew (and loved) everyone’s fallibility, including his own.

But still, we need facts, in whatever form. And those come from what we call sources. Those can be anybody or anything.

Let’s look at anything, and into the subset in archives that are not going away.

How much of that is produced by news organizations? And how much of what’s archived is just what is published?

I ask for two reasons.

One is because in this series I have made a strong case, over and over, for archiving everything possible that might be relevant in future news reporting and scholarship.

The other is because I have piles of unpublished source material that informed my writing in Linux Journal. This material is in the following forms:

Text files on this laptop and on various connected and disconnected drivesSound recordings on—Cassette tapesMicrocassette tapesSony MiniDisc disks.mp3, ogg, and other digital files, mostly on external drivesVideo recordings on—Hi-8 tapesMini-DV tapes

And I’m not sure what to do with them. Yet.

Open-sourcing them will take a lot of time and work. But they cover the 24 years I wrote for Linux Journal, and matter to the history of Linux and the open source movement (or movements, since there were many, including the original free software movement).

Suggestions welcome.

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Published on September 24, 2024 12:39
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