This
might make you go hmmm. Google and Amazon merge. Bloggers
force the New York Times to fold. News essentially writes itself.
ZDNet's David Berlind
poses an ever present question in journalism today: What role can
and should technology play in contributing to transparency--full
disclosure--in the media? Berlind is actually experimenting with
new mediums like podcasting to demonstrate how journalists can build
new "channels of transparency."
By providing the uncensored, unedited raw data used to assemble a
news story, opinion piece, or blog entry, the problems of misquoting,
quote truncation, placing quotes out of order to arrive at an
unintended meaning, quoting out of context, or manipulating interviews
in the interests of a particular agenda could go away.
How? Well check out his efforts in this opinion piece,
Why Blogging Matters to Your Business and Your IT.
He actually relies on quotes from UserLand Software's CEO Scott Young
from a recorded interview and then podcasts the uncensored and unedited
recording. He even includes in-line time-codes in the text
allowing readers to fast forward to the exact location of the quote in
the audio file.
This is a great experiment in transparency initiated by a
journalist who understands the potential for new technologies to
enhance the media consumption experience. I'm eager to see what
else unfolds over there at ZDNet, and beyond, spurred on by
Berlind. His final thought is golden:
I hope other journalists [this applies to much more than
just journalists] take what I've done into consideration and expand on
the idea. In the name of integrity, we won't know the answers
until we start trying some solutions.