I believe in citizen journalism for the same reason I believe in the solo developer.
Satoshi showed what one person can do. So did Snowden.
In 2013, Snowden needed the help of the (courageous) @ggreenwald, but the next Snowden could go full stack. Do the whole thing themselves.https://twitter.com/lessin/status/1281607900012535808 …
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Here's another impressive example from earlier this year. It may be wrong, but it's the best writeup on the topic, and didn't appear in any mainstream outlet. Open source, free, transparent, pseudonymous, likely by individuals or a small group. https://project-evidence.github.io pic.twitter.com/SWGj6qEWOZ
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balajis.com Retweeted sam lessin
I agree with some of
@lessin's points, esp on lower cost of punditry. However, if it's possible to be a freelance journalist, it's certainly possible to be a citizen journalist. The only difference is whether you need to be a "member of the community".https://twitter.com/lessin/status/1281627304947404801 …balajis.com added,
sam lessin @lessin6/ The challenge today is that with distribution costs at zero, punditry is nearly free to produce end-to-end but real information / journalism is still v expensive. This creates huge business pressure towards more high-margin punditry and less journalism / fact finding.Show this thread6 replies 2 retweets 41 likesShow this thread -
If it's possible to write the Great American Novel on your laptop, if it's possible to build a billion dollar startup in your dorm room, it's absolutely possible to break the story of the year as a citizen without any access to traditional institutions. http://archive.is/bgW6c pic.twitter.com/zJj3vw1tfA
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Replying to @balajis
So the great American novel is content.. yes you can do it alone. No one ‘builds’ a billion dollar startup alone, they ‘start’ things that grow into billion dollar companies with the work of large communities of employees or contributors
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Replying to @lessin
Well, as one example Minecraft was a solo operation for a long time and (I believe) valued near a billion. But to core point: I disagree that the defining line for what is “journalism” is high production values. Today it is more like “produced by recognized community members”.
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If the issue was simply cost of producing useful information, there are 1000 ways to bring that down. Eg pipeline to keep Google Maps annotations up to date. It’s more like “citizen journalism is journalism w/o license from institutions”. IMO that gets to core issue.
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It’s not just the cost of producing useful information. It’s that there are people or entities that are willing spend to exorbitant amounts of resources to make sure the public doesn’t have certain kinds of information.
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Famously, the president’s tax returns or that the NYT had to sue the CDC to get the data for a story this week about the demographic makeup of COVID deaths and cases.
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