Sunlight Foundation

Personal Democracy Forum: We.gov

Personal Democracy Forum kicks off Monday in New York. This will be PDF’s sixth event, with this year's theme being "We.gov,” as in all the ways that we, the people are using technology and new media to transform politics, campaigns, media, governance and civic action. This is one conference I never miss willingly (I think I've only missed one!) and I'm honestly not that much of a conference-goer. I think of it as my annual "brain food." I can't wait.

A “two-day tech + politics brainfest” is how Tim O’Reilly described PDF last week.  PDF will be tracking the state-of-the-art online politics, exploring government 2.0., looking at the new tools for organizing that are being used, as well as looking at the future of political journalism, blogging and networked media.

I’m excited to see old and new friends, many who are keynote speakers. A radically truncated list includes emerging technology expert (and Sunlight board member) Esther Dyson; senior fellow at Demos and PDF senior editor Allison Fine; now-former Washington Post “White House Watch” blogger Dan Froomkin (Dan posted his last earlier today…A must read!); New York State Senate CIO Andrew Hoppin (I blogged about him earlier today); journalism prof and Buzzmachine.com blogger Jeff Jarvis; Obama administration CIO Vivek Kundra; Craigslist founder (and Sunlight board member) Craig Newmark; law professor Beth Noveck; “Here Comes Everybody” author Clay Shirky; campaign re-inventor Joe Trippi and “The Cluetrain Manifesto” co-author and blogger David Weinberger. Really there are too many good people coming and speaking to mention

Congratulations, in advance to Andrew Rasiej and Micah Sifry, PDF’s co-founders, and Sunlight’s senior technology advisors. It’s going to be a very exciting couple of days.

Maybe you can join at the last minute.

The Internet As the First Amendment

Jeff Jarvis has an excellent post today about the Internet As the First Amendment.

He says:

The internet is the First Amendment brought to life. Our First Amendment argues that it is both undesirable and impossible to contain speech and the marketplace of ideas. The internet enforces that idea. You simply can't contain speech on it. Oh, governments will try. And those who favor rule by the offended will try to make them. And companies have become accomplices to regimes' crimes against speech by handing over speakers' identities (see Yahoo in China and Google in India). These are, of course, the areas where anonymity has its place (the ethic of identity in these cases is protecting the identity of speakers).
So we can treat the First Amendment and the moral of speech as exceptionalism, because it has been. Or we can recognize that the internet offers the openness of speech to anyone anywhere, though not without risk, and we who have this privilege can make it our mission to educate others about the inevitability and benefits of free speech.
Bravo.

Regrets

Thank goodness this is not a post about the World Series.

Jeff Jarvis highlights Craig Silverman's blog Regret the Error and his book by the same title which chronicles mistakes by journalists.  Jeff makes the point that in the world of Web 2.0, journalists can't hide from their mistakes, and they should rush to admit and correct the regrettable yet inevitable errors. 

Well said, Jeff. Imagine if the concept were applied more widely.

I think I'd like to make a banner of these two sentences: "In the end, this is about instilling an ethic of transparency -- even about our fallibility and foibles -- in journalism, professional and amateur. It is about being unafraid to speak in our imperfect human voice instead of hiding behind the cold, castle walls of the institution." I'd hang that banner across the Capitol dome in Washington.

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Washington Meets Facebook

Facebook is holding a seminar here in Washington, next Tuesday to teach politicians and other government types how to use the social web. We at the Sunlight Foundation say "Bravo!" The new Web's benefits to elected officials of every stripe are pretty obvious, allowing government officials to communicate directly with their constituents, bypassing both internal and news-based editorial control. What is equally apparent is how the Web encourages openness, accountability and transparency and how Facebook has become a place to be for presidential candidates.

The organizers promise a lively seminar about how social media can be an integral part of any campaign and constituent strategy. In an effort to accommodate schedules and keep the sessions smaller, Facebook has scheduled two sessions on October 9, one in the morning and the other in the afternoon.

Hat Tip Jeff Jarvis.


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Networked Journalism Summit

I'd like to give a shout-out to Jeff Jarvis, who announced the first Networked Journalism Summit to be held on October 10 in New York. The Summit will take place at the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism and is funded by the MacArthur Foundation. Networked Journalism is really one of the most exciting new developments in journalism, a way of professionals and amateurs working together to get the real story, all uniquely possible because of the Internet.

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Reporting Innovations

One day I am going to have to actually meet Howard Weaver. He's been on the edge of my life for years now -- he was money and politics database expert Larry Makinson's editor at the Anchorage Daily News in the early- 80's. Weaver is clearly an insightful guy for an MSM editor. Makinson was working with graphs and charts back then to display the relative influence of political donors in Alaska. (Maybe if Makinson and Weaver hadn't left that paper someone would have followed up on their initial leads. Veco was the top political donor there in 1984.) Weaver encouraged Makinson to create the first Open Secrets (for Alaska) and they teamed up together for the second edition. (BTW The Anchorage Daily News won two Pulitzer Prizes for Public Service while Howard was editor there. Makinson went on to give his talents to the Center for Responsive Politics for many years.)


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