Steps towards a Revolutionary News Service with an active audience of millions

[Ben Seattle]

Hi folks,

Many years ago I came to the conclusion that the central task that will unite revolutionary activists will be the creation of a revolutionary news service that will offer comprehensive news, analysis and discussion from the perspective of the material interest of the working class. This news service will be open to contributions from all progressive trends (and from ordinary people) and will also provide a platform for the struggle of trends. This news service will make use of both paper and digital forms of communication but it will be the digital backbone of this service that will eventually extend its reach to many millions of people on a daily basis who will rate, filter and discuss articles from a wide range of sources.

I created a more detailed proposal for how this might get started at: http://NewsRefinery.com/ .

http://newsrefinery.com/images/refinery_animated.gif http://newsrefinery.com/images/news_to_theory.gif

Drace sent me a private message asking about the purpose of that site. I am creating this thread as a place for discussion of practical steps that might help such a project gain attention and support.

First, I should make clear that such a project is a very large one and is far beyond my ability to get started by myself. What I have tried to do--is to develop interest in the basic idea and the principles that would guide the project and, eventually, give it an audience of many millions. I have also worked on various smaller projects that might provide experience and insight that will be useful for the eventual development of such a comprehensive news service.

I believe that revolutionary and progressive activists will inevitably create a project more or less similar to what I have described. I believe this because such a project represents, so to speak, the low-hanging fruit that would be relatively easy for a movement to create. The emerging revolution in communications is opening up all kinds of possibilities for revolutionary activists. A news service such as this could be the central project that ties together the efforts of a large number of activist circles.

The most important step in the direction of such a project would probably be the development of a core group of activists who understood the importance and value of such a project and the principles that must guide it. If I can help such a group of activists to come together, I would be doing very well.

So, Drace, have I answered your question about the purpose of the NewsRefinery site? What do you think of my proposal? Has my description or reasoning been clear at all?

-- Ben

[Drace]

I am still confused a bit on just what the site will be.
At first I thought it was simply a site that gave news that are of interest to the revolutionary left.
Something like http://libcom.org/..but apparently not?

But it seems you have something else in mind. Can you explain more please?

And I don't see how you will establish an active audience of millions. If everyone on Revleft joined you'd still only have less than 20,000 people.

[Ben Seattle]

Hi Drace,

The intent of the site is not just "revolutionary news", nor just news of interest to revolutionary activists. Rather, it would be eventually be a comprehensive news site--with summaries of articles from the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal and the Economist magazine as well as the left-wing newspapers and blogs.

These summaries would go into a common database. Politial groups and individuals would be able to add their articles to the database.

What would determine which articles showed up on the main page when you went to the web site?

Each article would get rated for relevance by readers and reviewers. And as a reader, you would be able to choose which filter or rating service you feel most comfortable with and trust.

For example, I find, on average, at least one or two articles in the New York times worth knowing about each day. Similarly, there are one or two articles in Counterpunch that are worth looking at. With such a news service--I would not need to look at the NYT or the Economist or Counterpunch so often--because the most relevant articles would be summarized on the news service. Similarly for the Kasama site (a blog created by refugees from the RCP). I could find good, clear summaries of some of the articles and discussion threads without having to wade through so much long-winded crap.

I discussed this a bit in a comment on Q's blog at: http://www.revleft.com/vb/blog.php?bt=1788

Yes, we would intelligent, experienced people to make summaries and rate articles and summaries. Our movement has many such activists. A project such as this could help them work together.

In any event, this is not at all what I find when I go to libcom.org. Currently, for example, I am interested in news about Pakistan. There is nothing on the front page of libcom about Pakistan. Ditto for most other topics. It is just a small collection of articles by a few authors--not a summary of the most interesting and relevant articles from both mainstream and leftist sources.

Also--I have no ability to contribute my article to libcom (unless I contact the folks there and they like me). The news service needs to be open to contributions from all sources.

Put another way--what we need to do--is compete with the mainstream news in a way roughly analogous to the way the Linux operating system competes with Windows. Why can't we summarize and rate the most relevant articles from a dozens of mainstream and leftist sources? Why can't we do a better job of allowing readers to find the most interesting articles (and the most interesting comments on those articles)? One of the keys here is what is called collaborative filtering. You can look at those articles rated as relevant by that subset of readers who have made rating decisions that are similar to your own. So, for example, if you vote for a particular article and I have voted for the same article--then, in the future, I will be more likely to see other articles for which you voted.

Am I doing better at answering your question?

-- Ben

[Drace]

Seems like an interesting project, and tough one indeed.

So as I understand it, a site that will allow users to post and summarize important news articles and allow users to comment and rate them.
The idea doesn't seem very unique from Digg (http://digg.com/) or Reddit (http://www.reddit.com/)except that it is more restricted to news.

[Ben Seattle]

Consider the matter from the perspective of a reader who wants to understand what is going on in the world that is important.

Yes, some people find it interesting to dig thru lists of stuff that other people found interesting.

But that is not meaningful news. If you go to http://NYTimes.com you do not see a random list of tidbits. You find comprehensive news on all major topics. It is sorted for you. You can easily find out the major stories on most topics. There are categories: Business, Technology, Politics, Culture, World, U.S., Local, etc.

That is not true with Digg or Reddit. The tidbits there are rated by everyone and I can only see what is rated highly by people who (on average) understand very little about the class struggle or the nature of our society or what moves things forward. What I want is to find only the items that have been rated highly by people who have an advanced political perspective and who understand what is important.

Drace, I have tried to explain this a few times now. It does not appear that I can explain very well the nature of this project at this time so I am going to need to take a break. It is possible that this is the kind of thing that many people will not understand very well until they see it in some "demo" form that is more concrete.

Maybe I should eventually create some kind of mockup for how the website might look to a reader.

But that would be a project for another time.

Just so I can understand your perspective--what are your personal news reading habits? How much news do get online vs. paper? What papers or sites do you read? How often? What topics do you follow? I may not be able to, so to speak, get on the same page with you until I have a better understanding of how you find and follow news.

-- Ben

[Drace]

Your right, a model of the site would help a lot.
Though I still don't see how you plan on getting millions of users as an audience.
Digg only has about 3 million members. It of course attracts a lot more people than a news site will and has had the help of 40 million dollars in funding.


Just so I can understand your perspective--what are your personal news reading habits? How much news do get online vs. paper? What papers or sites do you read? How often? What topics do you follow? I may not be able to, so to speak, get on the same page with you until I have a better understanding of how you find and follow news.


To tell you the truth the only news I get is what I hear, the articles that I come across on places like Yahoo and on here.

[Lacrimi de Chiciură]

I agree that utilization of mass media is vital if we are going to build up the consciousness necessary to begin a serious revolutionary movement.

What about Indymedia sites? They seem to be rather popular among left activists. A lot of the time Indymedia is the first place where I hear about scheduled events, bookstores, protests, etc.

Or how about submitting editorials from a communist prospective to popular/local newspapers?

But anyways, good luck with your website. Keep us updated!

[The Idler]

I already posted about NowPublic (http://www.nowpublic.com/) and Newsvine (http://www.newsvine.com/) here (http://www.revleft.com/vb/showthread.php?t=97534). Both are democratic newswires which is what you are talking about.

[Ben Seattle]

Hi Fly Pan Dulce,


What about Indymedia sites? They seem to be rather popular among left activists. A lot of the time Indymedia is the first place where I hear about scheduled events, bookstores, protests, etc.

First, I would like to thank you for your comments. Indymedia sites are often useful--but we must soberly recognize their limits. In Seattle, where I live, the Indymedia site is owned by a single person. Sometimes it has not announced mass actions. It has no public meetings, nor a public forum where improving the site can be discussed. The owner has deleted and tampered with my posts on several occasions. Nor does there appear to be any realistic way to change this situation. Currently the site is not even functional (although it will probably be up in the next few weeks).

See: http://newsrefinery.com/indymedia/Seattle/index.htm

http://struggle.net/ben/2009/images/seaimc_censorship.jpg
I created a proposal to modify Indymedia so that it would be far more useful. It is here:

Detailed proposal and mockups for democratic filters for Indymedia
http://newsrefinery.com/indymedia/proposal.htm
http://newsrefinery.com/indymedia/mockup.htm
http://newsrefinery.com/indymedia/filters.htm
http://struggle.net/ben/images/newswire_filters.gif
Nothing has (or can) happen with my proposal. The darn thing has become an institution owned by social-democracy. It does not belong to the movement. It simply pretends to.


Or how about submitting editorials from a communist prospective to popular/local newspapers?

We live in a class society. Most newspapers exist as institutions which uphold the current system of bourgeois class rule. More specifically, they rely on advertizing revenue and are subject to crippling economic action if they do too much to tell the masses the truth about the issues that are important.

I recently created a political cartoon that helps to illustrate the basic problem:
http://struggle.net/ben/2009/images/two-paths.gif

We need to create something that can be controlled by the revolutionary movement and is not dependent on other institutions over which the capitalist machinery of political control has influence.

I will respond to Idler's comments in my next post.

[Ben Seattle]

Hi Idler,


I already posted about NowPublic and Newsvine here. Both are
democratic newswires which is what you are talking about.

Thanks for your comments and for bring my attention to the news sites you mentioned.

To assist other readers in following this discussion I have posted reduced screen shots of portions of the front page of these two sites along with, for comparison, screenshots from the New York Times and the "Left-Wing web portal" in your sig.

I have circled parts of them in red and will make comments on them, and on your remarks, in my next post.

New York Times:
http://struggle.net/ben/2009/images/nytimes.gif

Left-wing forums:
http://struggle.net/ben/2009/images/left-forums.gif

NowPublic:
http://struggle.net/ben/2009/images/NowPublic.gif

NewsVine:
http://struggle.net/ben/2009/images/newsvine.gif

[Ben Seattle]

Hi Idler,


I already posted about NowPublic and Newsvine here. Both are democratic newswires which is what you are talking about.

Thanks again for the site info and comment. The two sites you mention do allow greater participation that most mainstream news sites. People can submit articles and vote for them. So, in this way, they are more democratic.

But these sites are not revolutionary news services. They do not give readers:

comprehensive news, analysis and discussion
from the perspective of the material interest
of the working class.
Neither NowPublic nor Newsvine makes it easy to get an overview of how the Pakistani army, in order to please U.S. imperialism, has forced millions of people from their homes as freezing winter weather arrives--or explained that Obama is again being urged to bomb Iran. What I see instead when I go to these sites is a mixture of (1) some real news and (2) entertainment and escape pretending to be news. More the latter than the former.

It appears to me that the idea of a revolutionary news service I am trying to explain is unfamilar to many readers. I will therefore make another attempt to illustrate the idea:

Ok, you walk into a grocery store and attempt to go down the aisle to select some food. The manager stands in your way, stops you and says that, no, that is not how they do it here. He then hands you a bag of food containing items selected by the store's "editorial committee" which knows what is good for you. He says that's all the food you need to eat. Take it--or go elsewhere. You look at the food and can see that it is all food made by the company that owns the grocery store.

That's the New York Times.

You walk into a second grocery store and attempt to walk the aisle. Again you are stopped. The manager hands you a bag of food. These are the most popular items that customers want, he tells you. Peole voted for these items. You see a big can of peanuts in the bag. You try to explain that you are allergic to peanuts. The manager says he will tabulate your vote and add it to the total. If enough people are allergic to peanuts--the store will no longer put peanuts in the bags they give to everyone.

That is NowPublic and NewsVine.

You walk into a third store. Here you can walk down lots of different aisles and they actually have a number of items you want and that are hard to find. But they don't have most of the basic and necessary items. For example, there are no fruits or vegetables of any kind, or bread or milk or orange juice or hot sauce or any kind of meat, etc. And the items are arranged and grouped together, not in a way that is logical to you--but according to the company that supplied them. So if ten different companies supply magazines--these will be located at ten different locations in the store.

That is the portal for left-wing forums.

Now, finally, you come to the last store. As soon as you enter the door everything in the store changes around. Some food items, like peanuts, disappear from the store while other items, that you sometimes want, appear. All the basic items are there. You happen to like hot sauce and the store has a hundred different brands of hot sauce. More than this, the store has noted that customers who like hot sauce often, for some reason, also like a certain kind of ice cream--and so there is a display of that ice cream near the hot sauce with a sign explaining that it is popular with people who like hot sauce and offering a sample.

After you leave the store and the next customer comes in, the store changes around for him just like it did for you.

That is closer to what we need.

When you go to the front page of the Revolutionary News Service you will see news items as selected by people who you have found trustworthy. Someone else going to the site will see different items selected by different people whom they consider trustworthy. Over time, you will get exposed to different articles by different people and explore their affiliations and, if their judgement appears good to you--you will add these people to your "trust list" and their selections or rating will influence what you see when you go to the site. This is democratic but it democratic in a deeper and more profound way than the store which wants to give you a can of peanuts because "most people like peanuts".

[The Idler]

First of all, I commend your efforts to explain your proposal in detail and respond to replies. You obviously care very much about it.
However, I do think what you are proposing is not new. To explain why, I will describe news mediums from the least democratic to the most democratic. I don't know if these are the best terms to describe it, but hopefully you will see the following is on a scale.

Newspaper (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newspaper)
A newspaper is the earliest, oldest form of news (dating back to the 17th century). It is controlled by a single editor selecting articles from writers usually employed by the newspaper. It can accept submissions at editorial discretion, but this is not generally the norm. It isn't neccessarily a bad news medium, Democracy Now! (http://www.democracynow.org/) and Indymedia (http://www.indymedia.org/) fall into this most archaic of news mediums albeit relying on bias in favour of human rights and participatory submissions controlled by a single editor. Both the publishing and reading side aren't democratic.

Newswire (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/News_agency)
A newswire dates back to the 19th Century. It is also called a news agency or news aggregator. It is controlled by a single editor but selects stories from multiple sources independently controlled by other single editors. It could be argued that this double-filtering is less democratic but its generally thought to be good for plurality of news sources. Reuters and the left-wing web portal is an example of this. RevLeft Newsbot is another example I think.

Citizen Journalism (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizen_journalism)
Citizen journalism has been around probably since the early 20th Century, but has really taken off with the internet. Basically it can be defined as citizens having the power to publish stories themselves without an editor. The democratic limitation of this is that readers of this type of news can only take it or leave it. WikiNews (http://en.wikinews.org/), created in 2005, is the best example of this, but most 20th Century 'zines are examples too. I think NowPublic (http://www.nowpublic.com/) might be an example of this too, although there seems to be limited voting.

Democratic Journalism (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_journalism)
Democratic journalism finally democratises both publishing and reading and has only come about in the last few years thanks to the internet. Publishers are free to submit/publish stories without editorial control and readers can upvote, downvote and comment on stories. Newsvine (http://www.newsvine.com/) is the best example of this, but there is also Digg and Reddit. The most progressive left-wing example (and the one which sounds most similar to your proposal) was the short-lived Infoshop Pligg implementation (http://news.infoshop.org/article.php?story=2008infoshop-links). I suggest you look this up and study how successful it was.

I hope you are not suggesting democratic journalism with some editorial control (or trust based as you describe it) which isn't really extreme democracy at all.

If not then feel free to buy lots of bandwidth and install pligg (http://www.pligg.com/) (an open-source implementation of digg).

[革命者]

I want the journalists whose work I read to have the time and skills to do a good job. As I see it, right now only (quality) newspapers can do that. They pay skilled journalists for the time they have to put in to do research.

But not all journalists are analytical or open-minded enough. Then, they have to share the newspaper with many others.

I suggest therefore you buy a book by an analytical and open-minded journalist on a topic that interests you, in addition to reading the newspaper.

And do it while you can, because good journalists are an endangered species due to outdated intellectual property laws.


Best,

Scotty

[Ben Seattle]

Hi Idler,

You said that my proposal is not new, but it does not appear to me, based on your comments, that you understand the proposal. One possibility is that you have not read my comments here very carefully. Even if this is true, however, the fault is mine--inasmuch as I have simply not found a good way to make it clear to readers how this might work. It is also possible that I do not have the ability to make these ideas more clear at this time, and will need to revisit this later, when I am more rested and have less on my mind.

None of the examples you have brought up are close to what we need. I do not know how I can make this clear:

Bookstore analogy -- we need choice

Imagine you go into a bookstore. You ask for a book by Noam Chomsky. The sales guy has no idea who this is and gives you a list of categories to choose from, such as sports and politics. You select politics. He then hands you two books: one by Rush Limbaugh and the other by Glenn Beck. He says these are the most popular books in politics. He offers to tabulate your vote for this Chomsky person.

That is not sufficiently democratic. Do you understand what I am getting at? It is not what you want. It is not what you need. You need to have CHOICE. You need to be able to get what you want without a lot of work.


I hope you are not suggesting democratic journalism with some editorial control (or trust based as you describe it) which isn't really extreme democracy at all.

I think the phrase "democratic journalism" has potential to be useful but the way you are using this term does not create a lot of clarity.

You will need writers to write stories for you and you also need editors to select stories for you. You need the ability to choose the team of editors who will select articles for you.

Anyone who has the time would be able to be an editor and make choices. You will do that, in part, by rating articles--or by other means. You would, for example, be able to go to the site and tell it that you want the front page created by the team from Infoshop (if you like them). Or you could declare yourself an editor and then readers would have the possibility of looking at the front page that you put together.

A proletarian version of the New York Times

But instead of using an analogy with bookstores or grocery stores, consider from the perspective of someone who reads the paper in order to be informed.

I read the New York Times (or the Wall Street Journal or the Economist magazine) in order to get information about what is going on in every region the world. The NYT, for example, has articles about major news events from all over. It has articles about major developments in politics, economics, culture and technology. If there is something big in the news that is likely to have a large impact on other events, then the New York times is likely to have an article about it (unless they choose to suppress a story for political reasons). They need to do this in order to maintain their reputation as a "paper of record".

The articles are all from a bourgeois perspective--but I am forced to read them in order to know what is going on. What we need is a news service that would be a proletarian version of the New York Times or the Economist. Then I could be informed about major news events in the world without having to read about it all from a bourgeois perspective.

It appears to me that this basic idea, which is actually kind of simple, may be difficult for some readers here to understand. Possibly an issue is that not everyone here regularly reads the NYT or the Economist or understands what comprehensive news or journalism is. My suggestion to readers, if you are one of those people, is to pick up a copy or two and read a lot of the articles in it.

A more concrete example

Finally, let's consider how this might work in a more concrete way. Imagine that:

(1) We have a team of a half-dozen intelligent activists who spend about four to six hours a week, each, to pump into a common database (that is public domain -- ie: free of copyright) summaries of the most important articles from the New York Times and the Economist magazine. Members of this team understand what journalism is; they understand the expectations of readers and how to quickly explain the who, what, where, how and why that readers expect. Members of this team have enough political experience to understand the difference between real news and faux news, between things that are important and celebrity culture or fluff.

(2) There is also a team of astute activists who pump into this database summaries of (a) articles from leftist websites (like Counterpunch) and (b) articles from radical leftist organizations (socialists, anarchists, etc) (c) postings from more independent leftist blogs and (d) similar sources.

(3) Anyone else can contribute to this database.

(4) Any person or team of people has the right to appoint themselves an editor and create their own (a) front page, (b) categories, (c) filters and (d) ratings

(5) You, as the reader, have the right to select which front page you want to look at as well as which categories, filters and ratings level.

(6) Since everything in the database is public domain--any person has the right to make their own version of any summary or article in the database. So if you see an article or summary that you like but which you believe has mistaken conclusions--you can create your own version with conclusions which you believe are better. (Your version would generally contain a link to the original--so readers would be able to easily see your source and be aware of the changes you made).

(7) Similar considerations would apply to comments that readers make on articles. If some article draws 300 comments and you, as a reader, only want to look at the best comments, you can choose any filter and rating system you like (or create your own). (This is similar to how http://Slashdot.org (http://Slashdot.org) rates and filters comments--but more democratic since you can chose who rates comments.)

The above points do not represent some complete list of how this would need to work. Rather, the points above illustrate the principle. The service would need to be open and democratic at all levels and in all of its functions--not only as writers--but as editors, etc.

[The Idler]

The grocery store which notes your vote but gives you peanuts or won't stock hot sauce (red pepper (http://www.redpepper.org.uk/) might have been a more apt example) isn't really analogous to newsvine or the news medium of democratic journalism. The absence of hot sauce is a problem of distribution and limited resources (shelf space, hot sauce production etc.) which doesn't apply on the internet. By submitting an article by Chomsky to newsvine or any democratic journalism news media, it gets published without editorial selection.

Likewise the bookstore which notes your vote for Chomsky but gives you Limbaugh and Beck isn't analogous to newsvine or the news medium of democratic journalism for the same reasons. Information on the internet is free and publication in democratic journalism news medium is instantaneous and uncensored. The choice you get rests on whatever anyone cares to publish.

The personalised experience you seek will be created by viewing your friends pages which will display what stories your friends upvoted/"dugg"/liked/recommended.

Either buy some pligg hosting yourself, or see if you can persuade revleft to install pligg (or infoshop.org to reinstall pligg). The most democratic way a proletarian bias will be achieved will simply be by the site attracting proletarian users in the first place which sites like infoshop.org and revleft already do.

So unless you're waiting for utopia, what are you waiting for? Get started with a pligg installation!
http://www.pligg.com/hosting.php

[Ben Seattle]

The personalised experience you seek will be created by viewing your friends pages which will display what stories your friends upvoted/"dugg"/liked/recommended.

Either buy some pligg hosting yourself, or see if you can persuade revleft to install pligg (or infoshop.org to reinstall pligg). The most democratic way a proletarian bias will be achieved will simply be by the site attracting proletarian users in the first place which sites like infoshop.org and revleft already do.

So unless you're waiting for utopia, what are you waiting for? Get started with a pligg installation!

I looked at the site and the gallery of screenshots but I found it a bit confusing. Possibly this has potential although it would need further investigation, which I may do at some point. I appreciate your pointing it out to me. Even though it has a somewhat awkward format (ie: we need something that can be laid out like the categories in the NYT screenshot above--rather than just a list of things that force the reader to do a lot of scrolling) it might be useful to gain experience.

I am not familiar with why it did not work for infoshop and they gave up on it.

I will add something, however, and then I intend to give this a rest:


The most democratic way a proletarian bias will be achieved will simply be by the site attracting proletarian users in the first place which sites like infoshop.org and revleft already do.

This will not be enough. This will not work. There needs to be a way to combine the ratings of the people who I believe know what they are doing--and not the people who do not have a clue.

[The Idler]

I looked at the site and the gallery of screenshots but I found it a bit confusing. Possibly this has potential although it would need further investigation, which I may do at some point. I appreciate your pointing it out to me. Even though it has a somewhat awkward format (ie: we need something that can be laid out like the categories in the NYT screenshot above--rather than just a list of things that force the reader to do a lot of scrolling) it might be useful to gain experience.

I am not familiar with why it did not work for infoshop and they gave up on it.

I will add something, however, and then I intend to give this a rest:



This will not be enough. This will not work. There needs to be a way to combine the ratings of the people who I believe know what they are doing--and not the people who do not have a clue.
For what its worth, pligg can be set out in multi-column categories as opposed to just a list.

[Ben Seattle]

Hi there Idler,


For what its worth, pligg can be set out in multi-column categories as opposed to just a list.

You seem to be a fan of Pligg.

Having given this some thought, I am of two minds on the matter.

(1) I am skeptical about Pligg because it appears to be limited (I could be mistaken) in how much control we would have over it (ie: the programming and database and stuff). In the long run, we need something over which we have total control--so we can add the features we need as we determine we need them. We will never be able to do this on a service controlled by a third party.

(2) On the other hand, something like Pligg might enable a group of people to gain some useful experience. So it might be worth working with for a while (a few weeks or maybe months or maybe longer?) for this purpose.

In order to make this a worthwhile experimental project we would need at least two or three experienced and politically astute activists to each add at least 2 or 3 summaries per week of some significant article or posting in either (a) the mainstream press, (b) more left-wing press or (c) leftist blogs. (I could be one of those people--but this will go nowhere if I try to do this by myself.)

We would also need a place to host it and so forth. Most likely, I could host it, although I might need some help setting it up (I generally hate to do stuff like that--nothing ever works right and everything seems to be a pain--Murphy's Law rules information technology). But it does not sound like it would be too expensive.

But the main point is that would likely involve a certain amount of work. Would you be willing to do some of this work?

There are various kinds of work. For example, someone would need to email the infoshop people who intended to do this--and ask them about their experience. Why did they give up on it? If they had a good reason to abandon this--we should know what it was. Maybe we could save ourselves a lot of time.

Would you be willing to contact them and see if you can find anything out?

Also--would there be any way you could find out if leftists have created anything using Pligg (that is readable in the english language). We might learn a lot this way.

The general principle is that it is worth learning about the experience of others before we jump into something and waste a lot of time.

Also--so I better understand where you are coming from: how did your interest in newsites and democratic journalism (as you call it) develop? How do you see democratic journalism developing in the next five, ten or twenty years?

I will away from RevLeft for the next ten days or so. But I will certainly check this thread when I return. It is possible that we might be able to get some kind of very modest pilot project running sometime in 2010, if we have a certain level of support and if we keep our expectations modest and realistic. If we cannot do this at this time, we can keep our eyes open. Because of the great value of projects of this nature it will likely only be a matter of time before similar projects from other activists emerge and we might be able to assist these.

[Lyev]

Wow, thanks for all your posts and efforts on Revleft, Ben, you seem wholly committed. Should we make a user-group (if one hasn't been made already) or something like that to get people involved? Two points: 1) there was a user-group, similar to this, called the "leftist paper project" or something like that and it didn't seem to make much progress for lack of interest. 2) I think this is a good idea, because, as has been mentioned earlier in the thread, there's a lot of reactionary, anti-worker, BS propaganda in the mainstream media. But, because it's in the mainstream, it's all people see, and get some really biased, capitalist opinions from it. We need to give people a leftist alternative.

[The Idler]

I am skeptical about Pligg because it appears to be limited (I could be mistaken) in how much control we would have over it (ie: the programming and database and stuff). In the long run, we need something over which we have total control--so we can add the features we need as we determine we need them. We will never be able to do this on a service controlled by a third party.

...

There are various kinds of work. For example, someone would need to email the infoshop people who intended to do this--and ask them about their experience. Why did they give up on it? If they had a good reason to abandon this--we should know what it was. Maybe we could save ourselves a lot of time.

Would you be willing to contact them and see if you can find anything out?

...

Also--so I better understand where you are coming from: how did your interest in newsites and democratic journalism (as you call it) develop? How do you see democratic journalism developing in the next five, ten or twenty years?
...
Pligg is Free Software. The GPL states you have access to the source to adapt and use as you please. If it doesn't have a feature, a programmer can add it.

The only service controlled by a third party is the hosting to which I linked. This is not the same as the software! You can use any hosting provider! If you want total control you can even host it yourself provided you leave a PC hooked up to the internet.

If what you are seeking is impossible (or the existing solutions aren't good enough), then resign yourself to the fact you will merely be philosophising about your news service for years to come. However Karl Marx once said philosophers have merely analysed the world, the point is to change it.

I contacted infoshop.org about a week ago, but got no response. Apart from that I can offer limited help provided you do not have unrealistic expectations. The help I can offer is as a user (populating it, recommendations etc.), I am not a programmer. The biggest task of putting your ideas into an implementable reality has already been done with pligg, be thankful this has been drawn to your attention and explained.

Once I discovered digg (or it may have been wikinews) I read about democratic journalism on Wikipedia and it led me to want to get news mediums in context and understand the differences. I've always been a fan of democracy and knew for a long-time the mainstream media is owned and shaped by just a handful of people.

Wow, thanks for all your posts and efforts on Revleft, Ben, you seem wholly committed. Should we make a user-group (if one hasn't been made already) or something like that to get people involved? Two points: 1) there was a user-group, similar to this, called the "leftist paper project" or something like that and it didn't seem to make much progress for lack of interest. 2) I think this is a good idea, because, as has been mentioned earlier in the thread, there's a lot of reactionary, anti-worker, BS propaganda in the mainstream media. But, because it's in the mainstream, it's all people see, and get some really biased, capitalist opinions from it. We need to give people a leftist alternative.
I'm not sure how specific the comments of Expropriate are supposed to be, but I think BenSeattle has made it clear the existing Leftist progressive worker alternative papers, of which there are many (Socialist Worker, The Socialist, ISR etc.), aren't what he is trying to replicate.

[Davie zepeda]

Can you post a link to the final product?

[StalinFanboy]

www.modestoanarcho.org

[anton black]

I want to comment here on the basic concept, to help frame detail stuff.

I think that a long term objective is to develop revolutionary/proletarian/allied journalism in areas of reporting, fact checking etc, with the orientation of reporting on events that are not reported, under or misreported by capitalist mainstream media. There is a need to in the long term create infrastructure that can train and develop people who can report, fact check edit etc in ways that create a news products that will have lots of people looking to such a news source for info as timely and more accurate and more relevant than mainstream media.

The point now is to create steps that can meaningfully contribute to that.

An example of a good existing news compiling source which might be an example towards a starting point is the news page at rawa dot org. (revleft will not let me post link because this is only my first post here)

[Ben Seattle]

Hi everyone (particularly Idler, Expropriate and Anton),

It has been two weeks since I posted to this thread and there is a bit to catch up on.

Idler has proposed (if I understand him correctly) that we go ahead and host the Pligg open source news service on a web server and start to populate it. Presumably I would do the technical setup work and he could help to test it as a user. The two of us could populate it with news articles and so forth. I think the idea is that others might eventually join and help us out.

Anton (who I would like to welcome to RevLeft) has a view that is a little more long-term, where we keep in mind not just what we might be able to do today--but where we want to end up tomorrow--especially in regard to training activists to research and write articles that a lot of people would actually want to read.




I think that a long term objective is to develop revolutionary/proletarian/allied journalism in areas of reporting, fact checking etc, with the orientation of reporting on events that are not reported, under or misreported by capitalist mainstream media. There is a need to in the long term create infrastructure that can train and develop people who can report, fact check edit etc in ways that create a news products that will have lots of people looking to such a news source for info as timely and more accurate and more relevant than mainstream media.

The point now is to create steps that can meaningfully contribute to that.

An example of a good existing news compiling source which might be an example towards a starting point is the news page at http://rawa.org.

And finally, Expropriate has expressed enthusiasm for the idea of creating a leftist alternative to the mainstream media.

What is our first step forward?

I would like to comment in a way that I hope can be helpful. I should probably note that I am tired as I write this and I hope my thoughts are not too confused.

First, it is good that Idler is enthusiastic about getting something off the ground right away.

However I am far more cautious about attempting something right away--for several reasons:

I have done this before. I have jumped into various kinds of projects. I have invested a lot of my time and my life into various projects--that failed.

Of course failure can be a good thing. We can learn from failure. Success is built from failure.

But failure also carries the risk of burn-out and exhaustion and demoralization. And that is not good.

My experience is that projects that turn out to be successful are usually taken with a relatively clear view of the nature of our goal.

And that is what I would like to focus on at this time. I would like to see if we can develop useful discussion in the direction of understanding better what it is that we need.

Before we actually find a server and start hosting and modifying code I think we need at least two things:

(1) We need an idea of a tangible objective that would allow ourselves and others to view the project as successful. This kind of objective is usually refered to as "proof of concept".

(2) We need long-term goals that we have discussed and understand.
Put in other words, we need a relatively clear idea of (1) our first step forward and (2) our long-term goal.

We don't have either of these at this time.

Since I am tired I will only be able to add some scattered thoughts right now. But I would like to see this discussion develop.

I am not excited, for several reasons, about starting by trying to create something like the site at http://rawa.org as some kind of first step. I created a diagram (below) that might help explain my views. I would like to see something that would initially consist mainly (maybe 80%) of summaries of things in the mainstream press (ie: light blue background in the diagram). We could also include summaries from left sources, including sites like rawa. But summaries of mainstream sources, it seems to me, are essential if we want to create something that many people will consistently read.

Yes, many people do want to keep up with news that the mainstream media underreports, distorts or hides. But a better approach may be to include this news as part of our service. More people will read about it, I believe, if it is part of a service that allows them to keep up with important news in the mainstream press.

Then, over time, as we develop readers and writers who better understand the various topics--we may be able to move closer to giving readers analysis of a wide a range of topics from the perspective of the material interests of the working class.

http://struggle.net/ben/2010/images/RNS-Dev.gif

I have a lot of other thoughts--but these will have to wait for another time.

[The Idler]

I should mention there are alternatives to Pligg, Drigg (http://www.drigg.org/) is one which is also free software as far as I know.

It would seem Pligg also offered free hosting at a website called Fraxi (http://www.downloadsquad.com/2007/12/20/pligg-announces-fraxi-make-your-own-digg-with-just-a-few-mouse/) for a time in 2007, but for whatever reason, no longer seem to do so. Corank.com (http://www.corank.com/) still offer this service albeit without using free software behind the scenes. In fact you might like them after reading the following quote


While there are other sites offering similar services, in coRank each user has their own "front page", and the stories promoted to a user's front page are determined only by the votes of the people this user has previously selected - these are what we call, the user's sources

If you decide on Pligg, you should also be aware of the 8 myths about Pligg article (http://www.upstartblogger.com/8-myths-about-launching-a-pligg-site).

I would also mention again to ask revleft if they will host it. I will try to contact infoshop.org again too.

[Ben Seattle]

Hi Idler,

My mind is a bit refreshed after getting some sleep, and I can think more clearly.

First, thanks for the additional info.

I have not (yet) had time to check out all the links you provided. But I did glance at the "8 myths about Pligg". It was very useful. This is exactly the kind of info we need to collect and review before we jump into something.

Here is what I think (going back to December):


The Idler, Dec 27:

So unless you're waiting for utopia, what are you waiting for? Get started with a pligg installation!

I disagree with this orientation. Our choice is not between (1) waiting and (2) creating a pligg installation. We need to have cool heads.

We do not need to rush into trying to do anything right away. I have seen that in action. The usual result is disappointment and demoralization without any clear idea of what went wrong.

Rather, at this stage we should simply begin to collect information and make an effort to sort out some of our options. This is not a project that a few people are going to pull off. This is (ultimately) a project that hundreds (and then thousands) will make happen. We are clearly not the only people thinking of this. There undoubtably are (or will be) many groups of activists thinking along similar lines.

For example: the second link at the top of this page says "News". If you click on it--you will see a project run by activists here on RevLeft, to create a functional newswire. It contains 28 articles that were posted today. Mostly they were pulled (automatically, I assume) from anarchist or "socialist" sources. It looks like it has been in operation since December 18 (ie: about a week before I started this thread).

What is the experience of this project? How many people actually read these articles? How did the originators of this project decide to structure it this way? What were (or are) their expectations? Do they consider the project successful? Are there threads here on RevLeft that talk about these things?

The page lists three people here (Wanted Man, Comrade Alastair & Rorschach) as moderators. We could (and should) ask them all these questions.

Concrete things we can do now

(1) I would like to see us put together one or more lists of various leftist news syndication projects. We could organize the information in tables that would make it easy for us to see what info we have collected. We would want info on the URL of the project and the team of people that are trying to make it happen and the technology they are using or hope to use and some of the features of their project.

(2) Similarly, it would be useful to have a table of info we collect about the various kinds of software used to manage news sites. This would include a list of possible features as well as examples (if any) of groups that have used this to create something. You mentioned that the coRank.com hosting gives each user his own front page. This feature would be important (as would many others) --so we could have a column in the table for this.

Are there any groups of leftists who have used Pligg? If so, their project would show up on both of the tables above.

(3) We also need a list of the software features that we would need to make the project worthwhile. This is one of the most important things we need.

(4) There is something else also. Since RevLeft might be a natural place to organize such a project--we should consider the kinds of forum software improvements might make it possible (and relatively easy) for activists here to contribute to this project. I can think of three things that would be needed:

(a) Improved software for discussion threads. This includes improved rating and filtering as well as node display and navigation. (I discuss one way that the rating and filtering might work in a post on my blog. See the section titled: Threads where attention flows to deserving posts (http://www.revleft.com/vb/blog.php?bt=2072))

(b) Individual wiki branches. Currently, RevLeft has a wiki but it is organized like most wiki's. For example there is a single page on the "Dictatorship of the Proletariat". Everyone who works on that page would (presumably) need to agree on what needs to go on the page. This would be an exercize in frustration and futility. What is needed would be to give everyone the ability to create their own branch of the wiki. For example I could create a page called:

"Ben Seattle/Dictatorship of the Proletariat"
and only I (or someone I authorize) would be able to edit that page. The various cargo cult Leninists would put their views on their pages. Essentially, this would make it possible for everyone to have their own wiki. We need this.

Currently--the closest we have to individual wiki's for everyone--are the blogs. Anyone can update their blog posting in a way that is similar to how a wiki page can be updated. But there are problems also. It is awkward to link blog pages to one another (in comparison to how easy it is with a wiki). And blogs do not allow tables (which are very important--see below).

(c) Everyone needs the ability to create tables. Tables are what we use for lists of things where we need to collect and display info in an organized way. For example, users will need to create lists of:

things to do
people
projects
organizations
forums
news articles
news article sources
Here is an example of what a table of news articles might look like:
http://struggle.net/ben/2010/images/news_article_table_80.gif

Users need to be able to create their own tables. These tables need to be set up so that they can be sorted and filtered (ie: each table can be a table in a database).

It should also be easy to set up each table for data entry--so that the person who pumps in the data has an easier time of it. The data entry screen might look similar to the following:
http://struggle.net/ben/2010/images/data_entry.gif

[Ben Seattle]

continued from yesterday ...

We will need to be able to pull the data in various tables (ie: article titles, summaries, etc)
and then filter, rate and sort the articles for final display (see diagram below)

http://struggle.net/ben/2010/images/database_pull.gif

[Ben Seattle]

Hi everyone,

I am going to be offline until next month. Basically, I need to focus on my life for a while. I appreciate the attention this thread has drawn so far.

I have outlined (and diagrammed) some ideas that might help us better understand how we might develop some motion in the direction of practical steps to contribute to a project that may eventually collect, refine and distribute meaningful news and leftist analysis to a large number of readers.

In particular, I have listed four (relatively) concrete things that might be helpful:

1) Make a list of leftist news projects
2) Make a list of software used to manage news sites
3) Make a list of the software features we believe we need
4) Make a list of software improvements that might be made
here at RevLeft that we could use to collect and refine news here.
Lists 1 and 2 need not be exhaustive. Rather we just need something to help us understand what else is going on so we can study and learn from the experience of others. It might also be useful to collect info in tables rather than lists.

It might also be useful to get authorization to use the RevLeft wiki. Most wiki's give users the ability to create tables.

I am not particularly good at organizing projects. I am lucky on most days to be able to organize myself. I will most likely be focusing my efforts mainly on task # 3 above. I have an idea of what is needed so it makes sense to me that I should attempt to describe this.

If Idler or Expropriate or Anton or anyone else would like to contribute to this motion I believe it would be useful to focus on tasks 1 and 2 above.

In particular, someone should contact the admins of the RevLeft News project and ask them about their experience. Maybe point them to this page and ask their opinion. Yes, I could do this myself. Yes, I might (eventually). But there are a lot of things I would like to do--and my time is limited. So a lot of things will not get done if everyone waits for me to do them.

It might also be useful to find out how the RevLeft forum software works. How much of it is custom code and how much of it is a software package that might be difficult to customize? How much enthusiasm might the tech person (or people) have for making changes? Who would know the answers to these questions? (I do not know who to ask--I am new here and have little idea how anything works.)

So if anyone is enthusiastic about helping to make some of these things happen--please join in. And if no one is enthusiastic about these things--well, that is ok also. I happen to believe that a project somewhat similar to what I have described will be the project that will eventually unite everything healthy in the left. But not everyone shares this conviction of mine and so not everyone may find themselves enthusiastic about working in this direction.

I have no intention of killing myself attempting to make something significant happen all on my own. What I can do, and what I intend to do, is to write regularly (or semi-regularly) about the need for a Revolutionary News Service and how it might work and what features it would need.

[The Idler]

1. Infoshop.org Links, Reddit Anarchism (http://www.reddit.com/r/anarchism), Reddit Socialism (http://www.reddit.com/r/anarchism), Revleft Newsbot and perhaps more, but most are done in traditional newspaper model of hierarchical control
2. Pligg, Drigg, SocialWebCMS, coRank.com, Reddit (http://code.reddit.com/), PHPDug, Drupalig, HotaruCMS, Blinkk, Upwarded, MarkIt, The People's Feed, GrabTheMic, Loudle?
3. Automatic feed importing (http://forums.pligg.com/questions-comments/4285-rss-import-problem-feed-not-fully-setup-skipping.html) and submitting, multi-column view, captcha?

Incidentally I posted at Infoshop.org (http://forums.infoshop.org/viewtopic.php?f=41&t=8917)

[Chuck0]

Hi. This is Chuck from Infoshop News. This thread and proposed project were brought to my attention by a post to our Infoshop Forums. I hate to rain on anybody's parade, but I think this project isn't going to go anywhere for various reasons. The spirit being this proposal is admirable, but as I will explain, this energy is better added to existing news projects than in an effort to re-invent the wheel.

By way of introduction, let me explain a bit about my background with alternative news publishing. I've been running Infoshop News, pretty much every day, for the past 12 years. Infoshop News (news.infoshop.org) has long been the most popular site for anarchist news, but we provide a range of news from non-anarchists. Our goal has always been to be a news service for *everybody* run by anarchists. We see our competition as being mainstream news organizations like CNN. We have never been interested in being a radical news service that only caters to anarchists and radicals. I think that our popularity over the years has confirmed our goals as a project. If your goal is to be a news service that reaches millions, then we are a radical news service that has already done that.

I also have experience in alternative media publishing. I was a co-editor of Alternative Press Review (which is relaunching on the Internet) and published a zine for over a decade. I've also worked for one mainstream magazine (Science). I follow publishing, journalism and new social media very closely. I am also a web developer. I was also involved with Indymedia off an on for several years.

As I understand it, the project being proposed here involves several facets. There is this language about creating a "revolutionary news service" that will reach millions and discussion about a news service that works something like Digg.com. If you are interested in creating a mass audience leftist news service that reaches millions, I have to ask why you aren't suggesting that people join existing leftist news organizations? There are already quite a few leftist news organizations out there with mass audiences. I haven't check our stats lately, but in late 2008, Infoshop was getting around 150,000 monthly unique visitors, a number which has probably increased since then. There are other excellent news projects, such as Libcom, Left Turn, WSWS, Democracy Now and of course, Indymedia. These projects all are trying hard to reach more and more people, but they face the challenge that alternative media has always faced: lack of capital and resources. Most of these news projects would reach millions if they had the money to advertise and market. Democracy Now already reaches hundreds of thousands, but that's because they are a radio show which taps into the fact that there are radio stations out there that mass broadcast. But even without finances, radical news outlets struggle because they can't find new content, which should be written by the people who are interested in the project discussed here.

The Web and technologies such as blogs and social media have really opened up news production for average people. This is something that Indymedia demonstrated early on, but that project has suffered, mainly because it subscribes to an outdated model of how you do journalism. Indymedia has been great for activists who want to tell their stories, but pretty much a failure when it comes to creating an alternative journalism that includes analysis and investigative reporting.

Let me provide one important word of caution to would-be radical Woodward and Bernsteins who want to create another radical news site. If you subscribe to dreamy ideas about doing journalism like investigative reporting, please don't waste your time. There is no interest for investigative reporting among radicals. Radical leftists like to pretend that they are more enlightened than the Fox News watching masses, but radical don't pay attention to investigative reporting. The failure of news projects like the New Standard stand as examples and I've seen this with our own attempts to publish original journalism on Infoshop News.

Even if you leave aside the fact that people aren't interested in original journalism, then you have to ask, will millions of people read poorly written communique from groups? Radical opinions about revolution? There is a limited readership for this stuff, even among radicals, but this is what the majority of radical news content consists of. I should know, because I spend hours every day trying to find good news content. People are interested in news analysis, such as many of the excellent analyses being published about Haiti. One site that I really like for leftist analysis is CounterPunch. But I don't think people understand how awful radical left news content is these days. What is needed more than more news sites is a growing movement of radicals who devote themselves to writing news, reporting and analysis.

Another thing for people to consider is that people are getting their news differently these days. Not just through Facebook and Twitter, but the style that people prefer has changed. People really like stories that are in the form of lists. They aren't very interesting in long political analysis.

This thread also talks about creating a news service that functions something like Digg.com. This has even prompted somebody to contact me about this idea, because I have experience with this kind of software. First of all, I read Digg several times a day, so I'm very familiar with what's being proposed. The Infoshop collective briefly discussed the idea of running a Digg-like news service several months ago and we rejected the idea for two reasons. Yes, it would be really cool if there was a radical version of Digg, but it ain't going to fly.

The first reason is that there is a limited audience for such a news service. The number of radical news eyeballs is already fragmented by the existing news sites and blogs. Infoshop News already has a global audience and large traffic (we run it on two servers), but we understand that such a service would languish from lack of participation. Even hugely popular sites such as Digg have millions of readers, but only a small fraction of those readers ever participate. This has been covered in numerous studies, but just look at the number of votes stories get that reach the front page. We are talking here about 200-200 votes out of millions of users. This fact about the limits of DIY media affects other sites big and small. Take Wikipedia, which has millions of users and thousands of editors, but only a small fraction are active participants. Indymedia has crashed because it assumed that there was this movement of people out there who were eager to do DIY media. There are millions out there, but Indymedia overestimated the appetite for people to do anything beyond their own blogs or Facebook updates. You can see this most prominently with the constant failure of local Indymedia sites. There just aren't that many people out there who want to to unpaid, DIY journalism.

Now Facebook and other social media are an exception to the limitations of participation in DIY news creation. With Facebook, people really control their own space within the network. These days, I actually get most of my story leads for Infoshop News from my Facebook live feed.

The second reason we rejected setting up a Digg version of Infoshop News is because there is already a paucity of radical news content out there and because there are already a bunch of radical news sites providing aggregation of that scarce content. Common Dreams or Alternet already provide links to much of the left progressive news content out there. Infoshop News, Indymedia and Anarchist News do the same for anarchist and radical content. You could set up a radical Digg, but you'd be linking to the same content that's already being linked to by other websites. What's the point? What is needed is more original content and for more people to help out existing sites.

Yes, I do have experience running Drigg. We've been running Drigg on Drupal for nearly two years on our DIY site, DIYhound.com. I can say that Drigg isn't easy to use, configure or manage on a daily basis. It can run an aggregation service that runs itself. Finding people to vote on stories is something that might take off with more marketing, but again, most people who read sites don't participate.

Anyway, those are a few thoughts from somebody with experience. I think that if people really want to make radical ideas and news available to more people, then you should join up with an existing project. Infoshop News is always looking for more volunteers and we are currently redesigning our website.

[Ben Seattle]

Hi folks,

Apologies for the delay in my return to RevLeft. (I have been focused recently on a thread on the Kasama site (http://z11.invisionfree.com/Kasama_Threads/index.php?showtopic=1011)).

First, I would like to thank the Idler for (1) contacting Chuck0 and drawing his attention to this thread and the associated project ideas and (2) persuading Chuck to contribute his thoughts. Chuck has created a well-known and popular news site with up to 150,000 monthly unique visitors. That is impressive. If we are going to create a project along the lines of what I have described here--we will need advice and opinion from a "brain trust" of activists, such as Chuck, who have experience in creating web sites or forums for news and comment.

Chuck's comments are valuable. I do not necessarily agree with everything he says but his comments will help us develop a more realistic idea of the kinds of problems we are likely to face and some practical ideas for resolving these problems.

I will deal with one of Chuck's comments in this post and I may have additional comments either in the next few days or next month.

Chuck0:



If you are interested in creating a mass audience leftist news service that reaches millions,
I have to ask why you aren't suggesting that people join existing leftist news organizations?


First--it is a very good idea that activists participate in existing leftist news organizations. This is good for everyone. Doing so will:

(1) allow activists to gain experience creating news sites
(2) help the sites directly with their labor
(3) help to develop a set of core principles that will be useful
.... not only for our project but for many similar projects
.... that are likely to emerge in the coming period.

At the same time, I believe it is useful and necessary to engage in this kind of work in such a way that we maintain a clear focus on our goal. For example, Chuck lists a number of leftists news sites that we could support: his own infoshop news (http://news.infoshop.org) and also Libcom, Left Turn, WSWS, Democracy Now and of course, Indymedia. So which sites should we support? Which sites might be most deserving of our labor? Which sites would give us the most valuable experience? Which sites are closest to our philosophy concerning what needs to be done? And what exactly do we believe needs to be done?

I conclude that a conscious approach remains what I have already outlined above: we first do a survey.

How to do a survey

We create a table (probably using the RevLeft wiki (http://www.revleft.com/wiki) - if it can be brought online [it is not operational as I write this] or some other wiki such as the free wiki's available and hosted at http://WetPaint.com) listing the news sites above along the top and listing the essential features (or objectives) along the side. Then we fill in the cells of the table with symbols or abbreviations of some kind to indicate the status (or progress) of each feature in each project.

What features are essential?

What follows are the ideas that strike me as I write this post rather than some kind of definitive list. The project probably needs to have the following aims:

(1) Comprehensive news (covering:
.... (a) politics,
.... (b) economics,
.... (c) culture,
.... (d) technology,
.... (e) news from the major regions of the world)
based on intelligent summaries (from people who understand:
.... (a) the topic areas and
.... (b) that journalism answers questions such as what,
......... when, who and why in a concise and readable way)
of the most interesting and important articles in both:
.... (a) the mainstream press and
.... (b) the left press and blogs
(2) Collaborative filtering on the basis of ratings and filters on articles and comments such that readers can choose what filters they use and whose ratings they trust
(3) Revolutionary orientation -- based on the core idea that we need to shitcan the existing system of capitalist rule and create a world run by the working class without imperialist war, without exploitation and with peace, abundance and authentic community for all.
(4) Openess -- any activist can join in the effort and everything created is public domain (ie: no copyright) to make it easier for anyone who thinks they can do something better to modify or re-use anything. For this purpose the entire database (ie: summaries, original articles, comments, ratings and filters) must be public and easy for anyone to copy (ie: only passwords will be private).

Once we put together a list of essential features and aims--we can then conduct a survey of what left news orgaizations have these features and aims (or appear serious about them). Our survery chart might look something like this:

http://struggle.net/ben/2010/images/news_service_survey.gif

[The Idler]

Any news on this?

[MilitantWorker]

democracynow.org :thumbup1:

its not exactly proletarian, or revolutionary-- but miles beyond Fox News

[Ben Seattle]

Any news on this?

Hi Idler,

No news. I have been busy. If you would like to begin creating a table to categorize leftist news sites similar to how I have described, I recommend the use of a wiki -- because tables are very useful (and, as far as I know, only wikis allow you to create tables). The RevLeft wiki is still broke (probably the people involved haven't fixed it yet because there is relatively little demand for its use). I have a wiki I created for the (now more or less dead) Media Weapon community at: http://mediaweapon.wetpaint.com/

If you create an account at wetpaint and request access I can make you an editor and you could then use that wiki. In some ways the wiki is better (and in some ways worse) than the RevLeft wiki (when it was working). It has highly annoying animated ads (I freeze them using the red "X" on Internet Explorer). And the function and editing (like with most wikis) can be clumsy and frustrating. But if we make do with what we have now -- then we will better appreciate the better (ie: less clumsy) software we will be using in the future.

Please look at the suggested site rules. Any pages you create should start with "Idler-" (if you want to use "Idler" as your alias) to avoid time-wasting conflicts concerning the content of various pages. Those pages will be yours. Pages beginning with "Ben-" will be mine, etc.

(The same offer extends to anyone else who would like to help with this.)

There is political judgement (ie: a lot of experience required) to make an assessment of the news sites in the various categories--so I would not necessarily recommend using happy/sad faces as in my diagram above--maybe some comments, descriptions or a quick summary of various positive and negative features.

Yes, if you want to wait for me to do this--I will probably get around to it...but you may have a very long wait. So if you want to see it done, I suggest putting some minutes into this project. Thoughtful work often attracts more of the same.


democracynow.org :thumbup1:

its not exactly proletarian, or revolutionary-- but miles beyond Fox News

Yes, it is better than Fox News. But that is not saying much. We can wait for Democracy Now to get better (kind of waiting for lead to turn into gold) or we can put minutes of our time into creating a project that serves the needs of the revolutionary movement

[Ben Seattle]

Hi everyone,

Good news! The Idler has accepted my suggestion of creating a table of leftist news sites and some info about each site. It is posted here:
http://mediaweapon.wetpaint.com/page/theidler-news-sources

I have copied it here. (I have some comments under the chart.)

Source .......................... Comprehensive ............... Collaborative
Socialism or Your Money Back .... No .......................... No
Infoshop News ................... No .......................... No
Znet ............................ Yes ......................... No
Democracy Now! .................. Yes ......................... No
The Morning Star ................ Yes ......................... No
Socialist Worker (UK) ........... No .......................... No
Socialist Worker (US) ........... Yes ......................... No
Workers' Liberty ................ No .......................... No
Libcom .......................... No .......................... No
Red Pepper ...................... Yes ......................... No
The Nation ...................... Yes ......................... No
Mother Jones .................... Yes ......................... No
CrimethInc ...................... No .......................... No
WSWS ............................ Yes ......................... No
Permanent Revolution ............ No .......................... No
The Commune ..................... No .......................... No
Monthly Review .................. No .......................... No
In These Times .................. Yes ......................... No
Dissent ......................... Yes ......................... No
Left Turn ....................... No .......................... No
Ceasefire ....................... No .......................... No
Anarkismo ....................... No .......................... No
Last Hours ...................... No .......................... No
Peoples Weekly World ............ Yes ......................... No
New Politics .................... Yes ......................... No
International Socialist Review .. Yes ......................... No
International Socialist Journal . Yes ......................... No
Workers World ................... Yes ......................... No
Party for Socialism and Liberation Yes ........................ No
Common Dreams ................... Yes ......................... No
Alternet ........................ Yes ......................... No
Counterpunch .................... No .......................... No
Truthdig ........................ No .......................... No
Crooks and Liars ................ No .......................... No
Dollars & Sense ................. Yes ......................... No
Critique ........................ Yes ......................... No
Political Affairs ............... Yes ......................... No
The Socialist (UK) .............. Yes ......................... No
The Socialist (US) .............. Yes ......................... No
The Soul of Man under Capitalism .... ......................... No
Mac Uaid .................................................. ... No
Lenin's Tomb .................................................. No
HarpyMarx .................................................. .. No
Organized Rage ................................................ No
Counterfire

Comments by Ben:

(1) So first--I would like to thank the Idler for doing this. It took time to do and will be useful.

(2) This chart also proves the usefulness of tables (for example, it took time for me to copy his table here and add all the period marks for readability). Tables are probably the main reason we need to use a wiki.

(3) The wiki at WetPaint sucks for two reasons: (a) lots of distracting ads and (b) sometimes slow and awkward to use. However we do need a wiki. WetPaint at least is free and not too hard to learn to use.

(4) Anyone else who is interested in using the Wetpaint wiki--go ahead and create an account at WetPaint and request access to:
http://mediaweapon.wetpaint.com/ and I will go ahead and make you an editor.

Please note: Please make sure all your pages begin with "xxxx-" (where "xxxx" is your user name). That will eliminate time-wasting disputes concerning what content will be on a particular wiki page. Everyone will, so to speak, "own" their own wiki pages.

(5) I will probably use the Idler's table as a basis for further work when I return to political activity after an upcoming break (which may be a few weeks or, more likely, a few months).

(6) The Idler has expressed an interest in setting up a leftist news site using Digg. Such a project could turn out to be useful to gain practical experience. I will not be able to assist in such a project anytime soon but anyone who may be interested in helping the Idler with this may want to contact him.

[The Idler]

7 websites you need to stop building (http://theoatmeal.com/comics/websites_stop) ;)