Thursday, January 06, 2005

Dan Gillmor on Distributed Journalism's Future

Dan writes:

"The potential for distributed journalism to be a key part of tomorrow's news strikes me as immense. We in citizen journalism -- and, if we're smart, in professional journalism -- can focus the energy and knowledge of regular folks, and especially their willingness to do some small amount of legwork to help feed a larger whole, on all kinds of things.

Suppose, for example, that we assemble a nationwide group of volunteers -- lawyers who are familiar with statutes -- and ask each of them to take a small section of one of those immense congressional bills that the members of Congress don't even read themselves. Suppose, further, that we could get this analysis posted before the House and Senate did their final votes. We might catch a lot of sleazy stuff before it became law. Today we're lucky if we know about any of it before it actually passes."

You can read the full posting here.

I am not a lawyer but I would be interested in reading some of this stuff before it became law. As an English major (many years ago), I learned to read for critical understanding and ask good questions. I am sure I could come up with some questions after making my way through some legalese. I think it would be good to use technology in this manner.

What do you think?

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