This David Weinberger post directed me to ZDNet's executive editor David Berlind's Media Transparency Channel.
Berlind is attempting make the process of journalism more transparent by posting the complete audio of his interviews. A few weeks ago, I e-mailed Berlind a blog press release containing details of this open source documentary project. He responded to my e-mail this weekend, and I replied with a short e-mail pitch and suggested that he give me a call so that we can talk more about The Echo Chamber. He just called and we talked for about 90 minutes about challenges of transparency and the future of journalism.
Berlind's motivation for transparency is for his own credibility as a journalist -- one of the most precious commodities of the future that helps preserve his "eyeball minutes" of attention.
My interest in transparency stems from implementing a more comprehensive analytical philosophy that allows journalists and independent filmmakers to do a better job of deception detection. The current "He Said / She Said" objectivity standard does a very poor job of debunking partisan deception -- especially if both sides are guilty of deceiving.
Berlind passed along a lot of great insights and names of people who have contacted him because of his media transparency project. He hopes to organize a "transparency think tank" between all of the people who are working on this issue, and I volunteered to be a part of whatever comes of his idea.
Berlind is trying to implement principles of transparency and discovering the difficulties and time requirements. He is developing some tools to deal with this issue, but these tools aren't to the point where I can start using them for what I'm doing.
As I've mentioned before, I'm not sure how much of these transparency principles I'll have time to implement throughout the process of creating this documentary. My focus is going to be on creating an ecosystem and methodology for organizing a decentralized volunteer labor force, creating a productive and emotionally engaging community experience, and ultimately producing and distributing a 90-minute documentary film.
I will continue to disclose any conflicts of interest, write about my thoughts on politically contentious topics relevant to this project (such as my views on the Iraq war and elections) as well as any other subjective judgments that have to be made through the process of editing my documentary.
The Echo Chamber is on Berlind's radar screen now, and I am going to continue reaching out to leaders of the New Media movement.
