Distributed editing: share ratios and eBay-style feedback combine!

So, back to the distributed publishing question I began to explore in the post Following the Story.

In that post, I explored how crowdsourcing could theoretically provide editorial direction, brainstorming, checks and balances on bias and ethics, an extra eye for catching holes in the story, and even, to some extent, some initial fact checking.

The one thing that I couldn't solve with crowdsourcing was what I described as "flow" editing: rearranging the piece so that it flows better. Editing for writing style and clarity would also fit in here.

Well, crowdsourcing may not solve the problem, but borrowing some concepts from peer-to-peer file sharing sites and the eBay feedback system, I might have a barter-based solution that will address the problem.

In essence, most journalists are trained to edit as well as to write. Some are better at one than the other, but I suspect that most of us enjoy at least a little of both. Imagine a system where users had to maintain a specific edit ratio: for every piece they edit, they earn the right to get a piece edited by someone else. Now add on an eBay feedback system, where writers and editors give feedback on the job they each did. Writers in a rush or with a basic news piece would have to take the first editor who came along, but writers who are working on a feature with which they can take their time could hold out for a really good editor. The rating system would motivate users to do a good job editing (and not be too difficult an editee) because if you don't do a good job, it will be harder and harder to find someone to edit your own work. If that didn't motivate people enough, the edit ratios could be partly weighted by the feedback rating of each user.

What about people who only want to edit, or only want to write? Obviously those people can just hire an editor. But if they want to work within this website, people who only want to edit could sell edit credits to people who only want to write.

And, for those of you who aren't fans of crowdsourcing, a system like this would work for other aspects of the editorial process, such as fact checking and copy editing.

Following the story

As I read Gillmor's account of Korean phenomenon OhmyNews and Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism's online projects, I continued to mull over how news stories could be edited without having a full-time editing staff.

Sure, the simple solution would be a repeat of the top-down model we're so familiar with - editors assigned to stories could be entitled to a percentage of any income the story generates.

But what about harnessing the power of the Internet and the power of the readers? I'm hoping I can come open with a theoretical model that will do so, rather than simply mimicking traditional publications in an online forum.

The editorial staff at a publication serve a variety of functions.

1. Direction: Which stories to run, when to kill a story, and how important a story is.
2. Brainstorming: What would be a good angle for the story? What is missing at first draft? Are there any big holes?
3. Flow editing: Rearranging the piece so that it reads better.
4. Copy editing: Maintaining a house style and correcting spelling and grammar.
5. Fact checking: At least in magazines, fact checking is part of the process.
6. Standards: Are the reporters being honest? Are they being ethical? Are they truly invested in coming as close to the truth as possible, rather than forwarding their own agenda? When faced with facts that contradict their bias, will they admit it?

Right now I'd like to talk about step two, brainstorming. Among the wide variety of traditional publications for which I've worked or written, there is an equally wide variety of processes used to brainstorm a story. But all of these processes rely on staff.

Here's a process that might achieve the goals of brainstorming without involving staff members.

1. The story idea is posted on the website's work in progress section
2. Readers can indicate their level of interest in the story idea and/or leave comments suggesting angles, sources, or relevant facts that should be mentioned in the article
3. Using their own reporting skills and reader input, the reporter will then do her reporting and post the story's draft
4. Again, readers will be able to comment on the story with suggestions about questions they feel are left unanswered, things that aren't clear, etc.
5. The reporter uses those comments to write a final draft
6. The final draft gets posted online
7. Professional editors and fact checkers take the final draft and work on the writing style, etc. to create an extremely smooth, well-researched piece, and publish it on a subscription-only portion of the website

What I'd particularly like to see is the story treated as an individual unit. Readers could see a story idea and subscribe to it - they could ask to see every step of the process, or they could ask to see only the final result. Right now RSS feeds, subscriptions, etc. are usually tied to the entire publication, or to an entire section of a publication. But why stop there? Why not let someone focus in on a particular story?

There are lots of problems with concepts like this. For instance, the reporter may be scooped by reporters at traditional publications. Of course, the concept of scooping is arguably outdated. It's unclear, in this day and age, how much it matters to be the first to cover a story. Instantaneous and evolving breaking news coverage started the shift away from 'scooping.' Meanwhile, the ability to tailor what we read using services like Google News Alerts means that more and more, the story is the unit, rather than the publication. And if readers read a story that leaves them with questions, more often than not, they'll go looking for another article that answers those questions. If your story has more information than the person who got there before you, yours is still likely to get read. The extra mile makes the difference.

Another problem is the overwhelming amount of information reporters will have to contend with. Will reporters be drowned in so many comments, he won't be able to sort the signal from the noise? A Slashdot approach to this, allowing readers to rate comments - and respond to them - may help mitigate this problem.

What other problems are there with this approach? Talk to me, cyberspace.

Editorial standards

I've been mulling over the question of maintaining editorial standards in a network of professional blogs. I'm imagining an online publication readers feel they can trust that consists of a network of freelance blogs. Yet, I want to have as little management as possible. A system that runs itself without oversight would be ideal, but is it possible?

Right now I'm reading We the Media by Dan Gillmor, who works at the Knight Center for Digital Media Entrepreneurship. One of the points he keeps on driving home is that the Internet's greatest power is not simply interactivity. Allowing readers to comment? Simple interactivity. Harnessing the knowledge, creativity, and judgment of the readers to enforce editorial standards? That's open source press.

What I've been realizing is that the open source movement is about far more than just coding. Increasingly, individuals are being invested with the tools and knowledge to make change. It's happening in programming and in media. It's also happening in politics. Medicine too - with more and more information available to patients, it is now possible for patients to be far more informed about their more obscure health problems than a general practitioner can possibly be. Meanwhile, smart medical researchers may be looking to health forums for research questions.

Gillmor seems to be saying that as Internet technology evolves, it is handing us more and more tools that make centralization and management less and less crucial. Grassroots civic involvement and a more democratic process are just some of the possible benefits.

At the moment, I'd say that I agree with Gillmor. I'd be interested to read some thoughtful and pointed rebuttals, if anyone can point me towards one.

I'm also on the look out for well-written, succinct information on the open source coding movement. Information on how they do distributed project management, as well as a history of the philosophy and theory of the movement, would be key. Hook me up!