links for 2009-09-27

Now we’re launching ConscienceOnline.com, a social networking site for volunteers and nonprofits. Think of it as a Facebook-style site for local do-gooders. I see it becoming a central communications hub for our region.

50 tips for budding journalists

1. It's a vocation, not a job
2. You are born with a news sense, you can't be taught one
3. Your duty is to scrutinise the executive and shine a torch in dark places
4. All journalism should be investigative
5. You are on duty 24 x 7

Imagine being able to search across the New York Times’ cache of records on Guantánamo Bay detainees, the ACLU’s unrivaled set of documents on detention policy, Jane Mayer’s source material for her coverage of the CIA in The New Yorker, and The Washington Post’s valuable contributions to all of the above. That’s the promise of DocumentCloud, which I’ve explained at length in previous posts.

Without the giant newsrooms and overheads, they begin to turn a modest profit. The blogosphere becomes what it has always threatened to be (and in some places – notably the US – already is, almost)…a fantastically broad, fragmented organic news source.

But the quality still isn’t quite there. Obama’s prediction of an “all blogosphere” news environment becomes dangerously close to realisation. The old news organisations that are still clinging on for life have one final play left in them, and turn to the government en masse.