Out With A Bang

This is more by way of an update; an update on Saturday’s musings about kitemarks and with it a greater explanation of ‘The Transparency Initiative’ from the man himself, Matin Moore.

http://outwithabang.rickwaghorn.co.uk/?p=229#comments

If you actually read his own blog post…

http://mediastandardstrust.blogspot.com/2009/01/making-news-transparent-is-not-about.html

… where he and Sir Tim are actually going becomes ever more intriguing.

If only in the use of language… that they are bringing another empowerment device to the table… one that encourages mass participation; of the workers uniting and finding value and recognition built into their home-written wares via Martin’s meta-marking…

‘… it distributes participation, enabling anyone who is producing content online (ie a journalist) to describe what it is rather than rely on a third party to do it for them… In this sense it is ‘bottom up’ rather than top down…

‘It’s (c) Empowering – once labelled, there is information within the content itself that provides the reader with what they need to assess it…

And for ‘readers’ could we read ‘Government’ and ‘advertisers’ – both of whom are likely to be on a mission to find digital value and worth?

But what’s brilliant is this sense that it is specifically designed to be used by the masses; it’s empowerment to the people; it works from the bottom up, not the top down model as envisaged by ‘kitemarks’ and the Reuters Institute…

Which won’t work, says Knight’s finest.

‘(a) It’s top down – like most 20th century media models it assumes some sort of central control. If we’ve learnt anything from the digital revolution it must be the – welcome – dissolution of control…’

… so it works from the coalface; pick in one hand… http://newscredit.org/ … in the other.

A journalistic ‘coalface’ that you can find within every postcode community in the country; injecting value and worth into the system from the moment that the headmaster, the parish council chairman or the librarian start to speak…

And note, too, Martin’s use of the word ‘revolution’. Cos, for me, that’s what all this is about; it’s about power to the people.

Or rather, bringing empowerment to the people.