Jeff Jarvis has an excellent post today about the Internet As the First Amendment.

He says:

The internet is the First Amendment brought to life. Our First Amendment argues that it is both undesirable and impossible to contain speech and the marketplace of ideas. The internet enforces that idea. You simply can’t contain speech on it. Oh, governments will try. And those who favor rule by the offended will try to make them. And companies have become accomplices to regimes’ crimes against speech by handing over speakers’ identities (see Yahoo in China and Google in India). These are, of course, the areas where anonymity has its place (the ethic of identity in these cases is protecting the identity of speakers).

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Thank goodness this is not a post about the World Series.

Jeff Jarvis highlights Craig Silverman’s blog Regret the Error and his book by the same title which chronicles mistakes by journalists.  Jeff makes the point that in the world of Web 2.0, journalists can’t hide from their mistakes, and they should rush to admit and correct the regrettable yet inevitable errors. 

Well said, Jeff. Imagine if the concept were applied more widely.

I think I’d like to make a banner of these two sentences: "In the end, this is about instilling an ethic of transparency — even about our fallibility and foibles — in journalism, professional and amateur. It is about being unafraid to speak in our imperfect human voice instead of hiding behind the cold, castle walls of the institution." I’d hang that banner across the Capitol dome in Washington.

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Facebook is holding a seminar here in Washington, next Tuesday to teach politicians and other government types how to use the social web. We at the Sunlight Foundation say "Bravo!" The new Web’s benefits to elected officials of every stripe are pretty obvious, allowing government officials to communicate directly with their constituents, bypassing both internal and news-based editorial control. What is equally apparent is how the Web encourages openness, accountability and transparency and how Facebook has become a place to be for presidential candidates.

The organizers promise a lively seminar about how social media can be an integral part of any campaign and constituent strategy. In an effort to accommodate schedules and keep the sessions smaller, Facebook has scheduled two sessions on October 9, one in the morning and the other in the afternoon.

Hat Tip Jeff Jarvis.

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I’d like to give a shout-out to Jeff Jarvis, who announced the first Networked Journalism Summit to be held on October 10 in New York. The Summit will take place at the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism and is funded by the MacArthur Foundation. Networked Journalism is really one of the most exciting new developments in journalism, a way of professionals and amateurs working together to get the real story, all uniquely possible because of the Internet.

Unfortunately, I can’t make it. But Sunlight will be well represented by Bill Allison.

Jeff is saying that it will be a day about action: "new projects, new partnerships, new experiments." Based on Jeff’s description, the event sounds like a real participatory affair — I wouldn’t expect anything less.

NewAssignment.net’s David Cohn collaborated with Jeff to organize the summit. They’ve pulled in an impressive list of participants.

It’s all so exciting…and we’ve just scratched the surface of this new style of journalism’s potential.

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One day I am going to have to actually meet Howard Weaver. He’s been on the edge of my life for years now — he was money and politics database expert Larry Makinson’s editor at the Anchorage Daily News in the early- 80’s. Weaver is clearly an insightful guy for an MSM editor. Makinson was working with graphs and charts back then to display the relative influence of political donors in Alaska. (Maybe if Makinson and Weaver hadn’t left that paper someone would have followed up on their initial leads. Veco was the top political donor there in 1984.) Weaver encouraged Makinson to create the first Open Secrets (for Alaska) and they teamed up together for the second edition. (BTW The Anchorage Daily News won two Pulitzer Prizes for Public Service while Howard was editor there. Makinson went on to give his talents to the Center for Responsive Politics for many years.)

Now Weaver, as one of the top executives at McClatchy, has picked up an idea that Jeff Jarvis floated to create a Google map with citizens reporting, identifing and cataloguing infrastructure problems. The Merced Sun Star launched it in couple of hours. Very neat.

I wonder what the analogue to what might be in our world of Congressional activity? A Google map of earmarks? A map that reflects where lawmakers have their fundraising events with lobbyists? (Yes, still permitted.) A Gawker Stalker effort that tracks lobbyists visits in the halls of Congress? A map that shows the land deals lawmakers have that also shows earmarks from the same members? A map of lawmakers daily schedules, each point representing the location of the group/business/person the lawmaker is meeting with (not the location of the meeting). More ideas?

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