Annotative Reporting and Open

source journalism
 We are familiar with hypertextuality, interactivity and
multimediality, and the way they change the character of the
text it is time to discuss the way these characteristics can be
utilized to give the reader (user), and society in general, more
than what they get from print or broadcast journalism.
 The two main ways of doing this are: annotative
reporting and open source journalism.
 Nora Paul coined the term 'annotative
journalism' in February 1995.
 Paul envisaged a model of journalism based on
hyperlinks, on a vision of the audience as active
users instead of passive consumers of
information, requiring "a whole new category of
worker in the interactive products newsroom"
 According to the Concise Oxford English Dictionary, to
‘annotate’ is to “add notes to (a text or diagram) giving
explanation or comment”. Therefore, this word and its
derivative, ‘annotative’, presuppose the existence of other
texts.
 In the case of online journalism, these other texts are the
immense and ever-growing number of web pages and
databases on every conceivable subject that are available on
the internet.
 the term ‘annotative reporting’ was coined in the mid-1990s
when media commentators realised that since news sites
constituted a very small fraction of all existing sites, these
were far from being the only sources of information for the
public.
 They saw that in the new situation, the reporter's role would
have to evolve beyond the traditional one of a mere provider
of information to that of a facilitator of interactive media
environments in which readers (users) would construct their
own ‘news’ from material present on the net with the help of
hyperlinks.
 To annotate means to add explanation to
information - extra 'commentary information' in
terms of the Online Dictionary of Computing.
 put it more explicitly: it used to be 'getting the
information to the public', now added to that
comes 'analyzing and explaining complex issues
 Internet and the World Wide Web can bring about
a discipline of 'pure' annotative reporting
 decrease the need for mediation by media
professionals
 it's the same profession of journalism that can be
seen as being able to point a way through the
'clutter of voices' through participatory
storytelling
 Citizens will become more direct and active
information seekers on subjects they are already
familiar with - needing instrumental journalism -
while they will continue to favor assistance in
fields they are less familiar with - opting for
orientational journalism
 Annotative reporting can be seen as a hybrid between these
two options: both critical - expecting specialized expertise on
the side of the audience - as well as orientational - guiding
individuals to and through information on any given topic and
issue.
 meaning a model of journalism which is aimed at gathering
information, describing the bits and pieces and pointing out to
the involved public where to access this information.
 Good examples of such early forms of annotative genres are
sites like Slashdot, which allows users to create an
environment in which people can both access as well as post
information - or comments and discussion about information.
 In this respect annotative journalism should be defined as a
form of service-oriented meta-journalism; journalism about
journalism.
 Open source journalism
 Open-source journalism, a close cousin to citizen journalism is a
term coined in the title of a 1999 article by Andrew
Leonard of Salon.com.
  Although the term was not actually used in the body text of
Leonard's article, the headline encapsulated a collaboration between
users of the internet technology blog Slashdot and a writer for Jane's
Intelligence Review.
 This early usage of the phrase clearly implied the paid use, by a
mainstream journalist, of copyright-protected posts made in a public
online forum. It thus referred to the standard journalistic techniques
of news gathering and fact checking, and reflected a similar term
that was in use from 1992 in military intelligence circles, open
source intelligence.
 The meaning of the term has since changed and broadened,
and it is now commonly used to describe forms of innovative
publishing of online journalism, rather than the sourcing of
news stories by a professional journalist
 The term open-source journalism is often used to describe a
spectrum on online publications: from various forms of semi-
participatory online community journalism (as exemplified
by projects such as the copyright newspaper NorthWest
Voice),[4] through to genuine open-source news publications
(such as the Spanish 20 minutos, and Wikinews)
 This was a pure form of open source journalism: the use of
so-called 'open' sources on the Internet to check facts. The
term 'open-source' stems from the procedure to make
software source codes openly available so that experts and
regular users will find and correct glitches and modify the
original code to their own benefit (O'Reilly, 1998).
 Advocates of open-source journalism proclaim it as the new
journalism, perfecting all that is wrong with traditional
journalism. Others strongly oppose use of open sources,
claiming the tactic will hinder the practice of traditional
journalism and allow experts to wrest editorial control from
journalists and the outlets for which they write
 The fundamental idea behind open source journalism can be
seen as an advanced form of civic, public or communitarian
journalism: involving the audience in the (manufacture of)
news, creating a kind of user-generated content sites
 "Open source journalism would be amateur journalism,
journalism produced by citizens, scholars, community
activists and other troublemakers just because we love the
idea of creating, organizing or deploying the information that
could save our planet and our souls."
 . The potentials (and pitfalls) of open source journalism
should therefore be explored, not discarded. An early example
of support for this potential came from a survey among Dutch
online journalists in 1999: 69% of these new media
professionals agreed to the proposition that a strong
interactive relationship with the audience is an essential
building block for any news site
  This genre of journalism is based on the concept of open
source programming, which allows for public testing beta
versions of software in order to provide critiques on how to
improve the viability of the product in question.
 The term was first adopted in relation to journalism in
October 1999, when the online magazine Salon referenced
how Jane's Intelligence Review, a publication that dealt with
the subject of threat analysis, had asked for critiques from
users of the website Slashdot about an article concerning
cyberterrorism. The criticism toward the article was intense
enough for it to be shelved, with a new article that included
information derived from the Slashdot users.
 The journalistic version of this approach has been compared
to such offshoots as participatory journalism, citizen
journalism and user-created content. In some sense, it means
an author is requesting or receiving the assistance of the
public (in effect, crowdsourcing) in making sure that the
finished product is as complete and accurate as possible.
 Such approaches generally run the gamut from asking readers
to conduct fact checking on an article to having individuals
doing a mountain of leg work to collectively gather
information germane to a specific thesis. 
 In many cases, the use of raw information without any
filtering by editors is offered in order to at least give the
appearance of transparency. Whether or not it is 100 percent
accurate remains a potential drawback that can hinder the
messenger.
 Generally, the most avid users of this collaborative brand of
journalism tend to be news-oriented organizations that are
under financial constraints. Despite the continuing struggles
of newspapers that have seen circulation numbers drop
precipitously over the past decade, this form has not reached
a stage where such organizations have adopted it in any
widespread form
 For example, stories about the 2013 Boston Marathon
bombing on the site included inaccurate information about the
supposed involvement of people who were completely
innocent of the crime, and brought complaints about vigilante
justice being offered up.
 Individuals were attempting to determine guilt based on their
own perceptions. That's difficult to do for even the most
experienced of investigators, let alone a faceless contributor
on an online forum.
  open source journalism is that it helps engage an audience on
a variety of topics that could help shed light on a story that
hasn't received much coverage in what are considered the
usual media circles. It also can be presented as an antidote to
the often weak voting numbers each year that give rise to
claims of rampant apathy.
 Criticisms about the genre include the merging of journalistic
objectivity and public relations content, which can blur the
line between accuracy and the marketing of a product or
political agenda. For example, a person who is deemed an
expert by this form of journalism may in fact represent a
lobbying faction that only offers their side of a story.
 In addition, the fact that stories can be published immediately,
with little or no attempt to edit the content. While users can
then distribute the story to a wider audience, that practice can
cause problems if inaccuracies or distortions exist within an
article.
 Complicating this issue is the fact that the collective
contributions that helped put together the article can make it
difficult to determine where exactly such erroneous
information first originated.
 Websites such as Reddit attempt to offer information on a
story through the work of visitors, but in some cases, that
effort can go very wrong. 
 Open Journalism, Social Media Journalism, Open-
Source Intelligence -

 We've written a couple of times about the use of

publicly-available information, typically posted
on social networks, to verify developing stories
where traditional sources are scarce or unreliable.
This new field doesn't seem to have a fixed name
yet -- open journalism, social media journalism,
open-source intelligence are all used