For years, wide-eyed journalists, politicos and academics have captured people’s imagination with musings about the many ways the Internet would democratize our society.  A decade and a half after the Internet’s emergence, the anticipated transformation is certainly underway.  Media, political, and corporate institutions have begun to incorporate readers, constituents and consumers into their regular operational and decision-making processes.  However, relative to the initial projections, the pace of change isn’t fast enough – at least to the impatient ones, including us here at MixedInk!

There are a couple of reasons for this.  First, government, media, and corporations are hesitant to cede real power to their stakeholders.  News reporters and editors don’t want to be fact-checked by their readers because it threatens their perceived status as “experts.”  Politicians want complete control over their policies, platforms and messages.  Companies want to know what their consumers think, but they don’t want consumers to have a say in decision making.

This reluctance is increasingly beside the point, however.  New, more democratic norms are coming to govern the relationship between reporter and audience member, elected official and constituent, company and consumer.  This is because free markets and elections provide these institutions with an existential reason to engage citizens transparently and democratically that overrules their hesitance: doing so brings them more votes, more dollars, and more attention.

Another challenge is that the trial and error process of testing social technology takes time.  Social processes are often counter-intuitive and difficult to manipulate, so it’s hard to build web-based tools that are a natural social fit.  New online tools thrive not because they solve some previously impossible technological problem, but because they provide “elegant organization” that offers an outlet to harness people’s energy in a productive (or at least entertaining) way.  It’s difficult, if not impossible, to predict how people will interact with each other using a new tool in advance.  Thus, finding ways to ‘organize elegantly’ requires a slow process of trial and error.

In practice, this has meant that innovative media and political organizations simply try out different tools to see what works, and then, over time, others imitate the tactics that turn out to be successful.  Being currently immersed in this trial and error process, the MixedInk team is very much aware of the time it takes; the way people use our private beta site sometimes surprises us.  As a startup, however, we don’t face the same risks as those at large, prominent institutions.  If things don’t go so well for us, few people will notice.  If they fail, everyone pays attention!

There’s plenty of cause for optimism, though.  The pace of change seems to have increased within the last several years between the growth of new media and the beginnings of a shift towards more democratic user engagement among corporate, political, and media organizations.  As Vanessa mentioned in a recent post, Dell’s IdeaStorm and MyStarbucksIdea are significant innovations in the world of corporate America.  Others, like the YouTube/CNN primary debate here in the US and the UK Prime Minister’s “Ask the PM” represent the beginnings of a democratic transformation within the media and political sphere.

To continue our online democracy’s forward progress, it’s important to recognize and address the risks involved with each of these efforts, though.  Each one engaged a large, critical mass of stakeholders with an up-front promise to publich, incorporate, and respond to their input in a meaningful way.  This sudden, very public democratization of communications meant risking that users might overwhelmingly contradict each institution’s official message and branding.  Yet by capitalizing on citizens’ desire to communicate directly with decision-makers, these efforts have been quite successful.

For all of us who aim to contribute to the emerging wave of online democracy, understanding the risks that that innovators like Starbucks, Dell and CNN face can be the difference between success and failure.  Only by adequately balancing risk and reward will new social technologies and applications be able to bring our emerging online democracy to its inevitable tipping point.  In my next post, I’ll describe a few different models for engaging citizens that provide varying degrees of risk and reward, allowing institutions with a range of risk-aversion and participatory ideals to strike the balance that’s appropriate for them.

In searching for a hosting solution, we were surprised by the lack of trustworthy information online to help people decide between them.  We set up a quick survey and are posting the results here.  There were 27 usable responses (the rest were missing too much information to use).   So the results are far from statistically significant, but hopefully they’re useful to others in the same situation.  It’s available as a Google Spreadsheet here: http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=pmbNeL2NbqdCUSddkHmCAbw.

Here’s some snapshots — the document itself is a bit overwhelming to look at.

The following hosting services received “excellent” ratings for uptime, speed, and customer service:

• Alticon (2 ratings)
• Bob
• Contegix
• Edgeweb Hosting
• ExchangeGuru (2 ratings)
• Grassroots Enterprise
• SoftLayer
• Verizon Business FIOS

The following hosting services received a mix of “excellent” and “good” ratings for uptime, speed, and customer service:

• ActiveHost
• Amazon (EC2+S3)
• Aplus
• VPSlink
• Web Hosting Solutions

I just stumbled on this article Marc Ambinder wrote in The Atlantic Monthly last month about how Barack Obama may “transform governance just as he has transformed campaigning.”  This little nugget stood out and I thought it was worth sharing:

Communication and transparency are virtues only up to a point; as students of bureaucracies know, both eventually become an enemy to efficiency. Moreover, if [a] presidency invited more input than it could reasonably weigh and respond to, it would quickly squander the networking capital that the campaign has built.

MixedInk’s was built precisely to address these challenges.  We couldn’t have said it better ourselves.  Thanks, Marc!

Sorry for the big pause in MixedInk’s musings. It was a busy Spring!

Over the past few weeks and months, there have been some notable developments in the crowd-powered arena, and I just want to take a moment to highlight a few interesting examples.

We’re always excited to see forward-looking companies embracing the collective wisdom, so cheers to Starbucks
and Dell, both of which opened the door to major customer feedback. Both companies have embraced a platform called Salesforce Ideas, which TechCrunch aptly described as “Digg-for-ideas.” It allows people to share their ideas, discuss them, and then vote on the ones they like. Participants also get updates from the company responding to the top-rated suggestions. Pretty cool! To many skeptics’ surprise, the Starbucks page has been very popular, with ideas coming in by
the thousands and garnering hundreds of thousands of votes. Starbucks has embraced this feedback as an opportunity to offer their customers the ultimate form of respect – asking their opinion – and to get some new and innovative ideas for free. Dell’s “IdeaStorm,” which was the first site to solicit consumer feedback in this way, rightly earned PR Week’s Innovation
of the Year Award in 2007.

Radiohead has also opened the door to crowd-sourcing. The band surprised fans earlier this year by letting them decide whether or how much to pay for their last CD. In April, they upped the ante by offering “stems” (or different tracks: bass, guitar, drums, vocals…) of their single “Nude,” and then letting fans remix the song. Fans could post the remixed versions to Nude Re/Mix, where the public then could vote their preferences. As SocialMediaInsider points out, “This practice views the original content creation as the mere starting point for what happens to it once it is embraced. Some artists dabble in this area, but most don’t.” This is exactly how MixedInk views the collaborative writing process. Each person’s written contributions are like stems – ready to be edited, remixed, and ranked – that together build the best possible response, reflective of the wisdom of the different people involved in the process.

Most recently, MoveOn challenged its members to make a 30-second TV ad that tells the nation why Barack Obama should be the next president. A whopping 5.5 million votes were cast on 1,100 entries. The top 15 videos were sent to a panel of filmmakers, artists, musicians, and progressives, including Ben Affleck, Matt Damon, Lawrence Lessig, Jesse Jackson, and Moby. The winner was recently announced, and will be aired on TV during the campaign.

We’d love to hear about other applications that show the power of the crowd. Please feel free to highlight any innovative examples in the comments!

There was a great NY Tech Meetup last week that got me thinking about collective organizing. For the first time the NY Tech Meetup had a theme, “Power to the People: The Future of Organizing.” It’s exciting to see great new ideas promoting people power – and forums that uncover and celebrate their budding existence online.

It was especially appropriate that Meetup identified this as a theme, being huge innovators in the world of local, do-it-yourself organizing. For anyone who isn’t familiar with it, Meetup is a website with an elegantly simple premise: let people post an idea for a community meeting about anything – whether it’s saving the earth, starting a business, or knitting – and allow interested people in the area to attend. In hosting this event, the NY Tech Meetup (run by Scott Heiferman, the co-founder and CEO of Meetup) aimed to bring kindred spirits in the online world of organizing together.

The seeming legendary Clay Shirky was there to chat about Here Comes Everybody, “a book about organizing without organizations.” He made an interesting presentation, mostly about how much easier group action has become – and how often it’s happening these days. The simple fact that people with something in common can now find one another is a huge step. Philosopher William James once said “thinking is for doing.” Clay says “publishing is for acting,” meaning that publishing is increasingly used to gather and coordinate people.

Check out this excerpt from Clay’s book about Meetup here. He makes the point that Meetup groups can’t be organized top-down – being self-organized is key: “Though it seems funny for a service business, Meetup actually does best not by trying to do things on behalf of its users, but by providing a platform for them to do things for one another.” The book is brand new and promises to be an inspiring read. Update: Check him out on the Colbert Report…

A bunch of interesting online innovators presented at last week’s Meetup, but I was most excited about ThePoint. The Point is a brilliant new website run by Andrew Mason in Chicago that’s based on a few basic principles: (1) People want to stand up for themselves and their beliefs (2) standing up for yourself is usually a waste of time, because you’re just one person and it’s hard to be heard, and (3) people don’t want to waste their time. So he figures that people are generally being pretty rational when they skip out on standing up for themselves.

Here’s how his site solves the problem. Say you love KFC, but you want them to treat their chickens a little better. You don’t want to boycott the place by yourself, which would certainly deprive you of that deep fried goodness without much chance of sending a strong message to KFC. So you head to ThePoint, sign in to the “Tough Love for KFC” campaign:

“KFC, your chicken is so tasty. Your biscuits are so buttery. Your colonel is so regal. You’re hard not to like. But maybe you could be just a little nicer to your animals?”

And you pledge to stop eating there if KFC doesn’t adopt the suggestions of their animal welfare board only if 1,000,000 join the movement.

Now you know you won’t be forgoing those tasty morsels for naught. You can assume your actions are sure to mean something when pooled with a million like-minded souls. So ThePoint allows you to be sure the conditions exist for your actions to be meaningful.

But this tool is not confined to social movements – you can use it to make anything happen that requires cooperation. For example, you can use it to organize your neighbors to build a new community garden, only if 1,000 of them pledge $10 each to pay for it. Pretty cool. PledgeBank, a UK-based site, provides a service that’s similar to ThePoint.

This whole people-powered online revolution thing seems to have caught on in the news this week as well. There’s an interesting article in the Guardian, “People power transforms the web in next online revolution.” Like Clay’s book, the article looks at how we are going to organize ourselves “without the trappings of traditional organizations.” It talks about flash mobs – when a group of people gathers somewhere to do something random together, like smile in October Square in Belarus. Flash mobs have affected elections in Spain, Philippines, and South Korea. In China, flash mobs are staging campaigns despite 54,000 cyber police, and it seems it will soon be impossible for even the most totalitarian governments to stop people from organizing. Update 4/16/08: Check out this story about a student twittering his way out of jail in Egypt! The article also discusses Wikipedia and other movements to make information openly accessible, including the Encyclopedia of Life (about all the Earth’s species) and the Public Library of Science, an open-access journal.

At MixedInk, we certainly plan to play our part in helping folks self-organize and harness their collective power. We just came up with an exciting idea that could make our democracy a little more people powered, which we submitted to the NetSquared Mashup Contest. It’s called Government by the people. You can help us win by voting for us! Anyone can register as a NetSquared user, making them eligible to vote – the contest is being decided, appropriately, by the people.

Update 4/16/08: Check out Seth Godin’s interesting article on the power of organizing.

In my last post, I described the vertical disaggregation process occurring within the news industry, wondering aloud (as is fashionable these days) what business model will support the news in the new media environment.

Actually, this question needs to be more precise. A better one is: Which business models will support which types of news generation processes – regardless of whether they happen in a newsroom or not? I believe that, in addition to vertical disaggregation, there will be a simultaneous process of horizontal disaggregation. That is, various types of news that have historically been created within a single company will end up within distinct entities, which are in turn supported by different revenue streams and cost structures.

The gurus of news 2.0 believe geographical scope will be a (if not the) major fault line along which content creation and aggregation are broken down, though hyperlocal journalism has had limited success so far. The national and regional news sites that already exist will be complemented by hyperlocal sites that tell you what’s going on in your neighborhood, on your block, or even in your apartment building. As it would be hard for a single neighborhood to generate enough advertising revenue to support paid reporters and editors, this type of hyperlocal site will only become possible through partial reliance on user-generated content, which the site obtains practically for free. A number of startups are already targeting this market.

But geographical breadth is just one of a number of social and technological fault lines along which horizontal disaggregation can occur. Any social or technological variation in the news content creation process could necessitate a different business model, and thus, be housed within a distinct entity.

Jeff Jarvis (CUNY professor of journalism and well known blogger) proposes separating the functions of newsgathering, editing, and analysis:

So maybe we need to disaggregate the newsroom yet further into its distinct and, we hope, marketable skills. Reporting and news-gathering (words, images, sound, video, data, investigation) may well be something that freelancers (professionals and amateurs) do. And editing — curating, vetting, enabling, educating, to cut up the task yet further — may find new value. Analysis may happen more and more in the commentsphere that the community has become.

This makes sense. But why stop there? Why not further divide the news generation process into its component steps? Conversely, will it make sense in some cases for news production processes remain unchanged? (Indeed, some magazines are thriving even as other print media declines.)

It will all depend on what type of news is being produced. Let’s consider five types of journalism. These are by no means exhaustive, or completely distinct from one another:

- Investigative journalism involving in–depth interviews, breaking news from private sources, or a high degree of technical expertise
- Crafting narratives from widely available, understood, and agreed-upon facts (e.g. sporting events, political events, market information, etc.)
- Opinion and analysis
- Hyperlocal news
- Collection and dissemination of raw data

These vary in the extent to which they can be crowdsourced, in citizens’ desire to participate in their production, in their need to be fact-checked, and in the degree of subjectivity involved in crafting narratives.

If we were to do an analysis of how much it costs to produce each category of journalistic text, either in per-article or per-word terms, I suspect we’d find huge variation, perhaps even an order of magnitude or more. We’d also find huge differences in revenue per unit, as some news is more viral, and some news inherently leads users to spend more money (which generates higher demand for advertising). In other words, it makes perfect sense that they would need separate business models!

These days, somewhat counterintuitively, news crowdsourcing experiments often create more work for the journalists who organize them – not less. Someone must generate internal support for the project, set up one or more technology platforms, encourage the community to participate, and/or monitor large numbers of contributions (the quality of which varies significantly). But eventually, as the technology improves, and as news sites institute permanent, flexible processes and deploy them with greater frequency and scale, these costs will shrink on a per-unit basis. Technology will selectively afford opportunities to crowdsource expensive components of the news creation process, thereby eliminating those costs from newsrooms. In this way, technology will magnify the differences in cost and revenue per unit between different types of news.

My prediction is that we’ll end up with multiple, distinct business models, each associated with different processes for gathering first- and second-hand information, crafting narratives, editing copy, fact-checking, etc. These processes may happen within a single company or within separate firms – I imagine there will be some examples of each. The point is that different types of news will become sustainable in different ways.

Intensive investigative journalism will probably always require a high level of professional journalism. The others, theoretically at least, could some day be largely crowdsourced, though the processes for crowdsourcing would likely vary significantly. A lot of data is already being collected by readers (polls, photos, comments, videos, etc.), though one might argue we have a long way to go in finding a structure that approaches traditional journalistic standards and fully exploits the value of this content.

Eventually, I think it will be possible to crowdsource a much larger share of journalism than we currently anticipate. MixedInk will be a socially and technologically different way to produce some types of news. It will enable motivated crowds of readers to assume responsibility for certain phases of the news generation process. Along with other technologies that facilitate crowdsourcing of content creation, it will help to cushion the fall of traditional media while producing a more democratic public sphere.

It’s important to acknowledge up front, though, that there won’t be a single solution to the news ‘crisis,’ but many distinct solutions. Journalism may be transformed almost beyond recognition, but I, for one, do not worry about its future. The demand for news is clearly not going anywhere. If anything, by providing pressure for change, the crisis is helping to avoid stagnation in our public discourse. It will result in a stronger news product that better engages and reflects the priorities of readers.

Much has been written on the subject of the internet-induced transformation currently underway within the news industry. (Those who’ve already had their fill of this topic should feel free to wait for Part 2.)

The basic idea is that the economics of distributing information online are radically different from print, so the business models that evolved within the physical world of newspapers no longer apply. The gradually declining fortunes of today’s newspapers mark the end of the previous era.

In meatspace, it made sense to keep the entire value chain – ad sales, news and editorial content, printing, and distribution – under a single roof. Given the economies of scale and high coordination costs from one end of the chain to the other, companies consolidated into local monopolies and national oligopolies in order to minimize costs and maximize profits.

The internet is changing things. Distribution costs are now much lower due to the ease of online publishing; new communication tools facilitate coordination among the different activities; and buying and selling advertising inventory is much simpler through automated web-based ad networks.

With the reduction in coordination costs, suddenly there’s much less pressure towards vertical integration. The value chain is more efficient when divided between multiple entities, each focusing solely on a single stage of the chain rather than doing everything (newsgathering, printing, distribution, etc.) in-house. Separate companies can develop their core competencies and engage with complementary firms within a competitive marketplace that stimulates innovation at each step in the chain.

So, the consensus among many internet gurus is that the news media is being reorganized. Within the new value chain, distinct companies are performing different functions – selling advertising (e.g. Google Ads, Tacoda), creating content (e.g. AP, NYTimes.com), and aggregating content (e.g. Digg, Google News), and other more narrow ones. They integrate almost seamlessly to deliver a product that was previously provided by a single company. Communications infrastructure firms, like Comcast, are also part of this new chain – they’re today’s delivery boys. But they’re simultaneously a part of many other web-based value chains, and they’re paid by end users, so their fortunes are much less dependent on the news industry.

This is not to suggest that the disaggregation process described so far is complete. Far from it. As more and more consumers get their news online instead of in hard copy, print advertising sales dry up. Online ad revenue, while growing, will probably never make up the difference – a major reason for this is that classified advertising, once a major source of newspaper revenue, has moved elsewhere. (Anyone heard of a site called Craigslist?) Newspapers of all shapes and sizes are being forced to cut back on editorial staff.

So the big question on everyone’s mind as the media ecosystem transforms is: As newsrooms cease to be able to support themselves as vertically integrated newspaper monopolies, how will they continue to do their jobs – if at all? It isn’t only journalists and news companies with a natural self-interest in protecting their livelihoods who ask this, but also foundations, academics, media watchdogs, and others who seek to safeguard a robust fourth estate out of a conviction that the health of our democracy depends on it.

Stay tuned for my thoughts on what’s in store in an upcoming post. The short version: Different types of news will sustain themselves through different business models.

Breaking from its conventional emphasis on editorial oversight, CNN is launching a completely user-generated news site at iReport.com this week.

In August 2006, CNN made a big move to bring citizen journalism into the mainstream when it launched iReport on CNN.com. iReport submissions are chosen by editors and checked for accuracy before CNN shows them online or on television. As a result, CNN has showcased only 10% of the nearly 100,000 news-related photos and videos that it has received since 2006. User-generated videos and news have provided some of CNN’s most compelling footage, which were especially noteworthy during California’s wildfires and the shootings at Virginia Tech.

The new CNN site will be fully open, allowing users to post anything (though the site will be monitored for inappropriate content). “The community will decide what the news is,” says Susan Grant, Executive VP of CNN News Services. Modeled after YouTube, iReport.com will allow citizen journalists to upload videos, photos, and audio files, while visitors can search, rate, and share clips.

The trend toward mainstream user-generated news doesn’t end with CNN. ESPN recently launched “ESPNU Campus Connection,” which “combines student reporting with gripping college hoops action,” according to its website. ESPNU is putting students to work as sportscasters responsible for generating coverage, sideline reporting, commentary, and analysis. This gives students a chance for a unique professional experience and offers ESPN exposure and more extensive programming on college campuses.

This is a win-win for publishers and consumers. “For a publisher, you’re engaging consumers, and mixing up your offerings. For consumers, you’re getting a voice and having an impact,” points out Piper Jaffray Web analyst Aaron Kessler.

Here at MixedInk, we’re excited to see these big players recognizing the potential of citizen journalism and supporting it with creative – and sometimes risky – new initiatives!

Also see ReadWriteWeb’s report on CNN here:
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/cnn_to_launch_completely_user.php

There’s always been a heavy anti-pundit streak in the online political realm. But lately, the volume of criticism seems to be growing.

The general consensus is that pundits are blowhards. They make statements – often absurd, offensive or false statements – for which they’re rarely held accountable. What is most frustrating is that they are granted unfettered access to millions of ears and eyes, regardless of the validity of their claims (or lack thereof).

This is not a left-vs-right thing; it’s a populist attitude that can be found on both sides of the aisle. Here’s Rightwing Nuthouse, from last August, pointing out what it takes to succeed as a pundit:

The trick in being a good political pundit is not in formulating wildly original analysis or penetrating insights into “what it all means.” Rather, it is much better to say exactly what everyone else is saying except be meaner, or funnier, or more serious, or more dismissive than the next fellow. A good turn of the phrase and an attitude will bring you stardom in punditland.

While their backgrounds and expertise may seem to qualify them to opine on political issues, the talking heads’ obsessive focus on strategy and tactics crowds out all but the most simplistic analyses of the government policies which are at stake.

Even when it comes to the horse race, politics is such a stubbornly unpredictable arena that the pundits seem unable to read the political tea leaves any better than their audiences. Or, at least, no better than those who follow politics closely (of whom there are a sizable number).

This rant from Colin Delaney at e.Politics following the Iowa caucuses calls the pundits out on their mistakes:

Well, who was the big loser in the Iowa caucuses? It wasn’t Mitt Romney or Hillary Clinton, and it certainly wasn’t Ron Paul. The big loser was political punditry.

…What was revealed to be vapid and empty last night was the endless, often cable TV-driven spouting of impression and prediction — when did political talking heads suddenly gain the ability to accurately foretell the future? Most of ‘em sure ain’t that good at it… even a cursory stroll down memory lane turns up plenty more. Remember when Fred Thompson was going to change the race irrevocably? Or when John McCain was doomed and should just pack up and go home? When Obama’s young-voter strategy was a waste of time, ’cause the damn kids never show up to vote anyway?

Political pundits: please stop telling us what you THINK is going to happen, because in the world of online communications, you don’t actually know more than we do. We have access to the same polls, we read the same on-the-ground reporting and scroll through the same blogs and we can see every significant piece of video the same day…

…Pundits, please just shut up and surrender some airtime to actual journalism.

Glenn Greenwald, a once-independent blogger who now writes for Salon, wrote about how wrong the pundits were on the Iowa Caucus results in a recent post, aptly titled “Worthless chatter.” He lists a number of quite damning instances in which pundits not only inaccurately foretold Governor Huckabee’s collapse in the Iowa caucuses, but did so with a degree of certainty which now seems absurd, if not downright manipulative.

Underlying much of the criticism is a belief that pundits are an undemocratic influence on the country’s political narratives, and thus, its political outcomes. Once a certain analysis or prediction becomes conventional wisdom among pundits, regardless of its initial veracity, it can serve as a self-fulfilling prophecy. Aware of this phenomenon, pundits often go so far as to make statements they know to be untrue in order to increase the likelihood that their preferred reality will be come to be.

So why is the pundit criticism getting louder now?

Pundits may be more extreme in their transgressions as they try to entertain for more airtime despite having no more material to work with. It also could be that the critics have more visible platforms than ever before.

But I would argue that on top of this, there’s a growing, organic, anti-pundit sentiment out there in the general public that the critics are beginning to tap into. People now have access to almost all the same information the pundits do – we’re savvier media consumers. We are seeing how frequently the pundits are incorrect, how their analyses are influenced by biases which may not be immediately apparent. And we’re justifiably angry.

Politicians recognize this. Both Republicans and Democrats talk about “the pundits” in voices dripping with disdain, instructing us to ignore their cynicism. Candidates in both parties claim they’re going to prove the pundits wrong, and brag of having exceeded expectations. Pursuing their own self interest, politicians are collectively stirring up a mini-rebellion, challenging the voters to show the supposedly omniscient pundits that this country is still a democracy (which, incidentally, means voting for them). It’s almost as if they’re arguing that proving the pundits wrong is valid enough reason for voters to support their candidacies in and of itself! This type of anti-elitist rhetoric used to be reserved for attacking corporate fat-cats, union leaders, and government officials and bureaucrats.

Bloggers definitely see it, too, and point out how wrong – and grating! – the pundits are. Markos Moulitsas and Jerome Armstrong, two leading bloggers of the left, have long railed against the “DC cocktail party circuit.” But even on DailyKos, a leading left-wing blogging community run by Mr. Moulitsas, there’s been an up-tick in the criticism lately, with special emphasis on Chris Matthews (unaffectionately dubbed “tweety”).

Others in politics are also leveraging anti-pundit sentiment. Credo Mobile, the activist network connected to Working Assets, just circulated an online petition accusing the punditry of “biased and uninformed commentary”:

“Can Hillary Cry Her Way Back to the White House?”

That was the headline of a Maureen Dowd column in today’s New York Times.

Hillary Clinton’s win in New Hampshire was shocking. The performance of the national press corps in the days preceding the vote, unfortunately, was not.

Journalists have been replaced by a punditocracy that makes its living (and gets its kicks) by perverting our democratic process. The misogyny that was unleashed by the media’s feeding frenzy on the video of an exhausted Clinton tearing up at a small New Hampshire roundtable of voters was just the tip of the iceberg.

To be clear, we are not endorsing any candidate. This is not about who we choose for president, but rather how we choose our leader…

Firedoglake summed it up:

America is sick of [expletive] this year. From politicians. And especially from pundits.

So what’s the solution? Though their offenses seem greater than ever before at the moment, this situation is not new. And yet the pundits’ stature within the media seems undiminished.

Marc Andreessen, blogger and entrepreneur of Netscape fame, has a proposal:

If the world were a sane and just place, every pundit, commentator, expert, and reporter who predicted the things that didn’t happen and missed the things that did — which is to say, all of them — would resign their jobs tonight.

Since that won’t happen, the only logical response is to put one’s hands over one’s ears and say “Nanananananananananananana” every time one sees them on television from here on out.

While that’s certainly one solution, there’s got to be a better one, a more systemic one.

Wouldn’t it be nice if we could take the narratives that shape our politics out of the hands of a privileged few?

Sure, the blogosphere is a big step in the right direction. Because bloggers are more numerous than pundits, and because there’s room for more websites than there is room for major news outlets, people can choose the bloggers they agree with or like with greater precision than they can choose their pundits. The blogosphere is thus more meritocratic. Also, bloggers tend to be more up-front about their beliefs – they do not disguise their points of view as fact – so any efforts to manipulate the debate are more transparent, by definition.

Yet bloggers are still lone individuals, people with agendas, interested in imposing their own lens on the political discourse. No matter how much that lens align with yours, no single individual can always speak on behalf of an entire community. In stepping into the role of pundit, any single person would end up with too much control over the debate.

If, within the media ecosystem, there were some way for groups to speak with a single voice, we could collectively shout down pundits’ efforts to manipulate the debate. If only there were a way that people could create our narratives from scratch, thereby avoiding the undemocratic influences of those who would digest and interpret our news for us. Hmmmm…

(Hipsters also encouraged to apply.)

This six-month contract position offers an exciting opportunity to help shape a web-based collaborative writing tool that has the potential to help democratize the media and politics and change the way organizations interact with their stakeholders. We’re looking for someone who is passionate, hard-working, easy-going, and smart. You should be a self starter, work well in teams, produce results in short timeframes, and thrive in a very informal startup environment.

Responsibilities

• Play a lead role in all phases of the design and development of software.
• Participate actively in the implementation, customization and integration of software, as well as maintenance and enhancement of existing software.
• Customize software based on clients’ needs.
• Share opinions regarding usability, user interface design and scalability.

Qualifications

• 1-3 years of web development experience.
• Experience with rich internet application development in Flash and Ajax. Experience with Flex is a plus.
• Proficient in PHP.
• Relational database design/development skills.Experience building databases for large scale applications is a plus.
• Strong knowledge of different client-to-server communication approaches and protocols.
• Excellent knowledge of object-oriented design, analysis, and programming.
• Strong command of web standards, cross-browser compatibility and various web-related optimization techniques.
• BS in Computer Science or related background required, master’s degree and coursework in math and statistics preferred.

To Apply

This position involves working remotely, but NY is a plus. To apply for this position, please submit your resume, work sample URLs, and a brief cover letter explaining how your background matches the responsibilities and qualifications described above to jobs@mixedink.com no later than January 18. Applications submitted without a cover letter will not be considered.