Request for Startups: News, Jobs, and Democracy

Groklaw became the source of authoritative reporting about the SCO cases. It had analysis from lawyers, paralegals, and technologists. It had (voluntary, amateur) reporters attending hearings and giving in-depth reports, and then thorough analysis from a wide variety of people. People cared enough to voluntarily take vacation days to go to the courthouse and attend hearings, and then spend the next 2+ hours writing it all up and posting it. People voluntarily gave money to keep it all going. It was amazing.

It also was subject to significant attack, both from SCO and from trolls. It consumed the life of the paralegal running it for a decade. It was probably not sustainable.

I think that moderation is essential for any online community that isn't going to fall to the lowest common denominator, but sustainability is an issue. (HN at least has multiple moderators, so hopefully they won't burn out.) For news, multiple reporters are needed (Groklaw didn't report on a hearing until multiple reports came in, because sometimes trolls sent in false reports.)

I think the answer may be multiple small sites that each care about a focused area, and attract enough of a following that there are multiple reporters available when needed. (This probably won't work for something like foreign policy. I can attend a court hearing in my town and write up a report, but I can't get an interview with the Secretary of State and start asking uncomfortable questions.)

This isn't really a firm idea, just some thoughts and observations...

Another two things to focus on:

- a better way to get an overview of a story and its evolution - something to collate news reports in order to easy see what's the current aggregate knowledge (trivial example: see how causalty rates tend to fluctuate for the first few hours/days of a disaster, and how the blame gets shifted around before appropriate investigations conclude)

- a better way to follow redactions and corrections - it's too easy to read an outraging story that later turns out to be completely false, but to never get the memo that the story was invalidated

This is insanely difficult as interpersonal trust is expensive and getting first-hand information/data is extremely non-trivial. I agree that "mainstream media" (quotes because that phrase makes my mouth taste like ash) has happily devolved into BuzzFeed-style clickbait, but another parrot of AP isn't progress.

Paul Graham suggests that the best way to come into a good startup idea is to become the sort of person that has them, which I think applies to informing the public at large -- I don't think it's realistic to expect to build a revenue model off of people that will only give you their eyeballs for 20 minutes a day in the hopes of finding something to have an opinion on. I think this is a much larger, nearly intractable, problem of making societies into the types that are interested in nuance and dry detail.

We need a Star Trek: TNG for the (pun not intended) next generation...

If someone is willing to start a movement that wants to create United Fedration of Planets, count me in.