Publish2 is announcing a new initiative to help newsrooms faced with declining resources continue to play the watchdog role that is so vital in this time of crisis. Digital Sunlight is our code name for a new feature set that will allow citizens to help journalists cover the stimulus act and the other big stories that affect our lives and our communities by submitting tips, leads, anecdotes, questions, etc. into a global searchable database.
I don't know why writers bother: why not just cut and paste other writers' cut-n-pastes and add a courtesy credit in brackets. It's as if the sheer gravitas of the subject cannot be appreciated without haystacking the auto-repeat adjectives and stories and pretending the piece is a self-contained first.
Our second goal is to explore new funding sources as a group. There is a lot of interest in climate change right now but organizations looking to create projects involving photography don't have a resource to handle the photography. We want to help them build the projects from the ground up and secure new sources of funding.
New America Media and the Maynard Institute have convened an array of Bay Area journalists, as well as highly respected media organizations and local university journalism departments to form an investigative team to honor and continue the work of journalist Chauncey Wendell Bailey Jr., and answer questions regarding his death. Bailey, the editor of the weekly Oakland Post, was murdered on Aug. 2, 2007, while reporting on a story regarding the suspicious activities of the Your Black Muslim Bakery.
