“On Monday, Jane’s Intelligence Review, the “international
journal of threat analysis” (a must-read on your average CIA
spook’s list), solicited feedback on an article about
“cyberterrorism” from the geeks who hang out at the Slashdot “news
for nerds” Web site. On Thursday, after the Slashdot members sliced
and diced Jane’s story into tiny little pieces, an editor at the
magazine announced that the story would not be published as
planned. Instead, the editor, Johan J Ingles-le Nobel, declared
that he would write a new article incorporating the Slashdot
comments, and would compensate Slashdot participants whose words
made it into the final copy.”
“When you ask for feedback you get feedback,” wrote Nobel, “and
since roughly 99% of the posters slammed the article, even saying
things like ‘we’d expect better from Jane’s’, I’ve informed the
author that we’re not going to run with it. Instead I’m going to
cull your comments together and make a better, sharper feature out
of it — I’ll be getting in touch with several of you for more
specific details or for more clarification…”
“Open-source pragmatists believe that better software arises
from the scrutiny inherent in the collaborative process. Will
better journalism ensue if more reporters and editors beta test
their own work? Hard to say — in the deadline-crazed world of
technology journalism, there’s often hardly enough time to get a
story properly copy edited and proofed, let alone reviewed by
hundreds of frothing critics…”