They don’t understand the open source process. (The identity of the gent at right will be found after the jump.)
At the heart of the process is a principal that you give before you take. The leaders of the open source movement are those people and companies who give the most to it before they try to take anything out of it. This is a fact that has been dawning very slowly in the industry, where many "mixed source" offerings have gone nowhere, and lost their chance to catch on.
In the political blogosphere you can make a big play by doing real reporting. Firedoglake and Unclaimed Territory came from nowhere in a hurry because those authors actually dug up stuff, and made what they found intelligible to their audience. It’s sort of like Groklaw. Pamela Jones is a Goddess to the open source movement because her reporting chops lead to great contributions.
Credibility is another key blogging attribute which comes from open source. You have to be transparent. You have to come with clean hands. You can’t just have the appearance of credibility, you have to earn it every day. As I’m fond of saying, we’re all journalists now, and we all have our credibility accounts. If you don’t have an existing reputation for credibility, you are going to start in the hole.
Scaling makes a big difference in the blogosphere. In the software world, it means organizing and bringing lots of people into your project, and using a scaled system like Drupal to organize comments, contributions, and help in an organic manner. Same thing with blogging. This is the lesson Howard Dean failed to learn (one he still hasn’t learned) and thus Markos Moulitsas has become de-facto party chair.
Leaning into the wind is a key to getting attention in the
political blogosphere. Every online crusade needs a Jerusalem and a
Saladin. If journalism companies ever really understood the blogosphere
and accomodated its demands, most independent blogging would end. The
best politician at using this Clue is Jack Kingston. (That’s who that guy is.) His blog sometimes has him coming off as Insta-Rep, but he’s trying.
Trying is another key, by the way. You learn by doing. You learn
by making mistakes. And you apologize for those mistakes, in the item
in question. Humility is an important attribute. This is something that does not come naturally to either Washington journalists or politicians. Patience is another attribute, one I’m learning all over again as I finally blog under my own name.
Finally, and this may be the most important of all — reading.
Find out who your friends are. Give them praise. Link to them. Add them
to your blogroll. The more you learn from others, the better your
software (uh, writing) is going to be.
