Open-source journalism

Open-source journalism is a way of making news where people who are not professional reporters help to gather and check information. The term comes from the idea of open-source software, where many people can see the code and help to find mistakes and make it better.

In journalism, this means that the public can help a journalist to gather news, check facts, and write the story.

​The idea first appeared in 1999.^[1] A writer from an intelligence magazine asked people on the internet for help with a story about cyberterrorism.^[2] They gave him information and he used it to write his article. This showed that the public could be a new source of information for professional reporters.^[3]

​This type of journalism has grown a lot because of the internet and social media. People with phones can now take pictures and videos of a news event as it is happening. Reporters can use these public images and videos to help with their stories. This is also known as open-source intelligence or OSINT.

​Some examples of open-source journalism include:

• A journalist writes a story and lets readers check the facts and add details.

• A news organization asks for help from many people to report on a very large event.

Wiki journalism is a type of open-source journalism that uses a wiki format. In a wiki, anyone can edit a page and work with others on the same text. The most famous example of a wiki is Wikipedia. The big example of wiki journalism is Wikinews.

​There are different kinds of wiki journalism:

• Second draft wiki journalism, a professional reporter writes the first story, and then readers are invited to edit it. This helps to find errors or to add more information.
• Crowdsourcing wiki journalism, is used for a project that would be too big for just one person or a small group. Many people work together to collect information and write the final story.