Memetics

"Your readers know more than you."

Dan Gillmor coined this as the now-familiar journalistic koan: the reporter aims to inform but always finds that some readers have more information about the story they're reporting. This was always the case, he explained, but it took on a new urgency in the Internet era, as readers found outlets to respond, and correct, reporters publicly.

I've recently spent many hours using the data on Wikileaks to produce some original analysis on the Bank Julius Baer story.

Now that a federal judge has cleared Wikileaks.org to have its domain restored, it perhaps might behoove the free information zealots to actually look into the substance of the story which instigated the takedown. Bank Julius Baer, a Swiss bank, has a Cayman Island subidiary apparently serving as a tax shelter for the rich: Perhaps top reporters are working on it?