Project 3Jane
Subject: Project 3Jane
From: Barrett Brown <barriticus@gmail.com>
Date: 1/25/10, 13:13
To: Allison Kilkenny <allisonkilkenny@gmail.com>, jamie kilstein <jamiekilstein@gmail.com>

Yo yo-

Our pursuit of creative destruction as relates to the corporate media is off to a pretty amazing start; Professor Juan Cole, who does such fine work on the Middle East, is interested in getting involved and wants me to call him this afternoon; with him on board, we'll have no problem recruiting tons of other left-of-center bloggers and commentators. I just talked to Coates Bateman at T/S and he's excited, too, wants to discuss how they can promote the project and otherwise get involved; Andrew Stein and I will probably meet with them next month to see if we can come to some sort of agreement that would advance the project while keeping it independent (T/S is great, but their capital comes from Forbes, I believe, and we're not having our anarcho-syndicalist insurgent media operation under that particular thumb, obviously; we don't necessarily need money for any of this anyhow). 

Also, I got rid of that crazy girl I was dating that I told you guys about and found a new girlfriend that's sweet and cool and allows me to lecture her on history and media theory and pretends that I'm interesting.

A few other bloggers have also gotten in touch and vowed allegiance to the jihad against the defunct media superstructure. A bunch of conservatives who hate Charles Johnson and now me helped to promote the project over the weekend by talking about how badly it would fail because Charles Johnson is involved (Johnson, on a totally unrelated note, co-founded Pajamas Media, for which a couple of those bloggers now work). I haven't even really started recruiting in earnest yet, but I'll begin doing so later this week after I write a formal announcement and manifesto for T/S, HuffPo, Daily Kos, and whatever else. Thinking of trying to get P.Z. Myers to serve as an advisor with regards to the demands we'll eventually make regarding superior science journalism in such things as Time. I've also got plenty of street cred with the skeptic crowd and should thus be able to get plenty of other science bloggers on board soon as well.

Our approach to the blogger network is something we need to think about - specific structure, etc. I'm thinking that all of those I recruit will be permitted to bring others in and they in turn, etc. Invitation-only, or rather anyone can also apply to anyone in the network and be brought in.

I'll provide more details on the software end of things later; I'm meeting with Stein tonight and will have him talk me through the essentials. Basically, the application is going to make information flow, evaluation, characterization/tagging, and all of that far easier, and partially automatic insomuch as that the blogs themselves will be "talking" to each other 24/7. After we've gotten the basics presented in such a way as that us laymen can understand them, you guys should start thinking about what additional features you might want and I'll be having others giving their input as well; Stein's not a writer or a blogger or researcher, so he won't have the same insight into the trade as we do. Later on, we can add new features to the system; he and I have been talking for several months about an improved application for compiling info in the course of research and making it more accessible when it comes down to writing; this is really only necessary for research-intensive books or long articles and the like, but I want it anyway. We've got a couple of other plans along those lines as well.

I gave my first university lecture two weeks ago to a class at Rutgers; this will help my academic straight cred, particularly if I do more of them. One girl raised her hand and asked where I studied or did my postgraduate work or some such nonsense. I explained that I did it at home because college is for suckers. It was a great victory for all of us who ditched school in favor of actually doing things.

Anyway, I'll make the formal announcement soon and will include some more details therein. Allison, I'd like you to be involved in whatever sort of "executive committee" we may establish to oversee this thing, as you're perfectly representative of the Democracy Now school of journalism insomuch as that you do wonkish work and otherwise are the exact opposite of Maureen Dowd, which is to say that you're exactly the sort of journalist we want to promote as we enter the later stages of this project, which will theoretically entail stacking the media with our people like we're FDR and it's the Supreme Court. That part probably would have sounded ambitious even to me just a couple of days ago, but I'm frankly amazed at how this has been received so far. Check out the comments at Balloon Juice:

http://www.balloon-juice.com/?p=33149

 A lot of people have been waiting for this for a long time. If we do this right, we will have really done something significant.

Thanks again for being on board with this.

Barrett Brown
Brooklyn, NY
512-560-2302