Media reform project; advice on improved science journalism

My name is Barrett Brown; as you once did a post on William Dembski's preemptive attack on my book Flock of Dodos and Panda's Thumb has done a couple of posts on that book and one of my Huffington Post articles on Uncommon Descent. Aside from that book and my upcoming book on media theory, I'm also a contributor to Vanity Fair, True/Slant, New York Press, and (like you) Skeptic, and have also written for The Onion, National Lampoon, McSweeney's, and a few other humor outlets. I also now write a monthly column for Skeptical Inquirer and serve as director of communications for Enlighten the Vote, formerly the Godless Americans Political Action Committee. I've been reading and enjoying your blog for about three years now, along with several others in the Scienceblogs array.

I'm getting in touch as I wanted to seek your consultation on an effort I'm about to launch as part of my experimental entity, Project PM, which is in effect a media reform project as well as a sort of functional laboratory for various new methods of online collaboration; we think of it as a sort of dynamic think-tank. Our central effort involves establishing a network of bloggers and other journalists who work at least partly in an online medium and providing a means for these participants to better disseminate their most important work to a larger audience; we are also pursuing various related efforts, such as bringing attention to the failures of specific outlets and pundits and doing so in such a way as to force the outlets in question to actually address such deficits publicly. Our media participants so far command a collective audience of several hundred thousand unique readers a month and range from pure bloggers such as Allison Kilkenny to more traditional journalists such as former Newsweek Baghdad correspondent Michael Hastings.

Meanwhile, our other network consists of some eighty individuals - lawyers, hackers, medical professionals, academics, charity workers, editors and producers - with varying skill sets and knowledge bases, who collectively seek to accomplish various tasks by way of particular methods that have only become possibly very recently and which I have designed in order to better ensure that such tasks are pursued in the most efficient possible manner. For instance, our flagship experiment, the Africa Development Project, involves identifying the best techniques by which to assist in increasing productivity and standard of living on the village level, while at the same time drawing conclusions regarding the best techniques by which a collection of individuals can pursue such projects as this in the most effective possible manner. There is some crossover between our two networks insomuch as that, for instance, our media people can relate to their readers what we discover in terms of collaborative methods, as well as asking for donations later on (although currently we are experimenting with a particular educational program that requires no money to implement) at such time as we set up a non-profit to accommodate any such funds.

Although of course I'd love to have you participate in whatever capacity you'd like in either of our two networks, I understand that you're extraordinarily busy with your various projects and other commitments (although joining our blogger network simply entails placing our widget onto your blog and pressing a button at such time as you'd like to submit your work into our system or perpetuate the work of others, so if you find our project worthwhile, you might consider participating in that respect, in which case there would be little time commitment while also a chance to reach a different and expanded audience; of course I have additional information on how all of this works if you do have an interest). At this time, rather, I'd like to ask your opinion on a sub-project we're thinking of implementing, which would be intended to improve science journalism on the part of U.S. outlets. We would compile a group of scientists and others with high degrees of scientific literacy and then approach various newspapers and television stations with a standing offer to have one or more of these volunteers review any articles or segments they intend to run that deal with science. Properly overseen, and with the involvement of enough volunteers, we could thereby reduce the number of errors that currently reach the public.

Are you aware of any similar efforts that exist already, in which case we could simply assist them? Otherwise, would you be willing to forward this e-mail to anyone you know who might have input into how this could best be implemented, or who might be open to participating as one of our volunteer reviewers? I'm going to ask the director of communications at the NCSE about this later today as we've been speaking a bit about doing something along these lines, but also wanted to get your opinion on such a project.

At any rate, thanks for taking the time to hear me out, and do please consider getting involved with us in some capacity or forwarding this to anyone else who might have more time and would be interested in doing so. Thanks also for your great work in support of science and skepticism.