General Background Information about Project PM

IRC channel

Instructions about gaining access to the #projectpm IRC channel:

[by Campbell Vertesi]

IRC stands for Internet Relay Chat, and it is one of the oldest communication methods on the 'net.  As such it's an appropriate venue for our talks, and to some extent, an appropriate example of a successful distributed information system (it was IRC networks that reported through media blackouts during the 1991 Soviet coup attempt and the first Gulf war).  Basically, it's a network of chatrooms all across the world.  You connect using a special IRC client, just like you used to have to have an email client to use email.   You connect to a public IRC server (in our case, irc.freenode.net), which hosts thousands of "rooms" and users jumping around between them.  Once you're connected to freenode, you join our room, which is called #projectpm (all IRC rooms start with a #).

Here are some specific instructions for those of you who are new to IRC, on either a PC or a Mac:

1) Download and install the Firefox (http://getfirefox.com) web browser if you haven't already.

2) In firefox, navigate to https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/16/  and install the Chatzilla plugin. Chatzilla gives you IRC within the browser.  Firefox will prompt you to restart the browser.

3) Once the browser comes back, navigate to i    .  Note the irc:// at the beginning of the URL!  This is what tells firefox that you are connecting to an IRC server, instead of a website.  A new window will appear.  It takes a few seconds to connect, and it will give you a lot of text while it does so. Once it gets to

End of /MOTD command.

Congratulations, you're connected to an IRC server!

4) Now join our chatroom, by typing

/join #projectpm

into the bar at the bottom of this new window, and hitting enter.  Note the "/" at the beginning: this is what identifies it as a command for your IRC client instead of just a regular message.  Your screen will display:

[INFO]Channel view for “#projectpm” opened.

And that's it! You're now in chat.  Type hello and hit enter. :)

If you're brave, you can try this yourself with some more full featured clients.  Really what you need to know is that you want to connect to Freenode (irc.freenode.net or chat.freenode.net), and join the channel #projectpm.  For PC: I would recommend Xchat or mIRC.  For Mac: I recommend Colloquy, hands down.

Selected statements by Founder Barrett Brown

Early Statements Related to Project PM

The news media of the world’s sole superpower cannot be considered anything other than a relative failure. The military engagements of the last decade could have gone considerably better — better in the sense of not causing such high degrees of unnecessary death and dislocation — if certain individuals of influence had managed to determine what was obvious to many others and then used their stations by which to promote a more reasonable foreign policy than the one we have gotten. Thomas Friedman and Charles Krauthammer, both of whom command huge readerships and widespread respect, retain their positions only by virtue of the inattention of their readers to the failures of their past predictions and, more generally, their inability to provide anything close to the level of erudition that they are alleged to offer. The system that has provided such people with equal parts power and unaccountability is probably not so virtuous as to fix itself from within, particularly as it is made up of a great many individuals with their own impulses and career paths, all in competition among one another to attract an audience. Such a system may only be changed from without.   ------- from http://bushwickbk.com/2010/02/03/join-or-dont/

I spent a portion of last year reading through more than a decade of accumulated columns and articles by the United States’ most respected and widely-read pundits; this was done in the course of writing my upcoming book on the failure of the American media to provide the passive news-consuming citizenry with a reasonably competent stream of opinion journalism. Additionally, I’ve spent much of the past five years engaging in media criticism in general, both professionally and as a deranged sort of hobby. I may accurately boast of being among the world’s greatest authorities on the failures of other media professionals. Ignoring for a moment what that says about me as a person, the reader should consider what a fine thing it is to know whether or not a crucial, resource-heavy enterprise is doing its job and what the implications may be if it isn’t. ---- from http://www.csicop.org/specialarticles/show/internet_and_the_republic_of_skepticism_part_two

The internet is still in its infancy, and the possibilities inherent to the medium have yet to be fully explored. New uses and dynamics keep popping up. They pop up in such quick succession that we do not even wonder at them anymore, would find it surprising only if new surprises did not appear. . . .   [F]or the first time in our two million year history, it is now a simple matter to communicate both visually and audibly with some individual with whom we were last connected perhaps a hundred thousand years ago by way of some common ancestor, and whom the twin barriers of physical geography and political reality would have successfully kept out of our reach were it not for the internet and the era that it has come to define.

From: http://trueslant.com/barrettbrown/2010/03/20/the-internet-skepticism-and-self-perpetuating-revolution/

Last month, I made the case that, despite dour predictions by certain scientists queried by the publication Edge, the internet does indeed constitute a net plus in terms of the effects it has on the mind and habits of its more reasonable users. Next month, I will try to better characterize the makeshift yet largely unified culture that the internet has made possible by providing for unlimited and real-time collaboration among the planet's erudite and reasonable individuals, all of whom now have the option - should they take it - to come together under a single entity or at least a series of interlocking associations, and thus accomplish all manner of things which would in earlier years be impossible due to the constraints of borders, language, distance, and - most damagingly - humanity's long record of governance by irrational mobs and, more often, unethical and non-technocratic elites.

From: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/barrett-brown/a-proposal-for-a-minor-re_b_566400.html

Blog Posts related to Project PM

The following blog post was published April 7, 2010 at True/Slant:

http://trueslant.com/barrettbrown/2010/04/07/wikileaks-the-reactive-media-and-the-necessity-of-project-pm/

Wikileaks, the Reactive Media, and the Necessity of Project PM

By BARRETT BROWN

Quite a few mainstream media outlets as well as the more prominent bloggers did eventually get around to covering the Wikileaks/Apache video incident, and some of them have even gone so far as to remark upon the more important aspect of how this story came to be, if not the even more fundamental story regarding the war over information that is being fought with varying results from China to Australia to the United States.

Though it is heartening to see that many of the major outlets did eventually pick up on this thing – after all, it consisted of a video of people being shot, which is of great appeal to the more amoral of producers and editors – the manner in which this particular piece of information flowed throughout the media superstructure is still worrisome. On three different occasions over the past three weeks, the traditional news outlets either failed to cover very newsworthy incidents (and undeniably interesting ones at that) or waited to do so until it had been done by its institutional peers, as if these were all elementary school kids trying to collectively decide whether wearing one’s backpack with both straps had become sufficiently cool again. Many of them were scooped not just by hours, but actual days, by myself and other journalists who straddle the respective infrastructures of the mainstream and alternate/online news. As with many other issues of great but not traditionally identifiable relevance, it was the online media that lead the way.

The morning after Wikileaks released a series of Twitter messages announcing that certain of their employees had been targeted by an aggressive surveillance operation orchestrated by members of the U.S. intelligence community, at which time I wrote an article on this development including background and commentary, there existed exactly one blog post covering the story and not a word from any traditional news outlet. Although Gawker did a fine job of alerting its readers to what was going on as well as explaining why it mattered, almost nothing appeared on this for the rest of the day, with only a few minor outlets bothering to discuss it all (although those that did usually did so quite competently). Likewise, when Wikileaks released a statement a few days later providing more information on its editors’ encounter with Icelandic police and U.S. intelligence agents, my post on the subject was followed by very few other articles (which is to say a great many of them relative to the previous news cycle). Upon the Wikileaks news conference on the morning of April 5th, the only news outlet that had provided a mention of that conference beforehand was al-Jazeera; this time, though, pretty much everyone ended up covering the story, but not before the noticeable dynamic by which most editors and producers seem to have waited for their counterparts to cover it first.

All of this is not simply to demonstrate that those who wish to be informed on issues of information flow and media dynamics – and additionally would like to know of related occurrences without having to wait until such time as the world’s newspaper editors and handbag-obsessed television producers get done figuring out what has happened and what it means and whether covering it will please those above them on the totem pole and whether or not it involves underage sex and who’s having handbag sales today – should follow my work.

Incidentally, you should indeed follow my work. But you should also be following the work of those bloggers and correspondents who collectively cover the world and its workings in a manner superior to anyone else, and in such a way as to keep an audience far better informed than could any other outlet of both the traditional and internet sorts. After it launches this summer, Project PM will be that very thing: a means of obtaining the best possible information as determined by the most honest and capable of journalists and commentators.

Although I and our existing participants believe that this effort will produce a news source of unparalleled quality, Project PM has another, more crucial function which it is already serving to some extent, which is to get people to realize what is possible – not to mention necessary – in the information age. As I have discussed elsewhere and about which I will continue to harangue everyone for the rest of my professional life, magnificent and largely unprecedented things are about to happen as the implications of our budding age begin to sink in among the citizenry at large, and particularly those of intelligence, honesty, erudition, and good will. This is just as well, as those of intelligence, dishonesty, erudition, and a totalitarian mindset have access to the same wonders as everyone else. Such people also tend be early adopters.

If you wish to take responsibility for the future and would be willing to consider my proposal, please read the this early description of what we’re trying to accomplish and how we intend to do so and the contact me at barriticus@gmail.com and either I or someone else will get back to you shorty. You do not need to be a blogger or journalist to join; you will be given the chance to serve in a sort of legislative body that will oversee this project as well as new functions added as we expand. A number of people, including some of the nation’s best and most widely-read journalists, consider Project PM to be a viable means of improving the news media both from within and from without. A more comprehensive manifesto will appear soon, although the link above will provide a specific understanding of certain key aspects of the project, and we are happy to answer questions ahead of our official announcement.

Again, I’d ask the reader to spend a few minutes reading my plan and to consider participating in one of the many capacities available. Becoming a member of our legislative network does not entail any time commitment whatsoever and, like the associated blogger network, it is designed not to suffer by way of the inaction of those involved. You’ll find, I think, that the whole project is designed in such a way as to take advantage of the environment in which we now live – unlike, say, nations.

The following blog post was published April 10, 2010 at True/Slant

http://trueslant.com/barrettbrown/2010/04/10/wikileaks-war-context-and-common-cause/

Wikileaks, War; Context and Common Cause

By BARRETT BROWN

The world’s sudden and unprecedented interconnectedness – as well as the great amount of novelty produced as a consequence of such a dynamic as this – puts new strain on the public’s ability to identify that information which most demands consideration. The possibilities inherent to a radically altered global environment in which most anyone may talk to anyone, and is increasingly likely to do so, in turn amplify the potential forms that human activity may take. In an age in which more is happening than ever and all of it has implications for everyone else, the citizenry requires similarly amplified access to the most relevant information. What it gets instead is a haphazard media infrastructure that has developed through a blind mess of profitability, career maneuvering, chance, and inertia, rather than such circumstances as could lead to a more optimal end result.

Of course, no one is demanding that the mainstream outlets achieve some sort of Platonic ideal with regards to its end product. Rather, the deficit in quality between such outlets on the one hand and others of more recent origins on the other- user-driven aggregation sites like reddit, the better blogs – provides us with a sense of what can be accomplished even without the exponentially greater resources possessed by such entities as CNN. Similarly, we can look at a copy of Time from the mid-20th century and see how far our newsweeklies have fallen since, or look at a copy of The Economist now and wonder why no American newsweekly can seem to pack an average of more than seventeen words into a single fucking page. We are not demanding the impossible, the improbable, or even anything that has not been done in the distant past and every week since – which is to say that we are indeed asking for the impossible, like when a kid asks Santa not to give him any toys but rather a sober daddy. Incidentally, the mainstream media has yet to hit rock bottom, blessed as it is with a hundred million enablers.

Still, those who are in a position to do anything about the broken media did not do it yesterday and are unlikely to come up with any good reason to do it tomorrow. More to the point, we do not need them to. The new institutions have begun to arrive; they have barely begun to approach their full potential, which we will not be prepared to even guess at for perhaps a decade. Among the most significant of these institutions, unprecedented in function and effect, is Wikileaks, the syndicate of free information activists who have established their own institution as the world’s most effective outlet for the dissemination of secrets, particularly the stolen sort. And insomuch as that a large contingent of our fellow humans live under governments possessed of no transparency whatsoever and operating largely in secret – and insomuch as that our own government has failed to earn any sort of easygoing trust on the part of its citizenry – such an entity as this serves a wholly necessary function. Leakers know that any documentation provided to Wikileaks will reach a wide and sympathetic audience by way of a group of individuals who wholly support their decision to leak. And rather than just passively convey the information it receives, the administrators are actively involved in the struggle to ensure that there exists a viable refuge for whatever knowledge may require a legal haven in the future or is already outlawed in the present; several have been involved in writing the Modern Media Initiative, proposed legislation which would establish Iceland as the first such a haven. Like a number of other phenomena that have arisen over the past decade or so, Wikileaks brings implications that are not yet fully understood, even by its founders.

Broader issues aside, though, Wikileaks risks narrowing both its audience and its potential pool of informants if it makes a habit of coloring its releases as it did the Department of Defense video released on April 5th. Entitling the Apache gunner cam footage “Collateral Murder,” for instance, was a foolish move, not least because “murder” is quite arguably not the best characterization here, to put it mildly. Worse was the editors’ failure to point out that one of the men whose killings constituted the “murder” in question could briefly be seen holding an RPG early in the video; if they did not come across this in the course of identifying photography equipment in the hands of the two Reuters employees over the course of however many dozens of views they must have undertaken before releasing the video, they might want to recruit the folks at the Jawa Report to go over their work next time. If they did spot the RPG but neglected to point it out, they have gotten into the business of deception themselves. An institution that derives its position in part from its trustworthiness cannot afford to engage in that sort of behavior, particularly when so clearly fueled by some ideological bent – in this case, anti-Americanism of the sort that highlights cameras and ignores heavy weaponry. I assumed that Wikileaks would note any such potentially important factor as a rocket-propelled grenade launcher in the hands of one fellow among those whose killings near a battlefield are to be characterized as “murders;” and because additionally no one else had spotted such a weapon over the next day or so, I asserted that no RPGs appeared on the video at all. Although any error that I make is ultimately my responsibility no matter how it is made and no matter how many others made the same error, I will simply note that I and quite a few other commentators will never again give Wikileaks the benefit of the doubt when evaluating future releases, particularly when such things deal with the U.S. in general and military matters in particular.

As I predicted in last month’s radio interview with Scott Horton, the video itself is not particularly earth-shattering in terms of what it depicts. Still, it has provided the public with a glimpse of guerrilla warfare as is practiced on urban battlefields – the sort in which a civilian who attempts to take a wounded man to a hospital can be shot to death and his daughter wounded in accordance with the rules of engagement, only to have some soldier remark that it was the civilian’s fault for bringing his kids to a fight (which he didn’t, of course). The importance of this clip is not that it depicts some rare and straightforward war crime, but rather that it depicts an unfortunately common and accepted aspect of such a war as we have gotten ourselves into at the behest of people who assured us that our goals would be accomplished in less than a year and with less than $60 billion.

Most such people, incidentally, are still pretending to be competent, honest commentators and statesmen, rather than abject failures. To varying degrees, the media has assisted in this ploy – due not to ideology, this time, but rather inertia. The “statesmen” in question are still around, giving advice to the current administration as it pursues a military course largely indistinguishable from the one that came before it. The commentators in question still retain their positions. Some of those whose predictions are now so laughable that no one bothers laughing at them anymore have actually been rewarded for their failures. Time gave William Kristol a column. The New York Times gave William Kristol a column.

The traditional outlets have largely failed, and the online institutions that have come about as a response to that failure already face an uphill battle in establishing themselves as credible alternatives to the large and established entities that lay claim to so much public attention by virtue of being large and established. It does not help when one of the most promising of these new, internet-driven institutions seeks to advance some ideology through incompetence, dishonesty, or both. William Kristol has enough competition as it is.

The following blog post was published March 24, 2010 at True/Slant

http://trueslant.com/barrettbrown/2010/03/24/project-pm/

Project PM

By BARRETT BROWN

This page will serve as a temporary repository for information on Project PM until such time as the complete manifesto is released. The text below provides a detailed description of the blogger network around which the project will be centered. Having been written for information technology and new media professionals, bloggers, and other participants with an interest in the specifics of how this network will serve as an improvement over existing mediums, it is necessarily a bit technical.

Note that in addition to bloggers, we’re also looking for people to participate in a sub-network which itself will be responsible for advancing the project by incubating ideas and “voting” on them. Joining this body does not require any commitment; inactive members won’t be detrimental to the network. If you think you might have some ideas down the line, or would simply like to have some influence in how the project proceeds, consider joining up.

Get in touch with me at barriticus@gmail.com if you’d like to get involved  or have any questions. Related materials involving concepts and implications related to this project may be found here and here. For more on the extent to which the media and the U.S. pundit class in particular has failed our republic, Google my name along with those of Thomas Friedman, Charles Krauthammer, Martin Peretz, National Review, Weekly Standard, The New York Times, or CNN, or read the work of blogger-journalists Glenn Greenwald, Matt Taibbi, and Allison Kilkenny.

Introduction

This effort is called Project PM. The major goals are (a) to reduce the negative influence of incompetent yet nonetheless well-regarded pundits such as Thomas Friedman and Charles Krauthammer and (b) to increase the positive influence of the more capable segments of the blogosphere. Both of these goals are to be pursued in part by way of the deliberate generation of critical mass among bloggers in such a manner as that segments of the traditional media will be prompted/forced to address certain critical issues as determined by a collective array of the most erudite and dependable bloggers in existence. A third goal that does not require the same critical mass or temporary control over the traditional media infrastructure involves the development of a communicational schematic that is superior to anything else in existence in terms providing bloggers with the best possible feed of raw information by which to produce content, as well as the best method by which readers can most easily find the best and most important of this content without having to sift through duplicate or sub-standard info, which is to say that it will discard some of the problems inherent to reddit, memeorandum, and other such sources as exist today (more on how this is to be accomplished may be seen below). All of this is to be achieved by way of Project PM network, which itself will make use of open-source software being designed for the purpose and developed by a fellow with a brilliant track record in innovative IT implementations.

Obviously, this is not some magic bullet that will turn the media into an optimal system, but it will certainly have some positive effect, and to the extent that we can integrate more and more people into the network, this effect will of course be amplified. Meanwhile, others will no doubt adopt some of the methods we have developed for use in their own efforts. Perhaps most importantly, this will demonstrate to others that we are nowhere near fulfilling the positive potential of the internet as a medium, and get them thinking about the manner in which the internet provides us with the ability to provide for a degree of actionable collaboration among some of the world’s most reasonable people in such a way that would have been impossible only a decade ago. Insomuch as that collaboration is the means by which human affairs are driven, such a grouping as makes use of intelligent, honest, and influential individuals and then gives them a means of communication and action that is even slightly superior to any other in existence would have unprecedented potential to achieve positive change, particularly by means of perpetuating information – information being, again, the fuel of human activity.

Project PM Network Summary

The institutions and structures that have developed over the past two decades of accelerating public internet use have had what we reasonably describe as a wholesome effect on information flow. But the information age is a work in progress, and thus there are potential improvements to be made. More importantly, there are improvements that can be made by an initially small number of influential participants working in coordination. The purpose of Project PM is to implement these solutions to the extent that participants are collectively able to do so, as well as to demonstrate the beneficial effects of these solutions to others that they might be spurred to recreate or even build upon them independently of our own efforts.

The Problems

Project PM is intended to address the following inefficiencies:

(a) Watering down of contributor quality within participatory networks: Open institutions such as reddit.comtend to peak in terms of the erudition of the content conveyed a few years after coming about, with this being due to the particular dynamics of network growth. By definition, early users are early adapters, who themselves tend to be better-informed and otherwise relatively capable in terms of the value they bring to the network. To even know of such networks early in their existence is to pass a certain sort of test regarding the potential quality of one’s contributions; as knowledge of the network expands, this “test” becomes easier, and to the extent that it does, the network is less “protected” from those who did not pass such a test by virtue of the fact that they did not know of the network until knowledge became more common. Obviously, failing to be aware of some particular institution does not come anywhere near precluding one from being intelligent and knowledgable in general and thus of value to the institution, but the influx of valuable participants versus damaging participants appears to decrease after a certain level of notoriety is reached. Again, the decline in the intellectual relevance of content at reddit.com is a good example of this.

(b) Data overflow: The watering down process described above does not only result in one coming across information of relatively low quality, but also in having to contend with more of it. On reddit.com, for instance, a user who scans new submissions will find not only a certain amount of potentially useful information, but also some amount of almost certainly useless information. The watering down of contributor quality also contributes to the extent to which the latter is perpetuated within the network itself insomuch as that lesser contributors are more likely to vote up useless information, thus helping to ensure that the barriers built into the network in order to facilitate the viewing of important rather than unimportant content – in this case, a pre-established threshold of up votes necessary to bring something to the front page – will thereby lose their effectiveness.

(c) Barriers to obtaining raw data: The obvious fact of data overflow – that some data is more useful than other data – is dealt with by means of selecting certain sources of information which one has identified as being a provider of quality output relative to other sources. Bloggers and others who require a steady stream of data in order to operate have certain methods of obtaining that data, and there is of course no reason to believe that any of these methods could not be improved upon to an extent that these improvements would be worth adapting. One has RSS feeds flowing from sources one has selected (and by virtue of having been selected, the sources must have been necessarily known to the blogger in the first place); one has algorithm-based sites like Memorandum.com (which merely shows what bloggers are talking about rather than necessarily providing any insight into what they should be talking about); one has democratic or pseudo-democratic sites such as reddit.com and digg.com; and one has the fundamentally one-way outlets of television and newspapers, the content of which is decided upon by a handful of producers or editors (who themselves are working within an incidental structure that does not appear to be of much value relative to what may now be found among the better portions of the blogosphere). A means of obtaining data that improves upon these and all other methods would be of great utility insomuch as that the quality of data is of course one major limiting factor with regards to the quality of output..

The Solutions

By way of a network designed to take better advantage of the existing informational environment, Project PM can help to remedy the problems described above without significant effort on the part of participants, yet with potentially dramatic results on the efficiency of information flow.

(a) Watering down of contributor quality within participatory networks: Project PM will greatly reduce the accumulation of low-value contributors by way of the method by which contributors are brought it. The network will be established with a handful of contributors who have been selected by virtue of intellectual honesty, proven expertise in certain topics, and journalistic competence in general. Each of these contributors has the option of inviting into the network any number of other bloggers, each of whom will initially be connected only to the contributor who brought him in. Each of these new participants also has the option of bringing others into the network in the same fashion as well as offering a connection to any other participant, as will anyone they bring in, and so on. To the extent that the original participants are of value in terms of their judgement, they may be expected to bring in participants of similarly high value, and so on; meanwhile, as the network expands, participants will be likely to form new direct connections to others whom they have determined to be of particular value relative to other participants, and conversely, to disestablish any direct connections they might have established to those whose output they find to be below par. Of course, none of this precludes the network from eventually encompassing participants of low desirability relative to that of the average participant, but to the extent that such a thing occurs, its effect are largely neutralized by way of the dynamic described below.

(b) Data overflow: Information flows through the Project PM network by way of a single button accessible to each participant. When a participant either writes or receives a blog post or other informational element, the participant may “push” the item, thus sending it to all of those with whom he is directly connected in the network. In such a case as a participant pushes forward items that others may determine to be of little merit, the resulting clutter is only seen by the participant who brought such a low-value blogger into the network in the first place, as well as those whom the low-value blogger has to this point brought in himself along with those who have agreed to connect with him from elsewhere in the network. To the extent that a given participant exercises good judgment in establishing connections, then, he will only receive informational elements of value while also being able to quickly transmit them to contributors who will be able to make best use of such information. Meanwhile, below-average participants will have only very limited means by which to clutter the network, as informational elements become less likely to be pushed forward as they approach above-average participants within the network, who themselves are “buffered” from such things by way of the competent participants with whom they surround themselves by way of their connections and who, by virtue of their competence, are unlikely to push forward low-value information.

(c) Barriers to obtaining raw data: The dynamics described in (a) and (b) collectively provide for a means of information inflow that should theoretically be superior to any other medium currently in existence in terms of overall quality, both by virtue of the network’s improved organizational methods as well as the relatively high competence of participating bloggers relative to members of the traditional media outlets as a whole. Accessibility to particularly valuable items of information will be enhanced further by the option to set one’s widget in such a way as to display any piece of information from the network, regardless of “proximity,” if such information is pushed forward (which is to say, approved of other participants) a certain number of times. This should help to ensure that, as the network expands, particularly valuable information does not become unduly “regionalized.” A variant on the widget for use by readers (as opposed to network participants) displaying information that meets similar thresholds of popularity within the network would likewise provide those readers with a source of information above and beyond other existing mediums.

From the Announcement of The Science Journalism Project:

From “A Modern Solution to An Age-Old Problem,” published in Skeptical Inquirer, October 11, 2010

http://www.csicop.org/specialarticles/show/a_modern_solution_to_an_age_old_problem

If we seek to improve the state of science journalism, we have the best chance of doing so by influencing the writer rather than those who run the outlet; the latter will not be convinced to abandon the pursuit of readership and profits in service to mere science, whereas even the most mercenary of freelancers will happily accept any assistance that makes his work easier and more profitable while also making it better. More to the point, there are a great number of writers who are quite mindful of making a positive impact on public understanding who would consider any help in doing so to be similarly attractive.

As such, I’d like to announce the launch of the Science Journalism Improvement Program, the first of several efforts being undertaken by the distributed think tank Project PM since its founding earlier this year. . . . The process by which this program operates centers around the pairing of freelance writers with scientists and science-based practitioners (such as healthcare professionals or engineers) who will assist their partners by identifying potential story ideas, providing assistance with research, and putting writers in touch with other qualified sources for background information and quotations. Participating scientists can expect several benefits: more media attention given to one’s own area of expertise; publicity for themselves, their institutions, and their sponsors; and even byline credit if the level of contribution merits such recognition.

Participating journalists can expect to produce articles and presentations of better quality and higher accuracy than the current norm without losing popular appeal. Hopefully, they will also be able to see more of their work published.