The release Sunday of more than 90,000 secret records on U.S. military involvement in Afghanistan was orchestrated by the Wikileaks site in conjunction with The New York Times, The Guardian of London and Der Spiegel.
The release of the so-called War Logs is bound to be discussed and studied for a long time. But the initial focus for the craft of journalism ought to be studying the game-changing qualities of material that spreads from an online resource, through well-resourced traditional newsrooms, into the hands of thousands of other expert and non-expert organizations and individuals. It's the largest test yet of a new map of information.
Nieman Journalism Lab has a good starting-point piece today on how the study can be framed. Among other things it raises questions on how Wikileaks will evolve and whether there is sufficient new information in the logs to change the course of the war --- as did the release of the Pentagon Papers nearly four decades ago. Mainly, though, it will be a profound test of the digital information ecosystem.
The release of the so-called War Logs is bound to be discussed and studied for a long time. But the initial focus for the craft of journalism ought to be studying the game-changing qualities of material that spreads from an online resource, through well-resourced traditional newsrooms, into the hands of thousands of other expert and non-expert organizations and individuals. It's the largest test yet of a new map of information.
Nieman Journalism Lab has a good starting-point piece today on how the study can be framed. Among other things it raises questions on how Wikileaks will evolve and whether there is sufficient new information in the logs to change the course of the war --- as did the release of the Pentagon Papers nearly four decades ago. Mainly, though, it will be a profound test of the digital information ecosystem.
