October 25, 2004
Getting the Scoop | Software developed on Peaks Island powers influential political blogs
By Rebecca Zicarelli
Conventional wisdom holds that this is the year the Internet and politics converged, largely through the efforts of a cadre of freshly minted pundits and their blogs (short for weblogs). Political bloggers ˆ both professional and amateur journalists with a jones for politics who write about their interest and publish on the Web ˆ have amped up the speed and ferocity of an already fast-paced news cycle, offering both fact-checking and spin nearly instantaneously.
For example, the right-leaning blog www.freerepublic.com proffered the notion that the memos documenting the pressure a Texas Air National Guard official felt to clean up President George W. Bush's National Guard service were forgeries within an hour after Dan Rather's now infamous broadcast on 60 Minutes. Similarly, an hour after the debate in which Vice President Dick Cheney said he'd never before met Sen. John Edwards, photographs of Cheney and Edwards together were showing up on the left-leaning www.dailykos.com.
Daily Kos and a number of other political blogs, including the similarly left-leaning www.mydd.com and right-leaning www.tacitus.org and www.redstate.org, run on an open-source program called Scoop that was written here in Maine. Rusty Foster of Peaks Island developed Scoop for his own website, www.kuro5hin.org, pronounced "corrosion," a play on his first name. "Scoop doesn't come out of the blogging lineage of software," Foster says. "Blogging is all about one person sharing their opinions with readers. I wasn't a blogger and I wasn't interested in being a blogger, I was just a programmer. And I was more interested in bringing people together to talk to each other than I was in promoting my personal writing."
Typically, bloggers post articles on their websites' home pages. Readers respond with comments that usually are posted chronologically, one after another. So if 50 people have commented already, but you want to respond to something posted by the 12th person, you have to do so in comment number 51.
With a website powered by Scoop, bloggers still post articles on the main page, and readers still comment. But readers also can post their own articles, called diaries. Readers' comments are threaded, meaning your response to comment 12 essentially is posted as comment 12a, making it easier to have a conversation. And readers can rate comments, helping the best rise to the top.
On his site, Foster describes Scoop as a collaborative media application. "It falls somewhere between a content management system, a Web bulletin board system and a weblog. Scoop is designed to enable your website to become a community," he writes. "It empowers your visitors to be the producers of the site, contributing news and discussion."
While Scoop isn't earning any money directly ˆ like many open-source programs, it's free to download and use, though installation and administration require high levels of technical proficiency ˆ it is making a difference in the national political debate, according to Dan Gillmor, a columnist for SiliconValley.com, a blogger and the author of the recently published We, the Media: Grassroots Journalism by the People, for the People.
"Journalists from bigger organizations pick up on the chatter and pay attention to what's being said [on blogs]," Gillmor said in an e-mail interview. "More voices are in almost every respect better than fewer voices."
The open-source model
Early last year, Foster was struggling to keep Kuro5hin financially solvent with an online fundraiser and the stated goal of forming a nonprofit he planned to call Collaborative Media Foundation ("The community approach," Feb. 3, 2003). While Foster says he did raise enough money to keep Kuro5hin solvent, he never got the nonprofit off the ground. He calls it "a personal failure," based on his lack of business savvy. "Kuro5hin has regained its financial footing," Foster says. "The fundraising got me through an extremely tough period when we had lost a source of ad revenue. Socially, that whole experience was a disaster because I didn't get it done."
Despite the smudge that episode may have put on Foster's reputation, the software's ability to foster a community feel in a blog was obvious from Kuro5hin's continued popularity. And, last year, Daily Kos switched from Movable Type ˆ one of the most prevalent blog platforms ˆ to Scoop.
According to Markos Moulitsas, the site's eponymous founder, "Daily Kos is currently serving up between 500,000 and a million page views every day, and hosting a community of tens of thousands of rabid partisans. There are literally hundreds of diaries written every day, and thousands of comments posted. There are two platforms that would make this all possible: Slashcode, which runs Slashdot.com" ˆ a popular website that describes itself as "news for nerds" ˆ "and Scoop. And when I evaluated the two platforms, it was clear that Scoop was just as powerful as the legendary Slashcode, but far easier to use." With the audience he's gained, Moulitsas has been able to raise nearly $1 million for candidates he supports, including the Kerry-Edwards ticket and 12 congressional candidates across the country.
For Foster, Scoop has the hallmarks of a classic open-source business model. Rather than sell the software, he sells his services based on the prestige he's garnered as its developer. Moulitsas says, "Given that it's open source, I have been able to work with [Foster] and other tech guys to customize the site to my tastes and the demands of my community at a cost far less than what proprietary content management systems cost."
While Foster was considering quitting Kuro5hin and getting a "real" job two years ago, he now says the customization he does for Daily Kos and other clients has become a real job. (Both Foster and Moulitsas declined to disclose both revenues and clients.)
In February, Foster joined forces with Moulitsas and Jerome Armstrong, who runs MyDD, as chief technical officer in their newly formed political consulting endeavor, Armstrong Zuniga LLC. It's a virtual organization, headquartered in Washington, D.C., because, as Foster puts it, "that's where the accountants and the lawyers are." With Scoop as the engine behind the effort, the three are consulting with both politicians and nonprofits to do grassroots organizing on the Internet.
"I suspect we're one election cycle away from these tools being a more fundamental part of the debate and conversation," Gillmor says. "Big media still dominate the discussion."
Foster says the down time after this election will give him time to focus on developing sophisticated tools for Scoop that can provide campaigns with a single portal that coordinates everything from communications and spin to fundraising and on-the-street campaigning. He hopes to have those tweaks ready before the next election comes around. Then, if he and Gillmor are right, expect to see Internet-based organizations driving more of our political process. "The major direction for growth is that only a tiny percentage of the population is aware of this stuff right now," Foster says. "What we need to do is bring it to a mass audience ˆ to a television-size audience, essentially. Until we can do that, we won't have gotten to the whole potential of this thing."
For example, the right-leaning blog www.freerepublic.com proffered the notion that the memos documenting the pressure a Texas Air National Guard official felt to clean up President George W. Bush's National Guard service were forgeries within an hour after Dan Rather's now infamous broadcast on 60 Minutes. Similarly, an hour after the debate in which Vice President Dick Cheney said he'd never before met Sen. John Edwards, photographs of Cheney and Edwards together were showing up on the left-leaning www.dailykos.com.
Daily Kos and a number of other political blogs, including the similarly left-leaning www.mydd.com and right-leaning www.tacitus.org and www.redstate.org, run on an open-source program called Scoop that was written here in Maine. Rusty Foster of Peaks Island developed Scoop for his own website, www.kuro5hin.org, pronounced "corrosion," a play on his first name. "Scoop doesn't come out of the blogging lineage of software," Foster says. "Blogging is all about one person sharing their opinions with readers. I wasn't a blogger and I wasn't interested in being a blogger, I was just a programmer. And I was more interested in bringing people together to talk to each other than I was in promoting my personal writing."
Typically, bloggers post articles on their websites' home pages. Readers respond with comments that usually are posted chronologically, one after another. So if 50 people have commented already, but you want to respond to something posted by the 12th person, you have to do so in comment number 51.
With a website powered by Scoop, bloggers still post articles on the main page, and readers still comment. But readers also can post their own articles, called diaries. Readers' comments are threaded, meaning your response to comment 12 essentially is posted as comment 12a, making it easier to have a conversation. And readers can rate comments, helping the best rise to the top.
On his site, Foster describes Scoop as a collaborative media application. "It falls somewhere between a content management system, a Web bulletin board system and a weblog. Scoop is designed to enable your website to become a community," he writes. "It empowers your visitors to be the producers of the site, contributing news and discussion."
While Scoop isn't earning any money directly ˆ like many open-source programs, it's free to download and use, though installation and administration require high levels of technical proficiency ˆ it is making a difference in the national political debate, according to Dan Gillmor, a columnist for SiliconValley.com, a blogger and the author of the recently published We, the Media: Grassroots Journalism by the People, for the People.
"Journalists from bigger organizations pick up on the chatter and pay attention to what's being said [on blogs]," Gillmor said in an e-mail interview. "More voices are in almost every respect better than fewer voices."
The open-source model
Early last year, Foster was struggling to keep Kuro5hin financially solvent with an online fundraiser and the stated goal of forming a nonprofit he planned to call Collaborative Media Foundation ("The community approach," Feb. 3, 2003). While Foster says he did raise enough money to keep Kuro5hin solvent, he never got the nonprofit off the ground. He calls it "a personal failure," based on his lack of business savvy. "Kuro5hin has regained its financial footing," Foster says. "The fundraising got me through an extremely tough period when we had lost a source of ad revenue. Socially, that whole experience was a disaster because I didn't get it done."
Despite the smudge that episode may have put on Foster's reputation, the software's ability to foster a community feel in a blog was obvious from Kuro5hin's continued popularity. And, last year, Daily Kos switched from Movable Type ˆ one of the most prevalent blog platforms ˆ to Scoop.
According to Markos Moulitsas, the site's eponymous founder, "Daily Kos is currently serving up between 500,000 and a million page views every day, and hosting a community of tens of thousands of rabid partisans. There are literally hundreds of diaries written every day, and thousands of comments posted. There are two platforms that would make this all possible: Slashcode, which runs Slashdot.com" ˆ a popular website that describes itself as "news for nerds" ˆ "and Scoop. And when I evaluated the two platforms, it was clear that Scoop was just as powerful as the legendary Slashcode, but far easier to use." With the audience he's gained, Moulitsas has been able to raise nearly $1 million for candidates he supports, including the Kerry-Edwards ticket and 12 congressional candidates across the country.
For Foster, Scoop has the hallmarks of a classic open-source business model. Rather than sell the software, he sells his services based on the prestige he's garnered as its developer. Moulitsas says, "Given that it's open source, I have been able to work with [Foster] and other tech guys to customize the site to my tastes and the demands of my community at a cost far less than what proprietary content management systems cost."
While Foster was considering quitting Kuro5hin and getting a "real" job two years ago, he now says the customization he does for Daily Kos and other clients has become a real job. (Both Foster and Moulitsas declined to disclose both revenues and clients.)
In February, Foster joined forces with Moulitsas and Jerome Armstrong, who runs MyDD, as chief technical officer in their newly formed political consulting endeavor, Armstrong Zuniga LLC. It's a virtual organization, headquartered in Washington, D.C., because, as Foster puts it, "that's where the accountants and the lawyers are." With Scoop as the engine behind the effort, the three are consulting with both politicians and nonprofits to do grassroots organizing on the Internet.
"I suspect we're one election cycle away from these tools being a more fundamental part of the debate and conversation," Gillmor says. "Big media still dominate the discussion."
Foster says the down time after this election will give him time to focus on developing sophisticated tools for Scoop that can provide campaigns with a single portal that coordinates everything from communications and spin to fundraising and on-the-street campaigning. He hopes to have those tweaks ready before the next election comes around. Then, if he and Gillmor are right, expect to see Internet-based organizations driving more of our political process. "The major direction for growth is that only a tiny percentage of the population is aware of this stuff right now," Foster says. "What we need to do is bring it to a mass audience ˆ to a television-size audience, essentially. Until we can do that, we won't have gotten to the whole potential of this thing."
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