Politics

Another Kind of Tip Jar

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The recent surge in hyperlocal media has just met the WikiLeaks era. The new website localeaks is an interesting experiment described by Audrey Watters as "A Drop-Box for Anonymous Tips to 1400 U.S. Newspapers":

Although the mission of WikiLeaks is to "open governments," it's done quite a lot to make us think about how to open journalism as well. We've seen a number of new whistleblower sites crop up—OpenLeaks and Rospil, for example—as well as major news organizations—Al Jazeera, and perhaps even The New York Times—investigate ways to facilitate more whistle-blowing and leaking.

But why wait for local newspapers to roll out their own anonymous tips pipeline when a project from CUNY Graduate School's Entrepreneurial Journalism program has designed just that thing.

Using Localeaks, you can send an anonymous tip, including a file, to over 1400 newspapers in the U.S. through one online form. Choose your state. Choose the newspaper. Enter your information and submit your anonymous tip.

Bonus reading: "After the Newspaper," from early 2009, in which I speculated about "local equivalents [of WikiLeaks] appearing in the future."

Via Jeff Jarvis, who also shares a funny tidbit from Davos: "Sad irony: the session on transparency was off-the-record."