Links of the Day #7

Today's round-up features openness. There is Open Source design, publishing with the Open Source Laboratory and some Open Access journal articles, plus what's shown and hidden in journalism and a behind-the-scenes look at writing an Annual Review. Bonus link on typographical formatting and letter-spacing (for good measure!).

All the web’s a stage: What we show and what we choose to hide in journalism Posted: 01 Sep 2010 07:13 AM PDT "The vast majority of their newsgathering operation — the desk assistants and the bookers and the people who do all the pre-interviewing and the off-air correspondents — are people who never appear on-air. No network is its anchor. So there's that aspect, in which a large portion of the news ecosystem isn't visible to the public — and there's an argument to be made that having a small set of news personalities with whom audiences can identify is good for the product — and there are a lot of organizations where the vast majority of people involved in things don't really speak. So that was one of the interesting aspects of looking at the blogging efforts of network news: Once that somewhat natural distinction between on-air and off-air talent and support staff disappears, who becomes visible online?" Josh Braun

The Case For Open-Source Design: Can Design By Committee Work? - Smashing Magazine Posted: 01 Sep 2010 06:54 AM PDT An investigation into the difficulties of extending the open-source collaboration model from coding to interface design. ... a note of caution to think before rushing to declare the rise of "open-source architecture," "open-source university," "open-source democracy" and so on. "Both software and wikis are made of granular building blocks. This makes every typo an invitation to collaborate. My first Wikipedia edit was a typo correction, my second was adding a reference link, my third was writing a whole paragraph, and that led me to more substantial contributions, like adding a whole new article and so on. ...This ladder of participation makes each successive step easier. It also allows you to compare changes easily, giving you transparency, accountability, moderation and an open license to try and possibly fail, knowing you can always revert to the previous version. You don't get that with design, because the changes are not granular."

How I published a book, thanks to The Open Laboratory Posted: 01 Sep 2010 04:24 AM PDT Alun Salt on publishing an academic text with Lulu, selling on Amazon and offering a free PDF download (CC licensed via Scribd)

Jost Hochuli: Detail in Typography | The Designer's Review of Books Posted: 01 Sep 2010 04:17 AM PDT "While macrotypography - the typographic layout – is concerned with the format of the printed matter, with the size and position of the columns of type and illustrations, with the organization of the hierarchy of headings, subheadings and captions, detail typography is concerned with the individual components – letters, letterspacing, words, wordspacing, lines and linespacing, columns of text. These are the components that graphic or typographic designers like to neglect, as they fall outside the area that is normally regarded as 'creative'…"

Interprete » Annual Review of Anthropology on Digital Media Posted: 01 Sep 2010 04:11 AM PDT On the daunting task of writing an Annual Review. Nice inside look.

SJIR Archives Posted: 01 Sep 2010 03:54 AM PDT Browse Open Access articles at the Stanford Journal of International Relations