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The meaning of the term has since changed and broadened, and it is now commonly used to describe forms of innovative publishing of Online Journalism , rather than the sourcing of news stories by a professional journalist.

The term 'open source journalism' is often used to describe a spectrum on online publications: from various forms of semi-participatory online community journalism (as exemplified by projects such as the copyright newspaper [http://www.northwestvoice.com/default.asp NorthWest Voice]), through to genuine Open Source news publications (such as the Spanish 20 Minutes , and WikiNews ).

A relatively new development is the use of convergent polls, allowing editorials and opinions to be submitted and voted on. Overtime, the poll converges on the most broadly accepted editorials and opinions. Examples of this are OpinionRepublic.com and Digg.com


USAGE

At first sight, it would appear to many that Weblogs fit within the current meaning of 'open source journalism'. Yet the term's use of ''open source'' clearly currently implies the meaning as given to it by the Open Source software movement; where the Source Code of programs is published openly to allow anyone to locate and fix mistakes or add new functions. Anyone may also freely take and re-use that Source Code in order to create new works, within set licence parameters.

Given certain legal traditions of copyright, weblogs may not be "open source" in the sense that one is prohibited from taking the weblogger's words or visitor comments and re-using them in another form without breaching the author's Copyright or making payment. However, many weblogs draw on such material through quotations (often with links to the original material), and follow guidelines more comparable to Research than Media production.

Creative Commons is a licensing arrangement useful as a legal workaround for such an inherent structual dilemma intrinsic to weblogging, and its fruition is manifest in the common practices of referencing another published article, image or piece of information via a Hyperlink . Insofar as weblog works can explicitly inform readers and other participants of the "openness" of their text via Creative Commons, they not only publish openly, but allow anyone to locate, critique, summarize etc their works.


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