Subscribe to ePluribus Media



ePluribus Media Store


Want Headlines via Email?
Enter your email address:


Help Save 1.800.SUICIDE


When did you join up?

by rcs1

Update [2005-7-28 21:0:5 by NYBri]: Promoted to Front Page by NYBri

In an email, Aaron Barlow mentioned that it would be fascinating to provide a little history of the many contributors to ePluribus Media.  We have the official version, written by Sue in Kentucky, but no down in the weeds view.  We agreed that it would be terrible if little things, such as who came up with the name, got lost.  (Though there was a diary with lots of suggestions for the name, I heard that Bionic came up with ePluribus Media, and kiw designed the logo to emphasize the "us.")

Only problem.  

Like everyone else involved in our grand adventure, I didn't know.

Thus, this commentary to ask everyone when did you "volunteer" for ePluribus Media and how did you get involved?

What made you jump in?


commentary :: :: :: buzz-it!
Display:
Like lots of us, I was around the evening that SusanG put up her first Gannon diary... and watched mesmerized as the story unfolded and hundreds of Kossacks jumped in to find missing pieces.
Eventually, Georgia10 put out a request for folks who could write or proofread.   I argued with myself and checked with my Better Half before I jumped in and sent an email off into the vapors of cyberspace.

Over these past six months it's been awe-inspiring to watch everyone just dig in, work, plan, sweat, get stressed, get depressed, catch a second wind, and carry on.


by Cho on Wed Jul 27, 2005 at 08:07:16 PM EST

when all the Gannon stuff really popped.  I was reading diaries over at Daily Kos and found the investigative site.  I didn't have too much to contribute, but I did do a legwork-type trip down to Quantico to check Gannon's records.

Then I fell away for a bit (new job and all) and then came over to beta test here on July 22.  And that's it!

RenaRF: All you can possibly want and them some at my blog


by RenaRF on Wed Jul 27, 2005 at 08:26:38 PM EST

... that started it all, and thinking about how I had been wondering if anything was happening with the Plame investigation. From there, I was captivated.

Signed up on what was then the Propagannon site on Valentine's Day. I have done a tiny bit of research, and some downloading and archive work, but have been away from here recently due to the downingstreetmemo.com project.

A year ago, I would never have imagined that I would do what I have this year... this group started me off.

by highacidity on Thu Jul 28, 2005 at 01:17:38 AM EST

Right in the beginning of the Gannon saga.

Seriously, I hadn't paid any attention to blogs before.  I was still disgusted with all of the voting shenanigans, saw a hotlink off the Political News page on Yahoo and landed in the world of DailyKos.

I felt like I had come home.

by kfred on Thu Jul 28, 2005 at 07:06:38 PM EST

Maybe we ought to do something permanent with this experience and energy from the Gannon investigation ... and here we are.

It's really ALL his idea and baby before everyone else came along. I never would have dreamed of aiming for such an ambitious project. He's really the dad of it all.

And all the rest of you made it happen. I'm just along for the ride at this point.

by SusanG on Thu Jul 28, 2005 at 07:14:08 PM EST

I also think I was something of a seer, as I started posting lots of comments about blog investigations gaining legitimacy, and harping on the fact that the attention we had started getting from elected officials coming to dKos to post marked a turning point in the history of this media.  (I think Brian saved a lot of this stuff in one of his earlier diaries, actually).  

I still think that years down the road, historians will point to 2004-05 and these events as marking the birth of an important new era in investigative journalism.

We'll just have to see now, won't we?

by NotFuzzy on Tue Aug 02, 2005 at 09:46:17 AM EST
[ Parent ]

...and I was amazed at what I saw.  I jumped in here.  I wrote SusanG after that and said, "Shall we go for it?"  

Standingup was the first to contact me about doing some FOIAs.  

Well done, ePM.


by NYBri on Thu Jul 28, 2005 at 07:59:39 PM EST



by kfred on Fri Jul 29, 2005 at 01:01:35 PM EST
[ Parent ]
And I've still got an outstanding FOIA with the state department from that era.

by silence on Fri Jul 29, 2005 at 03:03:05 PM EST
[ Parent ]
I was on the wild ride with Susan G et al that first night and saw the sun rise while chasing down Jimmy Moore of Talon and gazing into the gaping maw of the many headed hydra of the Bushco, Scaife, Mellon, Moonie, Heritage machine.  I was so impressed with the quality of the hearts & minds I met that night, I knew I would have to join the band. I am so glad I get to ride in your beautiful balloon!  

by DEFuning on Fri Jul 29, 2005 at 03:23:36 PM EST
and tossed out a theory as to why Novak was loudly claiming that Plame wasn't a covert agent. susan encouraged me to pursue it. that's how i dived in. i wound up sending my notes to spiderleaf for her plame leak timeline.

i think it was a week that i saw the diary about looking for volunteers to work on a site. i was going to send a note volunteering, then thought "nah. they probably have tons of designers already."

and then i thought "well, maybe they'll need a logo or something." since i had a week or so before i got really busy with work again, plenty of time for a quick logo, i wrote brian and asked... "need any design help?"

:-)

by kiw on Sat Jul 30, 2005 at 04:45:21 AM EST

and look at all this....

Well done, ePM.


by NYBri on Sat Jul 30, 2005 at 08:49:22 AM EST
[ Parent ]

...but only visited one or two and found them bewildering.

After the election I was depressed and pissed off. I began telling anyone who'd listen that the biggest threat our country faced was not terrorism, but that we were losing our freedom of the press. Not so much interest.

So I registered NewtSoup.com, was learning about WordPress and 'designing' a stunningly amateurish front page when I saw Gannon's now famous question lampooned by Jon Stewart on the Daily Show. That was my tipping point.

Through Google I found AmericaBlog. After being utterly ignored for few days, I followed a link to dKos -- it hurt my brain and to be honest, I found the whole "kossacks" thing a little worrisome. Thankfully that led to Propagannon.

After a week or so at ppg, someone named SusanG pm'd me and asked if I like to be more involved. I said "yes" and someone named Tanya emailed me. I replied to Tanya and someone named Brian Kelly emailed me an invitation to a conference call.

Just five minutes after that conference call, I emailed my first group-wide apology for being so outspoken. Soon, I received multiple replies stating I had nothing to apologize for, and welcoming me to ePluribus Media.

And 21 weeks and 5 days later, they're still regretting it.

todd
They said, "kick all the illegal aliens out, then build a super-fence so they can't get back in." And I went, "Um, who's gonna build it?" --Carlos Mencia
by txj on Sat Jul 30, 2005 at 12:13:33 PM EST

I remember that first SusanG diary, and watched propagannon/eplumedia progress mostly as a lurker for a while.  then I got to thinking about some stuff I thought would be cool for a citizen journalism tool to do, so I sent an email to Brian asking if he could put me in touch with whoever was working on the long-term project of building tools for citizen journalists.

email led to emails lead to invitations to help here and there, and hey presto, whaddaya know.   now I'm one of those people.  I still feel kinda bad about bailing out on Leo, who I was originally supposed to help with the contact list, but he seems to be managing without me :-)  we'll get there...

scoop and drupal are just a start BTW.  CJ is not going away, and there's a years-long learning process ahead of us about what works, what doesn't, and how to turn these abstract ideas into stable communities of well-informed citizens...

by radish on Sat Jul 30, 2005 at 01:50:32 PM EST

join 'em.

Someone wonderful convinced me that ePluribus was the way of the future and that so much more could be accomplished working with a ton of talented researchers, gifted writers, tech savvy programmers, accomplished editors, publicists and legal minds than just going the write and whore traditional blog route.

It was a real struggle to get the work I did on my own, especially the plagiarism of the msm by Talon News, noticed by the blogosphere....and the mainstream media has yet to report it.  But I think these Websites are going to change the face of the left side of the blogosphere.  The work we've all been doing here is extraordinary..and the fact checking...the digging...the focus on being right instead of just being first...is going to do more than just change the media's perception of blogs...it's going to show the media what they should be doing to change the blogs' perception of the media, as well.

by Ron Brynaert on Mon Aug 01, 2005 at 12:33:47 AM EST

Sometime early in February, I decided to assign my students Jeff Gannon as a research topic (I had been following the mess on Media Matters for America--and a little on dKos).  I emailed Kos asking him to forward a request to SusanG, asking if my students could contact her with questions (something, it turned out, that didn't happen--the students felt they had enough info from the web).  She suggested looking at Propagannon and, sometime about Valentine's Day (the Saturday before, I think) I ended up talking with Cho on the phone.

When I look at this site, when I think back to all of the "citizen journalism" pieces that have resulted over the past months, I am just amazed.

Pat yourselves on the back, everyone!

by Aaron Barlow on Mon Aug 01, 2005 at 10:15:59 AM EST

I'm also one of those who got sucked in by the propagannon diaries.  Somewhere along the road there was a diary about "where to go from here", and a few of us suggested we'd actually pay a subscription fee for real news.

Subsequent diary talked about the physical setup, and y'all hit the ground running.  Lost the place for a couple months, and just recently came back.

Love the t-shirts.  

I think going forward that, in addition to news, this morphing entity could easily become a premier vetting site.  There are others out there, but none built the way ePluribus is.  Something to think about.

by rba on Tue Aug 02, 2005 at 08:55:30 AM EST

Support ePluribus Media -- Support Citizen Powered Journalism!

ePluribus Media

↑ Grab this Headline Animator

members


community front page

make a new account


Username:
Password:

create account | faq | search | community front page |