Dan Gillmor just took the podium at the Accelerating Change conference at Stanford. He's here to talk about We The Media. The notion that anyone can publish is quite powerful.

On election night 2000, Dan was in Hong Kong. He listened to a RealAudio feed of National Public Radio and watched CNN. He realized that even though he was far away, he was getting more and better news than people watching television.

On 9/11, Dan was in Africa, on the way to Zambia. Dave Farber was emailing news in bulk. Dan received a aerial photo of Manhattan -- his first grok of the magnitude of the event. Bloggers picked up the story; blogging was a new phenomenon back then and this brought it national recognition. One blogger: "Now I know what a burning city smells like."

Trent Lott was nostalgic for Strom Thurman's segregationist Dixiecrats. Bloggers fans the flames and chastised the mainstream media back in 2002.

Columbia explodes and a blogger posts a weather photo showing the debris field.

Journalism has been a lecture. You buy what we sell. Or not. Now journalism is becoming a conversagtion or maybe a seminar. The story is the beginning of the conversation. Dan's foundation principle: The readers know more than the reporter.

Dan was blogging Esther's PC Forum. Joe Naccio, head of Qwest, was complaining about his tough job. "What's so tough about running a monopoly?" asked Dan. A guy in Florida tapped into the SEC database and emailed Dan that Naccio was selling off his stock like crazy. Soon the news media picked it up. The "guys in pajamas became the pajamadin."

Now it's harder to keep secrets. Consider Abu Ghraib. The Army wanted to ban digital cameras.

Social project extradinaire.

Ooof. Looking back on this post, I see a LOT of space for misinterpretation.

How do we make money from this? (Web journalism, not Abu Ghraib or other American atrocities.)

The Tip Jar. | User-submitted content. | Niche markets (e.g. Gizmodo).

Dan Gilmour is a great reporter and change agent, but there have to be other models for making moolah than tip jars and other forms of begging.