At POSSE, professors discover the value(s) of open source

In a conference room bubbling with excited conversations between professors of computer science, software development, and information systems, Dr. Andrea Hickerson glimpsed journalism's future--one in which reporters will be more important than they've ever been. Navigating this new frontier will require gathering, synthesizing, weighing, and reporting information in new ways and with new tools, said Hickerson, who'll teach newswriting this fall at Rochester Institute of Technology in Rochester, MA.

But, she said, tomorrow's journalists will embrace a core set of values that has persisted for generations--one that resonates sharply with open source communities. "The values that underlie open source, like transparency and open communication, are the same values that underlie journalism and democracy," Hickerson said. "It seems like a natural marriage to me."...