One of Philly’s public radio stations, WHYY, has launched a crowd-sourced website newsroom to CPR an otherwise moribund pool of local journalism. It’s called Newsworks ~ a Joomla install with a new template and Community Builder.

As an effort in community journalism, I wish them well.

Their site, though, flies in the face of their mission. Everything about the site is built on community effort, yet they don’t acknowledge open source anywhere. their ToS contains language that probably violates the GPL (the license on which their site is built).

And if one truly wanted to crowdsource journalism, isn’t using a Creative Commons license a natch? Between the ToS and the Discussion Agreement, I don’t see much potential for growing community engagement.

I don’t have a problem with community conduct; I’ve signed the Ubuntu code of conduct. But I have a nagging feeling that the folks that put Newsworks together — the back-end and the content — are newbies to online communities.

Tip to my friends at WHYY: It’s not that hard to reach out to Lessig or Bacon, and they’d be happy to share what they know (being community-oriented and all).

Tags: creative commons, jono bacon, joomla, lessig, newsworks, npr, whyy