I just saw Dan’s post on his next steps, and his departure from Bayosphere for Berkeley’s new Center for Citizen Journalism. I’m excited for him. But I think Lea and Fleddy’s comments on his post are important. There’s more details in their comments – but the gist: “Hey Dan, What about Bayosphere?”

Bayosphere was started as a citizen journalist venture. Bayosphere denizens have invested in it and communicated through it, some occassionally, some frequently. Citizen journalism tries, among other things, to create a more bottom-up and granular system of reporting and accountability to the truth. The grassroots part of it implies to me that accountability to each other is valued more highly than accountability to the dictates of established, monolithic outlets for ‘truth’. Yes, currently we aren’t really community-owned and driven. But what drew me here was the vision of co-ownership. I also believed in the potential of the vision because of Dan, his track record, and what I perceived to be his commitment to shared process rather than shared endpoints. He was seeding the venture, and he embodied the principles I thought necessary for a grassroots journalism project.

But Dan, your leaving us in the dark about the future of this venture, as you move on your next one, seems directly opposed to some core principles of process that I thought were an essential part of Bayosphere – commitment and accountability to the community that Bayosphere has invited and encouraged. Sure, people can (and do) come and go from Bayosphere, and when the community is fully ‘bottom up’, we might expect that to happen without fanfared farewells. We’re not at that stage yet, and the venture still has Dan’s strong imprint. Given that, it’s not responsible, Dan, for you to quietly walk away without giving us a sense of what’s going to happen to the project that we’ve all invested in.

Please do, then, share with us openly what your own evolution has been (from bayosphere to non profit center) and what your current thoughts are about Bayosphere. We’d be curious to hear about your analysis on what worked (in your mind), what didn’t work, and also where you think Bayosphere may be headed – even if the answer is ‘nowhere’. Bayosphere, for all its faults, was more our venture – as opposed to the new center, which is more your venture, as well as the venture of two very traditional establishments (the window dressing of novel-sounding nomenclature (aka “Internet & Society”) notwithstanding)

I had come here to post on Chandigarh, India (which is where I’m writing from). More on that in a separate po