Leak-o-nomy: The Economy of Wikileaks

[Bodhi BloodWave]

Link: http://stefanmey.wordpress.com/2010/01/04/leak-o-nomy-the-economy-of-wikileaks/

Notice: This is from the start of the year and as such not recent news but i found it interesting nonetheless.

Also since this is an interview I'm going to copy and paste 4 questions and answers, if that breaks the 4 paragraph rule please tell me so i can make the change to the OP, seems wrong to only post answers without questions tho.

**

In mainstream media as well as in non-commercial media there are two important questions. What does it cost? And how is it financed? Would you please first describe the cost side …

By far the biggest cost is people. That’s also a cost that scales with operations. The more material we go through, the more the management and labour costs are. People need to write summaries of the material and see whether it’s true or not. In the moment everyone is paying himself, but that can’t last forever.

-

So all in all, can you give figures about how much money Wikileaks needs in one year?

Propably 200 000, that’s with everyone paying themselves. But there are people who can’t afford to continue being involved fulltime unless they are paid. For that I would say maybe it’s 600 000 a year.

-

You want to make sure that if you give them the exclusivity that they really do what they promise to do …

Yes. One thing that can’t be faked is how much money they pay. If you have an auction and a media organisation pays the most, then they are predicting, that they will benefit the most from publishing the story. That is, they will have the maximum number of readers. So this is a very good way to measure who should have the exclusivity. We tried to do it as an experiment in Venezuela .

-

They would have timely privileged access to all Wikileaks documents that are relevant for North America …

Yes. Let’s imagine there are only two companies in the auction. And one pays double what the other one pays. And let’s say the source says they want the document to be published in one month’s time. So there is a one month window where the journalists have time to investigate and write about the material. The organisation that pays the most for it gets it immediately, so therefore they would be able to do a more comprehensive story. Then the organisation that pays half as much gets it half the time later, they get the documents two weeks later. And then after one month they both publish.

[Bodhi BloodWave]

1. First kick to let more people see and read this old but facinating interview

Would be happy to read what others think after having read it.