📰 Journalists Can Now Enter MyZubster as Characters — Here’s How It Works
Open-source communities usually have developers.
They have maintainers.
Sometimes designers, researchers and translators.
But what about the people whose job is to observe what those communities are actually doing?
Today we're opening another path inside MyZubster:
Media & Journalist Characters.
Journalists, independent reporters, editors, fact-checkers, documentary makers, technical writers and media researchers can now participate in the public MyZubster ecosystem through an optional character linked to their public work.
But there's an important distinction:
A MyZubster character doesn't turn someone into a verified journalist.
The system is designed around evidence, provenance and editorial independence.
Here's how it works.
👾 What is a Media Character?
MyZubster already has a Git-native Character Registry.
The idea is simple:
Git identity
↓
Character
↓
Mission
↓
Contribution
↓
Evidence
↓
Review
↓
World State
Instead of treating contributors as anonymous database rows, MyZubster can represent their public roles through characters.
Now we're extending this model to media.
A journalist can create a:
MEDIA / JOURNALIST Character
representing their public role inside the ecosystem.
This can include roles such as:
Journalist
Reporter
Editor
Fact-checker
Media researcher
Documentary maker
Technical writer
Creating one is completely optional.
You can investigate MyZubster without becoming part of MyZubster.
🔎 The journalist workflow
The media workflow looks like this:
PRESS KIT
↓
MEDIA CHARACTER
↓
CLAIM TO VERIFY
↓
SOURCE / EVIDENCE REVIEW
↓
INDEPENDENT REPORT
↓
ARTICLE / TEST / FACT-CHECK
↓
PUBLIC EVIDENCE
↓
CHRONICLE / WORLD STATE
Let's break that down.
- Start from the Press Kit
We've created a public Press & Media Kit:
https://www.myzubster.com/press
The objective isn't to provide journalists with marketing copy.
It's to give them a map.
From there they can find the repository, roadmap, public evidence, Zorgax, governance experiments, environmental work and community documentation.
More importantly, the Press Kit explicitly separates:
what exists
what is experimental
what is being developed
what is planned
what still requires independent verification
That distinction matters.
- Choose something to investigate
A journalist doesn't need to cover the entire MyZubster ecosystem.
They can choose one claim.
For example:
Does this feature actually exist?
Can this workflow be reproduced?
Is Zorgax doing what the documentation says?
Was this milestone actually completed?
Does the repository contain evidence for this claim?
Can another developer reproduce the result?
And criticism is welcome.
The objective isn't:
“Write something positive about MyZubster.”
It's:
“Inspect the evidence and report what you find.”
- Create a character — if you want one
The public Character Registry lives on GitHub.
A media contributor can propose something similar to:
id: your-media-character-id
display_name: Your Character Name
github_alias: your-github-alias
character_type: media_journalist
role: journalist
languages:
- English
- Italian
beats:
- open-source
- AI
- environment
affiliation_claim: null
verified_affiliation: false
verification_evidence: null
public_links: []
contribution_sources: []
status: proposed
No legal name is required for ordinary community participation.
A public alias can be used.
And we specifically ask contributors not to upload identity documents, private addresses or unnecessary personal information to GitHub.
🛡️ Verification has several levels
This is probably the most important part of the system.
We don't want someone creating:
“John — BBC Journalist”
and suddenly having MyZubster display that as a verified fact.
So media characters have separate states.
PROPOSED
↓
COMMUNITY_JOURNALIST
↓
AFFILIATION_VERIFIED
↓
ACTIVE
AFFILIATION_VERIFIED is optional.
It should only be used when appropriate evidence connecting the contributor with the claimed media organization has actually been reviewed.
And even then:
Media Character
≠ verified journalist
Verified affiliation
≠ employer endorsement
Article about MyZubster
≠ partnership
Community participation
≠ editorial approval
Press access
≠ sponsorship
These boundaries are deliberately explicit.
🧭 What counts as a media contribution?
A contribution doesn't have to be an article saying MyZubster is great.
It could be:
an article
an interview
a technical reproduction
a correction
a dataset analysis
a critical investigation
a fact-check
a documentary
a reproducibility test
For example:
MyZubster claims X
↓
journalist checks repository
↓
runs public workflow
↓
finds X partially reproducible
↓
publishes results
↓
public report becomes evidence
That report can then be linked to the character.
Now the character isn't simply decorative.
It has provenance.
📚 Characters become part of the Chronicle
This is where things get more experimental.
MyZubster has a public narrative layer called the Chronicle.
The idea is to connect the visual world with real repository evidence.
A journalist character might therefore appear as an observer documenting a particular stage of the project.
But the narrative layer must remain distinguishable from factual evidence.
The Chronicle might say:
THE OBSERVER ARRIVES
while the evidence layer points to:
article URL
GitHub issue
commit
dataset
test
interview
verification result
Storytelling is the interface.
Evidence is the source of truth.
🤖 What does Zorgax do?
Zorgax is MyZubster's automation/orchestration track.
For media workflows, Zorgax could eventually help organize public sources, surface repository evidence, prepare timelines or draft evidence summaries.
But we've explicitly defined boundaries.
Zorgax must not:
invent journalist credentials
fabricate quotes
invent affiliations
pretend an organization endorsed MyZubster
decide what a journalist should conclude
silently label someone as verified
AI can help organize evidence.
It doesn't become the evidence.
✍️ Editorial independence matters
Joining the Media Character program does not mean becoming part of MyZubster's PR operation.
A journalist remains editorially independent.
They don't have to publish positive coverage.
In fact:
a well-supported criticism can be more valuable than praise.
If someone discovers that a MyZubster claim isn't reproducible, we want that information attached to the evidence trail.
That's how an evidence-first project should work.
🌍 Why we're doing this
MyZubster is preparing for a stage where people outside the original development context need to understand what's happening.
Developers.
Researchers.
Universities.
Communities.
Potential pilot participants.
And eventually journalists.
Traditional project communication usually works like this:
PROJECT
↓
PRESS RELEASE
↓
JOURNALIST
↓
ARTICLE
We're experimenting with something more open:
PROJECT
↓
PUBLIC CODE + DATA + EVIDENCE
↓
INDEPENDENT OBSERVER
↓
VERIFICATION
↓
PUBLIC REPORT
↓
PERMANENT EVIDENCE TRAIL
That creates a very different relationship between an open-source project and the people reporting on it.
🚀 Want to try it?
You don't need permission to start inspecting MyZubster.
You don't even need a character.
Start with the public resources.
Press & Media Kit:
https://www.myzubster.com/press
GitHub:
https://github.com/MyZubster-Ecosystem/myzubster
Character Registry:
https://github.com/MyZubster-Ecosystem/myzubster/issues/617
Media & Journalist Program:
https://github.com/MyZubster-Ecosystem/myzubster/blob/main/docs/MEDIA_JOURNALIST_PROGRAM.md
Pick one claim.
Inspect the evidence.
Try to reproduce it.
Ask difficult questions.
Then report what you actually find.
Observe independently.
Verify the evidence.
Report what you find.
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