The Wiki movement has a new student in the offing — a group called Wikileaks.org, which plans to apply the concepts behind Wikipedia to whistle-blowing. While the attempt to provide an online outlet to expose corrupt governments and corporations is admirable at first blush, the project is flawed and will be difficult to pull off because of its anonymous nature.

It’s difficult to get past the first stumbling block — the site’s authors remain anonymous. The site’s FAQ states Wikileaks was “founded by Chinese dissidents, mathematicians and startup company technologists, from the US, Taiwan, Europe, Australia and South Africa.” Of course, that’s information that cannot be verified. The secrecy and anonymity, which has extended to its relations with the press, has brought on a bloggorhea speculation and accusations.

Before it could publish its first leak, Wikileaks itself was leaked leaked to the press by Cryptome.org writer John Young, a legend in hosting leaked information in his own right who says he refused to sit on Wikileak’s board.

The site has since been accused of intending to fleece the CIA for $5 million (Young suggested going for $100 million instead), and of being a CIA front, or a possible source of disinformation for terrorists. In this climate, odds are the project will not get off the ground unless the founders identify themselves.

But the concept of wiki-leaking is flawed.

Issue 7: JPG Mag
Issue seven of JPG Magazine, all 20,000 copies of it, are giving the publishing world something a little different. Founders Derek Powazek and Heather Powazek-Champ (yes, they’re married), print on dead-trees, but the production of the bi-monthly magazine relies completely on photography submitted by users of their online community.

“Instead of starting in print and building a community, you start online. Then when you launch your first copy, you have supporters there,” said Derek Powazek.

JPG was, in part, an expansion of a working idea called Photo Club – a service that delivered an original photo once a month to subscribers. The Powazeks went online and named their endeavor JPG Magazine, “to honor all the fantastic work being put online that never saw the light of day in print.” They accepted digital submissions from anyone using all the digital tools at their disposal (gmail, flickr, lulu), selected the best and produced six issues over the next two years.

Issue seven had more than 1,400 submissions in several loose themes, like “self-portraiture,” “hometown,” and “big,” and issue eight has already received over 5,000 submissions.

And while editors still have final say, the community now votes on what photos they would like to see in the magazine. Think American Idol for magazines.

“We consider ourselves an open source magazine in that the participants have access to everything the editors have access to, with a couple of exceptions. In traditional magazines, it’s all about hoarding until that last moment and then going ta-da – buy the magazine!”