Assignment Zero Takes Journalism Back to the Lab
Important Details: NYU Journalism Professor Jay Rosen has been working on ways to involve the public in journalism creation for more than a decade. Now his AssignmentZero has captured attention – and the interest of journalism companies. Assignment Zero is the first project of Rosen’s newassignment.net initiative. Basically, it’s a crowdsourcing experiment which involves knowledgeable and curious members of the public in the reporting, editing and writing of stories.
“We thought we’d get 250 people participating, and we got 800,” Rosen told Outsell, who has helped re-define the notion of “readers” in the digital age: “the group formerly known as the audience.” The basic issues and learnings of the project are familiar to anyone in journalism. It’s the “division of labor”, says Rosen, “rightsizing” editorial work, dividing the tasks efficiently and clearly to get to readable and useful packages of content.
What’s the actual story that Assignment Zero is reporting, with an early June deadline for publication on newassignment.net, with an accompanying article on Wired News? It’s about crowdsourcing itself, the phenomenon of having members of the public interview, report, write and edit. Rosen, who is serving as executive editor on the initial project, is the first to admit that a crowdsourcing project on crowdsourcing may seem a bit confusing out of the gate. Still, he maintains, it’s a good first project, because, after all, what he is interested in is learning about and perfecting the crowdsourcing process itself. A look at the site shows a wide range of interviewees and topics, from social news reporting to crowd-inflected religion and music sites.
newassignment.net has already gotten numerous inquiries from mainstream media companies, says Rosen. At this point, only one further project has been scheduled, around how to cover the 2008 elections, in partnership with Huffington Post.
Rosen stresses that newassignment isn’t a company or an institution. Formally, it’s a project, a learning lab. “My only mission is to spark innovation and push the practice forward.” To that end, he says he thinks he may take on three or four projects a year, “but I’m open to lots of them.”
Implications: There’s much to learn here, as publishers struggle to engage their communities and harvest local user-gen content. There are lots of people out there. How do you figure out which ones to use and how? But in the answer is pure gold – great content, engagement and for a tiny percentage of the cost of professional content.
newassignment.net is just a part of that puzzle, as is the AP/Now Public experiment now in implementation. The practice of journalism wasn’t born whole, though in its pre-internet days, it had settled into comfortable rhythms. Many served readers well; others now seem just encrusted with habit that competition has called into question. Rosen’s project is one of many that will redefine journalism, not by replacing what exists, but coming to grips with a world that has forever changed, this Pro/Am world in the making.
Rosen’s work is also notable because of his own experience and knowledge. Unlike many of those working in and around social media, he’s not a techie. As a journalism professor, he knows the difference between good and mediocre work. His PressThink blog is one of the more thoughtful on the tectonic changes in today’s journalism. Quality is one of his key goals, and that’s why newassignment.net bears study by those in the news profession and in all business sectors coming to grips with newly energized customers.