Today is Zero day for NewAssignment.net, a non-profit networked journalism project led by Jay Rosen and funded by Reuters, Craig Newmark, the Sunlight Foundation, and others. I’m going to be working on developing a distributed fact checking system to help verify the reporting, but there are a lot of great folks who have already done huge work to get this site launched. Today we introduced the first assignment, a joint project with Wired. I encourage you to join up. Anyone can. Everyone should.
Steve Fox, formerly of washingtonpost.com, explains the project:
…Today, citizen journalism takes a step forward with the unveiling of Assignment Zero.
After years of hearing the internal journalistic debates of “who is a
journalist,” Jay Rosen proposed last year to bring together the best
qualities of professional journalists and citizen journalists under one
umbrella. He then assembled an amazing team of editors, developers and
designers who spent the last several months making his vision reality.It’s a simple concept recently, one Jay dubbed “pro-am journalism.”
Assignment Zero will use the crowd to do much of the traditional
legwork needed to do go reporting — the first story will examine the
history and practice of crowdsourcing. The crowd will be assisted by
professional editors and the final product will be pulled together and
written by Wired’s Jeff Howe.The theory is that by using a large pool of reporters, you get more
sourcing, more anecdotes, better reporting, and ultimately, a better
story…