Though I was involved with Assignment Zero, the first project undertaken by NewAssignment.net, I have to confess that I've been a bit out of touch with how NewAssignment has evolved. But thanks to a Tweet by the ever-engaged Matthew Ingram, I was directed to a post by David Cohn on the NewAssignment website. I was a fan of Dave's during our work on Assignment Zero and he makes a good point about the value of projects such as NewAssignment:
Since this project launched I’ve always said, even if we don’t improve the quality of news (which I hope we do), we re-engage citizens in the news process and this is a benefit to democracy. Democracy rests its fate on engaged citizens - people who consume the news but also go out and make news happen.
The emphasis we put on Pro-Am is about re-engaging people into the news process, so they are introduced to concepts and aspects of our society that they can continue to pursue after the reporting is done. That’s how you create a strong democracy.
In the past news organizations would show people problems in our society in the hopes of spurring action. In truth, however, we probably lost their attention in the first 10 minutes. But instead of showing people, the Pro-Am model engages people. It asks them to tell news organizations what they see, think and feel. That is a call to action and the hope is that it is one that continues after the reporting.
Society as a whole wins when people are encouraged to participate in the news process and are given the means to do so. I tend to focus on how we can get people to take more of a role in detecting and correcting errors, but my micro approach only serves to illustrate that there are so many different ways to bring the public into the news process.
Craig – you continue to rock!
I really think this is the biggest value of citizen journalism. So often journalists complain to me “do you really think they can report the news better than we do.”
Of course not: They might at times – but citizen journalists do this as a hobby in their spare time. Anytime you put a profesional against somebody doing something as a hobby, the pro will be better, whether it’s journalism or weight lifting.
But if you can engage citizens into productive hobbies like journalism – as opposed to tv watching or video games, etc — we benefit – even if they don’t produce pulitzer work (which, who knows – maybe they will).
Anyways. Thanks for the thoughts. Peace!