Pro-am journalism

http://zero.newassignment.net/about

Welcome to Assignment Zero.

Inspired by the open-source movement, this is an attempt to bring journalists together with people in the public who can help cover a story. It's a collaboration among NewAssignment.Net, Wired, and those who choose to participate.

The investigation takes place in the open, not behind newsroom walls. Participation is voluntary; contributors are welcome from across the Web. The people getting, telling and vetting the story are a mix of professional journalists and members of the public -- also known as citizen journalists. This is a model I describe as "pro-am."

The "ams" are simply people getting together on their own time to contribute to a project in journalism that for their own reasons they support. The "pros" are journalists guiding and editing the story, setting standards, overseeing fact-checking, and publishing a final version.

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An outstanding fact of the Net era is that costs for people to find each other, share information, and work together are falling rapidly. This should have consequences for reporting big, moving stories where the truth is distributed around. By pooling their intelligence and dividing up the work, a network of journalists and volunteer users should be able to find out things that the larger public needs to know.

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Our site was designed for the "open" mode of news production. That means anyone can wander by and check out what we're doing. And if we do this right, anyone who is interested can find within minutes something useful to do. We're betting that openness of that type has editorial advantages bigger than its well-known weak points.

This is not just an open, but also a pro-am, project. Some things will be decided by editors, others will be left to participants. We don't know what the optimal mix is yet, but in the course of the project we'll find it.

One place that is likely to happen is The Exchange, Assignment Zero's discussion forum. That's where you can talk about the project, float ideas and tell us what's working, or not. Anyone can start a thread. The editors watch The Exchange and of course participate.

Mais sobre opne source journalism: http://www.wired.com/techbiz/media/news/2007/07/view_from_crowds e http://www.wired.com/techbiz/media/news/2007/07/creative_crowdwriting