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Assignment Zero Tests Pro-Am Journalism
Jay Rosen writes "Assignment Zero is a pro-am, open-platform reporting project. The investigation: crowd sourcing and peer production are a social trend growing well beyond tech. Why is this happening? Partners: NewAssignment.Net and Wired.com, with Newsvine. From the Wired essay: 'We're trying to figure something out here. Can large groups of widely scattered people, working together voluntarily on the net, report on something happening in their world right now, and by dividing the work wisely tell the story more completely, while hitting high standards in truth, accuracy and free expression?' Wired.com: 'We want out readers and our sources to be one and the same. We think it will make for better journalism.'"
A while ago a coup happened in Fiji, the wikipedia entry pretty much reflected events on the ground as they progressed, I thought it was pretty amazing that it took the 'real' news services sometimes more than a few days to catch up with the situation.
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They're partly doing this experiment to find out whether such news reporting would be close to the truth. However, what stakes do those who benefit from false reporting have, in involving themselves in this experiment?
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
So basically they want to get people to work for free? This sounds like a new management trend in the making. What better way to improve profits than to drive resource costs to zero? It's even better than slave labor - it's sucker labor! =)
There's a long-standing precedent for this: newspapers and other media have used "stringers" for years. These are people with some interest in subject/beat X and some ability to write articles about X who are hired on a per-article basis at below-market rates. (It's not free labor, but it's awfully cheap.)
Why is this happening?
Because most people, honestly, do not know that they're not very good at most everything. People don't have the critical thinking skills to separate quality work (say, reporting/editorial work) from amateurishness, and so they fancy themselves just as able to do anything that an experienced professional can do, if the subject matter is interesting to them. This is bolstered, these days, by 'reality' TV shows that make celebrities out of addled-brained twits, and by grade school warm-and-fuzziness that goes to great lengths to proclaim everyone a star at everything, regardless of actual merit, capacity, charm, motivation, DNA, or hard work.
Collaborative "reporting" attracts only those people that have some vested interest or an axe to grind. That vested interest distorts most people's sense of whether their own opinion is valid or objective, and makes their contributions highly suspect (in terms of actual journalism). Someone truly objective is practicing a true skill/profession, and if they're any good at it, they're usually going to be looking for an actual job at it. And what makes someone who IS a professional journalist skip on over to a collaborative arena, for no pay, to work on some other material? Personal vested interest in that topic area, and the resulting lack of objectivity on that particular topic.
So, you've got either serious, capable people who are good journalists, and capable communicators/researchers who are off on a project that isn't part of their career, per se... or, you've got what amounts to activists and fan boys who are solely motivated by the outcome of the reporting, usually as characterized by a glorious dollup of spin... or, you've got people who think they've got more to offer on this front than they really do, and get social validation from having their hands in it - and everyone's too politically correct to tell them that they're really not very good at it, actually. And since operations like Wired are really just looking to build more brand loyalty and eyeballs on their site, of course they're going to position this get-other-people-to-do-the-work effort as being a vital, fresh, hip, we're-really-all-journalists shrine to Web 2.0. Balls, I say.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
That's what it sounds like to me.
http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Main_Page
Science never settles, never rests.
Such a project would share many of the adventages and problems with sites like Wikipedia. Who will guarantee accuracy? What can be done against vandalism? A hierarchical structure (based on credibility) is required, but how to avoid cronyism and abuse?
Though the anonymity of the net blows up the problem of whether a source can be deemed credible or not it is not unique to the net. If a 'meatspace' reporter screwes up his face will be associated with that screw-up. (Likewise a screen name will become stigmatized.) A good reporter, though, will consistently supply good stories, so his reputation rises and he becomes more popular.
The same should hold true in cyberspace. A color code could be used to indicate the credibility of the author of that particular entry and s/he will get bumped up on the credibility scale as soon as his information can be verified as authentic. This way freelance jounalists could even remain anonymous and use unverifiable/secret sources - as long as they consistently provide truthful stories they get bumped up; in time more people will read them (and check) and in turn everybody will be better informed.
I really hope this sort of alternative independent media becomes mainstream one day, but I fear that many governments will make them illegal to use because of "national security"(tm) reasons.
And when you gaze long enough into the code, the code will also gaze into you.
Wikipedia is excellent at reporting events well, and historical events even better. Once the information is in the wild, it takes time to consolidate into a Wiki primarily because the contributors are not committed 100%, i.e. professionals, to their Wiki entry. Sure you might get a few that have little more to do then chat online entering up to date Wiki info, but is this who you want reporting breaking stories?
The issue here is timing. If you want events as they are unfolding to be reported accurately you can do it in an open source format, but if you want them to be in "CNN" realtime, you can't rely on a non-paid community to take the time whenever it is required. They will do it, but that evening, or the next day when they are online. Even with "always on" internet connections, your coverage of events will still have a time lag in most instances.
We need to pay people who will be both neutral, and available at a moment's notice, if we want a reliable news source. If we had a major news outlet, such as CNN or NYT online (or a new one), paying for up to date information with attached mobile phone photos, then we might be getting closer to a freelance/opportunistic approach to a paid open-source news outlet. But we would still have a problem with reliability and neutrality. That would be hard to solve without a large number of entries which you could "average" into a story.
Isn't that quote from Wired actually saying: "We'd like our readers to be our sources too, because then we don't have to pay writers, but we can still charge the readers, effectively charging them for submitting stories..." Or did I just wake up all cynical today?
----- Connection reset by beer
Assignment Zero is an attempt to crowdsource journalism which has a great deal of long term potential. Crowdsourced journalism won't replace paid journalism but it will develop compelling content less influenced by corporate advertising dollars ... it's partnership with a for profit company might change this over time. In contrast, NewsCloud is a crowdsourced editorial site like Slashdot's Firehose effort i.e. aggregation by the people. Members pick and rank stories assembling the news of the moment in real time - again less influenced by corporate money. While it's unclear yet whether Internet users want to participate in editorial or journalism tasks, aggregated editorial is a lighter workload for casual users whereas sites like Assignment Zero will require more intense commitment, more so than Wikipedia. It's cool that both Assignment Zero and NewsCloud are open source platforms, former is based on Drupal, latter is based on its own emerging OS platform.