"One day, stories with a thousand people on the masterhead might become routine"
Is open-source pro-am journalism a possible future for reporting? The mission of Assignment Zero is to find out! Assignment Zero is taking the story of: "the spread of crowdsourcing/peer production accross wired society" and seeing if they can report on this in an open-source manor by distributing duties to a variety of people online. Will people find the motivation to do this without pay, because this is going to be a mostly volunteer project...
I think this idea is very smart, and will propbably be a huge trend in the future. Blogs, personal websites, social networking sites, and just general posting on websites has become more and more popular as more people learn about the internet, and I think it is just going to take the good idea such as Assignment Zero make something with Citizen Journalism to work. Imagine people in the Middle East and cities like New York City collaborating online to publish an article about the war. If it was put together well, why wouldn't someone want to read that article over a one-sided article about the same subject off a different site.
I guess that brings about the subject of reputation. However with a reputable magazine like Wired helping out Assignment Zero, I see this project really working. It is going to take some good promoting though. I am sure there are lots of people who would be willing to help out on these projects if they hear about it. You just need to find the right people. People who write for free....blog people.
Quotes from Wired's "Citizen Journalism Wants You" by Jay Rosen 3.14.07
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While I agree that online journalism is good when people from all over the world unite, there are some flaws to note as well. How easy is it for two people from two different cultures to unite on the same issue to write one article for the world to see? Typically, if the two people work well with each other, there might be some bias since it would be assumed that they share similar views. Otherwise, the two sides (such as the case you provided about the war) might be polarized and have extreme viewpoints from each other, and therefore not want to work together to post an article for the world to see. Either way, the concept is still pretty cool and I hope it does follow through with little to no hindrance.
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