Journalists! What do you think of Jay Rosen's idea for New Assignment.net

sorry that exclamation mark is a bit happy for a Wednesday afternoon.

I think it's poxy fuled. What is it?

Ok now I know. I don't think it's a goer, because the best journalism doesn't come from assignments, really, it comes from experts knowing a beat and having contacts. J Random Blogger can't trundle up and pick up an assignment like "get the skinny on Iraq" and come up with Abu Ghraib.

what's to stop these experts being involved tho?

Outlets and exposure. If you have the inside on Abu Ghraib, you give it to a journalist from the New York Times, not webs1te.c0m.

That's a vast and sweeping generalisation, and breaking something big could turn this thing into Drudge, but even Drudge doesn't have any power in itself, just in the reporting of its stuff by old media.

Yeah but the purpose of it is not necessarily to replace the big papers, isn't it possible that it will work in the sense of breaking stories that aren't being covered by the big papers, by sort of globalising local stories?

the main thing i think is wrong with this is that the "sponsors" will obviously have an investment in what they WANT the story to be, and they'll expect it to turn out that way. how will this not just be pure advocacy/press release journalism?

From here:

NewAssignment.Net would be a case of journalism without the media
But it's the "media" (read: high exposure outlets) that turns journalism into something with power. If I post something on my website saying Bush Lied About Iraq, nobody cares. If it goes on Drudge, somebody cares, but Bush still won't respond. If it then goes on the Post front page, he'll respond.

xpost: Yes, but that's filling a shortage that doesn't exist. There are countless websites getting exercised about local scandals and stories not covered by the big papers.

Well, they may want that but how does their investment give them any control over it?

Also the central tenet of this is not that the readers or outside parties pay for the stories, that's just the big idea that's being seized on, it can still have ads and already has big lump sum type funding, Rosen wants to make a pool of cash for the editors to commission stories also, I think.

x-post are there really countless websites which run in this collaborative way? surely this has the potential to be stronger because it's using co-operative info, like his example of the price of a drug around America?

As for nobody caring, what's to stop the press from publishing stories that appear on New Assignment? That's one of the main aims of it, that stories could be sold to the national press.

Well, nothing really, but it'll have to be a) an incredibly good story that they won't mind isn't theirs/exclusive, b) able to be followed-up since they can't "break it".

x-post are there really countless websites which run in this collaborative way? surely this has the potential to be stronger because it's using co-operative info, like his example of the price of a drug around America?

There aren't many in the colloborative mould, but again co-operative info isn't exactly short on the ground either. It sounds like it's trying to fix old media problems: finding out about local stories, and pooling global resources. the net has gone a huge way to dissolving both those issues.

In fact, if papers did take a story from new assignment, they'd assign one of their own staffers to write a follow-up, hence no cash going to NA.

No I mean literally buying it off New Assignment, not following it up. Syndication. I guess they could steal stories, but NA would not necessarily depend outright on syndication either. There are numerous ways of it making money, especially considering it's non profit anyway, it only needs money to sustain itself and pay reporters.

The net may have helped pool global resources but surely unless you apply this potential to media it's just sitting there, I mean to actual stories like say, the price of the drug example?

Check his blog today, there's an example of a newspaper trying to use the technique he outlines.

I think http://tpmmuckraker.com/ is a good example of how the marriage of the traditional reporting to new media might work. new Assignment is obviously still an amorphous entity without a real business model, but I think he's sniffing around an idea that has merit. I'll be following this. It looks interesting. Thanks for the heads-up, Ronan.

I've been chewing it over and I think there is something there, but he badly needs to be more focused. An open source news agency would be a great thing, especially if editors could comission it directly. Much cheaper than running your own Moscow office, much better than generic wire copy. I thought about doing something similar myself, but I'm lazy.

I don't think he's too bad, he's more a theorist I suppose tho?

it's a very interesting idea, and i love the fact he's not touting it as THE FUTURE OF JOURNALISM but saying, right, we've got this new medium; what can we do with it that's actually worthwhile? nobody's really thinking like that right now, ie trying to reimagine reporting: they're all too busy filling websites with tacked-on extra content (the modern equivalent of all those disposable extra sections you chuck in the bin).

but, er, when he talks about ...

People who are interested in the news, online regularly and accustomed to informing themselves. They would come because New Assignment does stories the regular news media doesn’t do, can’t do, wouldn’t do, or already screwed up

... all i can see is a big queue of conspiracy theorists, fruitloops, nutjobs and menks with tinfoil hats jumping up and down and demanding that they be helped to expose THE TRUTH about how 9/11 was a conspiracy by alien zionists.

still. i shall watch with interest.

sure there must be fruitloops, but he himself is not a fruitloop and he recognises that those types of story exist, so there must be others.

he's done some great stuff about blogging not being the future of journalism, or at least the relationship between the two.