As he explains on his Pressthink blog today, Jay Rosen has taken his biggest step yet into the world he’s been writing about for some time now. With the help of several grants he’s starting NewAssignment.net, based on this notion: “Reporter + smart mob + editor with a fund and backers get the story the press pack wouldn’t, couldn’t or didn’t.”
Needless to say (because I’ve been saying it repeatedly), I’m an enthusiast. I continue to believe that the people who could pull this off best are the traditional media, and that there will soon be some amazing examples. But the media business can’t do everything, and we need to see experiments of this sort.
I’ll be helping Jay as much as I can on this, and hope you’ll participate, too. Maybe your role will simply be reader. Maybe you’ll participate in the journalism. In the new-new media ecosystem we’ll have lots and lots of possibilities.
Give this project a look. It, and other projects of this sort, could become a big deal indeed.
on Jul 25th, 2006 at 5:48 pm
[…] Not surprisingly, Dan Gillmor — who started a citizen journalism venture called Bayosphere awhile back, and now helps run the Center for Citizen Media — also thinks it’s a great idea. But will it work? Dan’s own effort failed to attract any support from the blogosphere, or from interested citizen journalists in the Bay area, for a variety of reasons that Dan himself laid out after it folded. What makes Jay think NewAssignment will get any more traction? […]
on Dec 20th, 2006 at 11:07 pm
[…] Jay Rosen announced yesterday a revolutionary idea, something that harkens back to the original days of the freelance journalist. Something that could move the MSM into the 21st century. NewAssignment.net. Jay discusses in detail his idea (it’s long), but the bottom line is tapping into the new power of the Internet to both source stories, find people to write them, and then distribute the articles. Commentary is pretty positive. Dan Gillmor is backing it: […]