Here’s my long-delayed second post on Jay Rosen’s proposal for NewAssignment.net in which, as promised, I pass along a niggle or two about the beast. (Jay’s two posts on this are here and here.)
As I said in my first post, I’m keen on the idea and I think it will work. The combination of audience-driven and funded stories, developed by good reporters working with smart editors is workable. It adds another possibility to the emerging ways of doing journalism that, when taken together, help make journalism strong.
But I think there are some issues that either need to recognized or addressed as NewAssignment.net is fleshed out and comes into being. They are:
• Unlike a lot of those responding to Jay’s proposal, I’m not worried about funders fleeing the site if they don’t get the results they expect. I’m more concerned about what happens when the “smart mob” offers up basic information and funding and the reporter and editor together find there is no story. That’s something that happens frequently in journalism, particularly in investigations, when either a starting proposition proves faulty, or when the information that is suspected to exist cannot be found or confirmed. Will those who invest energy — and money — willingly settle for a story that says there’s no story and here’s why?
• The very public way in which stories would develop — ideas and information flowing up from the bottom to be discussed and poked at through blogs and forums as the stories are whipped into some kind of initial shape — could be a weakness for the type of investigation that relies, often to the very end stages, on a type of below-the-radar stealth.
• NewAssignment.net appears to give much power to the people formerly known as audience and to the editors, but not to reporters, who seem to be mere creatures of the mob and the editor. (That’s probably overstatement.) So far missing from the equation is a way to capture the many, many great stories that begin with a reporter wondering “What if…” Finding a way to bring that into the mix adds power to the proposal.
• There is bound to be an initial period of confusion and clamour as the forums for proposing and discussing stories becomes, to some degree or another, yet another battlefield for the ideological wars raging across much of the blogosphere. There will also be the typical moonbats who plague media of all sorts with the wildest of conspiracy theories, demanding attention and investigation. NewsAssignment.net needs to be robust enough from the beginning to survive that and find ways of keeping the attention of those truly interested in pushing and funding good journalism.
I have other minor concerns. I suspect, for instance, that given the physical and psychic weight of the U.S., NewAssignment.net may wind up as American-centric.
Despite all that, I like the idea and am among those cheering for NewAssignment.net. It is a refreshingly new and different way of looking at the one of the possibilities for doing journalism in a connected age.
TAGS: NEWASSIGNMENT.NET, JOURNALISM, RETHINKING_MEDIA
