Politics in the United States has always been a phenomenon of the crowd. Citizens donate money to campaigns, elect politicians, come together to lobby government officials, etc.

So what's new?

In an Internet age, the traditional ways people band together to influence politics are cheaper and easier than ever... and new crowd sourcing efforts exist, in fact and in theory, that would've been impossible before.

As Jay Rosen notes, politicians are always claiming to involve a crowd of supporters.

We're looking to cut through all that and isolate any instances where "the many" and their contributions--especially their collected ideas, pooled knowledge or voluntary activity--have actually replaced the few, where the crowd's work has proven more effective, or just better than the ideas, knowledge and actions of hired guns, political professionals, or staff...

Only where the power of many is disruptive to the normal pattern in politics--replacing the old practice or generating a new practice--do we have a story worthy of Assignment Zero.

So how should we organize the story? And what examples do we have so far?

CAMPAIGNS: The Internet makes it possible to organize masses of volunteers and raise tons of money without the firm backing of your political party's establishment -- consider Howard Dean's 2004 campaign, which AssignmentZero editor Amanda plans to write about.

LEGISLATION: One Utah legislator successfully experimented with a wiki that enabled constituents to contribute to school voucher legislation, garnering press attention and ultimately easing the bill's passage.

OPEN GOVERNMENT: Porkbusters is a blogger-driven effort to reduce Congressional pork barrel spending. When founders Glenn "Instapundit" Reynolds and N.Z. Bear found out about a secret hold placed on an anti-pork bill in the Senate, they asked their readers to track down the culprit by process of elimination. And they succeeded.

SO WHAT NEXT?

Our goal is a piece of journalism that explains this broad phenomenon.

So are these the best examples we've got, or can we do better? Let's use the assignments on the right to figure that out.

And are the three categories I've used the best way to organize the story? (If not, post your critique or alternative here.)

Questions? Feedback? Suggestions? E-mail me at conor.newassignment@gmail.com

Now we're getting down to the nitty-gritty!

As Assignment Zero began, I felt excited to see how Newsvine would tackle crowdsourced journalism -- their technology and their people held the promise of innovation.

Does that sound overly abstract?

Here's an example of what I mean: Celestina is leading a team working on the crowdsourced novels assignment. Rough drafts of their research are here and here.

The team is discussing how best to merge their research in the comment thread of this post.

In a way its simple stuff: when you get down to it crowdsourced journalism is just a bunch of people collaborating on research and writing online. On the other hand, Celestina and her team are figuring out how to use Newsvine's tools to collaborate most efficiently, imagining little innovations that might make their cooperation easier and thinking what they'd do different if they could start the whole process anew.

The whole premise behind Assignment Zero is that the best way to figure out how to do this kind of journalism is to just do it... and to learn from what happens.

And now it's happening.

Are there lessons to be learned already? Is there something we should be doing to make sure we learn them? You tell me.