Crowdsourced Journalism

I was a little quiet last week because I was in London at a research seminar. There was the usual rain -- almost goes without syaing, but a couple of sunny days too. I also saw the Billy Elliott musical, a must- see when it arrives in the states in 2008 . Of course, I wonder if the show will cut back on certain Britishism, but perhaps the producers will trust the American audience to "get it."

It's always fun to spend time reading and watching the media while visiting in other countries. I especially like London due to the ideological mix of newspapers. A colleague and I stopped in at one of the papers to visit the readers' editor, or ombudsmen, for some research we're doing. Our interviewee described the role of ombudsmen as an extension of democracy. Letting the reader into the conversation extends the public forum and makes journalism transparent.

That visit got me thinking about our experiment here. Chatting about the newspaper's decision in an online forum, and even answering a newspaper's call for examples, are quite different from digging in to report a story on a phenomenon. Over the past couple of weeks I have sent emails offering assignments to people who have joined the community and are looking for things to do; I've done several blogs and forum posts to put out a call for reporters. There are some really good people who have taken up assignments, but I am wondering whether the topic, which involves interviewing reporters and editors, ie. professional journalists, is a bit more daunting than some other subjects. Meta-analytics--reporting on reporting-- isn't even the cup of tea of many journalists.. I have had exchanges with community members who say they are interested in such questions as how accuracy gets maintained in a crowdsourced project, or why people would get involved. Good question. But the only way we can get close to answers is reporting on crowdsourced projects.

I will drop some assignments if they are not claimed in the next couple of days, so jump in if you are the slighest bit interested. We can negotiate aspects of the assignment.

The limited number of volunteers brings me to another question I am toying with: Are we seeing the limits of crowdsourced journalism within our very project? Is the experience here telling us something that we need to pay attention to?

Many citizen journalism projects move forward on the basis of partcipants' interest in certain problems, leisure pursuits, and politics. Mainstream media projects that engage the crowd seem to tap a similar type of participation. I think we see some of that focus here at AssignmentZero. The kind of topics with which amateur journalists might be most interested in engaging may be narrower, and the universe of citizens willing to tackle a project like a journalist could be narrow and easily characterized(re..the backgrounds of some of our most avid participants here at AssignmentZero). That might be the story.

"Our goal is to map the continuum of activities in which professional and amateur journalists collaborate to report the news. It is not a list we’re looking to develop here. Rather, in examining a range of different cases of journalism getting crowdsourced, we can ask any number of questions that will allow us to determine the conditions under which such journalism is produced, the challenges, the triumphs, and some of the more problematic dimensions. I speak of “mapping” a continuum because it gives an image—and perhaps some of those out there with artistic skills may find a way to represent our continuum in all its complexities—that has been with me as I read about projects, from the the aborted wikitorial attempt at the LA Times to the free daily newspapers and accompany websites cropping up like Bluffton Today.

Gannet has launched a series of activities across its various newspapers. And just this past week there has come word that the Chicago Tribune has launched a hyberlocal website, TribLocal.com, with an eye toward generating local content from the community. Given the stock battles that have brought a lot of anxiety in Chicago, and other newsrooms and communities where the Tribune owns properties, including the
Hartford Courant, my area paper and former employer from another lifetime.

We can’t romanticize this move toward collaboration with citizens. When I look at the Cincinnati Enquirer’s community pages, I recall a time 15-20 years ago when papers hired entry-level, just-out-of-college students writing that kind of copy, so when news companies announce they’re bringing in some citizens to report the news, we do need to ask certain questions about motivation, as well as the actual benefits to the citizens.

In mapping these areas, we want to think about: who originates the ideas getting worked on (reporters? community members?); the type of ideas; final edit control; who gets credit. A newsroom in which readers are simply asked to offer up anecdotes from their life for a reporter’s story is really just doing the usual stuff—only now they can pull in more examples through the Internet. On the other hand, the new
BostonNow BostonNow project, which is integrating the contents of a free daily newspaper with citizen blogs and video, on the other hand, is boldly going where most traditional newsrooms aren’t going yet.

In addition to learning how a particular model works, we need to ask questions critical to all collaborative projects: How are journalistic standards and concerns with accuracy and fairness maintained?

I’ll pose more questions —and ask you to join in — as more participants join us. I’m also eager for people to post thoughts about collaboration journalism projects they know about, have participated in, or may even live near. We need to examine as many different types of projects as possible position for our continuum to be rich and nuanced as possible. In other words, we need you.

Watching CNN's coverage of the Virgina Tech massacre, I couldn't help but think about America is getting well traied in journalism. I say that with tongue somewhat in cheek, but I also say it with a respectful nod to the crowd's increasing role in helping mainstream media cover big stories. The Virginia Tech student who captured the shootings on his cellphone not only gave CNN footage; he was a pretty good reporter during the interview, showing great care to separate facts from rumor. The latter is what caught my attention. CNN indentified him as a witness, but surely he had performed an act of citizen journalism in a loose sense. I think his actions showed that we can expect certain professionalism from amateurs; it also shows that there are citizens who can be mobilized to help with data collection in certain instances. I don't know where the line begins or ends--different aspects of journalism require higher levels of expertise-- but watching the interview did cause me to think about how the moment connected to our effort to do and gather some cases of crowdsourcing journalism. I'm beginning to wonder whether crowdsourcing journalism is indeed the best way to describe some of the newsroom projects in which reporters put out calls for data. In the meantime, I think it's kind of interesting that technology allows regular citizens to collect real-time images and comb documents like militias that stood at the ready to defend their communities in colonial times. At the very least it's certainly a way for citizens to share the watchdog function with the press.

I came back to add this:

Steve Fox has a somewhat different view on the value of the cellphone video.

On Friday, April 13,  I attended a seminar on "Democratization and the Networked Public Sphere" at the Vera List Center for Art & Politics at The New School in Greenwich Village, the purpose of which was to discuss the potential of sociable media such as weblogs and social networking sites to democratize society through emerging cultures of broad participation.The roster consisted of Danah Boyd (School of Information, UC Berkeley/Annenberg Center USC), Trebor Scholz (Professor at SUNY Buffalo, founded Institute for Distributed Creative) and Ethan Zuckerman (Berkman Center for Internet and Society, Harvard Law/co-founder of globalvoicesonline.org.

Ms. Boyd concentrated on social networking sites influence on youth cultures and her focus was that our culture has destroyed youths' access to unmediated public life. Why are we now destroying their access to mediated public life? What consequences does this have for democracy?Her most salient point with respect to the internet's ability or inability to transform politics is the difficulty that politicians have negotiating separate audiences as a politician.  She used the example of Stokely Carmichael, the black activist from the 60's.   When the highly articulate Mr. Carmichael appeared on tv he chose to use southern speech patterns akin to a preacher (analogies to the the Clinton's are too obvious to mention) and when he spoke to white audience in person he spoke 'proper' english.She made a good point that "your politics dictates where you surf" and people are basically "navel gazing". Ms. Boyd stated that most bloggers never intended to be journalists but had to make the semantic distinction for professional necessity.Professor Scholz is focused on labor and content control with respect to online contributors, e.g. what does the MySpace generation do about working for free? His discussion concentrated on the following:

1. The paradox of affective immaterial labor - very few get rich from the immaterial labor of very many.

2. There should not be a "factory without walls" and net publics should control their own contributions.

Ethan Zuckerman's discussion was most relevant to Assignment Zero, although his focus is on net freedom and censorship in the developing world, and government and corporate interference with democratizationHe illuminated the fact that Philip de vellis '1984' Hillary Clinton spot as new step in politics - the 'remix' was actually done first by a tunisian named Astrubal to boycott the rigged 2004 Tunisian elections. According to Mr. Zuckerman, Mr. de vellis claims he never saw Astrubal's version. Mr. Zuckerman showed a few maps of internet constraints worldwide and illuminated that in some places like Ghana where there is an open press, there is little blogging because people can call radio stations to complain against the government without fear of retributionAs for his thoughts on citizen journalism, he prefers term "citizen media" and that the people at 'globalvoices' think of themselves of bloggers and not journalists.

The 'assumed identity' issue of bloggers for activists also is an issue for "citizen media" who cannot, or should not act under the cloak of anonymity.

Mr. Zuckerman was familiar with Assignment Zero and was very respectful, but what I took away from the evening from him was an understandable sense of 'good luck to you' - polite acknowledgement without enthusiasm - understandable for someone with a long record of accomplishment in the online world.. 

The assembled audience seemed far more enthused about AZ than the assembled academics.  We'll see if any accept my invitation to join AZ.

Obviously, there will be a time when we’ll stop reporting on this story. As anyone who hangs around in web forum knows, eventually the conversation stops, no more new information comes in; the topic has saturated. But right now, most of the reporting and writing here, even the filed interviews, are part of an unfolding path, the contours of which are revealing themselves as we fall into them(in other words, they’re not listed on the map). Conceivably, anyone walking into the crowd could have a contribution to make (I’m speaking theoretically, not realistically). The reporting being filed will be taken to another level with help from those of you reading the material. Check out filed interviews and see if there are unexplored leads implied in the interview.

Francine Hardaway has posted a writeup of her interview with digital journalism pioneer Dan Gillmor.
Gillmor has become one of the usual suspects to interview when people are writing about citizen journalism or the future of journalism. Sometimes it can seem as though sources like Gillmore have been asked it all, that we’ve heard everything they have to say. Are their openings here that should be explored in more detail?

I will soon put out a call for people to help examine certain crowdsourced projects so we can see if there are certain patterns we can name. We've stumbled a bit over whether we are looking at citizen journalism projects versus crowdsourced journalism, intuitively drawing a line separating citizen-initiated projects from those initiated in newsrooms. That distinction still seems useful when it comes to organizing reporting, though ultimately we might find such projects aren't so different. Jeff Jarvis seemed to be making that point in an interview
with contributor Neal G. Moore, who runs NextNews, an aggregate blog dedicated to citizen journalism.

Moore was clearly interested in knowing how one of the exemplars of blogging sees citizen journalism and crowdsourced journalism in relation to one another, but Jarvis indicated impatience with the desire to make distinctions or rigidly categorize various projects. Fair enough. Rigid categories often cut off thinking and discussion, one of the raps against traditional journalism. Yet some categorization is necessary to get on with the work, and right now that is the spirit in which I think Neal and others are asking the question. I'm not convinced it's incorrect to examine citizen journalism and crowdsourced journalism separately -- easy conflation is as problematic as false dichotomies -- but I kind of like the way the Crowdsourced Journalism page is now listed in the new Topic Index as "Journalism gets Crowdsourced." A good inclusive way of describing a lot of different initiatives while we trying to understand what is really going on.

Neal, by the way, did the interview by email, and I hope he'll soon post some reflections on the experience. Email interviews are still new for many journalists. The view is email is best left for clarifying information, not the main conduit for interviewing. In some ways this concern mirrors some of the same apprehension with which journalists met the journalistic interview when it was getting integrated into regular practice in the second part of the 19th century. Media sociologist Michael Schudson, one of a handful of scholars who have written about the rise of the journalistic interview, has catalogued some of the skepticism people had about the method as a way to uncover truth. Among the issues debated then was whether to take notes. In more recent times, there were debates about taping; questions about the propriety of email and IM interviews are a logical progression.

Yet one benefit of email interviews that can't be overlooked is the way interviewer and interviewee can conduct an exchange that can document the trail of substantive ideas as well as tangents. Many journalists would rightly point out that email interviews allow people being interviewed to take more time to concoct answers and spin views. A more detached observer would say people have more time to be thoughtful.

Jeff Jarvis demonstrated how the rules are being turned upside down when he "scooped" us on our own interview by posting Neal's questions and his responses to those questions. Jarvis has invited people to expand or improve on the questions and answers. I'm hoping that the crowd will do some of that with the interview Neal filed here.

Disclaimer: the opinions and views expressed below are representative solely of the author's and not that of Assignment Zero, Wired Magazine, NewsVine, or of their respective staffs..

I have something to say to Lance Ulanoff, who writes an Op-Ed piece questioning and berating Crowdsourced journalism and Assignment Zero.

But first I'd like to note that Lance writes the post on a site hosted by PC Magazine, a Ziff Davis satellite. In their Terms of Use (http://www.ziffdavis.com/about/terms) it says:

"You hereby grant, transfer and assign to ZDH and its successors, assigns, and licensees (collectively, "Lincensee") a fully-paid, royalty-free, irrevocable, perpetual, worldwide right and license to publish, distribute, reproduce, transmit, use, translate, display, perform, modify, revise, create derivative works of and archive the Material, in any form or media now known or hereafter developed (including without limitation in print, magnetic or electronic form), on any number of occasions in any form, and to sublicense third parties (including other users of the Service) to do any of the foregoing with further right of sublicense (the "License"), without compensation to you."

(Sections bolded by me).

So, in theory whatever I say in response to Lance's post on PC Magazine could be misconstrued any way they please without my consent. Hmmph.

On to the retort.

I think that to a degree what Lance says is probably true in that despite the large number of users signed up that there are only a fraction of which that are actually contributing. But what Lance doesn't take into account is the fact that despite this ratio of contributors-to-users, I believe Assignment Zero by nature of the experiment itself will provide the opportunity for those who truly wish to contribute and make something of this, shine. Perhaps this process will spur some folks (like myself) to venture into something that has always been an aspiration but not a reality a chance to get their toes wet, and by God perhaps make the decision to become real bona-fide journalists.

It's reasonable to question the quality of the reporting, because after all it's not like we all have degrees in English. Some of us are real journalists, some of us are programmers, some technicians; others are general writers. Not all of us have the true interest in writing, and that's okay, as the site mechanics allow for that. Some just want to research.

But those who pursue good work and make the effort will receive feedback, comments, and potential praise. That makes all the difference in the world, Lance. That is what steers the quality of the content on the site.

But of course, Lance Ulanoff is a professional journalist, who gets to write op-ed pieces for PC Magazine, so it's reasonable that anything which could potentially threaten the throne he sits on should be criticized! After all, it would put him in the poor house! It is my fantasy that when Lance Ulanoff goes to bed at night, he pulls the covers over his head in harrowing fear that crowdsourced journalism will be the death of traditional, professional elitism in that coveted field and perhaps people like Lance would then realize that something good can come out of something new, unexpected, untried, or experimental.

But if it fails, so what? There will be other projects! It was tried, it was put to the test and lessons were learned, and people will move on. What good would it do for David Cohn to just throw up his hands and announce to the world, "I Quit!" just because Assignment Zero didn't work out? I have reasonable expectations that something modified would--like the Phoenix--rise from the ashes of AZ to become Assignment One (as hinted obscurely somewhere).

So my thoughts to you, Mr Ulanoff, is that you shouldn't pass judgement until the final word is in; that is of course unless you wish create "anti-hype" in hopes that you'll be the crowned the man who killed crowdsourced journalism.

Amanda Michel's plans to write a first person piece about her experiences with the Dean campaign on the Internet has inspired one of the contributors in my group, Anna Haynes, to draw on her experience working several crowdsourced journalism projects to provide a "contributor's-eye view" of the experience,. She's also looking to contact other contributors about their experiences. This piece has the potential to answer questions some of us might not even know we should be asking.