fiction

After consulting the team, we've changed our name to: The Open Book on Creative Crowdwriting. Thanks to Celestina and Gerrit for contributing the ideas. We're pulling in a lot of interesting info on several crowdsourced novels. Some people are reading and reviewing them. Others are interviewing organizations.
But there's more to be done and we're looking for more contributors. We're particularly interested in contributors willing to contact people who have participated in crowdsourcing novels and people who can help build our list of such projects. Just a few minutes of help on these would be great. We've got more time-intensive assignments as well. Check out our page and join the fun!
-Michele

As Lauren noted Friday in the Scoop (www.assignmentzero.net) , AZ editors like me are taking a good look at their topic areas early this week and cutting some of the topics that don’t seem to be drawing much interest. I’m supposed to give Lauren et al a revised list of what I’m up to and with whom. So I thought I’d just blog it …

My topics are taking me out of my comfort zone (print journalism) which is a lot of fun. I got into this because I know I have a lot to learn. Hooray. I’m learning!

Here’s my list from the world of Media and Publishing: http://zero.newassignment.net/desk?filter0=245

Crowdsourced Photos
The very energetic Shazz Mack is our first contributor. Shazz already interviewed iStock contributor Lise Gagne and I read Shazz’ Q&A (http://crowdsourcing.typepad.com/cs/2006/11/ive_always_said.html) as my intro to this new way for photograpers to get their work seen by people, including buyers. Shazz and I have been e-mailing a little bit about her focus. We are thinking she could follow up with Lise and get some examples of actual work. How it started all the way through publication. Shazz is also interested in the Canada angle – three major services started in Canada.
Meanwhile, we foresee a lot of assignments for people who only have time to do a couple of calls or maybe a few e-mails. Things like researching the major services online, helping us identify other services and buyers who have switched from traditional stock photo services to online.

Crowdsourced Novels
We’re looking for a good list of crowdsourced novels and an indepth look at a couple of them (read them, talk to participating writers.) Newsvine has been working on this. On Monday, the Newsvine folks will file their reporting to the AZ site and then we’ll coordinate more of a plan.
Meanwhile, though, two great contributors have jumped in to each read a different novel and identify participants. George Karimalil has started reading “A Million Penguins” and Kristin Gorski is reading “These Wicked Games,” a crowdsourced romance novel.
We’re looking for as many contributors as possible to help us interview people who have participated in writing crowdsourced fiction. We want to get to the human/creative aspect of the experience.

Crowdsourced Non-Fiction Books. Just getting started here with one potential contributor so far. I hope to be in touch with him Monday. I think Tapscott and Williams, authors of “Wikinomics” fits really well under this umbrella. Would love to get contributors with further ideas.

NewsTrust. Muhammad Saleem interviewed the founder of this Web site, which allows users to rate the quality of the news they receive. Muhammad is interested in following up.

That’s it for me for now. I’ll give this to the AZ editors who are, as Lauren said, going to be pruning the hedges next week. Meanwhile, I’ll be working with contributors to focus assignments (and looking for more contributors.) Once the redesigned site is up and running, I will make the assignments a little more organized in hopes of luring a few more people to help out!

Michele McLellan
www.newsimproved.org

Hello. I'm Michele McLellan and I'm just getting stated in Media and publishing. I am a longtime newspaper editor and spent a lot of time coaching reporters and writers so this job is right up my alley. I also spent a lot of the 90s (at The Oregonian in Portland) working to bring citizens and newsrooms closer together. That's when I met Jay, who gave me a lot of good advice when I was politics editor at The O. I went on to become the ombudsman and finished in 2003 as projects editor, which was a combination of producing major products in the newspaper and producing culture-change in the newsroom. That led to my current job, which is director of Tomorrow's Workforce at Medill School of Journalism in Illinois. I have spent the past few years in newsrooms, looking at how smart staff development can make change-resistant newsrooms more adaptive and more innovative. More on that in new book (www.newsimproved.org) by me and Tim Porter (wwww.timporter.com/firstdraft). Last week was the book launch so I am happily ready for something new and this is it!
So far, Steve has asked me to e-talk with one contributor about working on crowdsourcing fiction so I've been reading what's been compiled so far. It's quite fascinating. As soon as I finish the book I'm reading right now (Mao: The Unknown Story) I am going to read a crowdsourced book It looks like great fun. It'll be great to hear from others working on this as I get up to speed.
Cheers, Michele

There's a lot of thought right now about crowdsourcing the production of various media, but what about crowdsourcing its consumption? I realize this becomes sort of a recursive loop but here's what I mean:

Most copies of Sun Tzu's Art of War, I believe, have not only Sun Tzu's original text but also commentary written by several notable contemporaries. The final product we get is richer because of this "crowdsourcing" - even if the crowd does admittedly consist of other experts. What does it mean that it's now hard to distinguish the author of the text, especially in light of the fact that the ones infringing on Sun Tzu's authority are actually other readers?

Also, look at (post?)modernist literature. One cannot read Finnegans Wake by just sitting down and turning the pages - this is a text that demands a whole host of readers collaborating into a sort of collective, mutual understanding. The text was written with this sort of response in mind - it explodes the canon and works on the idea that a group of diverse readers will be much more effective at coming to a meaningful understanding than an expert who is familiar with the standard literary/historical canon.

These are two examples that jump into my head - can you think of other ways that media consumption is crowdsourced? How is this useful? What are the drawbacks? Can anything sweeping and meaningful be said about this process?