network journalism

Is it me or is it a little difficult to know how to proceed on an assignment? I might be too meek and mild but I just don't feel right about picking up the phone and calling anyone on behalf of Assignment Zero without sort of knowing it's ok. If that's what they want, fine but I can see how 20 people all taking it upon themselves to call the same group of people for roughly the same info would soon turn Assignment Zero into Assignment Lose My Number. But how do we know when we're good to go?

Anyway, here's what I want to do. Has anyone already done this? If so, please tell me. If not, and there are any questions you want to add to the list, please do.

I’d like to interview to everyone at the Washington Examiner who can talk about WeCan. I’d like to know details about the master plan for what they want to put up there. For instance will they post links to public records online (the Web 2.0 model so to speak)? Will they provide any guidance to help people navigate public records online, or do they plan to put everything on their own server? How many FOIA requests have they filed? Have they encountered formatting issues with anything they’ve received that, either by design or accident, makes data unobtainable? Do they intend to actively market (i.e. advertise) WeCan to their readership as a way to bring more readers to the site? If not, why not? If so, what are the target audience demographics? I don’t see any place for comments or forums. Do they intend to let readers post directly on the site to discuss what they’ve discovered in the records or is it intended to function as a tip line or just a cool resource? I’d also like to ask whether The Examiner has sought to partner or consult with IRE or any First Amendment groups. I think some of the answers to these questions might generate some good follow up questions for Brant Houston at IRE and, perhaps, James Surowiecki and Dan Gillmor.

The videos that surfaced on YouTube in the past few weeks were disturbing: a police officer tasering a student at a University of California-Los Angeles library for not showing an ID card; an LAPD officer punching suspect William Cardenas in the face. Both videos had thousands of views and sparked a nationwide discussion about the role of police -- an especially hot issue for a city still remembered for the 1991 Rodney King beating caught on videotape.

Both of these videos were incidents where the "filmmaker" stumbled across a controversial police encounter. Arlin Pacheco was taping her cats on her porch when she saw Cardenas and the library video was recorded on a cell phone. Yet some are not leaving cop watching to chance and have set up more systematic systems.

Since 1990, Berkeley Copwatch has been patrolling the streets of its California city with video cameras and police scanners to document and deter police misconduct. The group's methods—community involvement, public education, constant documentation—has parallels to citizen journalism, yet the group has yet to take true advantage of technology and the Web.

A few weeks ago, MyDD.com (Direct Democracy for People-Powered Politics) asked readers for help in paying its rent. The goal: $100 from 100 people. In a weekend, it raised $11,557.94 from 142. Matt Stoller said the financial support validated the site's mission and with the extra money hired Tim Tagaris to go to New Orleans and cover the Congressional race between Karen Carter and William Jefferson.

Such support would seem to indicate that citizen-funded journalism is continuing to catch on. Two strong examples -- Christopher Allbritton's Back to Iraq, around since 2003, and Michael J. Totten's Middle East Journal, which began earlier this year, indicate that freelancers are increasingly seeking out this model.

To know where online journalism is going we have to identify the big thinkers behind it.

The Online Press Gazette has made a list of the top 50 in the "new establishment" of online journalism. It's a little biased towards UK thinkers, but the list, which includes Rupert Murdoch and Oh Yeonho (Ohmynews) at the top, Jeff Jarvis and Nick Denton almost square in the middle and Dan Gilmore near the tail end, is insightful because of the few names squeezed in that have nothing to do with journalism at all.

Ranked 12th and 13th are Tom Anderson and Chris DeWolfe, founders of MySpace. What does Myspace have to do with journalism? A few comments on the post asked this same question.

One commentor wrote:

"MySpace may share an ultimate owner with Times Online, for example, but the two have very little in common in terms of their aims."

And he's right. Aside from being a horrible platform to blog, the social networking site has done nothing obvious for journalism. So why include it on the list?

Because it is THE social networking site, and in network journalism being interactive with the audience is a key shift. Kevin Anderson recently said

"Blogging isn't a publishing strategy; it is a community strategy. ... But I see the same mistake being replicated with blogging. Newspaper publishers and broadcasters often fall into the trap of trying to understand new media behavior through old media paradigms. Podcasting becomes another distribution channel, and blogging becomes another publishing platform. Adding comments to the bottom of stories or columns is a step, but it's missing the point."

The same could be said of social networking sites. They aren't just a place for journalists to find sources or a new web property for newspapers to buy up and place ads. Because of its size MySpace feels ubiquitous, but social networking sites have the potential to bring like-minded people together to help journalists tap into the wisdom of the crowd.

UPDATE: MediaVidea is extending the list to 100 and I think on the right track.

Danah Boyd is working on a timeline of social networking sites.

Here are nine ways that distributive networks are working to cover Election Day.

1. At Betsy Devine's blog you can learn more about "snapping the leaflets," a project to document what propaganda voters are subject to days before the election.

"On the last Sunday before Election Day, Republican operatives go out in force with a last-minute message to stick under windshield wipers. And mainstream media is too slow, too divided, to report on what people are being told.

But those "secret messages" won't be secret if you and I take the time to make them public."

Hey, don't Democratic operatives ever stick flyers under windshield wipers? One assumes they'll be made public too.

We're entering a new age of government transparency because the Net makes so much more information available to so many more people. Some of them are going to want to do something with it.

A good and recent example is My Left Nutmeg, "where Connecticut Dems scratch that progressive itch." It created an investigative network around some strange figures in the campaign spending habits of Senator Joe Lieberman. Originating in politics not journalism, the project demonstrates the potential that open source methods have to reveal portions of the campaign that would otherwise go unnoticed.

Nutmeg writer Matt Browner-Hamlin noticed that Lieberman spent over $380,000 in petty cash during his campaign -- an obvious red flag. But rather than make outrageous accusations, Hamlin wanted someone to investigate Lieberman's spending habits.

Although you can't tell form its homepage, the Washington D.C. Examiner is actively seeking everyone's help to do computer assisted reporting.

Inspired by the book The Wisdom of Crowds, the opinion editor Mark Tapscott has launched the Washington Examiner Community Action Network (WeCan), which makes local government databases open to the public. The hope is that with so many eyes picking apart the data, leads will develop.

"As it happens here at The Examiner I don't have enough staff to do everything I want, but there are literally hundreds of people in the Washington region that are civic activists in one region or another and they have enormous experience and contacts," said Taspcott. "They will see things that we won't."

Starting where I left off in the post on Citizendium, here are some thoughts from Josh Hallett on why we'll always need journalists. One of the aspects of NewAssignment.Net that appealed to me was its potential to use citizen journalism in combination with professionals.

It's about creating a give and take relationship.

The greatest contribution anyone can make to NewAssignment.Net is time. In the Sunlight Foundation's Congressional Family Business Project, a group of citizens gave a little of their time to report on all 435 members of Congress and their hiring habits. And by sharing the workload they did it did it in two days!

But if you don't have time, another contribution is money. Distrust for the media is at an all time high, but the need for investigative journalism is as strong as ever. Independent organizations like Sunlight and The Tyee are finding ways to spearhead investigations outside of the regular business model, but to do it they need support from readers who trust them.

Recently The Tyee held a fundraiser to create a fellowship that would sponsor independent journalists as they dig into problems that face British Columbians.

As the Internet has opened up the platform for independent journalism, these fundraisers are not unique. Recently The New Standard reached their goal and will be able to keep their doors open a little longer.

But you shouldn't think of these donations as charity. It's an investment. By becoming reader sponsored these organizations gain the freedom to go after the story and not the bottom line. There is a relationship between the journalist and the reader, not just fiscally, but in terms of trust. The donation is a sign of trust and hopefully Tyee, The New Standard and NewAssignment can deliver on that with important and engaging investigations.

NewAssignment.Net will need donations as well. But again, at NewAssignment.Net we value your time to help with ideas and investigations more than money. This is not a project of independent journalists doing work for you, it is a collaboration for all of us.

Earlier this week network journalism went into action to uncover the questionable, but legal, business strategy of a new phone company. Tom Evslin, who was involved in the investigation, gives a good play-by-play of the unfolding in his blog, Fractals of Change.

It started with an innocent article from the New York Times' technology columnist David Pogue, a fluff piece on a new phone company, FuturePhone. The company offers free phone calls to landlines in 40 countries by routing the calls through Iowa. The service is free, no signup, registration or calling cards. It seems to good to be true, and Pogue leaves it at that.

"Truth is, I don't know what Futurephone's game is here. They say they're giving away the calls in order to 'build up the company's brand-name recognition."

Some readers, however, thought Pogue should have kept digging. Pogue might not cover Washington politics, but every area of journalism can warrent investigation. To Pogue's credit, he later chimed in to explain why he wasn't able to get the information himself.

As it turns out, the answer to FuturePhone's business model requires special knowledge of how phone companies recieve tax subsidies. Alec Saunders and Tom Evslin both posted what they knew about the subject and citizen journalists began to connect the dots through comments. They figured out that the phone company is relying on a tax subsidy on terminated access charges, which under new Iowa regualtion can be higher than the cost of making long distance phone calls. The charge doesn't neccesarily fall on the caller, but someone is splitting the bill.

As Evslin says, part of which was picked up by Poynter Online's wrap up post, "The subject wasn't earth-shattering; no mighty will be toppled by these revelations; no regimes will change; but the process was interesting. In this case not only bloggers but also commenters were key participants in unraveling a small mystery."

This was a case where readers with expert knowledge were able to shed light on something that would have otherwise gone unnoticed. It should also be noted that Evslin is keeping an eye on NewAssignmnet and has already suggested a possible project. I'll be following up on this idea with a post in the future. All ideas are welcome.