Media Takes: Giving the 'smart mob' a voice in the media
Jay Rosen has spent 20 years teaching journalism at New York University. He's written a well-received book on civic journalism –What Are Journalists For?– and even hosted a New York City radio show for a spell.
But for the past three years on his blog PressThink, the Buffalo native seems to have found his real métier: He has emerged as not only one of the nation's most provocative press critics but also a relentless advocate for wresting some control of journalism from the professional media and putting it in the hands of the engaged, online public, the folks he calls the "smart mob."
And now he has an audacious – some say doomed – plan to do just that: Rosen announced Tuesday on his blog that with $10,000 from Craig Newmark (the man whose online Craigslist free-ad empire has decimated the paid classified pages of newspapers across the country), he will launch an online investigative journalism venture that will turn to its readers for both ideas and funding.
It's a compelling concept: Rosen wants to solicit that so-called smart mob for ideas for stories the traditional news media "doesn't do, can't do, wouldn't do, or already screwed up," his 12-page manifesto says. And once users and bloggers and other potential donors are invested intellectually and emotionally in the story, he wants them to pony up the dough to hire reporters and editors to carry out the project – with continued input and, potentially, reporting assistance from the mob.
Rosen on Tuesday told me that reaction to the venture has been "pretty much what I expected – some people immediately think of all the problems with this, why it won't work. Other people are interested in how it does work."
The broadest criticisms have centered around control big donors may seek to exert on story selection and content, the potential for donors demanding money back if a story doesn't reach a conclusion they support, and the outsize influence that may be wielded by wealthier, older Americans who have more access and time to spend on the web.
Rosen acknowledges all of those concerns. But the venture – expected to be online this fall with an eye toward potentially choosing, funding, and producing a story that bears on the 2008 presidential election – is an experiment, he says, designed to begin to answer the question of whether the economies of scale of online participation can be put to solid journalistic use.
"How do we do that," he says, "and what are the problems?"
Rosen wrote his online manifesto about the project he's calling NewAssignment.Net in a question-and-answer form, and we thought we'd ask Rosen to weigh in on with us in similar fashion.
On whether the venture will compete with traditional media.
We're not trying to be a comprehensive news source. We're not your objective news source or anything like that. You would not rely on us to understand the United States. We're not claiming to monitor the world here. We would be a niche or boutique producer that would from time to time do something different and hopefully extraordinary, if it works.
On how NewAssignment will assure that the monied -– companies with deep pockets, political parties – will be prevented from influencing content if they contribute large sums.
What is the system of controls at U.S.News & World Report? At the Chicago Tribune and other places? It's editors. And we have editors. The editors stand between donors and journalists just as they do in newsrooms. This it one of the things about this design – it is very traditional in that respect. If a donor wants to influence the outcome of an investigation, he or she would have to go through the editor. And the editor would not be wise to sell out to please a donor. Ultimately, the people we would have to answer to are the users, and it's not a good long-term play to bend coverage to a donor. You lose the trust you need to survive.
On how the venture will involve users in choosing stories.
Suppose we said that we have $10,000 to spend on an investigation. Do you have any ideas? We'll be testing whether in fact we can create an assignment online like that, whether we can find stories that a broad base of interested users want. You can't do this just by saying, "send us your ideas." You can never test the capacity of the public by opening the floodgates. Just having people email you their ideas is just about the dumbest thing. There will be a big learning curve there. How do you enable people to contribute something? ... We have to get the geeks interested.
On how he or the editors and reporters will manage the mob, its ideas, and, potentially, its reporting contributions.
Journalists have this instinctive image of users as the "wild mob." That the mob is going to get you here, get you there. That excesses are the outstanding features of the mob seen this way.
On the potential for the traditional media to hover at NewAssignment.Net, where story development is public, and poach story ideas.
That means we won.
On what stories he thinks the traditional media in recent years wouldn't do or screwed up and how NewAssignment could do better.
Mostly I don't mean particular stories. Mostly I mean that we know that stories fall through the cracks or don't get covered well. Our news system is not perfect. There are lots of stories out there that do need to be told. There are so many ways that the people feel the press failed them; that there have to be stories that an outside institution could have done.
On potential for success and/or failure of the venture.
All I want to do is test these ideas. I don't care if NewAssignment is some big empire in three years. But I want to find out if these ideas make sense. I don't know yet.
On the best result, outside of good journalism, he hopes from the effort.
To show that there is a wisdom in the public, there is wisdom in the crowd. That people do understand the need for truth and will in some way demand it. This is a current in American culture – Jefferson was a believer in it, Whitman was a believer in it. There's a lot of intelligence out there, in all classes and stations in life, and we have to use it all.