Assignment More than Zero
PC Mag’s Lance Ulanoff, whom I admire, has a cranky piece about Assignment Zero that finishes by proclaiming that “in the end … we’ll learn the truth about the wisdom of crowds — there is none.”
Lance is being more close-minded that the guy running the “crowdsourced” journalism project, NYU’s Jay Rosen, whom I spoke with last week over coffee and Thursday morning to see how I might be involved. Rosen acknowledges that he, himself, doesn’t know if this form of journalism will work. But, posits Jay, rather than just proclaiming its glory or lack thereof, doesn’t it make sense to try it out? Isn’t, he notes, that what tenure is supposed be for – so scholars can risk failure in pursuit of knowledge?
Rosen is doing this project with that kind of spirit – see what comes of it, and then move on from there. He acknowledges that there have been missteps already, just weeks into the project, and he knows that whatever is produced from what Ulanoff calls the “unwashed masses” will be far from perfect. I, too, expressed my skepticism to Rosen, asking why anyone would spend their time and energy on this, how it’s different than just trying to get folks to contribute for free, how people will be given incentives to participate or even be held to account for accuracy. Rosen occasionally hesitated, and acknowledged he didn’t always have perfect answers to these questions, but expressed confidence that folks will want to try helping this new idea.
Despite my questions, I am choosing to get involved for that very reason, to see where this may lead. I do have some selfish reasons – to make new contacts, to do some reporting I can use elsewhere – but also some intellectual, even academic ones: to be involved in an experiment being led by someone else I admire. I also plan, in a few weeks, to talk to Rosen about how this all becomes self-sustaining and ask some hard, financial questions.
Meanwhile, as for Ulanoff’s complaint that the assigned stories are all a bunch of self-serving navel-gazing about crowd-sourcing itself, he is missing the point. And, frankly, that may be Assignment Zero’s fault for not better describing the project in an easily accessible way on its website. The reasons all the reporting is being done about this topic, is because a) it seemed a good candidate for a topic because folks involved in the project are by virtue of their involvement interested, and b) it will feed a Wired.com story planned for the beginning of June, about the phenomenon of crowdsourcing. There are some official “editors” through which this material is to be funneled, as Ulanoff notes. They (we) may be able to make something better than hash out of whatever mish-mosh of stuff we get. And it may, ultimately, die due to lack of interest as Ulanoff predicts. But is that a reason not to at least give it a shot and see what can or might be done?