We, the Media, and Assignment Zero

Much to my surprise, new media guru Jay Rosen approached me at the PDF Google party, and told me that Assignment Zero wanted to interview me on Politicopia and crowdsourcing (people working together to produce products and solutions). Assignment Zero (sponsored by NewAssignment.net and Wired magazine) itself is a crowdsourcing experiment in journalism. Professionals and amateurs are working together to cover stories.

For example, Sarah Cove interviewed me and posted her notes. Anyone can use those notes to build a story or part of a story. Utlimately, some of the finished products will be published in Wired magazine. Pretty cool.

Regardless how the finished products turn out (and I suspect they will be very good), publishing source materials, like interview notes, is a tremendous idea. Anyone interested in the story can examine those materials and draw his/her own conclusions.