Leading up to the Networked Journalism Summit
Wednesday morning, the Networked Journalism Summit at CUNY’s Graduate School of Journalism opens. Students will be liveblogging at the summit blog and I’ll ask the participants to tag their posts, photos, videos, etc. “netj.” Rachel Sterne from Ground Report also plans to broadcast from the summit.
Jay Rosen beats them to the punch tonight with a great post that both walks up to the summit and shares his lessons from NewAssignment.net. Jay’s summary:
That is my attempt to map the perimeter: solutions lie within. Division of labor is the key creative decision in acts of distributed reporting. Grok the motivations or it can’t be done. Watch for ballooning coordination costs as ramp up succeeds. Where the small pieces meet the larger narrative the alchemy of the project lives. Shared background knowledge raises group capacity. Extant communities already coordinate well.
No one is saying that collaborative, pro-am, networked journalism is the cure to the industry’s ills or that it will replace the professional model. I believe that it is one means by which journalism can and should expand now — even as journalistic organizations’ revenue and often staffs decline. New Assignment is one way to try this — with Rosen et al or on your own, as Brian Lehrer at WNYC has done. And tomorrow’s participants will hear about many other endeavors in other models. I hope they leave with information and inspiration and new ideas to implement and experiment with. When they do, we will report back on their plans and will follow up with progress reports.
Tags: cuny, journalism, netj, networkedjournalism, newassignment
October 10th, 2007 at 12:36 pm
With the increasing dubiousness over media’s reporting accuracy, there is a crying need for facts - and blogs have promise for getting, and giving, them. Best vibes to you all.
October 10th, 2007 at 6:24 pm
Jeff, congrats on a great event. We had a blast.
October 11th, 2007 at 2:28 am
What is grok?
October 11th, 2007 at 7:30 am
To grok is to understand deeply or wholly.
October 11th, 2007 at 11:58 am
Congrats to you and David for this fantastic event. I am glad I made the trip from LA!
October 11th, 2007 at 10:10 pm
[...] with amateur news contributors, particularly bloggers, to stem their industry’s decline. Jeff Jarvis this week hosted a Networked Journalism Summit in NYC to promote these activities, which now go by [...]
October 12th, 2007 at 7:14 pm
[...] out what your customers want and make technology your friend. Model yourself after people like Jeff Jarvis and Jay Rosen who are aggressively pursuing new approaches, while realizing most will not work. [...]