wired.com — This is not just another wiki. Assignment Zero is a new kind of website, one of the first of its kind tailored specifically to supporting a distributed newsgathering team. Everyone contributes reporting and at in the end, some pieces will get published and a final news piece will be produced for Wired News.
Mar 14, 2007 View in Crawl 4
funkytacoMar 15, 2007
Is Wired trying to get sued?
smhillMar 15, 2007
But it you are going to have bias no matter who reports. The potential advantage here is that you will get many biases at once. When an incident occurs quickly the people who witness it may all see different things or at least some people will see things others didn't.I think there is some potential here, but it will depend on how the editing and filtering occurs.
buellerdiggsMar 15, 2007
Read the book All the Presidents Men (or download the movie on piratebay) it illustrates that news stories dont come from thin air, commonly they take months of development and interviews to do the story justice. This website seems like it will shed light on all that goes into reporting the news. I think they have professionals doing the editing and anyone can contribute, the bias will be in the hierarchy but i assume they will have editors in place to actually edit the crappy and skewed content. The interesting thing will be if they can create enough momentum to have regular contributors that become like navigators (not paid dont want any sellouts =) your name and nerd cred will be on the line I feel like most will do their best to help the project.All of the US's mainstream media is now owned by huge corporations where the bottom line is what matters not accuracy and accountability. One of the biggest problems we face today is that our media is lazy and cares about hits, viewership, and readership. In the US the press is supposed to act as our 4th check and balance of our gov, clearly over the last 6 years they failed starting with Bush v Gore. If this thing works it could really make a dent early and often the Mainstream wont be able to ignore no bid haliburton contracts and rigged evoting elections....well thats the best case scenario it depends on how well we all contribute and i know im too busy reading digg and visiting thehun all day to actually write something....
jeezusMar 15, 2007
"sounds stupid and pointless"More to the point, what's in it for the citizen reporters? Money? Fame? I'd say this is just another attempt to exploit the masses to provide free content because it's "cool". Sure, Digg does it, Slashdot does it, but at least it feels like fun.This feels like work. More to the point, it feels like work that's legally dodgy, to boot. Nobody's mentioned liability issues, such as libel. Will Wired extend its legal umbrella over these citizen reporters? What happens when Joe Smith interviews Steve Jobs in a parking lot, gets Steve to say something horrendous (hypothetical example: "I know for a fact that top Microsoft execs stage orgies with goats") and writes it down?
drscottMar 15, 2007
Citizen Journalism is clearly the way to go in the future.
alexhuyalegzzMay 7, 2007
Splendid! sweet!