I remember standing in a corner margarita bar on Bourbon Street late in the afternoon March 19, 2003. I was celebrating my 26th birthday. I nursed a rum and coke and watched the start of the war in Iraq on the bar's TV. Looking around, there were only two people watching the news: me and the bartender. Everyone else steadfastly looked away from the TV.
It was a small scale observation, just a moment in time. It didn't necessarily represent the entire country or any greater truth. Just the truth of one bar, on a street corner of New Orleans. I've always thought it was a great anecdote though. Maybe a piece of the larger story of what was happening all over the country too.
Last semester, I spent three months investigating how KU handles Beak 'Em Bucks accounts. Throughout the story, and when it was finished, my instinct said that this was a bigger story. That at other universities, the same thing was happening. I wanted to expand the scope, really nail down the national numbers, but there is only so much human bandwidth one man has (thanks to Ellyn Angelotti for introducing this term to me).
Both my anecdote and my Beak 'Em Bucks research would have fit perfectly in larger stories; but how would I go about doing such a thing?
Enter, stage left, approaching-overused-buzzword: Crowdsourcing!
I've been of two minds about the idea, both endorsing and bashing it. But a project launched Wednesday has me interested. Wired News and newassignment.net are collaborating to build a single, uber-article on crowdsourcing, using…drumroll…crowdsourcing. They call it Assignment Zero.
This is, so far, the one of the best uses of journalistic crowdsourcing that I have seen. Professionals, experts and regular folk all working on one story.
I hope it works. If it does, they may expand to other topics. I know I have the pieces to some bigger stories (or the willingness to find pieces), just not the time or resources to flesh them out.
What stories do you have a piece of, or would you work on, to help create a crowdsourced uber-article?
Thanks for the support.
Maybe you could help out on this first project? We are still figuring things out and need as much of it as we can get. It's not hard -- just register at Assignment Zero, find a topic you are interested in (check out the Assignment Desk), and share what you know.
Your input would be much appreciated.