Assignment Zero - A Different Kind of Social Media

NewAssignment gets to maintain control over who writes and you'll have to "apply" with them for the spot

Just read that part. I've been signed up for a while now, but I'm not sure how to "apply" with them. Anyone got any clues?

I've looked into this a bit more, and I don't have all that much interest in writing any of these currently. So I'll step back and let someone else do the writing. I'm still up for research or whatnot if it's needed.

Adam --

These topics may have more to interest you buried inside them than you might glean on first notice.

Killfile told us he likes covering politics. We know Oldfogey is an old fogey on that beat, too. Crowdfunding offers a way to write about campaign fund-raising.

Many, if not all of you guys are writers. Which means, I'd gather that you're interested in how the craft may change through crowdsourcing. Or maybe you're more interested in what you write about than how you write about it. Maybe there's a book being opened up to the crowd related to topics that get you going. Do some digging. you may find that there's something in there to get you started.

The assignments that we provided are just ways to get people started. Where do you folks want to take it from there? As far as I'm concerned, the sky is the limit.

Lauren, what kind of time frame are we talking about? I still have some ideas on crowdfunding that have not been mentioned yet, so I am still interested, I just want to make sure I have time do this properly.

By the way, thanks for answering our questions and giving us a little motivation.

I've participated in a couple of ways that might (or might not) be considered crowdfunding, though not at all in the political arena. I wrote about onethousandpaintings (and bought a few), which I first read about in the Wired blog. I'm not sure you'd call it crowdfunding, but it was one of the first projects using the web to market a series of paintings (one thousand paintings, each of a number from one to 1000). The system was very well thought out by the artist and has been very successful (over 700 have now been sold).

I'm also particpating in a group license for browsercam through fundable.org I'd be happy to discuss either of these experiences, or write about my experiences, if they meet the criteria.

Wanna work with me on editing these stories?

Lauren, I'm also up for editing, if you need further help.

Lauren - would be delighted to.

Design? Illustration? Hell yeah! We were really under the gun to get this site launched, and we weren't able to psych out the visual side of storytelling. I'm married to a photojournalist, I'm a design maven -- I'm all about doing more on this site than working exclusively with words.

I volunteer to head up the Crowdsourced Novel angle, but only if oldfogey holds good on his promise to help. I have, as some may have noticed, a mild obsession with shared mythologies...

I'll help out with the novel if you need it.

Hi Pamela,

Lauren Sandler, here, editor of Assignment Zero. Take heart! We're not looking to replicate the voice of the New York Times, here. I, for one, think that the "standards of trained folk" tends to mean an extrication of all personality from writing. My heroes in journalism aren't a roster of what the Pulitzer committee deems excellent each year, but are the writers from the New Journalism era of the sixties and seventies who blew that voice (and perspective) to pieces: Joan Didion, Tom Wolfe, etc. True, the competition seems a bit stiff for the writing assignments. But if you want to get writing, we'll figure out a way. You appear concerned that you don't have the chops for this, but just reading your post, your sentence structure is dynamite.

There are a ton of assignments on our site. Not all of them are "write the big feature." We're also looking for shorter profiles of the projects that fall under the umbrellas of these big features. We're working right now on getting everything on the Desk internally linked so, for example, the big trend piece on crowdsourced nonfiction will link to our request for a profile of McKenzie Wark's Gamer Theory project. One of these pieces might be a good fit for you. Also, we'll want Q&As with major players on these projects, or people who are thinking about the big ideas related to them. As someone who has done Q&As for years, I can promise you that they're a great way to sharpen your writing. An ace intro to a Q&A has to be pithy, engaging, and packed with info. The Q&A itself is a model of structure and flow. You might find these assignments interesting as well.

I chose the three topics to send you folks because I thought they were so rich with ideas, stories, characters, and fascinating individual projects. I think there will be something in the package for everyone, regardless of experience.

thanks!

I have submitted my application. Below is the writeup I sent them:

I'm interested in the subject of crowdsourced nonfiction, capable of channeling my interest productively, and in a position to motivate others to participate. As a leader in the newsvine community, I have an advantage when it comes to organizing a group effort of newsviners. I'm familiar with the strengths and weaknesses of a great number of community members and I'm eager to help focus newsvine's unbridled energy into a productive workflow.

Looking over the material provided here on this subject, here are a few thoughts that spring to mind:

- We're discussing the "crowdsourcing of nonfiction books," but how strictly do we want to define "book"? The production process of a nonfiction book and that of a nonfiction website or documentary or lecture can to be pretty similar up until it comes time to consolidate everything into its final format. With this in mind, as leader I'd be willing to press various boundaries along these lines to get at the heart of "crowdsourcing" rather than to the heart of "books." The concept of "nonfiction" provides its own set of interesting questions - I have some background in narrative theory, for instance, enough to wonder if there is such a thing as "nonfiction" in any meaningful sense. A working definition of "the crowdsourcing of nonfiction books" is going to be the first thing on my agenda.

- As a recent university graduate in English, the nature of classroom discussion is still fresh in my mind. One additional aspect I'd like to explore is the way literary criticism (or, for that matter, cultural criticism) works with respect to crowdsourcing. Ever since the Modernist period there have been novels that can be described as rudimentarily hypertextual, and these demand a crowdsourced response. Why, then, isn't there a crowdsourced analysis of Finnegan's Wake? Instead, we have dozens of volumes by individual authors each trying to capture some aspect of the text, and while there will always be a place for this it's silly to think of any such text as definitive. In what ways would a "WikiWake" be better? In what ways would it suffer, especially in a field generally dominated by tenured professionals writing under pressure to publish "legitimate" work?

- Who gets the credit? As much as everyone's excited about the revolutionary idea of crowdsourced text, people still want their names in the byline. How do you deal with this issue when you have several dozen people contributing equally to a text? And, since we're talking nonfiction, this question gets teeth: who gets in trouble when a claim made turns out to be false? The great advantage of single-author-texts is that some people are just better writers/researchers than others - an author can develop a reputation over time, and if that reputation is tarnished it's his or her own fault. Crowdsourcing seems to lose this advantage - how do we make up for it?

...etc. These are issues that I've been toying with for a while now, so I have an idea of how to think about this subject. I'm eager to work with you because I think these questions are important in a larger context, but I'm also personally looking forward to taking some ideas that have been with me for a while and letting a group of qualified and enthusiastic individuals explore them with me.

I thank you for your consideration and look forward to hearing from you.

We're defintely keeping you in mind.