If you are looking for a writing challenge this month, check out Broowaha’s citizen journalism writing contest.

Broowaha’s community began in Los Angeles, but it has since spread to other cities. The contest will choose the best local news/op-ed article. Only articles with a local focus, i.e., themes relevant to the city in which you are registered, will be considered for this contest.

I will be one of the judges along with…

* Ariel Vardi, Founder of BrooWaha.com
* Joshua Marks, Features Editor, Variety.com
* David Domingo, Assistant Professor at University of Iowa
* Glenn Koenig, Staff Photographer at the Los Angeles Times
* Al Miller, Professor, Communications at Moorpark College

Words often do much more than we intend. They are uncontrollable, taking a life of their own in the readers mind and the cultural nuances that readers engage in. They echo between readers, changing from sender to receiver -- like a giant game of telephone. Because everyone can have a voice on the Internet, that echo chamber can produce a lot of noise. In the end, a general consensus is usually reached, but not always without debate. (See note at the end about Wikipedia)

There are a lot of words I hear regularly in my recent field of work, where I'm lucky enough to work with people like Jay Rosen, Jeff Jarvis and I can approach older (read: wiser) people in journalism like Leonard Witt and Dan Gillmore. "Community" is one of those words and I took a playful look at it last week by creating a Community Dream Team.

Since citizen media is an oft talked about subject, I do think distinctions should be made so people can clearly understand what they are referring to when they talk to each other. JD Lasica started an interesting conversation about the terms "citizen media," "social media" and "grassroots media," which itself needs to be hashed out. What I will be focusing on in this post is "citizen journalism" -- which is a subset of the larger conversation surrounding social media that JD was talking about.

"Citizen journalism" remains somewhat of a vague but very charged term. What intrigues me about the word and why I believe it is so vague are the various synonyms it has. "Participatory journalism," "stand-alone journalism," "network journalism," "open source journalism," "distributed reporting": Without reflection, they all mean the same thing and are used interchangingly by most people -- where citizens play an active or integral role in the collection, reporting, distilling, filtering and broadcasting of news and information.

So why do we have so many terms for this? For starters "citizen journalism" itself is pretty broad and can include many acts. Jeff Jarvis has posited replacing the term "citizen journalism" with "network journalism." I do think network journalism should enter the lexicon of citizen media more, but I don't know if it should replace "citizen journalism." What I suggest is a further refining of the various types of citizen journalism acts.

Take for example a car crash. People who might be walking by take photos with their phones (not an unheard of act) and then post them on their blog. Who knows, maybe through NowPublic their photos will even end up on the AP. Citizen journalism? -- Of course.

Contrast that with Assignment Zero, a collaborative effort between NewAssignment.Net, Wired News and "anyone else that participated." For four months the Assignment Zero community worked on one story, collecting 80 interviews and producing eight feature articles. Citizen journalism? -- Of course.

But these two acts of "citizen journalism" are incredibly different. The first was sporadic, spur of the moment and the act of an isolated individual. The former, a collaboration over time that required dedication and commitment.

Both are labeled "citizen journalism" because the rhetoric surrounding "citizen journalism" has yet to really grow into its own. There is no vocabulary to articulate different acts of citizen journalism. How do we distinguish these two acts from another?

The first example (the car crash) seems like an act of "Citizen Journalism" (with a big C). A person going about their day who witnesses an event, captures it and broadcasts it. It was not, however, a planned decision. The individual didn't go out with their camerae with the intention of reporting. It just happened to work out that way. NowPublic currently rests its fate on citizen journalism and it is coming close to a critical mass of people who will engage in acts of citizen journalism on its behalf (NowPublic also relies on stand-alone journalism, which I'll define later).

In the case of Assignment Zero, however, people were engaging in "Network Journalism." They were coming together for a purpose. I don't believe "network journalism" has reached its full potential yet, but I'm optimistic.

I don't claim to be the expert or the person who should define these terms. But, I do enjoy trying to make distinctions in my own mind, it's fun and hey, it's my blog. If you don't like it. Piss off (or leave a comment to give your own opinion).

These definitions are in large part inspired and playing off of Steve Outing's Poynter post 11 Layers of Citizen Journalism.

Citizen Journalism: An umbrella term, without a doubt, citizen journalism is when a person who does not make their living as a journalist engages in an act of journalism. Simple enough right? Again, this is a broad definition, which means citizen journalism encompasses all the other acts of journalism that will be described below. But not all acts of citizen journalism are necessarily "network journalism" or "open source journalism." These are unique types of citizen journalism. Another way to think of it: Citizen Journalism is the class and "network journalism" is a species. SAT Question: Mammal is to Human as Citizen Journalism is to Open Source Journalism.

(More After the Break)

Since entering the world of networked journalism (and the larger world of Web 2.0) I have noticed one word repeated over and over again.

"Community"

Why?

A Two sentence explanation: When the web first became part of our daily lives it was viewed as another publishing medium, a space to simply modify content and stick it online. With Web 2.0 we have found that true power of the Internet to be connecting people socially despite geographic limitations, allowing like minded people to work/socialize together.

"Community" is a quick word to represent that togetherness.

Creating a community atmosphere requires the right tools (software) as well as the right tone. Communities don't spring up overnight. They need to be cared for, managed, and constantly groomed. It is a skill.

I've also heard calls for new journalism heroes.

So, just for fun, I've decided to create my own Community Dream Team -- people who I look up to as heroes in community building. I've cast a wide net. I might revisit this one day and cast a smaller net, limiting it to journalism heroes. But I think right now, it's better to include people that might not be traditional "journalists" --  the job discription is changing anyways.

In the room where I grew up there is a poster of the 1992 Olympic basketball team. the first time that professional basketball players represented the United States in the Olympics. They were the "Dream Team." The motivation on the part of commissioner David Stern was in part to expand the audience of basketball, but it was also a moment of national pride. They were our basketball heroes. I'm going to draw on that first Dream Team as inspiration for my Community Dream Team. Who would be on your Community Dream Team? I left one space open on the team for your suggestions. Who is your community hero?

Basketball Dream Team: Scottie Pippen

Scottie Pippen is the most underrated player of all time. If there were no Michael Jordan the Bulls would still have been major comeptitors because Scottie Pippen was also one of the best 50 players of all time. But with his association to Michael Jordan he was always viewed as a second man, a Robin to his Batman. Scottie Pippen, however, could have easily been the first man on any other team. He was undeniably a great basketball player and an asset to any team.

Community Dream Team: Craig Newmark

The Scottie Pippen of my Community Dream Team is Craig Newmark from Craigslist.

By now everyone knows what Craigslist is (it probably helped you find the apartment or some furniture in your home). The community on Craigslist was even a place of gathering during the Katrina disaster as my friend Keith Axline reported. But for the majority of users the man behind Craigslist goes unnoticed. What's important to realize is that Craig isn't just the founder of Craigslist, he is head of customer service. Always has been and he says he always will. And that's no joke either, he really does do customer service, responding to emails and complaints. And he must be darn good at it to quell all the possible flame wars that could go down. In addition to his 9-5 job Craig is a champion of Web 2.0 projects that seek to empower the crowd, donating everything from time and money to projects like the NewAssignment.Net, the Sunlight Foundation, etc.

(More after the break)

Over at PJNET Leonard Witt has begun blogging about something he calls Representative Journalism.

Meanwhile at Invisible Inkling, Ryan Sholin is harboring on a future blog post, which although still hazy, he refers to as the “What Are You Reporting On?” post.

I think they are talking about the same thing.

Representative journalism, as I understand it, is very similar to what Innocentive has done for science research. (More reading: Our Assignment Zero interview with Alpheus Bingham, co-founder of Innocentive.)

I’d like to add my voice to the chorus. This is a business model that we’ve thrown around as an idea here at NewAssignment.Net — and in truth I think it’s the future of independent investigative journalism. I’m glad Leonard Witt has come up with a name for it. I’ve been struggling myself, often referring to it as “Innocentive journalism.”

The basis of the model is micropayments. Independent journalists post what investigations they want to begin. With the potential investigations posted, individual readers can then decide to donate $10 or so to the investigation they are most interested in. If 300 people donate $10 you have $3,000. That’s not a bad monthly wage for an independent journalist.

The individual funders are what Sellaband, an example of crowdfunding, would call believers. With enough believers, an independent band gets to record an album with SellaBand.

An immediate question that comes up when explaining this model is always “how do you keep the journalist honest.” If a journalist is investigating something with a political slant and is funded by people who want specific results, how can we continue to keep those investigations fair and balanced?

Good question.

First, let’s reconsider the relationship between funder and journalist. It shouldn’t be that the individual funders are trying to hire a journalist to get the “truth” that they are looking for. What they are hiring is an umpire, somebody they can trust to dig deep and find out what’s really happening. That might seem obvious to professional journalists, but whatever example of “Representative Journalism” comes to fruition will have to set that tone.

Second and more importantly, whatever organization creates the means for readers to find and fund journalists will have to be somewhat responsible for the end results. They will have to keep the independent journalists on deadline and working. In a sense, they will be managing editors. And if that means screening the journalists who can propose possible investigations, I’d understand that. Not in an effort to be top-down, but as a means to ensure that people’s money is put to good use.

Benefits: An audience is automatically created. Just like the Spread FireFox campaign, if you donate time or money to something, you are going to use the final product (in this case read the final product) because you feel a sense of ownership.

A marketplace for independent journalists to find funders for the type of journalism they believe in. The bottom line is erased and re-written by popular demand.

A new organization that doesn’t hire journalists, it allows them to make a case for their own work. Jobs might be limited right now, but there is space for anybody who is willing to commit to the job.

Funders/Readers can help with the investigation itself. This is a slippery slope. As we noted above, funders might also have axes to grind, and that is their right as citizens, so when I say they can “help with the investigation,” I am not suggesting they have a role that would compromise the investigation. But I do believe that through the funding process a network would be created and the journalist who is spearheading the investigation could use that network in innovative ways.

“Blowback! That’s what you’re in for when a great American newspaper runs a Sunday opinion piece as irretrievably lame as “Blogs: All the noise that fits” by Michael Skube (Aug. 19).”

So starts Jay Rosen’s crowdsourced response to Skube’s blast at bloggers earlier this week. Titled “The journalism that bloggers actually do,” Rosen’s response doesn’t just get to the heart of the controversy and misguided claims of Skube, he proves it wrong by organizing a quick example of networked reporting on the Web.

Much like our coverage of CNN’s YouTube debates, this was a “fly by the seat of our pants” investigation. Lesson learned: it is possible to organize swift reporting online.

Jay had written an initial response that ended up on the front page of the Daily Kos gaining plenty of eyes and comments.

Well, if the eyes are there, why not use the brains that are connected to them? That is, assuming bloggers know how to use their brains (Skube supporters respond).

Turns out, they do. Rosen asked the commentors to leave examples of bloggers who have done real investigations, citing the date, offering a link and a one sentence description.

Not only does the list stand in the face of Skube’s remarks against blogging as a medium for journalism, the manner in which the list was culled was an act of collective reporting organized through a blog.

I call that a “double booya.”

I helped a bit sifting through the initial list, which was then fed back to the Dialy Kos community one more time for refining. Meanwhile, Jay went to his community at Pressthink and his social network on Facebook for even more suggestions.

Lesson Learned: Our readers know more than we do (other than Skube, most of us have learned this lesson already). It’s possible that Jay and I could have come up with a similar list on our own. It would have taken much longer and in truth, it would have lacked many of the insights that came from the community. An individual can only remember so many investigations and we tend to fall back on a few key examples that are important or relevant to our lives.

But if you open the question up to hundreds or thousands of readers — then you have the collective memory of entire communities.

Lesson Learned: collective memories are out there, all they need is a community organizer to give them a platform so they can contribute it in a meaningful way.

And the list speaks for itself. If you doubt that blogging can result in journalism - have fun clicking the links below (note: for a bigger list check out the first round)

This post also found at Digidave.org

Journalism that Matters was a two day conference to ask “what happens when all that’s left is the journalism”?

I initially wasn’t going to attend. But from the proper prodding of Leonard Witt and Steve Peterson, and the amazing follow up of Bill Densmore, I found myself traveling to D.C. with an air of excitement.

Aside from an initial panel, which included Boss Rosen, it was an unconference. To my knowledge it is the only journalism unconference, which is something I’ve been screaming for at the top of my blogging lungs for a long time.

That alone was interesting to me. I’ve been to many unconferences before, but they are flooded with geeks, hackers, designers and very few journalists. It was interesting to see the demographic of journalits (older white men) participate in something that I usually only see web 2.0 entrepreneurs do (get on their knees to write out a session they want to hold).

Leaving Journalism That Matters I have a new faith that entreprenurial journalism is not dead. The craft of journalism is alive and well. It just isn’t being done by traditional journalists.

I was in Connecticut all weekend and got in early on Monday to a full inbox. The one that intrigued me the most was from NewAssignment.Net founder Jay Rosen.

“Are you around? What are you doing tonight?”

After talking with Amanda Michel, a colleague from Assignment Zero and OffTheBus.Net organizer, I knew exactly what I was doing. I quickly showered and met up with Jay, Amanda and Neil, a new OffTheBus employee at the Huffington Post office in SoHo.

We were going to cover the YouTube/CNN Debate. Of course — this meant that we were going to organize coverage of the debate with volunteers from around the country.

“This is going to be on the fly,” said Michel.

In truth, that’s just the way I like it. I got to the HuffPost headquarters and set up right next to Amanda. It was just like old times during the thick of Assignment Zero.

In this post what follows is:

1. A quick analysis of how we organized network journalism on the fly.

2. What we produced.

3. Thoughts on the social media aspect of the CNN/YouTube debate itself (update: turned into a seperate post)

READ MORE AFTER THE BREAK….

The YouTube debates last night drew answers typical in any presidential election season. But the off the bus mode in which questions were posed to the candidates is worth a closer look.

Was CNN really trying to give ownership of the debates back to the crowd? Some still think this was “their debate.”

Leading up to the event I suspected that CNN would use their filtering authority to search and find questions they would have asked anyways.

“CNN wants to look as if they are open to viewer suggestions, but aren’t ready to commit 100 percent just yet.”

While there is no definitive way to tell if this was a closed debate in an open debate’s clothing, a good long look at the garments shown last night might reveal a little. And that’s what we did last night. While some researchers kept a list of which YouTubers were getting their questions asked, others were Googling or even contacting the unassuming debate participants to find out just who these people are and how they became involved in the debate.

Read More After the Jump

OffTheBus.Net is rolling out the gates in full force.

Tonight we are covering the presidential debates.

From Amanda:

Our correspondents on-site will work to gather LOTS of reactions from those who attended, and to gather them from different groups: people around the debate, debate organizers, journalists, and political professionals. They’ll ask them questions about the format, about its impact, etc.. For example, what do journalists who have asked questions in debate think of the people substituting for them?

While our on-site team does the running, our virtual team will track network and print coverage of the debate to find out how the mainstream media is evaluating the debate’s format. What trends do they highlight? What examples do they point to? What is their overall take? By sharing this info with our on-site OffTheBus reporters, we’ll prepare them for interviewing mainstream media journalists about their take on the debate.

I’m here with Amanda at the Huffington Post headquarters as we set up to get organize the virtual end of our coverage. If you want to get involved Email David Cohn.

As Assignment Zero comes to a rolling halt, discussion this week is focusing on the lessons learned. And rightfully so — that was the point of the project in the first place.

Here are some great reactions to Jeff Howe’s original article which ran in wired.

1. Reportr.Net: Why a failed experiment in crowdsourcing was a success
   “The lesson here for journalism is not so much whether crowdsourcing works, but that failure is not something to be scared off. For journalism to thrive in the future, there is a need for more experimentation, more failure, and ultimately, more successes.”
2. Smart Mobs and Social Synergy: Assignment Zero: Valuable Lessons:
   “’m going to try and catalogue and summarize the lessons in this article as I review it in this blog posting, so:

   * Assignment Zero Lesson #1: Figure out a way to engage participants as soon as they show up.”

3. Mathew Ingram: A “citizen journalism” trifecta of failure:
   “Through some bizarre confluence of events, we have not one but two retrospectives on two separate citizen journalism or “crowdsourced” media projects today — Backfence, which recently announced it was shutting down, and Assignment Zero…”
4. Derek Powazek: Did Assignment Zero Work?
   “o did Assignment Zero Work? I say: Yes. A bunch of people, myself included, were published on Wired.com. Of course it didn’t go perfectly to plan - community projects rarely do. But the AZ editors showed they had what it takes when they reacted to the community needs, narrowed scope, changed the technology, and wound up making something great.”
5. Tish Grier: Assignment Zero Post-Mortem: Participation was Paramount
   “Amanda and I spent many days trying to figure out how to get through to the journalists, and decided it was perhaps better to do what we could to bolster the volunteers (some of the journalists got it—because they had done some interaction already—while others just didn’t.)”
6. Jeff Howe again The Importance of Community
   “Another concept that by all rights should have been more fleshed out in the Wired.com piece was the importance of community. While I’d like to think this idea suffuses the piece, I could probably have been more explicit in noting its importance to making AZ productive.”

And I’m sure there is more: If you find a good piece of analysis — please leave a comment.