Improving news with user-directed assignment desks

Journalism is about asking and answering questions. So for journalism the “metaquestion” — the question underlying all other questions — is, what questions shall we ask?

Until now, that metaquestion was answered by an analog process. It leveraged no network or algorithm. It basically consisted of editors speculating what they think the public should know, and reporters talking to informed people. That was fine, for the time.

But we can do better now.

That metaquestion can now be answered in powerful new ways that take advantage of the collaborative web. In short, the public can actually suggest and rank questions it wants the professional journalists to answer. In some cases the public can also help answer the question.

Here are some encouraging examples that align reporting efforts with public interest or even financial support:

• MyReporter.com: An excellent project by the Wilmington, NC, Star-News that lets users ask questions that the paper’s journalists answer.
• Explainthis.org: A concept by Jay Rosen to align the journalist’s efforts with the interest of the audience. Jay has been into this subject since his NewAssignment.Net project in 2006. The idea of that site was “open source methods to develop good assignments and help bring them to completion; it employs professional journalists to carry the project home and set high standards so the work holds up. There are accountability and reputation systems built in that should make the system reliable.”
• HelpMeInvestigate.com: A site by Paul Bradshaw to let a community of users suggest investigative topics and then collaborate on putting the pieces together.
• The Virtual Assignment Desk: Part of the New York Times “The Local” community blogging project, the assignment desk let’s users suggest assignments for the blogger. It also offers assignments for users to go cover themselves.
• Spot.us: Ideas are nominated and users pledge small donations up front to support them. Ideas that raise enough support are executed, with the added benefit of an engaged audience waiting to see and share the outcome.
• Kickstarter.com: Similar to Spot.us, Kickstarter lets people secure multiple-donation funding for news projects, as well as company startups and almost any type of venture.

I’m focusing on projects that connect pros with users. Other notable projects such as Cody Brown’s Kommons.com are empowering the public, but seek to displace the journalist altogether. See also Yahoo Answers, Mahalo.com.

Another great platform worth looking at, getsatisfaction.com: Conceived as a customer service tool, but could be applied to journalism. This service let a site’s users ask questions and suggest improvements, and then the community comments on and ranks the suggestions.

Do you know of others that should be included here? What elements need to be part of the user-directed assignment desk? Leave your comments.