An experiment that can easily be branded both the litmus test of the feasibility of crowd sourcing practices and its immediate suicide was recently concluded. Newassignment’s 5 June outcome - there’s scope for similar projects – is so meagre this in itself begs the question; can entire crowds suffer from self induced mass delusion?
The project’s future plans seem to underscore this assumption. Even though the project itself was declared a Failure it’s going to continue! The subject matter that was researched by the crowds -the viability of their own involvement in reporting- is of course as unnatural as the whole idea of ordinary people bracing themselves as hard nosed journos.
Journalists themselves hardly report on their own role as news, yet it’s one of the few free professions out there and it’s a known fact too that no one becomes a reporter for the sake of navel gazing. That’s left up to psychologists, right?
So it’s no surprise that among the first outcomes of the project is the repudiation of an equally sick underlying assumption; that crowd sourcing is a good cost-saving measure. In a sense the negative outcome might have been Newassignment’s saving grace. It’s only Yanks however that can come up with such a mockery of human sensibility.
Journalism is all about looking out, not about being self aware. It’s the other that’s making the headlines, not you, and for that matter; neither your father, mother, brother, sister, baby boy or neigbor. Or: not on most days. Look at the daily news headlines and you will hardly see stories about journalists. Unless corporate corruption gets taken to the task, but then, that’s hardly got anything to do with navel gazing and classifies also firmly as an external issue.
“Communities must be cultivated, respected and deftly managed if they are to come together to create economic value. This takes talented staff, and a set of skills not taught in journalism or business schools”, writes Jeff Howe in Wired. But who knows, perhaps the very costs involved in the project itself can be to blame for this outcome. If you have a budget, then you tend to spend it, especially when experimentation’s involved. Assignment Zero cost a heck of a lot of money and thank god for that. Where would we be if next we’d be exploiting people on a personal level by means of organized actions?
Thank god too that the project required plenty of energy of the people that collaborated. You know why that was? Because everyone was so obsessed in finding out motives that you naturally do not even pay any attention to…
Next on the agenda is covering the Presidential elections next year. Way more suitable material with series of real culprits ‘out there’ to be nailed and hammered for every ounce of flesh they are overweight (an open invitation to go and check their expense accounts) or whatever strikes you as unsavory… Bet you that you won’t be thinking about your body’s energy levels when you have the chance to find out what your Energy Secretary is up to.