"The public will come to NewAssignment.net with story ideas and will collaborate on honing them there. Once assigned by NewAssignment’s editors, the public will contribute both money and reporting to the work that reporters are paid to do. The process is open and the public will have a strong voice and role in the journalism NewAssignment does. Editors will supervise the assignments and the reporting and will edit the stories, assuring that NewAssignment produces quality journalism and also that it is not overtaken by a pressure groups."
It sounds lofty, idealistic and ambitious, fascinating and, frankly, difficult, for a journalist to really get his around how it will actually work. The project, which is being funded in part by Craigslist's Craig Newmark, comes across as, well, interesting on paper but we'll see how it really works in practice given it's an entirely new way of doing journalism. For one, how can the public contribute money and not expect to have their interests reflected in the final product? Will the editors be that pure and objective that can resist the reality their work si being financed by the people submitting their assignments? I'll have some more thoughts later some more "perculation" time.Update: Frank Barnako has his doubts about whether NewAssignment will fly, while Mathew Ingram (a print hack like me) is intrigued but not sure it's going to work. By the way, another intriguing media development is Time-Warner's decision to suspend the print publication of Teen People, while putting more resources into TeenPeople.com. It's another sign young people are consuming media on the Web rather than via print. This should be a huge wake-up call for the magazine and newspaper industry.