Jay Rosen’s well-thought-through project in citizen journalism has posted its first assignment. Jay doesn’t suggest that NewAssignment is the only way citizen journalism will proceed. Rather, it’s one attempt to take advantage of one of the opportunities a networked citizenry affords. Are there stories that a crowd could cover that an individual journalist could not? (But this is a well-organized crowd, with editors, assignments and collaborative tools.)

The first assignment is a self-referential one: What’s going on with crowdsourcing, and with peer production in general? If you want to participate by investigating, reporting or writing, Amanda Michel tells you how.

It’ll be fascinating to see if Jay and his group have gotten the weights and balances right to enable this thing to take off. If not, they can always nudge it this way or that. (Disclosure: I’m an advisor. It’s a non-profit.)

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