Jay Rosen, faculty member at the NYU Journalism school and journalism entrepreneur, came to speak to the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism about his new project, newassignment.net. With the goal of sparking innovation in online journalism, Rosen aims to harness the power and knowledge of people on the internet. The result is a brand new form of social networked and citizen reporting.

What is interesting about newassignment.net is that it combines the access and experience of professional reporters and editors with the passion and knowledge of an interested and engaged public. The professionals will work with “posses” of individuals in communities who will both suggest and report stories. Rosen said that newassignment.net will attempt to organize its interested public through a Director of Participation. Whoever takes on that position will have the heady task of ensuring that participants work in a useful and productive way, sorting out all of the crazies and the like.

I believe that newassignment.net appears to be an honorable endeavor. It attempts to bring professional journalism back into the community, tapping into the technology that is changing the industry. It also strives to bring the community in. But I really feel like I need to hold off judgement until I see this in action. After working in fundraising over the past few years, I have seen donors turn into volunteers, do I do believe that there are certain folk truly passionate about journalism and the media who will take that extra step to become participants in the process. If journalism is supposed to be independent, how will newassignment.net prevent certain biased or interested parties in skewing coverage or encouraging mob rule? And what kind of stories will it report on? Rosen kind of danced around that issue, so I’ll be interested to see if this is community-based, like our neighborhood beats or if this form could ever have a national stage.

As for a second blog, I agree with a few of my classmates who have indicated that an additional blog shouldn’t have to be about our neighborhood beats. I understand the argument of having neighborhood blogs, including adding value to some of our Craft stories and creating a dialogue between us and the community we’re covering, but I think this is an opportunity to revel in the form’s flexibility. We are in the midst of acquiring a great number of skills–both editorial and technological–why not use them to cover and write about something that we are passionate about, an issue or topic that we don’t necessarily get to examine while bogged down in Craft and Legal and Ethical Issues assignments?

As somewhat of an entertainment junkie, I would probably like to write about television, the upcoming awards season, and expand upon my previous post on dance and dance criticism.

With an art form such as dance, which cannot claim the populist appeal of music, movies, or television, there isn’t a multitude of voices in the criticism world, especially in the small New York dance community (where artists and choreographers eagerly await the response of three or four heralded critics). But dance critics, like all other critics and reporters in the field, face a changing industry and what are they doing to adapt to it? The answer is, not much. For example, dance reviews on both the New York Times and the Village Voice Web sites are staid pages with just text and image, without any arena where readers can give feedback or post comments. The possibilities are endless….

The nature of dance, as I have learned, is both collaborative and flexible. Dancers and choreographers work together to create movement, different bodies must adapt to each other and to varying conditions of studio space, injuries, staging, costumes, and lighting. Why can’t writing about dance adhere to the same virtues? As an editor of a major news outlets, I would give critics their space, but the conversation would be opened to include a myriad of opinions and voices so the reader would be more informed. For dance, an art that at its essence is intangible and lives in the present, video would always accompany the reviews. (In this future world, problems with copyrights, etc wouldn’t exist….). Let me take a moment and outline how the tools of online media could greatly benefit dance criticism.

- As I said above, video should be an integral piece of dance reviews and articles, including those of past performances and/or the performance being reviewed. Videos of rehearsals could also give readers an invaluable behind-the-scenes perspective.

- Most reviews are accompanied by images, but a comprehensive slideshow would help enhance the descriptions in the articles.

- Have interviews with choreographers, presenters, and dancers available via podcasts.

- Have a link to the artist’s or choreographer’s statement about their work. Having attended many dance performances with those unfamiliar with the art form, I’ve realized that audience members often look for the intended meaning in a dance. Posting this statement from the artist would give them a voice and provide a potential or former audience member with background into the choreographic process.

- Have a taste aggregator like Amazon.com…if you like this choreographer’s work, you may like this one…links to reviews and other articles about the suggested choreographer would be available to readers.

- Post links to the choreographer and presenter’s Web sites so the reader can then gain more information about the performance.

- Have a link to technorati.com to see what blogs are saying about the performance and the choreographer.

- Have a link at the bottom of the article that allows readers to send emails and comments to the critic.

- Host message boards and fan forums in which the public can comment on the performance and artists. Live discussions with critics and artists could also help increase reader feedback, helping to transform the strictly defined relationship between these three groups.

- During the season (new work is most often premiered during the September-June months), have links to blogs in which critics and outside bloggers examine the new work and trends.

- Post links to a calendar of local performances and events.

In the effort of full disclosure, I studied dance at Connecticut College, have worked in the arts as a grantwriter for the past two years, and am passionate about dance. Having said that, I believe that figuring out how to write and publish collaboratively about dance in way that incorporates multimedia, would reinvigorate dance criticism and would invite the audience and readers into the art form.