I know blogswarm linked to it in the Quickies, but its kinda a family thing for me, so I figured it deserved its own post.  My uncle Jay (Rosen) has been talking for years about putting together a distributed journalism site that would allow people to work collaboratively on in-depth research projects.  The kind that are increasingly rare in MSM.  His theory is that you can assign tasks and break projects into small chunks and create a cohesive whole with a few paid people.

He got funding from Reuters and a few other places to get it going and put his lectures in to practice.  And when I say lectures, I mean lectures, the man has never written anything short in his life 😛  Love you uncle… He teamed up with WIRED magazine for the first project, which is on crowdsourcing, a term WIRED came up with.

The site and project is called Assignment Zero and was built by my brother’s firm (Chapter Three LLC).  (I told you it was all in the family.)  So, if you see bugs, please leave them in the comments and I will be sure to get it back to the techies.

They have assignments for you, should you wish to get involved, including one from my favorite t-shirt store Threadless.  There is a message board to communicate with others working on the assignment.  A blog written by Lauren Sandler, the editor of Assignment 0, to help coordinate.  Plus you can fill out a survey to lend your voice to the project, which is a great opportunity to help out without taking a whole lot of time.

Best place to start is this basic intro to get you pointed in the right direction.

Go forth and make history!