In a Q&A with the Online Journalism Review, USC Annenberg professor Marc Cooper reviews his experience with Off The Bus so far. One of the main lessons “is that both sides of the debate over old and new media have been right, and you have to find the right hybrid.”

For background on Off The Bus, a pro-am journalism aggregator focusing on the US presidential campaign launched by the Huffington Post and new media guru Jay Rosen, click here.

Cooper’s most significant quote about the lessons learned from Off The Bus:

“What we've learned is that both sides of the debate over old and new media have been right, and you have to find the right hybrid.”

“So we know that you can multiply, or amplify, your resources and amplify your power of reporting and researching through the use of the internet in a way that was not possible before it was invented.”

“On the other hand, it is true that you cannot produce good journalism without people who understand reporting and writing and news judgment and editing and all that kid of stuff.”

What are the different types of people who submit pieces?

“There's a handful of individuals who have emerged out of nowhere who have turned out to be great citizen reporters. I'll refer you to one you can look up: Mayhill Fowler.

“Then there's a sub-category of folks who know how to write, but they're not journalists. They may be professors or lawyers, and they're kind of experts in their fields.

“The next category of people that we've recruited as individuals comes from the realization that while we're a project of citizen journalism, we didn't invent that (…) So we learned early on that it would be good to recruit people who were already doing this, but weren't getting much notice. Some of them I have no idea what they do, but they do these political blogs, and we've kind of adopted them.

“The third category is real, live distributive journalism, where we have found that while a lot of people can't really be reporters -- they don't have the time or the skill -- distributive research does work (…) we've done maybe six or eight pieces that were very complicated to do in which 30 or 40 people participated.”

The editorial process of Off The Bus in the latter case is somewhat similar to the traditional editorial chain – with its own specificities. Grassroots journalists do the initial reporting, which is then processed by staff or contracted individuals with some experience. Finally, the pieces are edited by an experienced writer (doesn’t mean he’s part of the fulltime editorial staff).

Sounds like it’s working so far, although there’s little information about the business viability of the not-for-profit venture.

Source: Online Journalism Review