About a month ago, Jay Rosen, a journalism professor at New York University, published a post on his blog about an idea that could make journalism better by allowing more people to participate in the journalistic process: ExplainThis.

Aware of the importance of context and research in the news environment, Rosen explained to the Poynter Online that his idea was based on a user-centric approach to news.

As conceived by Rosen, ExplainThis would have two parts. One would be an open system through which users can ask and answer questions and vote on them. The second part would involve "journalists standing by."

According to Rosen, journalists would monitor questions, ultimately answering those that meet three conditions:

1) many people are asking the same thing
2) the question can't be answered well via an ordinary or a sophisticated search
3) answering the question would require the work of journalism, in other words, serious investigative and explanatory work.

The unifying theme in Rosen's work is the idea that as you help people understand, they will become bigger consumers of news. In an interview with the Poynter, Rosen revealed that he believed "journalism can be improved if more people participate in it." He ellaborated that his idea could lead people to participate in the news system as "not only consumers but in some way producers" too.

Although ExplainThis might echo Yahoo! Answers! user-generated Q&A format, Rosen's sources of inspiration include Slate's Explainer Column, MyReporter.com, the Planet Money Team at National Public Radio, and Cody Brown, a former student with his own start-up. Rosen also likened the deep background knowledge with the updated foreground knowledge ExplainThis could provide with Wikipedia's collaborative project.

Poynter Online reports that Rosen's work on ExplainThis is taking two directions. In one, he is developing the "architecture of soliciting, sorting, and refining questions from users for journalists to answer" as an open-source project that anyone can adapt. The other direction is establishing a partnership with news organizations to provide the journalists who will stand by.

So far, one of the key aspects of Rosen's ExplainThis remains its main challenge - the journalists. For one, the questions users might throw at the journalists "who are standing by" might as well be answered by a panel of experts, ranging from a number of fields, from economists to lawyers and doctors. Rosen's example of a complex question - why is corn still subsidized? (at least in the U.S.) - could be answered by a journalist, but also probably by an economist, a political scientist, and someone who specializes in public policy. Furthermore, Rosen hints at creating a partnership with other news organizations to provide journalists to take care of this, but so far has not come up with a clear idea of where the journalists are going to be coming from (will they be working pro-bono? will they be part of established news organizations?). On the other hand, after some serious research, journalists could provide consumers with accessible and easy-to-understand answers to complex questions.

Although a business model on how Rosen's idea would bring in money has not been finalized, Rosen's ExplainThis concept shows a lot of potential in an age where consumer-generated content is on the rise.

Since the publication of his ExplainThis idea on his blog, Rosen has received offers from developers to build out the Web Site. He is also discussing with a national media company the development of a feature based on ExplainThis, though nothing is definite, according to the Poynter Online.

Sources: Poynter Online, Jay Rosen's blog

Images: Jay Rosen