Rosen, who began teaching at NYU in 1986 after completing his doctorate in media studies at the same institution, is the brains behind New Assignment, an Internet-based project that strives to combine the best qualities of professional and citizen journalism.
 
Several labels have been tagged to Rosen's vision; pro-am (professional-amateur) journalism, open source journalism, smart-mob journalism, a middle path and journalism without the media.
 
Traditional media are not yet sure how to handle the influx of competition from people that used to be only their customers but a recent $100,000 injection from Reuters shows that the MSM is interested and watching New Assignment's evolution closely.
 
Rosen chatted with the Editors Weblog about his project and his forecast for the future of journalism:

Could you describe your idea of the "middle path" between traditional and citizen journalism?

"All the terms we use to describe the ideas behind New Assignment are related. If you distinguish journalism from the media, as I have for a long time, then it is clear that the practice of journalism, particularly high quality journalism, is not limited to the media or to media organizations. We happen to be part of a time when the professional media successfully monopolized the practice of journalism. But that was just an era and all eras end.
 
"What's exciting about journalism and being a professor and practitioner of the craft today is that where the press has been professional and for profit, non-profit journalism is now hardly amateur; amateurs have more of the press today than they have in the past.
 
"I don't think that amateurs should or could take over the press, but there certainly exists a professional and amateur wing of journalism. The amateur sphere is not going to develop discipline on its own – it needs to begin generating informational trust and reliability. That's where the pro-am part of New Assignment comes in and what makes this experiment different.

"In the Internet era, the costs for people to find each other, share information and work together are falling rapidly. We're trying to discover what this horizontal dimension means for investigative reporting. That involves figuring out practical methods for using social networks and volunteers."

Have you started any projects?

"We've begun a joint project with Wired News that builds on their idea of writing an article via wikis. We haven't defined it as of yet but it's along the lines of how to do social network journalism within a particular news organization. For starters, it's easier to work with Wired because they were born on the web.
 
"We're looking at possible joint projects with other media organizations. We've discussed the project with professional journalists who are generally interested - they think that user-generated content is going to be big - but also cautious. They all ask the same question: 'Are people other than us really reliable? You're going to publish unverified information?'
 
"These worries are understandable. I don't know if it's going to work either. But we're trying to figure out, how do you build trust online when your journalistic practices are open to anyone who wants to contribute? In this sense, I think we not only need more professional journalism but we need more people aiming for the same standards of professional journalists. Attaining these standards is crucial because amateurs in the future will be an important part of the press."

How do you verify that information is truthful when it can come from so many sources?

"We're working on some principles, not exactly guidelines, but principles that will help build a system of reliability appropriate to the Web. I've been making a careful study of open source software, especially the radical 'anyone can play' aspect of it. When you look at the history of open source and how volunteers donate their time, talent, how they build something for the public, then you begin to get a sense of what makes this horizontal gathering of information practical."

How does New Assignment tie in with Dan Gillmor's idea that news is a conversation? New Assignment seems to be "news as cooperation".

"Dan is an advisor on the project. New Assignment starts with his mantra as a journalist, 'my readers know more than I do,' which I think is one of the most important statements made about the press in a long time. New Assignment is trying to discover where and when that applies and how to make good on the idea instead of just discussing things in theory.
 
"This is why it's best to launch this project without a given model because we don't know how it's going to work. We'll try everything. Local, national or international projects, we'll work with freelancers, mainstream media journalists, aspiring journalists. This is how a lot of enterprises are starting on the net. They get going and they see what works well as they move along.

What's your biggest worry about the project? What do you think will be the most difficult aspect of it to develop?

"I'm worried about two things. We don't need a lot of money but we still need to raise some.
 
"After that, I'm worried about attracting users which we need to make our assumptions flow with activity. Developing a core community is the first challenge in a start-up like this. Once we create that nucleus of people, the rest of the idea starts to flow.

"We're going to try everything; forums, regular polling of members, traditional editorial judgment, etc. We'll be open to stories generated by users in bottom-up fashion, by editors from the top down, and by writers in the middle.  We're hoping users will help us define what the editorial priorities of New Assignment should be as well as asking them to develop on stories. We're also hoping that some of the principles of journalism, such as fact checking, will turn out to be valuable to the users themselves. We want to lower the barriers to participation while at the same time raising the bar on quality."

Some useful links to the development of New Assignment:

Short introduction, with links to longer posts and to press, blog reactions...
Jay's post launching the idea for New Assignment.
The most common objections and problems
Announcement of Reuters grant with comments from Reuters execs.
The Economist on why experiments like New Assignment are emerging.