Although in its infancy, baby genious citizen journalism has given birth to numerous experiments - some more successful than others.
One of its spin-offs is the ‘campaign journalism.’

OffTheBus is Jay Rosen and Arianna Huffington’s new project, one that will allow ‘the crowd’ to cover the 2008 presidential campaign. The campaign has already been characterized by new media experiments, such as the CNN/YouTube debates. 
The project was announced on March 2007 at Press Think. Jay Rosen said it would consist of “campaign reporting by a great many more people than would ever fit on the bus,” the same bus that reporters “have famously gotten on and off every four years, as they try to cover the race for president.” 

According to Huffington, the new project is ‘the wisdom of the crowd’ that ‘hits the ‘08 campaign trail’. “We’ve seen what happens when the reportorial elite begins feeding off the same informational teat, and conventional wisdom becomes the order of the day (Exhibit A is, and will always be, the press’ shameful lack of questioning during the run-up to the war in Iraq),” she said. “Our volunteer reporters will aim to provide an authentic counter-narrative to the lockstep consensus we often get from the mainstream media.”

The approach of Off The Bus is covering the election is with a special attention to the social aspect of the debate, and the diversity of the contributions.

“Instead of hundreds of reporters on the bus, all doing the same beat, we’ll have hundreds of different beats (and melodies) coming not from the campaign trail but from different places in the United States where politics is part of life, and the presidential campaign ‘lands’ on people every four years, as if from above,” Rosen said.

Some months ago, Rosen decided to create a platform to explore the possibilities of growing citizen journalism. The platform was called Assignment Zero. The subject Rosen wanted to cover was the ways in which communities, or ‘the crowd,’ were coming together in creative processes.

Jeff Howe, contributing editor at Wired magazine, looks back in an article on ‘Wired magazine’ to make an assessment of the project, that ended on June 5. Even if the original aim of producing over 80 feature stories wasn’t accomplished, he calls it a ‘highly satisfying failure.’ Howe says that the real value of the exercise was discovery, learning about how crowds come together, and what’s required to organize them well.

The lessons learnt at Assignment Zero will be therefore carried into political space with OffTheBus, launched in mid-July 2007. Rosen calls it the ‘open platform campaign news bureau’ and defines some of the rules for posting. “We don’t want your latest rant at Bush or dig at the Clintons. Sounding off at some stray headline won’t cut it.”

Contributors to OffTheBus may find a FAQ post at Press Think.

E. Delaini 

Published: August 24, 2007