Good Morning Silicon Valley

Somehow, there’s got to be a way to harness the power of interested citizens in the wired world and pool their time and talent to produce well-researched, timely and consistent journalism on subjects large and small. It’s just that nobody’s found it yet. Today’s good for taking the temperature of the citizen journalism movement, with three interesting perspectives making the rounds.

Marc Potts conducts a post-mortem on Backfence, his venture into hyperlocal participatory journalism, which recently went casters-up. Potts still believes strongly in the concept, but is painfully aware of the challenges, both on the business front and organizational task of building, motivating and maintaining a community of people willing to do a whole lot of work for personal satisfaction and a smidge of recognition. The lessons Potts learned are illuminating reading.

Over at Wired, Jeff Howe deconstructs the experiment that was Assignment Zero, an effort to produce the definitive report on how crowds of volunteers are upending established businesses. The project suffered from a poorly chosen topic, staff departures and contributor confusion and only produced a portion of what it set out to do, but Howe calls it “a highly satisfying failure.”

Finally, ex-Merc columnist and godfather of citizen journalism Dan Gillmor has put together a year-over-year review of the field, and sums things up this way: “We’ve come a long way. There’s a growing recognition and appreciation of why citizen journalism matters. Investments, from media organizations and others, are fueling experiments of various kinds. Revenue models are taking early shape. And, most important, there’s a flood of great ideas. But we have a long, long way to go. We need much more experimentation in journalism and community information projects. The business models are, at best, uncertain — and some notable failures are discouraging. Dealing with the issues of trust, credibility and ethics is essential; as are more tools and training, including a dramatically updated notion of media literacy.”

And speaking of a growing appreciation for hyperlocal, community-oriented news, none other than the Washington Post has heard the call, launching LoudounExtra.com, narrowly targeted to the world of Loudoun County, Va., and its 272,000 residents. “There will be stories about things that normally would not make it into the pages of the Washington Post, like mailboxes being knocked down,” said Rob Curley, vice president of product development for Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive. “It has every Rotary meeting, every Bible study group. It is very local.” The venture has twin goals — attract local readers and give local advertisers a more targeted online audience. Should it succeed, the Post may expand the concept to other parts of its circulation area. Do the pros really have the resources and sensibility to do this better than the amateurs? Or is this another step on the way to a hybrid, multi-faceted type of journalism that includes both? We’ll wait for Dan’s next state of union assessment.