And The Beat Goes On

Hot on the heels of Assignment Zero comes Jay Rosen’s latest project which aims to marry beat reporting with social networking.

Beatblogging.org is a NewAssignment.Net initiative and is being launched by Rosen along with 12 participating news groups.

The dozen disciples are beat reporters from newspapers, TV stations and websites based in the US and each will follow their own experimental path to see how setting up a network connecting their various contacts could improve reporting.

Among the journalists taking part is an education reporter from the Dallas Morning News, a science reporter from the Houston Chronicle and a neighbourhood correspondent at the Patriot-News in Pennsylvania.

Writing on his PressThink blog, Rosen explains: “This is a simple project testing a single idea - maybe a beat reporter could do a way better job if there was a ‘live’ social network connected to the beat, made up of people who know the territory the beat covers and want the reporting on that beat to be better.

“Each reporter is going into this in their own fashion - they run it. They fund it. They venture into it independently but simultaneously with others trying similar combinations.”

Rosen’s crowdsourcing project Assignment Zero in collaboration with Wired.com drew to a close earlier this year and his verdict on its outcome can be found on his blog.