Once, there were publications, there were readers, and any exchange between the two occurred on the Letters to the Editor page. Now the line between the two has blurred to the point that readers are becoming auxiliary members of the editorial staff. "One thing that publications have to acknowledge is that readers know a lot, and that [publications] can access their knowledge and interest and expertise," said Sreenath Sreenivasan, a professor at the Columbia School of Journalism. Tapping social networks and the wisdom of the readers — or "crowdsourcing," as some call it — is an increasingly important element of many publications. NewAssignment.net, a non-profit venture launched in 2006 by New York University journalism professor Jay Rosen has attracted more than 700 volunteers to work alongside professional journalists on AssignmentZero, a collaborative effort to report on the crowdsourcing phenomenon.
As Rosen sees it, citizen journalism is a natural product of the Web, which, from its origins at the CERN physics laboratory, was intended to be a collaborative platform to link information residing on geographically dispersed computers. "He wasn"t trying to invent a platform for InfoWorld or CNN to distribute its product," Rosen said, referring to Tim Berners-Lee. "He thought he was creating a new platform for people to collaborate on things. The Web was born as a collaboration mechanism."