Over at Assignment Zero my role has shifted recently. I still handle most of the content on the back end, the site improvements that I spreadheaded are almost complete — and now I’m helping to set up other editors to take over specific topics.

I admit I’ve been slow to blog recently, apologies. Still, some of my favorite journalism bloggers somehow find time to do it every day. How, I don’t know.

Assignment Zero is still my main focus right now. But I hope to improve my blogging here by dropping little tidbits of what I learn about how, what I sometimes call "punk rock journalism.&quot, works.

These editors responsibilities as I see them are different from a traditional journalist.

How does one do journalism in a networked age?

1. Set up shop

We are inviting people to come into a mutual space and work on a project together. That space has to be spruced up first. Put a welcome mate in front of the door and make sure to have appetizers out for the early guests.

2. Outreach

The idea behind networked journalism is that other people are already interested in the topic somewhere out there in the blogosphere. Smart mobs are already organized around niche blogs, they just don’t have a platform to collaborate. Hopefully by now you’ve set up shop. Now you need to ping them and let them know. If you are covering the environment, for example, lord knows how many environmental blogs are out there, waiting for the chance to contribute their time, information, expert knowledge of a subject to a greater cause. Outreach in this sense is more than just a newsroom opening up a comment thread to their stories. It’s actively seeking out contributors.

3. Working with Participants

Easier said than done. Journalists aren’t trained to necessarily engage or collaborate with other people on a project. Just as there is a gap in the number of journalists with online skills or management skills, being a journalist doesn’t necessarily mean you know how to engage, manager or communicate with volunteers. This is actually an important and subtle talent

4. Edit the Copy

Ahhh, a sigh of relief. We haven’t gotten to this stage in Assignment Zero, so I won’t know for sure. But since the final copy is produced by one person that works with a crowd of researchers, I imagine it will be somewhat similar to traditional editing of copy.

And that’s all I have time to spew out right now. More to come eventually.

On a side note: Don’t forget to check me out at Vibe Wire’s e-Festival of ideas. I’ll be on a virtual panel with……  Dan Gillmore!!!!  For those who don’t know me — I am a huge fan of Gillmore’s — and the only downside to being on the same panel as him: I won’t be able to quote him as I often do to explain what’s going on in citizen journalism. Oh well, I guess I’ll have to come up with my own brilliant tag lines over the weekend.