I was in Connecticut all weekend and got in early on Monday to a full inbox. The one that intrigued me the most was from NewAssignment.Net founder Jay Rosen.

“Are you around? What are you doing tonight?”

After talking with Amanda Michel, a colleague from Assignment Zero and OffTheBus.Net organizer, I knew exactly what I was doing. I quickly showered and met up with Jay, Amanda and Neil, a new OffTheBus employee at the Huffington Post office in SoHo.

We were going to cover the YouTube/CNN Debate. Of course — this meant that we were going to organize coverage of the debate with volunteers from around the country.

“This is going to be on the fly,” said Michel.

In truth, that’s just the way I like it. I got to the HuffPost headquarters and set up right next to Amanda. It was just like old times during the thick of Assignment Zero.

In this post what follows is:

1. A quick analysis of how we organized network journalism on the fly.

2. What we produced.

3. Thoughts on the social media aspect of the CNN/YouTube debate itself (update: turned into a seperate post)

READ MORE AFTER THE BREAK….

It’s amazing how much organizing can be done for free online. That goes for personal organizing (free email, calenders, blogs, etc) and social organizing. Just today TechCrunch had a post Nine ways to build your own social network.

Wikis and networks and Chat rooms, oh my!

I won’t event attempt to list all the free online tools that could be used for distributed reporting. That is a separate post in itself. But it goes without saying — they are out there and they are cheap and easy to use. I’d even argue that Facebook is a tool that could be used for distributed reporting. It’s all about figuring out what a community needs and the best means to meet those demands.

And that’s what makes this such an exciting time for new media journalism. Creating an effort in network journalism from the ground up is a bit like chemistry. A sprinkle of public wikis, a dash of CampWare and OffTheBus had a means to communicate and collect reporting.

A public wiki and a chat room are like the baking soda and vineger of network journalism. They are easy to use and react instantly. It helps, however, if you have the right amount of each. The wiki should be organized and a populated with examples before the start of the public reporting. Unfortunately — we didn’t have that luxury on debate night. In fact, the Internet at the Huffington Post went out — so me and Amanda ran to a nearby Starbucks and began organizing the wiki with just 10 minutes before the debate started.

We had four topics to cover and instantly started to organize the wiki once we had Internet, posting instructions and examples.

1. Media Watch - track media coverage of the debates
2. Researching YouTube participants/questioners - to keep information on the people who appear in videotaped questions
3. How did CNN and Google chose the videos?

Each topic got its own chatroom in Campware, so Amanda and I jumped back in the chats and began seeing who wanted to work on what. Jay and Neil with both in the chat rooms too, begining to motivate people to work on blog posts and finding out where interest lay.

I focused mainly on researching the YouTube participants. This intrigued me the most, since it was the new social aspect of the debate and I also saw it as staying true to the Off The Bus approach in covering the election. Who were these people and how did CNN choose the videos?

In the chat one super contributor kept track of all the questions that were asked and I would copy and paste them into the wiki. Meanwhile Neil and I were also finding people who could start to Google and call any of the YouTube questioners that we could.

(side note: I was really happy to see Assignment Zero contributors that had traveled over to Off The Bus — it inspired a real community feel for me).

As far as the chemistry of tools goes (Campeware and PB Wiki) I was actually a bit disappointed. As common as PB wikis is — it can be a bit cumbersome and slow. Furthermore, cutting and pasting from the Campeware chat to the Wiki meant a lot of back and forth, it also meant each chat needed it’s own wiki page and a designated go-between person so wires weren’t crossed (journalists hate when they cross wires with other people).

If I were to go back, I’d want to look at different options. Something simple — that removes toggling back and forth.

All in all, however, I’d say Off The Bus did a decent job in its first “on the fly” coverage of an event. Zack Exley was at the debates getting live coverage and our internet team produced some good stories.

Here’s a taste.

1. No Sport of Kings: How the Questioners Featured in Last Night’s Debate Feel Now: Written by Jay Rosen — this compiled many of the interviews and research we did on who got to ask questions at last night’s debate.
2. The Consensus On Last Night’s Debate Format
3. Debate Night Coverage: CNN vs. FOX
4. Google in the Political Sphere: You Can’t Stop the Signal
5. And Lots More: Go to OffTheBus.Net for more.

But once again: The most fascinating part were the lessons learned. Assignment Zero was intense every single day, but our deadline was always somewhere in the distant horizon. This was fast network journalism.

Internet communities are like any real community. You need a Sherrif, a town meeting hall, public utilities, etc. etc. Last night Off The Bus showed just how quickly they can set up camp and move out. As with all things, the next time we go camping, we will be that much more agile and prepared.

For my thoughts on the social media aspect of the debate itself — see this post on NewAssignment.Net