I'm quite impressed with Assignment Zero's first piece of "pro-am" journalism, co-published with Wired magazine. This special report on Citzendium, a new competitor to Wikipedia, is the first in a series of articles about crowdsourcing, collaboratively written by a team of citizen journalists and professional editors. The collaboration seems to have paid off: the reporting is first-rate, based on factual information, vetted through multiple sources, with a variety of independent viewpoints and very helpful context. Thumbs up to AZ for a job well done!

This is a truly impressive story. Well-sourced, with links to supporting material in the text, and as fair as a story like this with a couple different forks is likely to get, I'd recommend it to anyone who regularly consults Wikipedia for information. This appears to be a first effort to bring citizen journalists together with professional journalists to write news stories. I'm looking foward to more from this collaboration.

At dinner a few weeks ago, my son's girlfriend--a high-school teacher--told me her students routinely use Wikipedia for reference. They're shocked when she doesn't allow it for papers because of how inaccurate it is. I've personally found it interesting and informative, though sometimes hard to navigate. So I suggested that if the students used the references at the end of listings to validate the information, it might still be useful. She said she might allow that. Considering that she's only 25, it's a pretty damming indictment of the accuracy of the information.

Citizendium is to Wikipedia as NewsTrust is to Digg. Will the crowd-sourced sites win over the potentially more accurate sites where people take personal responsibility for what they say. Unfortunately this seems doubtful. Without anonimity, there is more risk in making an authorititave statement. No matter what you say, a large number of people may disagree, and with your real name they can track you down...