Watching Jay Rosen

Wednesday, November 14, 2007 by Dave Winer.

One of the biggest scores of BloggerCon I in October 2003 was connecting with Jay Rosen, journalism prof at NYU. He predicted almost everything we're doing today with blogging, long before there was a world-wide web. He understood that eventually publishing tools would become easier and cheaper, as would distribution, and that eventually the ability to write and publish news would become more commonplace. He used different words for what we do, but we understood what he was saying anyway. He taught us so much about the value of journalism, things we understood intuitively, he gave us words for. 

At Jeff Jarvis's journalism conference at CUNY in October, Jay talked about his latest idea, combining the tools of social networking and journalism, combining the expertise of the readers and community members with the resources of professional news organizations. 

The project he described then is now launching as part of NewAssignment.net. I've learned to pay attention to Jay Rosen, and recommend the same to anyone interested in the future of blogging, publishing and news.