Ok, so we all know about 'The Wisdom Of Crowds' and other productive forms of mob mentality. It allegedly works in business, but can it work in journalism? Well two seperate experiments are banking on the fact that it does...

1. Our friends at The Economist are working on Project Red Stripe which hopes to come up with a viable Internet media business at the end of a mega-brainstorming session, to which anyone is free to contribute. (Including business media rivals with too much free time on their hands, who may spam them with ridiculous ideas - heh heh!). Excerpt: "We're a small team set up by The Economist Group, the parent company of the eponymous newspaper. Our mission is to develop truly innovative services online. We already have some ideas, of course. But as champions of free markets, we abhor the concept of a closed system. This is why we would like you to submit your idea (or ideas). Just think big - and we'll do the rest." More Here

Jay Rosen wants to get professional journalists and interested amateurs to join forces in a new age online newsroom at Assignment Zero. Excerpt: Inspired by the open source movement, this is an attempt to bring journalists together with people in the public who can help cover a story. More Here. Wikipedia of course is the mother of all collaborative projects and there's tons of editorial debate that happens over entries. I guess this hopes to take it one step further than the arm-chair debates between editors, to field-work and original fact gathering by reporters. Fascinating!

Cross Posted at the Espresso Economics blog.