Seed’s Goal Is To “Redefine Journalism For The Internet Age,”

Last December, Saul Hansell left his job as a veteran reporter and blogger at the New York Times to become the programming director for Aol’s Seed, which is the new online assignment desk for Aol’s 80 different Websites. In his first blog post since he took on the new job, Hansell admits that his new career path was met by “a lot of blank stares” from friends and family. Seed is still a bit of a mystery to many, but its essentially a way for Aol to assign articles to anyone on the Web beyond the 3,500 journalists and professional freelancers it employs directly. Why is this important? As Hansell explains:

AOL is a very different company now. It is independent again. And its mission is to redefine journalism for the Internet age.

Seed is supposed to help by assigning the stories that “satisfy the world’s curiosity” (the Seed Creed). Hansell does his best to make writing articles for Aol at $30 to $300 a pop sound enticing:

Seed is different because AOL is different. With such a large staff of professional journalists working with Seed and some very sophisticated news-gathering technology, our sites offer readers a level of quality and breadth that others simply can’t match.

And that means the experience of working for Seed is very different as well. Your work will appear right next to articles written by Pulitzer Prize winners and other journalists at the top of their game on sites seen daily by millions of people. And we’re not just asking you to write from home in your pajamas. We’re inviting you, if you’re interested, to pick up your reporters’ notebook and join us in our front row seats watching the most interesting events in our world.

Read more . . .

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Tags: aol, assignment desk, blogger, internet age, new york times, professional freelancers, professional journalists, pulitzer prize winners, redefine journalism, reporters notebook, saul hansell, veteran reporter

This entry was posted on Sunday, January 24th, 2010 at 1:04 pm and is filed under Communications, Consider This, Innovation, Innovation Needed, Shape of Things to Come?. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.