Learning from Assignment Zero

Hmmm, is it just me, or is it not peculiar how this question was thrown out, so to speak, in the middle of that Wired article and yet not really explored and/or answered? Because whenever I read about crowdsourcing, my mind free associates to the problem of outsourcing and why, as Rosen asks, all of these “citizen journalists/ volunteers” have no problems contributing their labor for free.
“Why are these people willing to work for free?” — Jay Rosen in Wired News, on the launch of Assignment Zero
That question, too, is always first on my mind whenever I read about these projects. I think that it is important to ask, what does crowdsourcing mean for professional writers/researchers from a financial standpoint? One inevitably finds similarities to the economic issues that plague composition teaching.
On a related note, this discussion about crowdsourcing reminds me of an article in the NYTimes Magazine about the Wikipedia cadre of volunteers from several weeks back, which also speculated about motives behind volunteering and raised some interesting and highly relevant questions about the lack of journalistic experience on the part of many young “wikipedians” and their presumptions about being able to obtain/police neutrality in their entries (while leaving out the crucial qualification of “alleged”).

Worth a read, if you haven’t already.

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I hate to come off as adversarial here — not my intent — yet I do pause at the concept of “*choosing* to do work for free” because I am not one to believe that the choice is always such a deliberate or conscious one. I mean, if most people had a direct choice between a paid job and an unpaid job, it is pretty obvious that they would choose the former. Similarly, if most (all?) university writing instructors had the choice between, say, a 45,000 job and piecemeal adjunct work at 2,500 or less per course, again, the choice would seem an obvious one. Point being that they are not actually choosing if alternative (paid) scenarios are not available — or even if they are choosing non-tangible rewards such as recognition, prestige or resume lines, I don’t believe that it is safe to assume that they are necessarily choosing not to be paid, at least not on a conscious basis. And I think that is where Rosen’s question comes into play — sure, folks will do this kind of work for the prestige (reputation) of being affiliated with Wired, still, by my assessment, that is not all that different than adjuncts/lecturers taking any teaching job at any pay that is available as a matter of maintaining an institutional affiliation or their professional status (reputation) as a teacher. I would hazard to say that in both cases you have cultural institutions using their cultural capital to entice a labor force to contribute their work for free or for pennies in exchange for a kind of psychic gratification of sharing in the (again, non-tangible) aura of that institution’s cultural capital — capital that they wouldn’t otherwise be able to partake of in the more competitive, occasionally-oligarchic arena of professional writing. Although I would agree that the analogy is limited by the fact that magazines’ reputations (cultural capital) are nearly exclusively dependent upon the quality of their writing — hence their desire to retain good writers, as you say — whereas universities need not care so much about quality of instruction in cases where research/scholarship has supplanted teaching as a source of reputation/capital — or when universities already know that adjuncts are often just as qualified, if not moreso, as t-t instructors (yet they can get away with paying adjuncts peanuts anyway). So, yes, the analogy may be a limited one — but only limited, I would argue, by how much is at risk for the institutions’ reputation in lowering the wage bar, and perhaps what Wired is (indirectly) doing with such an experiment as Assignment Zero is testing the quality of the (crowdsourcing) waters to see how crowdsourcing stands as a final product in relationship to its current models. Perhaps. I mean, 95K is, in fact, an investment — surely not just play money — and many companies similarly invest in and experiment with automating technologies/practices for the purpose of streamlining expenditures. That is to say, Wired may not be getting something for free even as they are still possibly making an investment with the hope of some kind of a future return once the system & tech is functioning more seamlessly. And, for certain, a university can likewise invest 95K in the salaries of two (or three) WPA’s to manage the crowds of adjuncts — likewise not exactly getting something for free yet still creating an administrative structure that keeps the masses in their place. So, anyway, those are a few of the grounds on which I find similarities. One of my main interests lately has been the concept of the psychic economy — which includes defining what is meant by “want” or “wanting” to give away labor — that underwrites how universities and other cultural institutions do business.
I also wanted to note — and maybe this has been noted elsewhere — that a precursor to this concept of crowdsourcing can be found in the customer-service business models of companies such as ebay. With ebay, it might be called customerservicesourcing, with customer service almost entirely farmed off to the community message boards, where members are “encouraged” to answer one another’s queries and concerns. Of course, ebay has gotten some flack for this over the years, and is now offering more direct customer service via chat, yet in its early years, as you may well know, it was extremely difficult to get direct customer service, and it still is next to impossible to get telephone customer service. Nobody can tell me that ebay’s recent 50 percent rise in profits is not at least partly attributable to its own crowdsourcing version of customer service that minimalizes its workforce. And there, too, it is interesting to speculate about why and how ebayers get sucked into giving away their time and labor for free.
Oh, and on the rhet/comp book review idea, as I recall, wasn’t there — once upon a time in a graduate program far, far away — an effort to create either a listserv or electronic journal devoted to book reviews. I forget how long that project existed — a year or two — or how it panned out? Anyway, when reading your earlier entry, I actually had a few theories about why the project is not so attractive a decade later as self-promotion (as opposed to collegially helping to promote others’ works, as book reviews do) and careerism has increasingly come to reign in the profession. I was also going to note that one of the things that I have noticed, on an informal basis, is that nearly half of the book reviews out there in comp/rhet appear to have been written by someone who is part of the extended (social or educational) network of the author of the book being reviewed. In other words, my sense is that many book reviews are often tribal in nature — meaning that people who are a part of the same rhet/comp networks or graduate programs are willing to set aside their own quest after academic capital (or recognition) to promote the work of one of their own — and increasingly on that condition alone. I was also going to note that for years, I have found it peculiar how many of the seminal texts in composition studies have never received a single review on Amazon — is it because, as an earlier commentator on this blog alludes, reviewing on amazon is perceived as too populist and unpoliced at that? That there is not a gatekeeping mechanism in place, so noone is willing to offer up a few comments? I might speculate that the scarcity of comments on Amazon for some comp/rhet books might have some indirect correlation to the unwillingness to take up the task of bookreviewing — they might spring from similar assumptions, perhaps.

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Umm, you’re decontextualizing my words a bit. I didn’t say that “academics *ought* to write books out of a sense of collegiality” — rather, I said that they already *do* write book reviews out of a sense of network affiliation and familiarity. There was no imperative in my previous comment. For instance, without naming names (it’s that search engine thing, again), I can count on more than one hand the number of book reviews by Albany-affiliated people for Albany-affiliated people that I have seen over the years. So, it’s not that I am objecting to any motives — indeed, I am far more inclined to find the quid-pro-quo book reviewing somewhat problematic, especially when there is no disclosure.
Okay, I can see, now, how you might have interpreted my earlier comment “as opposed to collegially helping to promote others’ works” as some kind of position — actually, it was intended as more of a value judgment than an imperative — that is, an observation about how values have shifted in the profession as a possible explanation for the decline in book-reviewing. Sure, you could say that I am objecting to the rampant, career-climbing individualism that pervades the post-20th C. academy — yet I can do that without simultaneously saying that people should give away their labor for the better, communal, institutionally-manufactured good. Protesting the former does not mean that I am advocating the latter — as if there were no happy medium. I happen to think that you’re conflating two separate issues here — because, originally, your book review website idea said nothing about compensation issues, so that angle was not on the table when I responded; however, if you are going to raise the issue now, I would say in response, sure, why shouldn’t academics get paid for book-reviewing labor? I certainly never said that they should substitute collegiality for payment as a motive, and if we are going to apply this analysis as an addendum, then why not go ahead and argue that academics should get paid for all of their writing — rather than being duped by the cv-line exchange economy wherein writing is reduced to a token or artificial academic currency?
So, I don’t see a viable juxtaposition here — because I believe that neither academics nor participants in crowdsourcing should ever sacrifice their own financial welfare for an institution’s or corporation’s loftier mission, and yet that belief does not necessarily mean that I am saying every person for her/himself with no consideration for the needs of others. I would say that there is a crucial distinction to be made between servicing the needs (bottom line) of a cultural institution and servicing the needs of one’s colleagues/allies/students — although I am well-aware that contemporary institutions are very savvy at exploiting the latter inclination and confusing the two for their own benefit. Going back to my ebay example, there is an excellent example of a corporation that has benefited from confusing the two and has taken advantage of people’s inclination (sense of responsibility) to help others. And that’s really what I am talking about here — institutions/corporations who exploit the service mentality for the benefit of their own bottom line and who capitalize on their cultural status as if it were sufficient payment for their workers, i.e., recognition in exchange for labor at meager wages. With academic book-reviewing — and granted that its part-and-parcel of a problematic system that tokenizes writing — the service of book-reviewing is not so likely to benefit an institution or corporation but rather the individual whose book is being reviewed. So, really, the factor at issue here is who benefits from the service being provided and whether or not those benefits equitable for all parties.
Okay, and in regards to the amateur-vs.-professional issue that you raise, first, I am not sure that we can even remotely assume that crowdsourcing writers do not aspire to be professional writers/communicators in whatever subjects that they fancy. Obviously, if they are voluntarily involved in a crowdsourcing project, then that implies a desire to communicate their knowledge of the subject and even a passion for the subject — the grounds on which the most successful writing is often based. I mean, in the reverse, not just any professional writer could start up a blog about a subject in which they held no abiding interest or passion (consider the etymological root of amateur) and retain a readership — I would argue that very few could. For these reasons and then some, I have been a long time-skeptic of the amateur/professional dichotomy — over a decade ago, Kurt Spellmeyer similarly deconstructed this dichotomy in the pages of *College English* and the rise of blogging, if I may say so, has only further deconstructed it.
And I was not saying that “adjuncts are ideological dupes” (my argument was more psychoanalytical than it was marxist) — what I was saying was that they hold psychological investments in their identities as teachers, in their desire to serve as teachers and assist students and in their identification with institutional/social statuses and because of those various investments, they *seemingly* choose to take lower pay in exchange for maintaining those identities and statuses — yet it’s not really a choice insofar as other alternatives (to work in their chosen profession of higher ed teaching) are not available. I am really not sure about your follow-up comparison in regards to trustees — because there is obviously a huge power, resource & even social class disparity between the two sets of people that you are comparing. I don’t see the point of your (rhetorical) question because I don’t know how you can possibly argue that trustees do not have greater institutional powers than adjuncts. Most importantly, trustees do not have to deal with a take-it-or-leave-it attitude that many adjuncts have to deal with — trustees are not viewed as expendable labor. Hmmm, are you really serious here?
Next point that you make about crowdsourcing not replacing professional writing — why not, I ask? I happen to think that it’s highly probable that wikis, blogs, youtube, etc., are, indeed, starting to supplant mass media and will only further supplant the conglomerate mass media in the future. Why else are we witnessing the union of CNN and Youtube for the presidential debates? Why else since the rise of youtube have newsites such as CNN and the NYTimes stepped-up their use of multimedia videos? And I remember, not long ago — although I don’t have the link — the Times running an article about how wikipedia was a new form of journalism — even as that more recent NYTimes Magazine article raises significant doubts about the substitution. On a different front, I have been following the blog of a certain highly-popular celebrity talk-show host who recently resigned from *The View* — basically, what she did was take her audience from *The View* to her blog and now does videoblogs and talks frequently in her answers section about turning her blog itself into a talk show and how her videoblogging is the future of talk shows (especially sans the producers that she did not get along with on The View). Virginia Hefferen wrote an article, “Really, Really Rosie” in the Times several weeks back about the revolution being spawned by that blog. It’s not necessarily anything new in concept in the world of blogging — what is new, though, is a major media personality waking up to the possibility of taking the mode of production into her own hands and carrying her audience with her.
As for why pay for an issue of Wired when crowdsourced material can be read for free online — well, at least to say that I have noticed that my own magazine-buying habits have declined significantly since the rise of blogs. If it’s not crowdsourced somewhere, then it’s usually blogged somewhere, and both potentially contribute to the decline in magazine readership. I suppose that one advantage of crowdsourcing is then the assurance of the readership of at least the crowd. I think, for example, that Daily Kos is another good example of a crowdsourced project that seems to retain its viability by the sheer existence of the busy-bee crowd and their apprentice-like blogging. The idea that they are contributing to the content gives the readers a reason to stick around, thus built into the crowdsourcing is a sense of (brand) loyalty — another benefit for institutions, particularly those concerned with losing readers to the ever-proliferating alternative online venues.
Okay, now I am really befuddled by your second-to-last statement/paragraph: “Contingent faculty create the conditions under which other academic work is possible. If were were to create a situation in which there were only tenure-track faculty, we would have to reconstruct the entire college experience, and not necessarily in a way that would be better for students.” SERIOUSLY??? Are you serious? Or have you crossed over to the dark side of post-tenure? Contingent labor benefits students??? I mean, you’re being a bit dry with that ode to suburbia stuff.
And what if some independent media producers, as you say, are, in fact, professional media producers who have simply become fed-up with the institutional & corporate structures/hierarchies that have previously defined the conditions of their work? And what about independent media producers who are able to parlay their independent work into professional positions — or, alternatively, what about independent media producers who discover through the use of online advertising (e.g., google adsense) that they can make a living without worrying about their official designation? One example that I am thinking of here is dooce.com — there is an example of one-time professional media producers running their own show. A rarity, perhaps, but a trend, nonetheless.

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I understand what you are saying and how the contingencies at Cortland inform your perspectives — I forgot that you work in the SUNY system where focus on research (in the humanities) has come to replace reason and reality, so to speak. Such as the reality that there is no return on investment for most overspeciaized humanities research or the reality that students attend public universities to be *taught*, not to finance obscure research that cannot be translated back into a general ed course. Long gone are the days, for example, that places like Albany were known primarily as *teaching* institutions. Anyway, after your clarification, I understand somewhat better where you are coming from, even as I am not convinced that there are not serious downsides to any system that segregates teaching from research or vice versa — or constructs a hierarchy between the two. And a hierarchy is what inevitably happens even with the best of intentions.
Just to note, I have seen at least a few programs wherein tenure-track faculty have less issues with teaching FYC and gen ed courses insofar as they are permitted to shape those courses according to their own (often interdisciplinary) interests and the courses have been redesigned as writing-intensive, first-year seminars. I think permitting faculty autonomy is the key with such courses. I have also witnessed Shakespereans teach FYC without the difficulties that you imply — of course, those Shakespereans also had a background in the more interdisciplinary field of cultural studies. This seems very common in some liberal arts institutions, where teaching rather than research is the priority. No doubt, every department is composed differently and has different priorities — but I tend to think that any graduate program that is not preparing its graduates to teach lower-division, gen ed courses is not preparing them for the realities (yes, that R word again) of most universities’ curriculum needs. Was this not part of the concept behind “Writing, *Teaching* and Criticism” (before the theoretical specialists took over the program and drove the generalist pedagogues out)? Isn’t the concept of two different “classes” of faculty — a class who researches and a class who teaches — a sharp divergence from the aims of that particular program — one being an attempt to restore value and stature to pedagogy (with the DA originally being a teaching degree)? Not that the aims of that (once visionary) program really matter to anyone within that program anymore. (Sorry, the editorializing just spills out sometime. What I am trying to say is that the darkness seems inherent to what the SUNY system has become with its out of whack priorities — as you say, grants and graduate programs over and above teaching. )
“Most people who get PhD’s want to do research in their specialty and teach courses related to it. We’d be hiring five or six people a year. And believe me that would be a nightmare.”
And just to underscore again — and I am sure that I am preaching to the choir here — what they — those who seek PhD’s –want to do is often inconsistent with the reality of what universities need them to do once they have the PhD in hand. I see this as mostly the fault of graduate programs which idealize and romanticize the profession — and hence create the nightmare that you speak of. And then there is the entire issue of how freshman comp and gen ed courses, being the primary source of revenue for many departments, serve to subsidize those few who do get to luxuriate in seminars based on their specialties.
One of the ways in which I have long envisioned composition studies has been through its occasional critiques of the concept of specialization — as a kind of narrow-minded pursuit that compartmentalizes knowledge in restrictive ways that are not useful outside of a campus. As such, I have a difficult time accepting the implied dichotomy of specialist versus generalist or the idea that the point of higher education is to specialize rather than a more interdisciplinary approach. That, after all, is one of the reasons that some folks go into composition studies — because they are able to more expansively work across so-called disciplines such as cultural studies, ethnography, sociology, psychology, philosophy. etc..
Anyway, that’s enough of my two cents on this topic — I agree that it became frayed several posts back. Thank you for your qualification, though — makes sense relative to your institutional & departmental conditions, yet I still disagree on a few matters.
http://www.aaup.org/publications/Academe/2001/01SO/so01buc.htm

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Just to quickly note, I think that concept of specialization is being used in two diverging ways here.
When you are talking about specialization, that is what I would refer to as expertise. That is to say, following your example, that you inarguably possess expertise in areas that others on your campus do not.
And when I am talking about specialization, the issue that I am raising is that of an overly narrow focus on a particular area, author or text in a discursive or theoretical manner that is not conversant with how people, particularly students, residing outside of the specialized interpretive community understand and interpret the texts. The critiques of specialization, used in this manner, often come from an ethnographic vantage and are based on the concept that knowledge-making or critical inquiry is holistically innate to all people and that one can learn from all interactions with texts, not only from those schooled or trained (another word that I have issues with) in specific theoretical methodologies. That is why I was using the admittedly-reductive phrase “generalist pedagogues” — because specialists, per this definition, are not so concerned with pedagogical matters because they assume their knowledges and interpretations to be authoritative and indisputable by virtue of their grounding in a specialized discursive community. They have walled themselves off from the world, in a way.
I think that a good analogy would be that of a general practitioner doctor when compared (off the top) to an orthopedic surgeon — both inarguably possess medical expertise yet the former is practiced, by necessity, in working with a wide range of maladies and ailments whereas the latter is only going to be sought out by those who need (and can afford) surgery for a specific orthopedic problem. Neither is any less knowledgeable than the other — that is not the issue here, rather the issue is one of to which kind of patients/clients they cater and how they cater to those patients/clients — how professors deliver knowledge to students, in other words.
And to further quickly point out, I have rarely met a university faculty — be that person on a tenure track or a lecturer — who does not have some abiding research interest.
As for your statement, “few of them would be qualified, since they don’t have PhD’s” — should that be the only condition (i.e., the “license” itself) by which people are qualified to teach and conduct research — as if the existence of the PhD alone were the only way that faculty’s talents could be assessed — or the only condition under which job security should be provided?
Following your reasoning here, the presence of an intellectual luminary such as Susan Sontag would have turned a university campus into a community college??? Obviously, you’re not saying that — yet that’s where that kind of reasoning leads since there are lots of intellectuals out there who do not have PhD’s and who believe that a degree itself does not a life of the mind make.

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