Looking for freelance work? Believe in the power of a democratic media? Think your fresh ideas could bring a much-needed new perspective to the typical nightly news narratives? Well, you might want to check out the following:

"Our Program Department will not have legions of in-house producers. Instead we want to make the best freelancers and independents a part of the organization. To enable this we have created this extranet commissioning system which will allow and encourage journalists worldwide to pitch stories and receive rapid decisions.... Underlying all this is the channel's mission to explain the world through the eyes of real people.... If you want to be part of this commitment, then register as a supplier by clicking 'Register' at the side of the screen. The registration process is how we can get to know you before we do any business. Not all applicants will be invited to submit factual material for the channel.... However, [we] want to encourage new talent, and we will be prepared to consider registrations from those with strong visual ideas and good access even though their actual broadcast experience is limited."

Sounds like the manifesto of most any run-of-the-mill, web-based independent media outlet with slightly popularist leanings, right? It's actually the text on the home page of Al Jazeera International. Set to launch in May of this year and bankrolled by the Emir of Qatar, AJI will be an English-language 24-hour cable news channel. The channel will be significantly, though not completely, independent from its ten-year-old forbearer, and exactly where that line is drawn remains to be seen.

AJI's operating model differentiates it from the other 24 hour news channels in two important ways. As indicated above, it is dedicated to a de-centralized process of content production, intended to encourage grassroots-style news reporting by "real people." Not only is this model more in tune with the journalistic trend toward media like blogging and podcasting than the current highly polished, shaped, and professionalized 24-hour news channels' models are, but it's also cheaper to produce. Given recent downsizing at virtually all major newspapers, AJI may be trend setting along both content and economic lines.

This is not to say that the channel hasn't signed up its share of talent. Legendary British broadcaster and interviewer David Frost, best known for his post-Watergate interviews with Richard Nixon, signed on to host an interview program for the channel back in October. AJI has also recruited both on and off camera talent from CNN (Riz Kahn), ABC (Dave Marash), the Guardian (Mark Sheddon), CNBC (Lindsay Oliver), and The Unites States Marine Corps (Josh Rushing, former press officer for Central Command during the 2003 invasion of Iraq). According to Salon.com AJI also plans to give significant voice to large personalities of the American left, including Michael Moore and Noam Chomsky. In this way, maybe they will succeed where Air America failed (or continues to fail). It's somehow fitting that a network that some viewers have called the Fox News of the Arab world may end up being the left's answer to Fox News.

The second difference in AJI's approach to the 24-hour news cycle is that they really mean it. Currently, 24-hour news channels do run all day and all night, but, somehow, they are laughably short on programming. As a result, some of them air some pretty inane stories . Or rather, lots of them air inane stories.

Oddly enough, AJI will make its content beefier by actually reducing the total number of segments it produces as a network. While AJI will be headquartered in Doha, Qatar, it will have bureaus in Kuala Lampur, Malaysia; Washington, D.C.; and London, England. The anchor desk will move from one bureau to the next throughout the 24 hour cycle, tracking the sun and primetime ratings. Where CNN produces localized (read inane) programming for different regions, AJI will produce a single news cast and filter it through the lens of each bureau.

AJI does not have a distribution agreement for the United States yet. Lindsay Oliver, who oversaw the growth of CNBC in Europe, is heading up the global launch of AJI and expects the channel to reach 30 to 40 million households on opening day. That's not a huge number, given the international scope of the channel, but if AJI is able to generate any of the controversy that its forbearer has without becoming a parody of itself, you can expect that number to grow rapidly.

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