In a little more than a year, Andrew Dunn will graduate from UNC-Chapel Hill with two degrees, in journalism and Spanish, only to face a dire economy and an industry rife with layoffs. A few years ago his internships at The St. Petersburg (Fla.) Times, The (Durham, N.C.) Herald Sun and The Charlotte Observer, coupled with his time on the editorial staff for UNC's The Daily Tar Heel, would have practically guaranteed him a list of job offers upon graduation, but he's not counting on it.

Instead, he's trying to crowdsource the media troops. Crowdsourcing, a term coined by Jeff Howe in a 2006 issue of Wired magazine, is a simple concept meant to counter tough challenges. It's simple: state a problem to a large group — typically online — and allow them to both propose solutions and sort through suggestions in search of the best possible ideas.

Unable to sleep a couple of weeks ago and pondering a what-we-would-do-if-we-owned-a-newspaper conversation with buddies on Twitter, Dunn spent 10 minutes creating the HTML backbone of a Web site designed to spur a collective brainstorm in the media community. The result: Let'sBuyaNewspaper.com.

The site was a whim, really, something he thought he'd work on for fun in his spare time but, to his surprise, it's catching on. Today pledges total almost $28,000. "I didn't expect anyone to contribute," says Dunn who also says, “Some people are taking it seriously and some aren't."

Here are a few quotes from the site:

"You'll get higher pledges if you auction the right to be the one to fire the publisher," wrote Guy Lucas, of Media General Publishing, who pledged $500.

"I'll bring the M & Ms," wrote Lisa Reichle, The Daily Tar Heel's business manager. She bid $75.

"Maybe I'd pledge more if there was an actual business plan, but with smart minds joined together it could work well," wrote Shannan Bowen, a reporter for the Wilmington Star-News who's in for $300.

Building on suggestions from Bowen and others, Dunn has added a Google Docs spreadsheet and a Wiki document. Both are online collaboration tools that allow anyone to add their ideas to the site's business plan and newsroom payroll discussion. “There hasn’t been much crowd participation yet,” says Dunn of the site's new problem-posing areas.

Too busy to market the site, Dunn says he's unsure where it will lead and that he'll keep working on it when he can. Meanwhile, he's being honest with himself, "I would love to work for a traditional news organization, to help them through these troubled times. It's the only thing I can see myself doing. But I don't see my options as print versus online. If you're going to be a journalist you're going to have to work across platforms."

If, however, the site generates enough pledges to actually buy a print newspaper, Dunn is up for the challenge. Only a few (hundred) million dollars to go.