Dave Winer called my scenario for the future of (local) news a “nightmare,” which may be a bit strong but gets the point across.
Dave wisely and eloquently tries to get away from old assumptions about news, who operates it and how and tries to abstract it to its constituent elements. I’ll agree and disagree with him - or actually, agree with him and then add to it - as I try to draw a picture of a complete ecology of news here.
Think about news as its constituent components, not in the bizarro news world we live in, think about news in the actual world. The components are: sources, facts, ideas, opinions, readers.
The challenge of the news industry, to the extent that there is one, is to connect the first four items with the last item. I don’t think you need a reporter and editor to do that. I don’t think they were doing their jobs anyway, they were being very selective about what sources, facts, ideas and opinions we could have.
I want it all, and I don’t want anyone saying what I can and can’t have.
In a following post, Dave gives us a different expression of the point:
If they [newspapers] could consider other points of view, two in particular, they might get somewhere. The two points of view are:
1. People with news.
2. People who want news.
Source and destination. Reporters are distributors. And editors are facilitators of distribution.
If the people with the news can publish it themselves, and they can; what’s to stop the people who want the news from reading it directly.
I think he’s right in identifying his first four components as the base of news and in identifying the essential relationships in gathering and sharing news. I have long said that gathering and sharing what the public knows will form much - most, even almost all - of news. But not all. There are things missing.
Missing from what? A complete picture. How do I define complete? Complete enough to inform society, to tell us what we need to know. Need or want? That’s a tough decision but I think the proper verb for this discussion is “need” (”want” tends to conjure images of Britney Spears, but I can argue either way). Who determines that need? Society - not the press. But the press, properly deployed and supported, can help assure that need is met. Who’s the press? Anyone can be. So what adds up to completeness? Tasks that need to be actively pursued to add value to the base Dave and I agree forms the foundation of news. I’ll outline those components shortly.
I need to be very careful here not to fall into the traps of (1) defining this ecology of news as the press - newspapers - would define it, from their perspective and (2) defining the tasks as if journalists (as formerly defined) must perform them. I will try hard to be agnostic to both, instead looking at what I think forms a complete ecology of news. Neither should we assume the form of news (see this about moving past the article, and this about rethinking the interview).
First, I’ll reiterate that I believe Dave is quite right in defining his components and how they will be gathered and shared: The public knows and wants to know and in a marketplace of information the internet now enables - with new tools that cannot be imagined in any well-intentioned scenario such as mine (see: Twitter) - that information will flow freely. So what’s missing? Or better yet, what value can be added atop this base? How can it be made better and operate more effectively? What needs and opportunities lie there? Those are the questions I try to concentrate on.
* Reporting. I’ll define this as getting information that people don’t know and/or don’t want to share. This is most commonly seen as investigation: finding out that the mayor is on the take, which may be revealed only by asking the right questions or demanding the right documents and understanding where to look. There is also the case of reporting that asks a question that has not been asked, as researchers do (e.g., what is the impact of the internet on friendship?). Reporting in this definition is an active, not passive, activity of digging, discovering, demanding and in a complete ecology of news - in an informed society and democracy and economy - it is not just a luxury but, I’ll argue, a necessity. (Again, keep in mind, I’m agnostic on who does the reporting; I’m saying that this is a different function from information transport.)
* Organization. Dave says he wants it all. Damned straight. That is to say that we don’t want others to filter, stop, or control information. It was Dave who coined the important notion of the river of news - and wanted no dams on it. Amen. But…. There are also times when we need and want organization. That could be curation (which, in Dave’s posts, Paul Krugman’s blog links provide). It could be summary (which Wikipedia amazingly provides even and especially in providing snapshots of knowledge in big news events - though without the curation of links). In the Mumbai story, GroundReport curated - or organized and facilitated - people, finding Twitterers in Mumbai - amid thousands who were not - to report and write. There are many means and tools to provide organization - bloggers, Digg, blog search, Daylife, GoogleNews, Technorati… My point is only that this is a function - a value - that sits atop the base. And when we all do news, “organization” brings new definitions and opportunities.
* Editing. Editing is such a loaded word, bringing baggage of control and orthodoxy. Keep in mind that here, you are my editors and I greatly value and need (almost all of) your editing. I’m also mindful of the incredible help my book editor, Ben Loehnen at Collins, gave me. Trying to get past the traps I listed above - who performs the tasks and the history of them - let’s try to define the real values of editing. They include vetting facts, clarifying language, asking questions, filling in gaps, adding perspective. Editing is, by definition, value added to the flow of information (when it does, indeed, add value).
* Education. Among all the things I say about news, this is actually the most out-there but gets the least attention. I argue that when everyone does news and wants to do it better, education is a key value to add. Michael Rosenblum does this when he teaches hundreds of people who want to learn how to make better video. Newspapers in the U.K. have been doing this when they tell people how to file effective FOIAs. The Media Bloggers Association does this when it organizes classes in libel law so bloggers can both avoid going to court and get insurance. Journalists were not generous with their knowledge, neither were journalism educators. Again, I’ll get past those old roles in this discussion and say that sharing knowledge about how to better share information is an important value to add to the base. It’s often - usually - not necessary, but it can be helpful for those who want and need it and those who have it would be wise to share.
* Functionality. It may be a mistake to make this a separate value, as technology is primarily a tool of organization. Twitter helps us organize ourselves into conversation. Technorati and Google help us organize our information. But I think it’s important to recognize that just as the internet itself is a tool of sharing our information, its component parts and inventions facilitate and add great value to that.
* Economy. Here Dave and I have disagreed in the past so I want to be careful in this, too, to avoid the traps above, assuming the definitions of the economy of the news industry as it stands. In most of this ecology, the sharing will happen because of generosity and need, without currency. Indeed, information is its own currency. And it would be a mistake to try to define the economy based on the supposed need of its participants (the old, “who’s going to pay for my newsroom?” argument). Instead, as in all economies, when the base - the free exchange - does not meet a need, sometimes it is necessary to pay to fill that need. Let’s say I want to shine as much sunlight as possible on school boards in New Jersey and convince hundreds of people to podcast their board meetings. But I can find no one in Trenton, which needs it most. I decide it’s so important I pay someone to reliably perform the task. I could do that out of goodness and charity, but if there are the means to support that with commerce (e.g., contributions or advertising), I can support and might be able to expand the service. There are opportunities there just as there are needs. I believe that just as software companies can grow out of such opportunity, so can news enterprises that help society better inform itself. I see that as real value atop the base and I also see it as a necessity to get to what I hope is a complete ecology of news and a better informed society.
One side of this discussion will get mad at me for not protecting the role and jobs of journalists. The other side will get mad at me for trying to involve journalists. Here’s my perspective: In one of the many fact-checking queries that apparently amended copy left on the cutting-room floor for the Observer article, John Koblin asked a thought-provoking question about defining myself as a utopian or an earth-scorcher or such (I forget his choices). I said I tried to be a realist about the forces at work in media, technology, and society today and an optimist about the opportunities these bring tomorrow. I’m not trying to kill journalists’ jobs nor do I see it as my role or in my power to protect them. I am trying to understand the inevitable changes occurring - and help spur conversation about them - and then to see opportunities in them, which I believe is the only sane and productive response to change. (Protection, in one of my favorite chestnuts, is not a strategy for the future.)
I hope that journalists will see and seize the opportunities at hand just as I celebrate the opening of news - its definitions and functions - to a vast and broad array of people. I value that new and open exchange of information and news greatly and where it is possible or necessary to add value, great.
So… I agree with Dave that the components of news are sources, facts, ideas, and opinions, though I’ll say the fifth is not readers - following Jay Rosen’s first pronouncement at the first Bloggercon Dave organized - but us, all of us, no matter what role we play. Those roles, I agree with Dave, start with those who have and want or need news. But to that I add the roles and values I outlined here: reporting, organization, editing, education, functionality (or facilitation), and in an economy of some sort - with or without money - supporting that.
Dave concludes his first post:
Now, I’m not glad to see the news industry go that way, I’ve been pleading with them to embrace the future, to stop fighting it, to accept the changes, to give up their point of view. I think it’s still possible to do it, and save some of what they’ve built, but not so much anymore. But it’s going to take some major shifting of point of view to get there. And us users don’t really have much reason to care anymore.
Exactly. But we all care about news.
[I accidentally published this before I was finished editing... as if I'm ever finished. So there are a few changes from the first RSS.]
I haven’t written anything about the Mumbai terror because I didn’t know what I had to add and I couldn’t grasp the 60 hours of horror there. I did write about Twitter and witnesses taking over news and — though I wish we wouldn’t make 9/11 the touchstone for all terrorist crimes henceforcth — I could not help recalling my 9/11:
Ever since I survived the 9/11 attacks, and later saw the coverage the world saw - smoke spied from rooftops miles away - I have made sure to always have a camera with me, as the view of the story from the ground was so different from that seen on TV. Now I carry a mobile phone that can capture and broadcast text, photos and video immediately. If I’d had that then, the image I would have shared would have been the image I most remember - not of smoke and helicopters, but instead of black tear-tracks on the face of an African-American woman covered in the grey dust of destruction. Such will be our new view of news: urgent, live, direct, emotional, personal.
And then I read this column in the Times of India and realized that I had perpetuated the same mistake: I was seeing Mumbai’s tragedy from many miles away, rooftop and satellite high. Bachi Karkaria writes about the tragedy from eye level and it is all too personal: the story of a wedding party brought to an end by phone calls with news of the tragedy as one guest decided to go back to her hotel — to the Taj.
“I hadn’t known till then that she was in the heritage suite which we had seen aflame all day,” the columnist wrote. “We pleaded for a miracle, for hope had turned out to be a perfidious ally…. I had brought Sabina to this situation, and I alone was responsible.”
That is how terror is suffered, a tragedy at a time.
Following the post below on CNN trying to unseat the AP…. McClatchy and the Christian Science Monitor just announced that they’re going to share stories from foreign correspondents. No money changes hands, just stories do. We’re going to see a lot more arrangements like this in a marketplace of original journalism.
CNN is heading 180 degrees in the wrong direction with its attempt to start a wire service to compete with the Associated Press, I think. CNN is just trying to amortize the cost of its existing coverage by reselling it and it may find a few clients. But I’m dubious because newspapers and news sites are canceling every syndication contract they can (I did that six years ago when I worked on sites). Yes, CNN might undercut the AP, but since it takes two years to cancel an AP contract - and because newspapers have an ownership stake in the AP and because there is volume and quantity there - I don’t see CNN taking over a critical mass of AP business quickly.
But there’s a much, much bigger strategic mistake at play here:
The syndication model is dying. As the content economy is supplanted by the link economy, reselling the same story over and over again becomes increasingly impossible.
What’s needed instead is an infrastructure to share and link to original journalism. Newspapers in Ohio are doing that now. Newspapers in the New York area have said they’re working on something similar.
That network could have been created years ago when newspapers created the doomed New Century Network but it died because they wouldn’t give up control or get along. But today, they’re desperate, absolutely desperate, to save any penny by using someone else’s stuff. No longer complaining about aggregation, they must aggregate themselves.
Many players can create the infrastructure that enables newspapers to share and link to their original journalism. (and, full disclosure, I work with one of them, Daylife). But they don’t even need infrastructure to get started. All they need is email or links and permission. That, I believe, will undercut CNN’s effort to undercut the AP.
CNN is holding a meeting of newspapers editors in Atlanta this week to sell them on the new wire. If I were there, I’d gather my colleagues over drinks and form my own wire service, for free.
David Carr is bang on assigning a share of blame for the Wal-Mart Black Friday death under the feet of a shopping mob to news media. I will disagree in degree about business vs. editorial responsibility. He sees the creation of Black Friday - and that horrible coinage itself - as a cynical business conspiracy to pump advertising. I wouldn’t disagree except that I’m never a conspiracy theorist, especially inside newspapers, which only conspire against themselves. I think there is also an editorial responsibility - importantly in local TV news, too - to do the same damned story everybody else is doing and everybody else did last year. Black Friday walk-up stories are in no way whatsoever informative; they are not news. They fill time and space. We thought they were just pap. But as Carr points out, their unthinking inanity can also be dangerous.
I came to that conclusion, unblogged, awhile ago because I saw the lines between media crumbling. I especially see this teaching journalism school. When I came into the business, we had to pick a medium for life (or at least until we went into PR). Now, every time a journalist does a story, she can and should pick from all appropriate media to tell it (and not just tell it, by the way). Today, still photographers shoot video with a still camera. Print reporters take pictures and make slide shows and shoot video. TV people write text. Magazine people make podcasts. And that was just the game of 52-card-pickup we began playing with old media. Now enter new media with data bases and animation and interactivity. What is Twitter? A medium? A conversation? Both? Yes. So how does one separate one medium from another? It’s impossible, I came to see.
Then On the Media called asking whether I fell into the media as plural or singular camp. Funny you should ask, I said. I was plural, now I’m singular.
Now Brooke Gladstone took this question from another angle as well: media as monolith. We complain about The Media. But I argued that media are is no longer monolithic thanks to the internet, because scarcity is dead, because the dinosaurs are consolidating only to hide from the cold wind of the future, because consolidation is thus no longer a threat, and because we can all make media. We are all media. We are the message.
So here’s the On the Media conversation. They don’t agree with me. But that’s fine.
The last mass-news story was 9/11, packaged from a distance. The 7/7 attacks on London and the 2004 tsunami then brought the perspective of witnesses via their cameras. The Sichuan earthquake and the Mumbai attacks brought the urgency of Twitter. The next news story will be seen live and at eye level. . . . Such will be our new view of news: urgent, live, direct, emotional, personal.
Out of the cacaphony of people sharing what they know - on the ground, in the area, then around the world - comes a greater need to make sense of it all. Thus, I conclude, organizing news will be the most important role of news organizations.
: After sending the column in, I got email from GroundReport’s Rachel Sterne telling us that:
* GroundReport.com had a full-length Mumbai attacks story on our homepage before any mainstream western outlet.
* We have published over 70 full-length articles, videos and op-eds from people on the ground there since the start of the crisis.
* GroundReport consistently published updates on terrorist whereabouts and casualty counts hours before mainstream media.
* During the attacks I used Twitter and #mumbai to recruit people on the ground in Mumbai to report, significantly adding to our coverage….
Thanks to links to the post below on medicine as information, I heard from Dr. Jay Parkinson, who is starting an incredible company and platform called HelloHealth to reform the relationship between doctor and patient around (a) the patient and (b) conversation. I’ll let him tell you about it (from Poptech):
As the man says at the end, it’s enough to make you wish you lived in Brooklyn to take advantage of the service. I don’t want to jinx myself, but I almost want to get sniffles to try it out.
It’s so great to see more and more news executives face the tough questions in the business and recognize the fundamental and urgent change upon them. Chuck Peters, CEO of a newspaper and TV company in Iowa (and the guy who created a blog bridge to the outside world from behind the closed doors of the recent API news CEO meeting) wrote a good post this weekend about the need for a new mindset in staff, a new understanding of the value of news organizations, new jobs and tasks for everyone, and a new and more open relationship with the community.
Peters summarizes the state of mind of news organizations:
As we work to develop this new game, or business model, within our own company, conflicts arise. Those who see the future, but can’t articulate it, are frustrated. Those who see the future and want to make it happen quickly are very frustrated by those who don’t even perceive the need for a new game. Those who don’t perceive the need for a new game are frustrated by all the commotion.
“We cannot continue to focus on products,” he says wisely. “Products are just nodes on the network, promotional flags to local intelligence, in context.” He also argues that they must change every job:
It is my strong belief that an organization such as ours, with over 500 employees, cannot expect that we can change all the mindsets and pursue a new game by simply repeating the forces and ideas driving the change in a series of seminars or links to interesting articles. We need to change the tasks, titles and organization so that we are doing new tasks, in new ways, and making the results of our efforts available immediately to our communities as we begin the larger task of organizing all this information elegantly.
John Naughton has a good Observer (UK) column today about patients getting health information on the internet.
The medical profession is, to put it mildly, not over the moon. The more literate practitioners shake their heads and quote Mark Twain’s adage: ‘Be careful about reading health books. You may die of a misprint.’ But others are more righteous and wax indignant about what they see as the errors and misinformation peddled by many sites that purport to deal with health issues.
It’s tempting to regard this as the blustering of an elite threatened with the kind of ‘disintermediation’ that has wiped out travel agents. But quite a few studies suggest that the quality of web health information is pretty variable. For instance, several estimate that about 5 per cent of sites dealing with cancer are inaccurate, while those dealing with nutrition (45 per cent inaccurate) and nutrition (89 per cent) are especially suspect.
In my book, I argue that - as with other apparent problems in industries - there is opportunity here. Doctors should act as curators, selecting the best information for their patients and making sure they are better informed. I had this discussion with some doctors at a lunch a year ago:
What if they created resource sites? What if they blogged to keep patients informed and up-to-date—and also linked themselves with a larger community of doctors working on the same conditions? If their patients got more of the right information, would that make them better patients? A bit grudgingly, the doctors accepted the notion. I’ve debated my prescriptions and treatments for afib with my doctor and what I really want from him is data and information about my choices to make better decisions together. I’m no citizen cardiologist, but it is my heart.
I’ve also been amazed at the power of PatientsLikeMe, which enables a community of patients to share their qualitative and quantitative data, which is valuable to fellow patients and to doctors.
Medicine is a science of information. The more information that is more openly available, the more we need help sorting good from bad, true, but the more we will all benefit. This requires less control - and more value added - from the still-closed priesthood of medicine. As with other professions and industries, this is a wrenching change but doctors, too, will soon hear demands to open up.
I’m writing a Media Guardian column on the news after Mumbai: When witnesses take over the news, the impact on our experience of news, the impact on the news event itself, on the role of journalists, on what new we need in news (organization), on what comes next (live video, of course, and assigning witnesses). As always, I’m grateful for your observations, opinions, and links.
: Wonderful observation about the absurdity of joining pundits on American TV to talk about news from Amit Varma, who found safety in a hotel hard on one of the attacks.
I was on Larry King Live on CNN about three hours ago. They called me and asked me to be on the show as an eyewitness, at which I protested that I hadn’t actually seen anything, I was merely in the vicinity. But they’d read what I wrote in this post earlier, and they wanted me to talk about that. So I agreed, and came on briefly. King asked me if I’d actually seen any terrorists—I felt guilty that I couldn’t offer him any dope there.
Deepak Chopra was also on the show, speculating that the attacks had taken place because terrorists were worried about Barack Obama’s friendly overtures to Muslims. (I know: WTF?) That sounded pretty ridiculous to me, but such theories are a consequence of our tendency as a species to want to give gyan [knowledge]. A media pundit, especially, feels compelled to have a narrative for everything. Everything must be explicable, and television expects instant analysis.
This is foolish, for sometimes events are complicated, and we simply need to wait for more information to emerge before we can understand it. But many of us—not just the pundits—don’t have the humility to accept that. We want to feel in control, at least on an intellectual level, so reasons and theories emerge. But the world is really far too complicated for us. Yet somehow we muddle along.
The right kind of gyan, in the immediate aftermath of this, is historical perspective, which Christiane Amanpour provided on King’s show. Anything else is premature.
: Amy Gahran tries to track down the rumor - and that’s what it is; an unconfirmed and unsourced reprort - that Mumbai police asked tweeters to stop.
Let me make this clear: I did not say bullshit to Bill Keller. Not that I couldn’t, wouldn’t, or haven’t, but I didn’t. Nor did he to me.
I said bullshit to the reporter (and, I suspect, his editors) who were trying to pit Times Executive Editor Keller against me and me against him as I refused to play into the us-v-them narrative of stories about news media today, whether the “us” and “them” are bloggers and MSM or “traditionalists” - the reporter’s word - and whatever the opposite is. The Observer’s John Koblin kept trying to pit me and I kept refusing to be pitted: The fucking pit bull just wags his tail. Gas him.
At the end of a few hours at a Lindy’s - not a place where I hang out but a convenient place he picked - he came to the point, as reporters do at the end (I know the tricks; I teach them). He wanted to set me against traditionalists and them against me. Later, I emailed him:
One thing gnawed at me after leaving you last night: “traditionalists.” I think it’s a false dichotomy and false drama to try to pit traditionalists against whatever one calls their supposed opposites. That’s what I meant when I made reference to bloggers. It’s just like the tired, old bloggers-v-MSM matches I refuse to join anymore….
I’m a traditionalist. I come from and respect the tradition of journalism. I teach journalism, including and especially its eternal verities. Last week, I met with the editor of a newspaper … who, as I said to his colleague afterwards, is far more radical than I am as he reinvents and even rejects the old value of a newspaper. Isn’t the editor of a newspaper the definition of a traditionalist? So what’s a traditionalist? How can these views be reduced - like silly red and blue states - to two camps? I won’t willingly join that fight.
On the last “fact-checking” call, the reporter again got to the point, telling me that Keller says I have inched closer to him than he to me. The reporter asked my reaction. I said it’s a bullshit question. But the Observer says I said bullshit to Keller. Not true. Indeed, it appears that Keller didn’t say that either. Keller said we’ve inched closer together. That’s true and it’s also true that we were never that far apart. That was my point in my kumbaya exchange with Keller long ago. But after quoting Keller, the Observer creates one fuck of an antecedent problem - fact-checking aside - when it says:
“That is bullshit,” Mr. Jarvis said when we told him what Mr. Keller had said. [No, the antecedent was the reporter's question, not Keller's statement -jj] But, it seemed, he was directing the charge at us. [Damned straight -jj] “That is journalistic cliché. That’s what every story tries to do: create a conflict. That conflict doesn’t exist. We’re all trying to figure what to do about it, and we all should have different answers and experiment with those answers. To say it’s traditional[ists] against something else is bullshit. And you can quote me on that. That’s dangerous.
“I’ve been forced into this blogger-versus-MSM thing for a while and I refuse to play the game anymore. I don’t give a damn if Bill Keller is closer to me or I’m closer to him. The question is: What are we all doing to advance this? I am delighted to see The New York Times advance in many, many ways. I think they’re brilliant.”
Hey, Bill, let’s hug.
The story is fine and I’m glad that, at the end - when journalists make their points - it made clear that I believe journalists are trying to pull together. I just don’t see much of a story here, especially not a cover story. But it’s fine.
What really pisses me off is that they couldn’t bother to mention my book - the only good reason to talk with a reporter - even after the reporter visited the recording of the audiobook. Now that’s bullshit.
Also:
* My glasses are too damned expensive to be unfashionable.
* I always remind reporters that I was not shown the door at Time Inc. If I had been, I would have received three years’ salary, bonus, and benefits. I didn’t. Instead, I walked out that door for good reason. Just for the record.
* I made it clear that I’ve not consulted for the Washington Post. I helped with one small task but I told the reporter specifically that I had not done consulting of note.
* I’m honored that The Times’ Jon Landman thinks I’m a Maoist and then the reporter says that to “most” newspaper editors - survey results, please - I’m a Marxist. And I thought I was too far right for Daily Kos because I voted for Hillary.
Koblin’s a nice guy to spend a couple hours with, even in Lindy’s. But what really struck me in this process - and it is always good for a journalist to endure journalism - is that the interview itself is becoming outmoded.
I’ve noted before that Dave Winer (who, ironically, is beating me up for being too much the journalistic traditionalist) wisely refuses interviews, telling journalists that everything he has to say he has said online. True for me as well. I didn’t say a single new thing to the Observer; everything I said I’d written already on my blog, so I was only drawn to repeat myself (and after four days of recording an audiobook, even I was sick of the sound of my own voice - yes, it finally happened).
The process of the interview has the reporter hold all the cards in his hand: who he talks with and what he will reveal to each and what he will say in the end, without links to what any of the parties has said. Then the reporter gets to toss it all on the table. A process of links and discovery and conversation and correction would be far more illuminating of the ideas and issues than this old process of control through the sieve (and efforts to trump up conflict and drama). That, you see, is the real moral to the story: It’s the form that’s bullshit. Keller isn’t. I leave it to you to decide whether I am.
