Distinguishing journalism from information
As sources of information proliferate, journalists are losing their special status as the town crier, telling us new and surprising and important things about our world. With information coming at us directly from every source imaginable, journalism gets lost in the avalanche of information overload.
A recent article called Overload! Journalism’s battle for relevance in an age of too much information by Bree Nordenson in Columbia Journalism Review quotes Annenberg Dean Michael X. Delli Carpini:
I think in some ways, we need a better metaphor,” says Delli Carpini. “The gatekeeping metaphor worked pretty well in the twentieth century, but maybe what news organizations should be now is not gatekeepers so much as guides. You don’t want gatekeepers that can say you can get this and you can’t get that. You want people who can guide you through all this stuff.
The article focuses on the results of a study by the Associated Press on the news habits of young people [download the report]. The article argues for distinguishing journalism from unprocessed information:
Much like educational institutions, the best news organizations help people convert information into the knowledge they need to understand the world. As Richard Lanham explains in The Economics of Attention, “Universities have never been simply data-mining and storage operations. They have always taken as their central activity the conversion of data into useful knowledge and into wisdom. They do this by creating attention structures that we call curricula, courses of study.” Institutions of journalism do it by crafting thoughtful and illuminating stories. “Journalists who limit their role to news flashes are absolving themselves of any overarching obligation to the audience,” writes Shenk in The End of Patience. “Mere telling focuses on the mechanics of transmitting information of the moment, while education assumes a responsibility for making sure that knowledge sticks.” The most valuable journalism is the kind that explains. “The first and foremost role that a journalist plays is to provide the information in a context that we wouldn’t be able to get as amateurs,” says Delli Carpini. “And I think that’s where journalism should be focusing.”
I agree with the notion that journalists now have a new mission and that is acting as a guide to readers trying to make sense of the hordes of information available online. But I would take issue with the suggestion that such a role becomes a journalist’s primary mission. I still believe that the public (defined as those who cannot dedicate a majority of their time to collecting and disseminating information) are in greater need of GOOD information more than ever. What good is a guide if the only information to guide through is potentially (and likely) incredible? I think the market is craving stories that have gravitas and in-depth analysis. The Girl in the Window by the St. Petersburg Times (http://tampabay.com/features/humaninterest/article750838.ece), arguably one of the best stories published this year, is a great example of this kind of journalism. While we should do more to help readers make sense of all the information online, another pressing mission is for us to figure out how we (professional journalists) make this kind of journalism economical and as frequent as possible.
Here’s another post that states the problem — and a goal — thoughtfully and usefully:
New Game requires New Mindset