fix journalism a conversation about journalism’s future

Author: Donica Mensing | 09.23.2008

[updated Sept 26]
We’re hoping to visit friends at IDEO in the next few weeks to talk about “how might we” reconceptualize journalism. So to follow up on Michael’s list below:

1. Journalism needs to find its rhythm
In its heyday, journalism fit over breakfast, on the trolley to work, on the ride home from work and around the family TV in the evening. Journalism conformed to the rhythm of workers and families, or they fit to it. But either way, they worked well together.

Today, we catch news over morning TV, on the car radio, in the office online — or not. It’s scattered, irregular, brief, random. Some people get a lot, some a little, some never. News is filtered through micro-niches, news is delivered in 120 character Twitter feeds, it creates noise in airports and on unwatched TV sets.

We need to better understand how and when people use specific information. Rather than an undifferentiated broadcast of mass information constantly spewing from newsrooms, we need bullets of targeted, specific information delivered just in time with a strategic mix of periodic interesting, engaging journalism.

2. Journalism needs to recalibrate its purpose
Read any journalism textbook and it clearly tells you the purpose of journalism: to inform people, especially about the government so citizens can participate in self-government. But people no longer suffer from a lack of information. They suffer from mountains of information avalanching all around them, making it difficult to find the critical information they really do need. How might journalism look it if was about facilitating the right information at the right time to the right people?

3. Journalism needs to become two-way
This isn’t a new idea. Jim Carey and others have been talking about this for 25 years. But it’s a hard rut to get out of for most journalists. “Informing people” — the mantra of journalism — implies a one-way relationship between journalist and audience. We don’t own the information anymore. Either we move to engage with others in ways that make us focused, relevant, useful, and vital, or people will route around us. This doesn’t mean we dumb it down — it means we get smarter.

4. Journalism needs to accept that it’s about advocacy
This is a biggie. I almost didn’t include it because it’s heresy. But if journalism is to survive, it has to be about helping our communities survive. It can’t hope that communities might improve if journalists only write more stories about corruption, influence peddling, shifty politicians and unresponsive legislators. We have to be part of the communities we cover, part of evaluating alternatives, weighing tradeoffs, coming to public judgment. This does not mean we push a particular agenda or abandon investigative reporting, but that we focus on facilitating a civil, fair, constructive discussion about serious answers to our problems. That’s a political stand. We advocate for fair-minded journalism. We advocate for public deliberation, transparent government. We work with communities on problems that most need attention and we do it consistently, fairly, and passionately.

5. Journalism needs new business models so it can afford to do the above
The old model is spent. Craigslist, tanking real estate markets, department store declines, the end of monopoly control, online competition guarantee that institutional journalism as it has been practiced is going to be difficult to sustain in any but the largest markets. Lots has been written about this. The point is that we need to think about multiple revenue streams from new ways of providing value — ways that match the rhythm, purpose and interactivity of the new journalistic product. We can no longer afford a disconnect between our sources of revenue and our primary reason for being.