fix journalism a conversation about journalism’s future

If you blow up everything you think is real and start over from scratch based on the needs of the community and tools of the newsroom, I think a newsroom could look like this (below).

The idea came from a class Donica and I are brainstorming about. We want to do something that’s similar to last year’s Poynter Fellowship (teams of multimedia producing journalists) and similar to Ball State’s Ball Bearings publication. And we want it to be for this kind of content. But we don’t want people to learn how to fill in newsroom roles, we want them to learn how to think like journalists and invent new journalism.

The purpose is simple: produce interesting and diverse content for the Web. But how do you do that without traditional diliniations: EIC, ME, section editors, assistant section editors, reporters, photographers, producers. Basically, a hierarchy of people who specialize in one or two things?

It’s freakin’ tough, but I think this is a start:

Destroy conventional categories and breakdowns

• News, Spots, Opinion, Entertainment
• People, Events, Issues, Blogs and maybe more breakdowns and sub breakdowns similar to this train of thought. But with modern tagging and categories online, a tag cloud and more niche categories are hella easy.
• Within these categories everything is broken down regardless of content type. Who cares if it’s words, images, moving pictures, sound. It goes where it makes sense and is double-booked if necessary.

Who do we need to work for us?

• Storytellers – Anyone who can tell good, competent stories about the above categories is in. I don’t care what tools you use, just do it and do it in a way that makes sense. Everyone should be able to passibly write, video tape, photograph, edit. Some people will excel at one or two of these but everyone should be able to do it at least once or help/augment other people who can’t. Any other tool you can find, make up or use is a bonus. Team-oriented storytelling. There is no one-man band in journalism.
• Builders – These people create infrastructure. Web developers, web designers, producers, software specialists, etc. They create the vessels for storytelling in a usable way for readers. They make sure the reader is always first.
• Public relations – While storytellers are out and about, public relations are too. They follow up and do what a normal PR person does. But they also find stories (with, not in replacement of storytellers) and they keep everyone aware of what’s going on. They pitch stories and follow up and help with sourcing and databasing.
• Advertising/marketing – They are what you’d expect. They market and “circulate” the web site while also providing sales. They help build advertorial content and find parternships where content created by storytellers can be paid for.

How does deadline work?

There are three teams of storytellers (or more, depending on staff size) + ad team and PR team. For class let’s say we meet Tuesday/Thursday.

• Two weekly teams. These teams only publish content once a week. Team one = Tuesday, Team two = Thursday. They work on extended enterprise and in depth reporting. These teams work closer with ad side.
• One daily team. This team publishes like a normal newsroom. Any and all daily content they can find in heavy conjunction with the PR people. Or in this case, they publish on Tuesday and Thursday, breaking news and quick stuff.
• Ad and PR do their thing, they don’t have deadlines.

Who are the editors?

Everyone, sort of.

• There are team leaders. They help give direction and coordinate. They should be keeping track of communication and coverage, institutional knowledge and training and personel management (read: ego management).
• They don’t edit in the way we normally think. Everyone does that. The workplace is completely peer edited. People work in teams and they edit each other (this obviously required incredibly competent workers or at least an experienced few who can help each other. Lots of thick skin and honest also required. read: ego management).
• There’s a single boss (editor in chief for lack of a better term) that gives direction, deals with personel, manages business matters and publisher like activities. He/she makes decision with team leaders involved.

And that’s what I’ve got so far. Thoughts?