fix journalism a conversation about journalism’s future

Author: Donica Mensing | 01.06.2009

One of the obvious effects of the sea change in how we get news is the devolution in power from the gatekeepers of media mammoths to the individual citizen. No one tells me “that’s how it is.” I am no longer dependent on one local newspaper, three television networks and my favorite radio station. Now, it’s up to me to decide what to read, watch, listen to, believe in, act on. I am empowered by choices.

As a teacher, this evolution in power has tremendous implications for what students are expected to competently manage. We have an elaborate set of tools designed to help students operate in an environment where information is as scarce as water in a desert, but very little established in our educational institutions for how to intelligently manage a flood. The same analogy holds true for citizens seeking political information, businesses seeking economic information, politicians seeking policy information, and even journalists seeking reportable information.

Dan Gillmor, author of “We the Media,” describes an aspect of the problem this way in a lengthy and interesting post titled Principles for a new media literacy:

In this emergent global conversation, which has created a tsunami of information, what can we trust? … How we live, work, and govern ourselves in a digital age depends in significant ways on the answers. To get this right, we’ll have to re-think, or at least re-apply, some older cultural norms in distinctly modern ways.

He provides (and elaborates on) five Principles of Media Consumption:

1. Be skeptical of absolutely everything.

2. Although skepticism is essential, don’t be equally skeptical of everything.

3. Go outside your personal comfort zone.

4. Ask more questions.

5. Understand and learn media techniques

As well as five Principles of Media Creation:

1. Do your homework, and then do some more.

2. Get it right, every time.

3. Be fair to everyone.

4. Think independently, especially of your own biases.

5. Practice and demand transparency.

My question is: are these the right principles? Or the most important? What else might we add? My experience with students who practice the first principle of media consumption is that they are incapable of learning; they have concluded that nothing and no one has the authority to be right. They have a hard time transitioning to principle #2. Similarly, learning media techniques (#5) is as likely to convince some students that news is made up as it is to convince others that it is a noble calling.

The second principle of Media Creation (Get it right, every time) doesn’t acknowledge the self-correcting power of the conversation. Getting names right is important, but “rightness” seems a far larger goal than double checking spelling. What principles would help us get at the humility and collaboration implied in crowdsourcing, for example?

Finally, in figuring out how to deal with a tsunami of information, is “trust” the most important variable, as Gillmor asserts? What other principles or methods might be important also?