This pre-internet installation was and remains a vital consideration in the future of media. It has been supposed for a long time that communication and media technologies allowed people who already knew each other to improve existing relationships. Alternatively, broadcast media were used to send corporate-owned messages to the ‘masses’. There has been very little in the understanding of communities and how they are built and morph through media. To date, due to the expense of entry to creating content for media communication technology, most middle class people have been limited to the telephone – and that form is one-to-one rather than the one-to-many formats offered by social media. This installation’s first day shows how people who did not know each other were able to create conversations and relationships – even for a short time.
People in the video respond a certain way because they realize people in the other location can actually see them. This created an ‘event’. In the 21st Century, when everything that happens in public locations could readily and easily be posted to the web, are we seeing a change in everyday public behaviors due to the fact that we are aware, more than ever before, that someone might be posting our actions? From music concerts to classrooms, from traffic accidents to natural environments, people are creating ‘events’. The greater questions are how have we as a community become the public entity we are creating, and what impact does this have on how we relate to each other. What has made people immediately reach for their cell phone to take a picture when something happens? This is a stage of history we’ve never faced before.
While we have come through an era where “the medium is the message,” we have moved on from this. The medium is still the technology. The message today is found in the resonance of community. One is not the other. In fact, the irony as stated by Steve Harrison in his essay on this particular video (found in HCI Remixed), is key. Separation does in fact, invite a connection. If we believe that human beings seek resonance with each other, eliminating some of the barriers to finding that resonance through disrupting the accepted norms of relationships and community will in fact deliver us to new ways of ‘seeing’ each other. Through these new ways of discovering resonance we will be able to grow an international array of communities. The international would relate not just to geographical space, but also class space. We have a media which will offer everyone an opportunity to find resonance of community with the homeless, the traditional-media famous, and their neighbor.
The new buzzword in social media appears to be Influence. According to conferences, some marketers it’s what people want. To influence others.
This is a mistake. It demonstrates a very shallow, one-sided view.
(cartoon from xkcd.com)
Talk to most people in social media for example, and they’ll tell you the truth. What they’re doing is looking for, and responding to resonance, not influence.
What all of us seek in social media is Resonance.
The influence part happens afterwards.
In social media, you can’t influence someone unless they want to be influenced.
Guess what… if traditional media had understood the need to find real resonance with its market, it wouldn’t be in the situation it is today.
Resonance. It’s what creates meaning. Just like the rice here.
Let’s confirm who professional journalists are: People (trained or not), paid to produce content under the mastheads of traditional news outlets.
Let’s confirm what they’re supposed to do: This is a tricky one. No matter how many times I have asked, and how many people, across Australia, the USA and the UK, nobody can give me a core definition of journalism. Maybe it’s a secret. A magician’s code. Part of the smoke and mirrors used to convince everyone they’re worth being paid for over anyone without a mogul. Professional journalists promote their work as a noble art, one that demands a rigor most can not attain. With prompting, a professional journalist will usually agree you need training, you need balance, fairness, fact collection and analysis.
In a conversation I had on Twitter with people in Australia following the Twitter’s Impact on Media and Journalism mini-conference (actually a 2-hour seminar of sorts), Brad Howarth, a professional journalist who was attending says journalism will not be “harmed or replaced by Twitter.” Another Australian, Renai Lemay, followed his presentation at the same conference with a post for ZDNet where he likens his role as a professional journalist to a knight, protecting the honour of a “great lady of noble birth” and describes Twitter as a “playground for pleasure of journalists.” Somewhere to reconnect with the audience. While Renai seeks to support Twitter’s role, he demonstrates a very Lipmann-esque view – it’s still them and us, and being able to play amongst the great unwashed is a novel way of “cutting the fat out of journalism.”
Bringing it to the US, last night, on Lou Dobbs’ show on CNN, the Face Off segment featured a rather strange topical area of ‘Social Networks & Journalism: Is traditional media obsolete?’, Professor Robert Thompson of Syracuse University held the same line as Renai. He described citizen journalists as “acting like deputies … it’s just like we used to use eyewitnesses.” In what was supposedly a debate (which Dobbs pointedly remarked at the start he hoped would be won by Professor Thompson), Micah Sifryn, co-founder of the Personal Democracy Forum began well by saying “anyone can commit and act of journalism.” However he followed that up by agreeing with Lou Dobbs that it “takes more than just holding up your mobile phone and filming stuff and then putting it online to be a journalist.”
Oh really?
My issue is that all of this is either a. focused on the media used for journalism rather than what journalism actually is, or b. garbled propaganda nonsense.
Let me be clear. For those who don’t know me, I was a traditional, paid journalist for 15 years. I then moved to Public Relations, and then into teaching journalism, marketing, PR, event management and advertising at college. Happily, I’m back in traditional professional journalism myself, as the Boulder Startup Examiner for Examiner.com. (I make enough for a cup of coffee a week). I’m even currently undertaking graduate research in the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at CU in Boulder (on social media communities), and I TA on the Intro to Journalism and Intro to Advertising classes. I’m a co-founder of a startup which will enable people to create more content and make better connections online. I’m pretty well engaged on all fronts.
And my question is thus: If traditional, professional journalists (those I’ve identified above) want to say what they do is different to what is able to be done by anyone else, I believe they have to say what makes it so, in order to be understood. So let me help you professionals out. The book, Elements of Journalism, authored by Bill Kovach and Tom Rosentiel, provides 10 elements of journalism. They are:
1. Journalism’s first obligation is to the truth.
2. Its first loyalty is to the citizens.
3. Its essence is discipline of verification.
4. Its practitioners must maintain an independence from those they cover.
5. It must serve as an independent monitor of power.
6. It must provide a forum for public criticism and compromise.
7. It must strive to make the significant interesting, and relevant.
8. It must keep the news comprehensive and proportional.
9. Its practitioners must be allowed to exercise their personal conscience.
10. The rights and responsibilities of citizens to be media literate.
But I’m questioning these traditional elements. While the 10th Element only appeared in this text in 2007 as a direct response to the power of Web 1.0, I believe it’s time to entirely redefine the concept of journalism. To strip it back and challenge the notion of what it is – a notion that has root in the medium, not the craft. All of the above elements of journalism reflect a somewhat Lipmann-esque attitude. But at last in the 21st Century, John Dewey really gets a turn. At journalism’s very core is one thing – communication. So I’ve developed a new definition of what journalism is:
Journalism is communication through any means that enables two things – a. the transmission of factual information about all factors that make up society, and b. validation, authentication and discussion of opinions, beliefs and commentary.
In the past, given the limited and expensive range of tools open to people, journalists were defined as a separate group of people. Training in the media they worked in, and how best to ‘do’ journalism to communicate messages were the focus. But those constraints have left us. The best journalism does not rely on the old elements – nor the old media. It doesn’t rely on training, or a paypacket.
Will journalism still exist when the moguls move onto more profitable ventures? Yes. Is it noble and necessary for democracy? Yes. Does it need defending? No (from what?). Is it the realm of the few? No, not any more. It’s not Twitter that is changing it. It’s Web 2.0. All social media. It’s going to be even greater when even more people are creating the content. That’s democracy.
I felt compelled to do it. Boulder is a wonderful town, with a fantastic tech community of people. It’s a really big community, for a small town. It’s exciting, vibrant and smart. It’s full of incredible people. And they’re all doing their own thing.
We’re all working with a similar environment. We see lots of familiar people every week, and there are lots of tech events focused on the community. But we have different lives, experiences and industries. There are lots of people here I’ve never met – and when many of those people are ones I’ve heard of and I know have heard of me in our ’small’ community, that’s disappointing. We have a wealth of things to draw on that don’t get any focus, simply because there’s no professional journalism covering it.
So that’s what I’m trying to do with my Examiner role. I’m treating it as I would a professional journalistic venture. It’s not personal (that’s what my blog’s for). It’s actual journalism. The way I used to do it. It’s amazing how you never forget. And I’m really enjoying it.
I’m putting together a plan of writing one article a week on five different topic areas. (Let’s see how my time management works with that!) Today’s topic area was Women in Tech. I’ll be writing on that once a week. And today’s story relates to how women who work in Boulder startups simply don’t seem to have the same networking opportunities the men of Boulder do. A pretty self-evident post, I thought. I got to interview some wonderful women (another bonus of working on Examiner is chatting with local startups I’ve never run across, or have only met briefly!). I said to Tara and Grace I wanted to focus on women in Boulder startups. It wasn’t their idea, it was mine. And they came to the party. We had a lovely chat over coffee last week. I recorded the chat, and I wrote the piece.
It seems to have hit a bit of a nerve with some people in various elements of social media, and I couldn’t be happier. I believe the article is respectful of Boulder, the community and both men and women. If you read beyond the headline (as any journalism school will explain, the headline is just the foothold into the story) you get a balanced view of women in startups here in Boulder.
I invite you to read the article yourself, and leave a comment. I now know I’ll definitely be covering women in startups in Boulder every week. Because it’s a great topic, obviously close to my heart. And nobody else covers it.
I do wish people would stop analysing the ‘death of print’ and focus on the future of journalism. There are so many traditional media with stories like the nicely titled “Is democracy written in disappearing ink” which attempt to say journalism will die along with the traditional formats. While I like the title, the answer if obviously “only if you guys want it to!”
Suck it up people. Democracy is alive and well, and professional journalists have never had a better opportunity to tell all the stories they need to tell. The web gets rid of all your publishers, advertisers… financial concerns which could be seen to impact on your ‘professionalism’. If your primary focus is to make money, then I’m putting it to you that democracy doesn’t sit well with that.
If the key to democracy is myriad voices gaining exposure, then democracy has never been better served.
In discussions with people who view the media climate as being a binary between big media and bloggers, many times the exclamation rises, “Well, if MSM didn’t exist what would bloggers talk about? All they do is talk about ‘real media’ stories.”
But how the tables have turned.
The last couple of weeks across the US and Australia has seen a great rise in MSM’s coverage of ‘normal’ citizens production of content on new media channels. Blogs, yes. But beyond that, social media is rising to take over. There seems to be stories in MSM covering content produced on Twitter, Ustream, 12seconds every single day.
The Sydney Morning Herald’s front page online today features a home invasion with details simply drawn from Twitter and UStream. Yes, when you open it you end up in the tech section – but it is firstly listed on the front page.
The New York Times had a great piece recently on how traditional media ‘personalities’ were taking up Twitter.
But all MSM reports have been very much along the lines of “we don’t know how this inane stuff involves so many people, but hey, it does.” MSM reporters are challenged by social media. They know it’s a space they need to be in, and report about, but they’re not really confident with doing either of those things.
Real life celebrities such as Demi Moore and Ashton Kutcher, Stephen Fry and (ex-model) Kathy Ireland are getting into Web 2.0 and actually talking directly to real, ordinary people. MSM is suddenly no longer needed to give a broadcast audience celebrity gossip. Why bother when I can watch Demi’s recent photo shoot for Helena Rubenstein courtesy of her husband’s Qik stream? It’s authentic. It’s credible. It’s straight from them!
So now the can of worms is opened. As expected, newspapers are closing. Many print journalists are inexplicably in shock. Their next paid employment may well include the words, “do you want fries with that?”
And that, truly, is devastating.
But we still have new people entering schools, wanting to be journalists. Play with me here:
Let’s say we have a new intake this year. They’ll be trusting us for the next four years to prepare them for employment. Beyond fast food. And so the question for educators is specific. What are the best journalism schools teaching now? What should they be teaching?
Be specific! I’m not interested in opinions that simply state “they need to be prepared for the web.”
Here’s a few of my views. We need to:
a. Teach the very real and vital aspects of the role of journalism, its values and role.
b. Equip students with these values as paramount, above and beyond the role of the media they work in. We need them to see the media they work within never compromises or changes their values as journalists.
c. Move away from teaching print media with a concentration on newspapers as the standard, and instead move towards the web as the standard media format.
d. Continue to teach content creation for broadcast and radio, and print magazines. And equip every student for a start in any of those formats.
e. In their first semester, teach students about the real possibilities of independent blogging, microblogging, podcasting and vlogging and insist they do all of them.
f. Instill in them all an awareness and practice of newsgathering and research in a new media environment.
The print edition of the Rocky Mountain News has hit the newsstands for the last time. It’s no secret that I have little time for those who are crying over the death of print. In fact, I believe that journalism has never had better opportunities than right now.The money in media has not just ‘disappeared’. It’s still there. The only difference is that now the playing field is opened up and the best will get their hands on the dollars – instead of it being limited to the few who could afford the cushioning luxury of an established masthead.
If established mastheads had moved effectively online, then their brands would survive. I firmly believe that in any business if the market likes your product then you survive. And media are no different. Do a good job, meet market need, and you survive.
The Rocky tried to go online, but all they did was degrade the quality and credibility of their brand in the process. They did a Web 1.0 operation and faked a bit of Web 2.0 by including unmoderated reader comments on everything from murders to the weather. The Rocky added absolutely nothing to the print edition by going online. All they did was further deplete the paid for market.
And that’s not a bad thing. Print newspapers are about the most environmentally unsound yet ‘accepted’ standard thing here in Colorado. I find it completely ridiculous that there are environmental reporters who are crying over the death of the newspaper. But I digress… (as usual)
The Rocky Mountain News online masthead is still up for sale, along with its archives. And it’s the only thing that would be worth buying anyway. So if I had the money, this is what I’d do:
1. Spend money on a relaunch of the Rocky online. Brand it as the community news source it built its reputation on.
2a. Run a couple of workshops for the public on how to be a part of the new Rocky, including how to contribute stories (in either text, video, audio or all of them).
2b. Invite the community to contribute news stories to be edited and considered for publication.
3. Vet the contributions as they come in, and invite contributors to make adjustments as needed.
4. Invite the most vocal, opinionated people to write regular paid columns.
5. Trawl the web to add value to the articles posted (and aim to do it with every story) – by linking to relevant educational sites, background info, interactive elements, etc. This includes other newspapers/sources. It means journalism really gets to be transparent, credible, authentic. You know, all that stuff it should always have been.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it until I’m purple in the face – the future of journalism is social. And involving the community to contribute to their own news source means democracy and the essential recommendations of the Hutchins Commission in the 1940s will be enabled far better than it ever was before.
That’s why this is an exciting time for journalism. The only sobbing I’m doing is over the traditional journalists that don’t see it.
Traditional print media’s attempts to embrace an online presence has been lacklustre, and in fact has helped kill their brands.
Most print MSM have incorporated blogs as part of their delivery mechanism. They have made their existing, print-trained reporters produce content for a medium they are not familiar with. It’s like having a trained print journalist produce television. There are differences. Traditional journalists who are already overworked due to company lay-offs have had varying degrees of ethics and purpose when producing content for their blogs. Most appear to not really know why they’re doing it other than ‘to show we’re in that space’. And because of the time involved, the overall quality of everything they do can suffer.
When blogs are put up by traditional media, the masthead appears as the banner to the blog. Anything produced under that masthead reflects on the brand. For a media brand, if it’s not journalism or well produced, that’s damaging. MSM has treated the internet as though it’s a massive printing press and anything and everything can run. At last, there’s no restrictions of cost of paper, distribution, etc. Stories which perhaps shouldn’t be written or run are given a second chance online.
Recognising the Web 2.0 social aspects, print media has incorporated Reader Comments sections in their online brands which allow all manner of diatribe, ill-informed opinion and complete drivel run for pages and pages – often longer than the stories themselves. Most of this ‘reader comment’ would never have seen the light of day if it were offered to print entities, but due to lack of staff, it runs away with itself unless flagged by another reader. I would suggest if it’s not fit for print under your masthead then it’s not fit for online publication under your masthead either – and as news organisations of many years’ standing, you have a responsibility to control these comments before your readers – particularly on hard news. By making the reader comments section open slather, it’s as if a peanut butter brand opened the lid and said “got anything you want to add? Sure thing, just chuck it in there.”
Online should be giving print media the opportunity to give readers a more in-depth experience with the type of quality reporting often limited by cost of paper and distribution. It should be expanding their brands. All stories should be including internal links to sources, further information, etc that are well researched and allow the reader a complete experience.
Print media believes writing for the web means writing all the information in a shorter way and presenting it well. Often simply repurposing content. For example, J-schools train up and coming reporters in how the eye looks at a screen, and gets them to rewrite a print story for the web. That’s kinda like getting a print reporter to rewrite their story for tv. It’s garbage. Great print media, in adopting an online presence should be all about giving extra information through the links they provide. It’s about being truly transparent. And in a Web 2.0 environment, it’s about being social.
Being a social media entity does enable everyone to be part of your efforts. Web 2.0 is community. But when you add that masthead to the top of your online efforts, then you have a responsibility to the survival of your professional brand as a business as well.
If you want to use Web 2.0, you need to do so responsibly to help your medium survive. Recognise that you have a community of readers who regularly want to respond. Why not approach those people to see if they’d like to have their own blogs rather than sullying up every story you run? Only add reader comments if you can moderate them, and only to particular stories. Invite people to provide additional links rather than simply their opinion! Identify exactly what it is that is driving you to make your print journalists write blogs too, when you have a whole community of people out there? There are plenty of ways to be effective in Web 2.0. It’s social. It’s about people you don’t employ. And they’re a community who could add value and credibility to your brand when you control the infrastructure within which they contribute.
If your masthead isn’t that important to you, then you deserve what’s happening to you.
Following my previous post about unhappily swimming in the B Pool, I’m pleased to have been able to scramble my way through to a bit of a splash in the A pool. You know, that place where the cool kids are?
My final paper for Media Ethics, Twittering a Funeral: Social media’s challenge to professional journalism received a final A grade. I think my professor was just as relieved and pleased about it as I am.
I’ll be working on the paper further to prepare it for possible conference/journal submission, under the intuitive guidance of Professor Mike McDevitt. Without his assistance in structuring my paper all the stuff in my head would still be struggling for a voice.
Anyway, I’ll happily send it along to anyone who’d like the long, academic version. Just email me or DM me on Twitter. But for those of you with lives not academically focused, here are the key points:
Statement of Purpose
This paper examines the impact on the professionalism of journalism as it integrates the social networking tool Twitter in traditional news reporting. The paper considers the use of Twitter by the Rocky Mountain News in which a child’s funeral was “live blogged,” as well as the ensuing outcry and response from the editor, John Temple. It identifies the particular characteristics of Twitter as a communication tool, and proposes an ethical model which supports the use of Twitter in professional journalism.
The paper then outlines the case study of the Rocky Mountain News’ reporting of a child’s funeral using Twitter, and identifies why this use was not only unethical but a case of unprofessional journalism. This is journalism which doesn’t address the recommendations of the Hutchins Commission, and puts the autonomy of American journalists, as well as their credibility, in the firing line. There is a desperate need for reporters to be trained in the functionality of Twitter and fully understand it as well as the community (not audience) which supports it.
I recommend a model which outlines three ways Twitter should not be used, as well as three ways in which it supports professional journalism.
NO:
1. When the use of Twitter (either through implementing the tool or the result) is perceived as a possible invasion of privacy.
2. When another journalistic tool would better serve the reporting need or the ability of the journalist.
3. When a journalist or media entity is unfamiliar with social media in its complete form, not just as a broadcast medium.
YES:
1. As a resource for newsgathering purposes, in preparing information for stories, getting leads, etc.
2. As a public journalism tool – where the journalist can attend an event and act as the mediator between the community and the event. Eg: a red carpet event, where the community can ask the journalist questions and she can filter them and respond accordingly (of course, this takes a different sort of journalistic training.)
3. For Amber Alerts (abducted children), especially when the child is suspected to have been abducted overseas; and for issues of imminent need or notice such as natural disasters, etc. The input would come from reliable sources, and media would then be able to aid in important efforts to communicate with the respectability of their professional branding adding weight to the message going out through the Twitter stream.
I hope the A pool welcomes me back a few more times. It’s really nice.
@franmolloy Thanks Fran! It is great to connect with a real conversation. Pity someone decided it was too much. I can be ... opinionated. ;) 2 hours ago
It will be a great 1.5hrs w Brad Berenthal (I think) interviewing Ted Turner. @stiricide get your ticket early - the room is limited size. 2 hours ago
