Eight (or Nine) Values for the Future of News

I just returned from the Future of News conference in St. Paul, Minn. Although the conference inspired Richard Gingras to cheekily tweet, “The future of news is a future of conferences about the future of news,” there were some interesting threads worth noting.

One presenter who stood out to me was Tom Rosenstiel, from the Pew Center for Excellence in Journalism, who proposed eight values he believed were core to the future of news. Some, he noted, were long-held values of legacy media organizations that we should carry over to new models. Others were values rooted in the changing media system and people’s responses to it.

Journalists as Cartographers

Ground Truthing: The use of a ground survey to confirm findings of aerial image or to calibrate quantitative aerial observations; validation and verification techniques used on the ground to support maps; walking the ground to see for oneself if what has been told is true; near-surface discoveries. ~From Terry Tempest Williams, Orion Magazine, MayJue 2003

The convergence of print, video, and audio online is just one function of a larger shift in the technology of our daily lives from analog to digital. Just glancing around my house there are a range of ways that digital technology has replaced analog: my watch, my stereo, my thermostat, my phone, my camera, etc… These changes are more than the simple march of progress. They represent a fundamental shift in our epistemology. Yochi Benkler has written that “Information, knowledge, and culture are central to human freedom and human development. How they are produced and exchanged in our society critically affects the way we see the state of the world as it is and might be; who decides these questions; and how we, as societies and polities, come to understand what can and ought to be done.” Changes in technology necessitate changes in how we respond to the world around us

Whether you blame or celebrate the role of the Internet in journalism, it is impossible to deny how the web has changed – and is changing – the role of the journalist. News and information – and they way we consume it – has undergone a radical shift in just the last twenty years. We went from watching the evening newscast, to 24 hour cable news, to always-on internet news, to always-on and always-accessible mobile news on cell phones. With these shifts have come changes in pace and delivery, as well as the content and character of the news.

Is the Future of Journalism a Drought or a Flood?

Journalism students may be short on jobs, but they certainly aren’t lacking reading material about their industry. In the last twelve months, there have been a number of landmark essays on journalism written by academics and journalists. In addition, at least six major textbook-sized reports on the future of American media have been released, as well as innumerable lectures, conferences and roundtables on the topic.

The list of materials produced this year could easily make up a respectable “open-source” syllabus for the aspiring journalism innovator. But until a week or two ago, this makeshift seminar wouldn’t have been complete. Just when I thought little else could be written about the future of news, a coalition of independent media outlets – The Media Consortium – has released a remarkable new report that deserves a slot in your reading list.

Editors Make the Case for Smart Journalism Policies

The editors of the Columbia Journalism Review published an important editorial this week outlining why they feel public policy must be a central part of the discussion about the future of news in America.

They wrote: “The idea that a purely commercial media alone can continue to deliver the journalism we need is becoming difficult to swallow. If we don’t get beyond the rational but outdated fear of government help for accountability journalism—if we just let the market sort it out—this vital public good will continue to decline.”

College Media and the Future of Journalism

Today I gave a presentation at the National College Media Convention here in Austin, Texas. I had a great crowd, some challenging questions, and overall a good discussion. All in all, a short one hour conference session is a tough venue to have an in-depth discussion about an issue as complex as the future of journalism.

I’m embedding my presentation here in hopes of continuing the conversation in the comment section of this blog blog. The presentation is below (sorry the videos don’t work at this point, still tweaking those).

In Defense of Journalism Policy

This was originally posted on Nov. 30th at SaveTheNews.org

Today’s Washington Post op-ed by Robert W. McChesney and John Nichols recovers a past too many Americans have forgotten and sets the record straight on the government’s role in protecting journalism.

“We seek to renew a rich if largely forgotten legacy of the American free-press tradition, one that speaks directly to today’s crisis,” they write. “The First Amendment necessarily prohibits state censorship, but it does not prevent citizens from using their government to subsidize and spawn independent media.”

McChesney and Nichols, two of the co-founders of Free Press, are responding to a common misconception about government involvement in journalism is antithetical to freedom of the press. Policy has always shaped journalism, and for a long time it was policy that helped ensure freedom of the press.

Journalism Co-Ops

What happens when the institutions we depend on – the ones supposedly “too big to fail” – begin to fail us? The unsustainable drive toward ever greater profits has undermined our society’s’ core institutions: health care, banks and now, journalism.

In response to this string of failures, it is no surprise to see small groups of people coming together locally to find ways of obtaining the information, health care and financial assistance they need in their communities.

One of these responses has been the formation of co-ops, or local cooperatives. Local cooperative banks and health care co-ops are now being held up as important social and economic models.

Why Newspaper Need Pledge Drives

(Hint: it has nothing to do with money)

People like to complain about pledge drives on NPR and PBS, but I was recently talking with a journalist at a local public radio station who said “One of the problems facing newspapers is that they don’t have fund drives.”

She went on to explain that, while fund drives are an absolute financial necessity for NPR and PBS, the donations they receive are only part of the benefits. “Two or thee times a year we get to spend a couple hours a day telling our community how important they are to us, and reminding them how important we are to them,” she said.

Eat, Read, Organize

For almost ten years my wife and I have held regular potlucks at our home. These dinner have been one of the most consistent parts of our life together. We have moved more than five times, changed jobs at least six times, got married, had a child, and through it all we have hosted these dinners. What began as a weekly gathering of some close friends and coworkers in Providence quickly spread until we had strangers showing up at our doorstep, and were meeting people at parties who would say “oh you’re the people who hold those potlucks…”.

Columbia Study Reaffirms National Journalism Strategy

This is a post I wrote for SaveTheNews.org – I’ll have more personal thoughts and reflections coming on this topic soon.

A hopeful future for journalism is within reach, but it’ll take an ambitious societal effort to seize the moment. That is the conclusion of a new report released today by Columbia University’s School of Journalism.

The Reconstruction of American Journalism by Leonard Downie, Jr., former executive editor of The Washington Post, and Michael Schudson, professor of journalism at Columbia, is the third major report to be released this year that advocates for a government role in securing the future of journalism.