Next spring, colleges and universities
will graduate thousands of new journalism students. They'll
go forth into newsrooms across the country to practice the skills
that have served journalism well for over a century. They'll
know how to interview sources, summarize their findings and
write a few hundred words of clear prose in an inverted pyramid
style. These are the skills that journalism schools have
taught for decades. And they will be almost meaningless in the
world these newly minted journalists will soon inhabit.
Journalism changed forever starting in early 2004. At that time,
there were about a million people worldwide writing the online
personal diaries called blogs. There was no MySpace,
no Facebook,
no Digg
and no YouTube.
Apple's iPod had sold less than a half-million units. The Internet
was emerging from a two-year hangover. Few people saw
the explosive changes that were about to take place.
Three years later, the online world is a very different place.
More than 100 million people have created blogs, and a third
of them update their blogs regularly. MySpace is so embedded
in the psyche of America's teens that nearly everyone under
the age of 18 has an account. More than 65,000 videos are uploaded
to YouTube every day. New services like Twitter
and Jaiku
allow ordinary citizens to publish information globally using
cell phones. In the summer of 2007, prominent blogger Robert
Scoble wrote of learning about an earthquake in Mexico on Twitter
an hour before it was reported in the news media.
The media has called this phenomenon Web 2.0, but it’s
basically a revolution in personal publishing. For the first
time in history, ordinary citizens have the means to publish
to a global audience cheaply and easily. Journalism will never
be the same.
A venerable craft
The craft of reporting as we know it was refined in the days
when information was scarce and the purveyors of information
were the few who could afford the substantial capital investments
needed to deliver stacks of newspapers and broadcast streams
to the masses. In an era of information scarcity, knowing what
to cut out was at least as important a part of journalism as
knowing what to keep.
The classic approach to reporting is error-prone, wasteful and
full of subjective decisions, but until recently, it was the
best we could do. Here’s a summary of how the process
typically works:
Armed with an assignment or story idea, the reporter strikes
out find and interview knowledgeable sources. Typically,
90 percent or more of the information she gathers never appears
in the final story. The reporter attempts to synthesize facts
and opinions into a single account. Despite the fact that she
is often less informed about the topic than any of the sources,
we put our faith in her because she is impartial and trained
to do this.
When the reporter writes, she must treat her audience as a single
entity, even though she knows that they have a diverse range
of interests and characteristics. A story about Oriental rugs,
for example, is of different relevance to a weaver, a home decorator
and a child labor attorney. But it doesn't matter; the story
can only be written one way.
If the published story contains an error, there is little that
can be done about it. A letter to the editor or a correction
may show up several days later, by which time most readers have
forgotten the original story anyway. If the story is picked
up by a wire service, the error is picked up as well.
A new approach to journalism
The practice described above was acceptable in an information-starved
world. However, many of the structural limitations of traditional
media are now gone. Information is plentiful, the tools of online
publishing are cheap and the networks to deliver information
are fast and reliable. There is simply no reason to continue
doing things the way we have done them.
Consider how a reporter might tackle a story in the future.
She contacts a source to request an interview. The source
agrees under the condition that the conversation be recorded,
posted on a website and linked to from the published article.
Or perhaps the interview is conducted via e-mail or instant
messenger, creating an archived trail that can be published
for any one who's interested to read. The reporter's notes are,
in effect, online for all to see.
When the reporter writes, she still synthesizes information,
but she also weaves in links to source material, blogger commentary
and background articles. Readers are given pointers to additional
material that may appeal to their particular interests. Readers
can also comment on the story, adding information and perspective.
If there’s a mistake, corrections are instantly made online.
However, the chance for a mistake is much lower because source
material is easily available. Over time, the story is updated
and embellished as new information surfaces. There's no need
to repeat the facts over and over because earlier accounts are
always available. The reporter and editor become, essentially,
aggregators of information.
This radical new approach to journalism is actually being practiced
right now. Wikipedia,
the massive online reference work that anyone can author, is
perhaps the most prominent example. Wikipedia’s community
model, in which there are no named editors, has created a resource
that is more than eight times the size of the Encyclopedia Britannica
and of nearly equal quality, according to independent studies.
What’s often overlooked on Wikipedia is its current
events coverage. Using content assembled from mainstream
media, first-hand accounts, amateur photographers and bloggers,
the site is remarkably effective at providing comprehensive
news and perspective. Its coverage
of the October, 2007 California fires is an outstanding
example of this.
Other experiments in this new form of journalism are proliferating,
including iBrattleboro.com,
Northwest
Voice and Korea’s OhMyNews.com.
Mainstream media like USA
Today and The
Washington Post are experimenting with reader comments on
published news. These publications are on the leading edge of
the new journalism. However, they are still in the minority.
Most newspapers don't even include hyperlinks in the stories
they publish online.
Some people refer to this new approach to newsgathering as citizen
journalism. This concept has drawn skepticism and even
derision from the mainstream media, who argue that ordinary
citizens lack the skills needed to produce well-structured,
impartial accounts. They’re right, but they miss
the point. Citizen journalism is not about replacing reporters
with ordinary citizens; it's about supplementing the work of
professional journalists with the newly accessible observations
and insights of interested people. The result of this interaction
is a new brand of journalism that is more comprehensive, accurate
and reflective of the varied needs of the readership than the
model that was constrained by the limitations of print and broadcast
media.
We're on the verge of an exciting reinvention of journalism
enabled by personal publishing. The transition will be tumultuous
and even painful, but the result will be well worth the effort.
PAUL GILLIN is a writer and social media
consultant whose 2007 book, The
New Influencers, documents the impact of new media on markets
and institutions.
