Learn more about Holistic Health Studies at Langara

Journalism in the 21st Century

INDEPENDENT MEDIA by Steve Anderson

Which do you find more engaging: reading an article in a newspaper or having a conversation about it with a friend afterwards? This is the question journalists, editors and media executives should be asking themselves as they try to navigate through the current crisis in journalism. If you’re like me, you find conversation about current events more interesting than the consumption of news.

It appears that the Internet is facilitating an increase in expression, collaboration and conversation, which although unevenly dispersed, is unmistakable. The current crisis in big business, coupled with the explosion of personal expression through online media, is fundamentally transforming journalism practices and giving way to the emergence of a more participatory form of journalism.

A new relationship between journalists and audiences

NYU journalism professor Jay Rosen calls this new form of journalism “pro-am,” short for professional and amateur. According to Rosen, “The pro-am approach looks for the hybrid forms that combine substantial openness with some controls.” Those controls come in the form of journalists acting as facilitators of collaborative “crowd sourced” journalism. Rosen maintains that pro-am or participatory journalism won’t replace traditional newsrooms, “but if taken seriously and used properly, this pro-am model has the potential to radically extend the reach and effectiveness of professional journalism.”

The Guardian newspaper harnessed its online community towards producing better professional journalism by inviting people to read through MPs’ expense documents, normally considered a highly expensive and unlikely initiative. To date, 23,376 people have reviewed 204,477 pages for the Guardian.

Ingredients for participatory journalism

A Canadian example of this transformation in journalism can be found in perhaps the most unlikely of places – the Financial Post. The FP’s live blog coverage of the CRTC’s traffic management hearing was facilitated by journalist Matt Hartley, who proved to be both a skilled online discussion facilitator and knowledgeable about the media and telecommunications industry. Hartley also added value to the hearing by inviting presenters to join the discussion. Hartley kept the discussion open; all twitter chats that were appropriately tagged were automatically fed into the conversation and messages were posted quickly.

The FP’s coverage was successful as a result of the three basic ingredients necessary for engaging participatory journalism:

  • Good facilitation (skilled, respected, knowledgeable)
  • Value (informative and relevant content)
  • Openness (provides open access via numerous points of entry)

Ownership matters

It could be a long wait indeed before big corporations become purveyors of open, transparent and participatory journalism. As Rosen put it when talking about the journalism system, “If you know how the old one fell apart, it’s easier to put something new together.” Keeping in mind that the greed of big media is largely responsible for the crisis in journalism, we can focus squarely on new independent and public projects.

One recent media success story is TVO’s The Agenda: On the Road, which ran a series of discussion panels that were hosted in local communities and focused on local issues. The show went one step further by allowing participants or “the audience” to drive the direction of the discussions. Through the “unconference” and other social media tools, the show collected citizen input and acted upon it. According to Mark Kuznicki, a social media and community management consultant involved in the series, “TVO is mixing the best of old and new media to stimulate a higher level of citizen engagement.”

Who will lead?

The public wants more participatory forms of media and we can’t trust that large corporations, with their matrix of commercial and ideological interests, can effectively curate democratic dialogue. While some enlightened media outlets have taken up the challenge of reinventing journalism, apart from the prematurely cancelled ZED series and Exposure, the CBC and many other socially mandated media outlets have yet to take full advantage of online media tools.

The media terrain is in the process of being renegotiated and public service media organizations should be at the forefront.

Steve Anderson is the national coordinator for the Campaign for Democratic Media. He contributed to Censored 2008 and Battleground: The Media, and has written for The TyeeToronto Star, Epoch Times and Adbusters. Reach him at: 
steve@democraticmedia.ca
www.FacebookSteve.com
www.SteveOnTwitter.com

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

*


*

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong>