Dead Sea Newspaper by Inju.“Society doesn’t need newspapers,” Clay Shirky wrote in his remarkable essay,
“Newspapers and the Unthinkable.” “What we need is journalism. For a century, the imperatives to strengthen journalism and to strengthen newspapers have been so tightly wound as to be indistinguishable. That’s been a fine accident to have, but when that accident stops, as it is stopping before our eyes, we’re going to need lots of other ways to strengthen journalism instead.”
It should be noted now, as the process of transformation gets underway, that it must include transitioning the news-gathering public from a passive, anonymous crowd into a savvy team of operators, willing and able to actively respond to challenges and opportunities for meaningful action. This is where digital media has the clear advantage on tree-based news distribution, and where the most potential lies for attracting funders.
As Clay notes in his essay, journalism is always subsidized, one way or another. Funding models are changing, but that can be extremely positive given the lack of focus on critical issues such as climate change, pollution, social hazard and injustice that occurs when reporters, editors, producers and publishers are beholden to advertisers.
Digital media allow for a mix of perspectives, the ability to update, delete, correct, streamline, post fragments, ideas, immersive and participatory media across language, geopolitical, socioeconomic, generational and physical barriers. This new opportunity to share important information in real-time can mean the difference between life and death, which, ultimately, is a journalist’s main mission: to inform the public about burgeoning trends, issues and ripples
before full escalation of violence or societal breakdown occurs, or--at least--so the process can occur more mindfully.
Experiencing the Unthinkable Makes it Less UnthinkableAfter years as a journalist, I made a switch in 2006 from print to digital. My company,
Dancing Ink Productions, is now two years deep into our journalistic experiment. Our most recent work (short documentary forthcoming in April) is a major
virtual newsroom project with the American University in Cairo’s Kamal Adham Center for Journalism Training and Research, led by war journalist, author and longtime Middle East correspondent Lawrence Pintak.
By way of background; I have been a journalist since 2000. My photographs, essays, articles, interviews and features about my work have appeared in multimedia around the world, including The New York Times, CNN, TIME, Wired, Boing Boing and NPR. My first major publication was in 2001, when my story, “
Terms of Service: Sweaty Scenes from the Life of an AOL Censor” appeared on the cover of the Village Voice.
In 2006, I spent 6 months investigating
post-Katrina corporate profiteering in the Gulf Coast, researching and reporting on widespread cronyism and corruption. This was a freelance gig in addition to my full-time job as a beat reporter on the old, leaky Indian Point nuclear power plant, over which terrorists flew on 9/11, and blueprints for which were reportedly found in a cave in Afghanistan (see comments below for more information on this issue).
I have covered scores of town and school board meetings in my day, and I’ve also interviewed dozens of people who have changed the world for better or worse, including George Plimpton, Ari Fleischer, Cal Ripken Jr. and my favorite interview of all time, Malik Rahim, a former member of the Black Panthers who served a stint on death row in the 1970’s after a shootout with cops at the Desire community in New Orleans. Malik Rahim is now instrumental in a segment of the rebuilding effort. Though he was shot at in Vietnam and did time on death row, nothing, he said, could have prepared him for the four days of renegade wilding that took place in the immediate aftermath of the storm and flood.
I’ve attended Congressional hearings on the nuclear industry and I even sprung a nun from the clink when she finished her prison stint for civil disobedience so I could interview her while the experience was still fresh in her mind. My career as a journalist has been one of the greatest sources of meaningful transformation in my life. I am committed to the profession, which is why I undertook a complete professional redesign in 2006.
There was never enough space in print to tell the whole story, and always an unsatisfying feeling of finality, that somehow, once the words were on paper and sent out into the world that there was no way to connect the people who might be able to take action to combat the very issue investigated on those static pages. On the other hand, not everyone has access to the Internet. The demise of print should catalyze an intense focus on widening broadband penetration and availability of equipment so that access to news doesn't become an insurmountable socioeconomic chasm.
Yes, the industry saw the Internet coming, but more in the way a smoker is unable to completely envision possible emphysema one distant day while continuing to light up.
“When reality is labeled unthinkable,” wrote Clay Shirky, “it creates a kind of sickness in an industry.”
Sliding into the Digital RealmI started off as a beat reporter in a two-weeklies town. In the beginning, my editor taught me how to use my old metal-body Minolta camera. He taught me how to get a feel for shadow and shine, a skill which soon became obsolete, more or less, when we switched to cheap little digital cameras with bad blurry lag. Soon after, The New York Times Travel Section put me on a photography assignment. I remember my relief, during that initial conversation with the editor, at having already made the transition to digital. I assumed that the Times had already done so, but I was wrong. Digital images were not considered acceptable. Only slides would suffice. That was only seven years ago.
Andy Carvin of NPR
tweeted today that newspapers were in trouble the first time somebody copied and pasted an article and sent it out to friends.
The people who are committed to saving newspapers are demanding to know, Clay wrote, “‘If the old model is broken, what will work in its place?’ To which the answer is: Nothing. Nothing will work. There is no general model for newspapers to replace the one the internet just broke.”
It’s true that a general model hasn’t yet been developed, given the suddenness with which the diagnosis of print-death struck, but that doesn’t mean that nothing will work. After all, it was only just this year that the Pulitzers started to recognize digital publications on par with print, largely due to
Dan Gillmor’s excellent guidance on the subject.
Tapping into HIVE MIND “
HIVE MIND” is a term
John Hodgman uses to describe people who use the platform Twitter to connect in real time 140 character bursts from airplanes, bathrooms, parties, conferences, classes, restaurants, war zones, and private roof decks. From anywhere. Journalists can tap into HIVE MIND as a source now. The “death” of print, as melancholy as it is for complicated reasons mostly related to the ceaseless, rapid transformation of society at this time, will not kill the profession of journalism.
In order to thrive in this climate, an investigative reporting outfit needs to go deeper on reports, stop working from press releases and official statements, which are helpful, but not the end of the trail, dig harder for new sources, cultivate a new sense of what "news" is, and invest in serious investigations. It sounds like a lot, but it’s only the beginning. The most important new responsibility is to correctly identify the target audience to connect information with those most likely to take action and affect the situation or benefit directly from the knowledge, as well as to connect potential funders with relevant potential consumers and thus rebuild those lethargic critical relationships.
“That is what real revolutions are like,” Clay wrote. “The old stuff gets broken faster than the new stuff is put in its place...Even the revolutionaries can’t predict what will happen...”
The Evolution of JournalismMy prediction is that journalism, as a field, is going to emerge stronger than ever before, with better sources, smarter application of social media and more serious long-term investigation funded in innovative new ways. The models that have been floated most broadly so far smack of lackluster imagination and vision. The failure to create widespread adoption of half-baked ideas is not a harbinger of death for journalism, but rather a clear signal that innovation hasn't peaked in sync with the crisis. The fact is, being a journalist doesn’t pay well for most, so the business model has been anemic for a long time. New funding models that recognize the dedication and danger of the profession as well as the necessity for support will energize the entire field.
It isn’t just a matter of the long hours spent in total isolation hunched up a keyboard, or the mind for mathematical analysis required to decipher complex economic factors or geopolitical conflict, etc., that sets hardcore journalists apart. Journalism can be lethal, especially for those committed to taking it all the way to theaters of war and destruction. Eventually, many journalists are forced to make a decision whether or not a story is worth one’s life. According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, between January 1, 1992—December 31, 2008: 722 journalists were killed while working.
Journalists, as Clay points out, do a lot of society’s heavy lifting. One of the most significant pieces of the changing relationship in the field isn’t just between journalists and dying publications, but between reporters and the public they serve. An increased commitment from the public will benefit the development of journalism and will serve to attract conscientious funders.
The lack of willingness to spend on banner ads shouldn’t come as a surprise. When advertisers are offered the opportunity to sponsor exciting mixed media, mixed purpose content, such as data visualization maps that share important information in a groundbreaking and memorable way, they might be willing to come back to the table.
A Major Hint About the Future“When we shift our attention from ’save newspapers’ to ’save society’, the imperative changes from ‘preserve the current institutions’ to ‘do whatever works.’ And what works today,” Clay wrote, “isn’t the same as what used to work.”
No one experiment, Clay wrote, is going to replace what we are now losing with the demise of news on paper, “but over time, the collection of new experiments that do work might give us the reporting we need.”
The word "unthinkable" in the essay's title also serves as a major hint, at least, how I interpret it, about the way journalism ought to function. Journalists aren't supposed to sit back and wait for public approval ratings. Journalists are supposed to investigate the unthinkable, and report it along the way, whether there's a news hook or not. Announcing that there's been a complete collapse of the economy as we know it, with no focus on the red flags leading up to that stunning, sudden moment of collective awareness, is a complete failure of the entire journalistic machine, particularly for those outfits with the sway to have made a difference when it mattered. But would the public have really paid attention? Now, with a process of assessment underway, is the time to strike up an energetic, action-oriented framework for the rebuilding effort.
It's likely that the profession will greatly benefit from the addition of new analytical thinkers and analysts as talent moves across boundaries in a shifting economy. For a clear example of what I mean, watch "
Credit Crisis Visualized," by the talented Jonathan Jarvis.
