There’s much debate about the future of journalism these days, much of which I find uninteresting. Too often ideas and analysis flow great distances from the front lines. This, of course, is my bias: I’m rarely interested in the thoughts and ideas of those who haven’t rolled up their sleeves and done the dirty work to transform the world from one of atoms to one of bits.
That transformation is more subtle than simply a transition from static paper to interactive digital “page.” The implications are profound as we begin to understand the nature of network communication, linked information systems, open architectures and social inter-connectivity. Even the most basic idea of budget meetings, where editors and reporters “decide” what the news will be, should be overhauled and re-imagined in this network world.
Our most basic ideas will not hold in this networked era. For traditionalists, this is blasphemous. For the digerati, this point is mundane. What is certain, though, is that the world journalists exist within has — and is — changing rapidly.
To help see this change, I’ve asked people who are working in the media sphere — journalists, public relations practitioners, producers — to talk about their experience in the modern newsroom. Here are their stories:
Jason Pontin, Editor and Publisher, MIT’s Technology Review
In 2004, I went to work for Technology Review as the company’s website producer. It was an interesting time for the nation’s oldest technology magazine. We were in the middle of a radical overhaul of the property that included: building a daily website, re-imagining the monthly magazine, combining the two editorial visions and expanding the intellectual property across other platforms (e.g. conferences, foreign publishing).
Six years later, the overhaul and transformation is nearly complete. The last step: solidifying user payment models. Pontin discusses how the company evolved and how that has shaped its emerging pay schemes.
Caitlin Thompson, Online Producer, Time Magazine
While I refuse to use the term “digital native” to ascribe skills to younger generations because they just “get” technology, Thompson has spent the bulk of her career working online and thus has an interesting perspective on traditional media. She is one of the new breed of journalists, those who can easily navigate between atoms and bits. Here she talks about the conflicts that arise between traditional and emerging journalists and the mistakes that the digerati make as they move deeper into the newsroom.
James Poniewozik, Television and popular culture critic, Time Magazine’s TunedIn blog
When I first approached James for this, his response: I’m not sure what I have to add to this, I’m just a writer. Of course, that’s exactly the point. The changing media landscape, both from amateur publishers to the ever-moving blogosphere, make cultural critiques all the more important — and difficult. We now move at the speed of clicks. Ponziewozik discusses the life of a critic in a world where everyone can — and does — offer their own take on the world at large.
David Cohn, Founder, Spot.Us
I met David just after he launched Spot.Us after being awarded a grant from the Knight News Challenge, the yearly competition meant to suss out the most innovative ideas in journalism. The idea behind the project: a freelance-like approach to developing stories; however, instead of pitching to an editor, the writer’s can pitch to the world. Reporters set a fee for reporting, and those people who are interested in the project can donate money. If the goal is reached, the reporter starts the story.
The Spot.Us team then looks for syndication partners to help promote the stories. The idea is to help build a sustainable model for long-form and investigative journalism, provide writers with an outlet to build a viable career and ensure that newspapers have access to the more expensive journalism.
Mike Orren, President, Pegasus News
I first met the Pegasus News team at South by Southwest Interactive several years ago. My initial response to their business plan: obviously a ridiculous failure waiting to happen. Fast forward to now and Pegasus News is still around, finding its footing somewhere between traditional news and the cultural weekly newspapers that focus on happenings and events in town. The company built much of its underlying technology, enabling users to get very directed and personalized information. While the editorial staff isn’t spending the bulk of its time and money chasing down stories, the Dallas-Ft. Worth readers can get an excellent snapshot of what is happening in their neighborhood and city every day.
Kevin Dugan, Fouding Co-Editor, The Bad Pitch Blog
I moved back to Cincinnati in 2006 and happened to meet Kevin when we were both invited to speak in a class at Northern Kentucky University, where I happened to teach. He’s won several public relations awards for his work and for The Bad Pitch Blog, a quirky look at the good and the bad happening in the public relations industry. He’s also one of the people behind Cincinnati’s Social Media breakfast, one of the most successful satellite groups in the country. Here Kevin talks about how social media is changing the interaction companies have with news organizations and with customers. This is one area that should concern the media a great deal: why does anyone need the news media anymore?
Eliot Van Buskirk, Editor, Wired’s Epicenter
I met Eliot nearly a decade ago when I first started working at Wired. He covered the emerging MP3/digital music market at Cnet’s News.com, one of our main competitors at the time. He continued his coverage of the nascent market as it evolved and grew into its modern adolescence. Today he covers the confluence of music, business and popular culture at Wired. What’s so interesting, though, is his approach to crowdsourcing, how he uses emerging technologies to gather information and how he manages a working group that is spread across the planet.
Joanna Geary, Web Development Editor, The Times in London
Joanna is a Twitter find. I started following her sometime before the summer of 2009 (who can really be sure of these things) and when I visited London, she was kind enough to give me a quick tour of the Times. She introduced me to several folks at the organization who were looking at ways to optimize the data and information at the paper. This was long before the run up to the company’s new paywall, but even then there were discussions about what such a piece of software may look like in terms of the business (but not revenues). After all, there are many ways to make money and if, as many netizens (myself included) are right, the page view and other traditional metrics are actually quite useless. Here she talks about the changing new media landscape.
Dan Gillmor, Director, Knight Center for Digital Media Entrepreneurship at the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism + Mass Communication at Arizona State University
For years, Dan Gillmor wrote the must-read technology column from Silicon Valley in the San Jose Mercury News. For anyone involved in the dotcom era, Gillmor’s work helped define debates about technology and society at large. He was one of the first journalists (that I can recall) who crowdsourced his work, gathering tips and leads using his blog and allowing his extensive network of readers help him shape his thoughts and ideas. He authored We the Media, one of the first examinations of the “social media” phenomenon before settling into his current gig at Arizona State, where he continues work on Media-active, his second book about tackling the phenomenon on networked publishing platforms, journalism and citizens.
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Brad King is an assistant professor of Journalism and an Emerging Media Fellow at Ball State University. He is also on the advisory boards for South by Southwest Interactive and Carnegie Mellon’s ETC Press.