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February 10 2012
Still shaping the way people think about news innovation? A few reflections on the new KNC 2.0
As someone who probably has spent more time thinking about the Knight News Challenge than anyone outside of Knight Foundation headquarters — doing a dissertation on the subject will do that to you! — I can’t help but follow its evolution, even after my major research ended in 2010. And evolve it has: from an initial focus on citizen journalism and bloggy kinds of initiatives (all the rage circa 2007, right?) to a later emphasis on business models, visualizations, and data-focused projects (like this one) — among a whole host of other projects including news games, SMS tools for the developing world, crowdsourcing applications, and more.
Now, after five years and $27 million in its first incarnation, Knight News Challenge 2.0 has been announced for 2012, emphasizing speed and agility (three contests a year, eight-week turnarounds on entries) and a new topical focus (the first round is focused on leveraging existing networks). While more information will be coming ahead of the February 27 launch, here are three questions to chew on now.
Does the Knight News Challenge still dominate this space?
The short answer is yes (and I’m not just saying that because, full disclosure, the Knight Foundation is a financial supporter of the Lab). As I’ve argued before, in the news innovation scene, at this crossroads of journalism and technology communities, the KNC has served an agenda-setting kind of function — perhaps not telling news hipsters what to think regarding the future of journalism, but rather telling them what to think about. So while folks might disagree on the Next Big Thing for News, there’s little question that the KNC has helped to shape the substance and culture of the debate and the parameters in which it occurs.
Some evidence for this comes from the contest itself: Whatever theme/trend got funded one year would trigger a wave of repetitive proposals the next. (As Knight said yesterday: “Our concern is that once we describe what we think we might see, we receive proposals crafted to meet our preconception.”)
And yet the longer answer to this question is slightly more nuanced. When the KNC began in 2006, with the first winners named in 2007, it truly was the only game in town — a forum for showing “what news innovation looks like” unlike any other. Nowadays, a flourishing ecosystem of websites (ahem, like this one), aggregators (like MediaGazer), and social media platforms is making the storyline of journalism’s reboot all the more apparent. It’s easier than ever to track who’s trying what, which experiments are working, and so on — and seemingly in real time, as opposed to a once-a-year unveiling. Hence the Knight Foundation’s move to three quick-fire contests a year, “as we try to bring our work closer to Internet speed.”
How should we define the “news” in News Challenge?
One of the striking things I found in my research (discussed in a previous Lab post) was that Knight, in its overall emphasis, has pivoted away from focusing mostly on journalism professionalism (questions like “how do we train/educate better journalists?”) and moved toward a broader concern for “information.” This entails far less regard for who’s doing the creating, filtering, or distributing — rather, it’s more about ensuring that people are informed at the local community level. This shift from journalism to information, reflected in the Knight Foundation’s own transformation and its efforts to shape the field, can be seen, perhaps, like worrying less about doctors (the means) and more about public health (the ends) — even if this pursuit of health outcomes sometimes sidesteps doctors and traditional medicine along the way.
This is not to say that Knight doesn’t care about journalism. Not at all. It still pours millions upon millions of dollars into clearly “newsy” projects — including investigative reporting, the grist of shoe-leather journalism. Rather, this is about Knight trying to rejigger the boundaries of journalism: opening them up to let other fields, actors, and ideas inside.
So, how should you define “news” in your application? My suggestion: broadly.
What will be the defining ethos of KNC 2.0?
This is the big, open, and most interesting question to me. My research on the first two years of KNC 1.0, using a regression analysis, found that contest submissions emphasizing participation and distributed knowledge (like crowdsourcing) were more likely to advance, all things being equal. My followup interviews with KNC winners confirmed this widely shared desire for participation — a feeling that the news process not only could be shared with users, but in fact should be.
I called this an “ethic of participation,” a founding doctrine of news innovation that challenges journalism’s traditional norm of professional control. But perhaps, to some extent, that was a function of the times, during the roughly 2007-2010 heyday of citizen media, with the attendant buzz around user-generated content as the hot early-adopter thing in news — even if news organizations then, as now, struggled to reconcile and incorporate a participatory audience. Even while participation has become more mainstream in journalism, there are still frequent flare-ups, like this week’s flap over breaking news on Twitter, revealing enduring tensions at the “collision of two worlds — when a hierarchical media system in the hands of the few collides with a networked media system open to all,” as Alfred Hermida wrote.
So what about this time around? Perhaps KNC 2.0 will have an underlying emphasis on Big Data, algorithms, news apps, and other things bubbling up at the growing intersection of computer science and journalism. It’s true that Knight is already underwriting a significant push in this area through the (also just-revised) Knight-Mozilla OpenNews project (formerly called the Knight-Mozilla News Technology Partnership — which Nikki Usher and I have written about for the Lab). To what extent is there overlap or synergy here? OpenNews, for 2012, is trying to build on the burgeoning “community around code” in journalism — leveraging the momentum of Hacks/Hackers, NICAR, and ONA with hackfests, code-swapping, and online learning. KNC 2.0, meanwhile, talks about embracing The Hacker Way described by Mark Zuckerberg — but at the same time backs away a bit from its previous emphasis on open source as a prerequisite. It’ll be interesting to see how computational journalism — explained well in this forthcoming paper (PDF here) by Terry Flew et al. in Journalism Practice — figures into KNC 2.0.
Regardless, the Knight News Challenge is worth watching for what it reveals about the way people — journalists and technologists, organizations and individuals, everybody working in this space — talk about and make sense of “news innovation”: what it means, where it’s taking us, and why that matters for the future of journalism.
July 25 2011
Talk on the promise and practice of participatory journalism
During my trip to Australia, I was invited to deliver a keynote at the Screen Futures conference in Melbourne.
In the talk, I explored the promise and practice of participatory journalism.
It draws on the data from my co-authored book, Participatory Journalism: Guarding Open Gates at Online Newspapers.
We found that journalists are navigating uncharted waters – figuring out how to bring in the audience into the professional process of producing journalism at a time when the practice of what we called “journalism” tries to retain its structure and integrity, its rules and roles, its organizations and its traditions.
Here are the slides from the talk.
July 22 2010
An Ethical Argument for Transparency in Journalism
In a recent post on my website I examined an ethical argument for transparency. I will continue this internal dialogue with the caveat that I am not a journalism academic. I do not prescribe my beliefs to anyone but myself. This is a disgustingly theoretical post (I promise the next one will be practical up the wahzoo). I should also note the inspiration behind these two posts was a discussion at FOO Camp: Philosophy and Technology - Tim O'Reilly and Damon Horowitz.
The First Chapter
The first post on this topic hinged on the idea that transparency is necessary for public participation in journalism.
This Wikipedia quote puts it bluntly. The argument for transparency then isn't ethical so much as practical. It's a second order argument. The process of journalism must be transparent if we expect people to participate in a meaningful way. This assumes, however, that we want people to participate.
If we can reason that participation in journalism is ethical and transparency is necessary for participation to occur, it follows that there is an ethical argument for transparency.
Which means the next step is to examine the base of this syllogism: There is an ethical argument for participation in journalism.
The Goal of Journalism
What is the purpose or goal of journalism? In philosophy I might pose this as, what is journalism's Telos -- its purpose, aim, end and/or design.
The reason this question (and blog post) is important is that if you look at the current understanding of ethics in journalism you can see that it is more along the lines of a professional code than an ethical debate or analysis. Public accountability is mentioned in many of the existing code of ethics. As is the rightful dissemination of information to the public. But in almost all of these cannons of journalism the public is acted upon and is rarely an actor.
When I ask what is the goal of journalism I am not interested in the journalism industry or a journalism company. The goal for both of which would be the same for any industry (protecting itself as an economic good) or company (increasing revenue).
The tagline for my blog is "journalism is a process, not a product," and that continues to be my rallying cry. Too often our ethics, ideas of success and end goals are determined by journalism as a product, industry or company. I am more interested in the process of journalism. What is the end goal for an act of journalism?
Now here I have to posit a question: If an act of journalism is committed but never published, is it an act of journalism?
Many people don't know this, but I used to be a musician. I've actually recorded at least two albums. But I never promoted my work. So if a work of art is not shared, is it art? What is the distinction between art and hobby? Related: If an act of reporting occurs but is not shared, is it journalism? What is the distinction between journalism and journaling?
I ask this question because it gives me the platform to pose a possible end goal of journalism -- to inform. Journalism, which is a tricky thing to define, is the process of collecting, filtering and distributing information that has meaning. One caveat of course is that the information is non-fiction (true and accurate).
If we take away the "distributing" of information we no longer have the process of journalism. It is the final step in the process because it is the final Telos of journalism -- to inform our fellow human beings. Size of the audience aside, journalism is fundamentally a process of education. But when we look at the conversation about journalism, those two words are most often coupled around journalism education (journalism schools) and rarely about how the two endeavors are intimately tied.
Informing is Participatory
So the goal of journalism is to inform people about events in the world. This is fundamentally a social act and would remain the goal of journalism if we lived in a democracy, republic or any other kind of society.
Historically speaking, the "participation" of journalism consumers was to consume. That is a form of participation, but not necessarily the kind that I wan to justify. If it were, this blog post could have been much shorter: "We can justify transparency in journalism because people need to be able to read it!"
The kind of participation that I want to argue for is more engaging. Members of the public are not participating by the sheer act of be informed, but they are self-informing. It's the difference between roads that make public transportation possible and roads that make all forms of transportation possible.
Why Individual Participation is Ethical
And herein lies the base of this whole thought process. It comes down to the individual. It is the individual, as part of a collective, that journalism seeks to inform. The individual should be actively participating in the dissemination of information for several reasons:
1. On a utilitarian level, they will become more informed and help inform more people. If the good of journalism is to inform, then letting more people participate will inform more people. Similarly, the mission of roads is to enable travel/transportation, not to safeguard public transportation. (There could be unintended consequences, of source, such as pollution.) The mission of journalism is to inform, not to safeguard journalism companies. A network has infinity more connections and that requires active participation and self-informed informants.
2. They have a moral right as an individual to participate to the extent that they do not hinder others from participating. (See individualism).
Anti-climactic?
So, to review:
- Transparency is required for well-informed participation to happen.
- Participation is needed because....
- Journalism's end goal is to inform other people.
- More people participating in the process of journalism means more people being informed.
- Combine this with individual rights and ...
The journalism industry has a moral obligation to make the practices and processes of journalism more transparent so that the larger citizenry can participate.
Behind the lack of climax
Perhaps I could have shortened this blog post. I made every attempt to go step-by-step and lay out my line or reasoning.
Why?
Too often our discussion of participatory journalism, citizen journalism, etc takes an industry or company view. Either citizen journalism is good or bad because of its relationship to a bottom line.
Slighter better arguments are that participatory journalism is good/bad because of its quality (or lack of).
What I'm suggesting is that participation in the media is a net positive because of its intrinsic value.
July 09 2010
Rethinking the Role of the Journalist in the Participatory Age
Education content on MediaShift is sponsored by Carnegie-Knight News21, an alliance of 12 journalism schools in which top students tell complex stories in inventive ways. See tips for spurring innovation and digital learning at Learn.News21.com.
Students who dream of a career in journalism are entering the profession at a time when the question of who is a journalist, and even what is journalism, is open to interpretation. The function of journalism is still to provide independent, reliable and accurate information considered vital to a vibrant democracy. But defining who is a journalist is much harder.
The Oxford English Dictionary defines a journalist as "a person who writes for newspapers or magazines or prepares news or features to be broadcast on radio or television." The definition is less about what a journalist actually does and more about whom they work for. It reflects how the profession of journalism developed in a mass media system, based on the production of news by paid professionals who decided what the public needs to know, when it needs to know it and how it will know it.
The media industry is going through a profound transformation that is disrupting just about every aspect of the business. Journalists are at the center of a transformation that is challenging norms and routines that have remained, until now, highly consistent. It all amounts to, in the words of media scholar Mark Deuze, "one of the biggest challenges facing journalism studies and education in the 21st century."
The new journalist needs to learn and understand how news and information works in a digital world, instead of simply applying established norms and practices that may no longer be effective.
New Technologies, New Mindset
Studies show that journalists have been reluctant to give up their traditional gatekeeping role. BBC News executive Peter Horrocks has described this mindset as fortress journalism (PDF) -- seeing the profession as a practice to be defended. As a result, journalism as a profession largely considers the media environment to be the same as before, only now more technologized.
New media technologies do not just offer journalists new ways of doing their old job. A newspaper online is not the same as a newspaper in print. On paper, the newspaper delivers a bundle of stories, ads and amusements, such as the crossword puzzle. On the web, the newspaper package is unbundled into individual fragments. The stable, hierarchy of information in the printed newspaper falls apart online.
Scholars Colin Lankshear and Michelle Knobel have researched what they describe as the shift from a physical-industrial mindset to a cyberspatial, post-industrial mindset. They write that "the world is being changed in some quite fundamental ways as a result of people imagining and exploring new ways of doing things and new ways of being that are made possible by new tools and techniques."
Literacy has traditionally been described as the ability to read and write. New literacies generally refer to new forms of literacy made possible by digital technologies, such as blogging, uploading photos or sharing videos. According to new literacies, media is collaborative, distributed, and participatory nature.
Participatory and Collaborative Journalism
Let's look at one of the ways this applies to journalism. Traditionally, journalism has been about producing finished products by designated individuals and teams, based on individual expertise and intelligence, operating in a shared physical space. However, new literacies research suggests that the changes taking place challenge fundamental norms, conventions, and routines of journalism.
One example is the ability of the audience to report and distribute the news in photographs, videos, and text, which undermines the monopoly on reporting that journalists traditionally enjoyed. Anyone can do an act of journalism, from sending a tweet about a G20 protest to uploading a photo of police and demonstrators.
Seen through the lens of new literacies research, digital media is more participatory, collaborative and distributed, and less finalized, individualized and author-centric than previous forms of media. The journalist still matters. But as Tom Rosenstiel has suggested, they shift from being the gatekeeper to being an authenticator of information, a sense-maker to derive meaning, a navigator to help orient audiences and a community leader to engage audiences.
Both those taking their first steps into journalism and those who have already followed a well-trodden path need to figure out where they fit in. The role of the journalist is being determined by the complex interplay between media technologies, professional practices, and societal factors.
Journalism developed as a relatively closed culture for the production of knowledge, based on a system of editorial control. Yet new media are characterized by their connected and collaborative nature. The challenge for journalism, and the journalist, is to find a place along the continuum between control and connection, and between a closed and a collaborative media culture.
This piece is adapted from a chapter appearing in The New Journalist: Roles, Skills, and Critical Thinking, a new textbook for journalism students.
Alfred Hermida is an online news pioneer and journalism educator. He is an assistant professor at the Graduate School of Journalism, the University of British Columbia, where he leads the integrated journalism program. He was a founding news editor of the BBC News website. He blogs at Reportr.net.
Education content on MediaShift is sponsored by Carnegie-Knight News21, an alliance of 12 journalism schools in which top students tell complex stories in inventive ways. See tips for spurring innovation and digital learning at Learn.News21.com.
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June 30 2010
Spot.Us Lessons: Journalists Work in, and For, the Public
In a previous post I introduced the most significant findings from my recent case study of Spot.Us, a crowdfunding platform for journalism. In this post I discuss what my findings mean for journalism, and for the role and the work of a journalist.
Renegotiating the Role of a Journalist
A crowdfunded journalistic process brings a new element to a journalist's job: Pitching in public. Traditionally, a journalist pitches his or her story directly to an editor. The journalist doesn't need to think about marketing the story to the readers.
In a crowdfunded model, a journalist has to be willing to raise awareness about the pitch in order to attract donations. That means they have to assume responsibility for the marketing of the pitch by convincing the community of the significance of the story topic.
However, Spot.Us reporters expressed discomfort with pitching their stories in public and with asking for donations. To this end, the element of pitching in public brings new requirements and shifts the nature of the journalist's role.
Similar shifts are occurring in creative industries as brands and institutions such as record labels and media institutions lose power. According to Mark Deuze, an associate professor in the Department of Telecommunications at Indiana University, creativity and commerce in cultural work are increasingly coming together.
This development presumes that creative workers see their skills, ideas and talent in commercial terms. Traditionally, journalists have embraced creative autonomy and peer review rather than market appeal. In crowdfunded journalism, however, market appeal and readers' opinions become more important than peer review.
These new requirements challenge the traditional journalist's self-perception as that of an independent creative worker whose story topics are first and foremost accepted by colleagues, rather than by the public.
Participatory Culture Motivates Journalists
On Spot.Us, a participatory culture manifests itself in many ways: Community members (readers and donors) can donate money or talent for a pitch, they can leave a comment, submit a tip, or take on an assignment that a reporter has assigned to the readers.
These options for participation -- particularly reader donations for a story -- have a strong, positive impact on a journalist's motivation to work. One of the Spot.Us reporters I interviewed said it was "beyond professionally motivating" the see that the public is willing to support her work by donating money.
From the journalist's perspective, the act of donation creates a strong connection between the donor and reporter. Reporters find it rewarding to have a direct link to readers. This connectedness also creates a strong sense of responsibility for the story.
Typically, though, donors prefer to participate solely by donating; they are not eager to leave comments or submit tips, nor do they get engaged in the story process to the extent that they closely follow any story updates. For the most part, donors feel that they've done their part by offering up money.
Spot.Us: A Journalist's Personal R&D Lab
For Spot.Us reporters, this platform is more than just a way to finance their work; they see it as an opportunity to experiment with new methods of journalism, for example in reader engagement.
The reporters also see Spot.Us as an opportunity to experiment with tools such as video and infographics. The site gives them the freedom to experiment that they seem to have been longing for. They feel there is a lack of opportunity to try new things when working for traditional news operations.
Reporters also consider Spot.Us as a good way to find partners for collaboration.
Donating for a Better Society
Donors don't seem to be contributing to a specific journalistic piece as much as they are donating for the common good. Donors rarely follow up with the stories they help fund, and they might not even check up on the finished story.
For them, it's not about the story; they want their donation to be a catalyst for change in society. They're hoping the story helps make this happen.
This notion provokes a question about journalism's role in society. Is the role of journalism only to inform people about issues and problems? Or should journalism also give the public a chance to make a difference, to attempt to solve a problem? If the latter is valid, then perhaps advocacy, cause-driven, or problem-solving journalism is more meaningful for the community than neutral, objective journalism that provides information but not the means to solve problems.
An example of problem-solving journalism is Huffington Post Impact, where journalism is married to causes. The stories on Huffington Post Impact report on issues like hunger at schools, or the misery of a family that lost a home in a flood. At the end of the story, the reader is given a chance to donate to a non-profit organization that can help alleviate the problem.
Based on my findings, at least some people consider journalism to be a means for contributing to social change. Therefore, journalism organizations should embed tools similar to SeeClickFix or new Knight News Challenge winner CitySeed, which allow the public to contribute to the betterment of the community with one click. Readers want constructive ways to participate, and journalism should give them the tools.
Journalism Aligned With Cause Marketing
Because the public donates for a cause, and not necessarily for journalism, the pitches on crowdfunded journalistic platforms such as Spot.Us should be more aligned with the features of cause marketing, a term applied to marketing efforts by non-profits working for social change.
In this era of declining media conglomerates, journalism organizations should have a clear message to readers as to why their stories matter, and how a reader can make a difference in society. It is important to note, though, that the strategy of cause-marketing works only for certain types of topics and journalism, such as the field of investigative reporting.
Participation as a Tool for Identity Building
In crowdfunded journalism, people share more than just the actual story -- they share the story of their participation in the process by tweeting and Facebooking. This act of participation binds people together. As one donor put it: "I felt I belonged to a community when I donated."
When Spot.Us donors spread news of their donation, they are also building their own identity. It says something about them, and they want to share that. That's a significant result and benefit for donors. As a result, journalists should think of how they can provide the public with ways to link identity and causes to reporting.
For more information about the study, please contact me at tanja.aitamurto at gmail.com, or on Twitter @tanjaaita
Tanja Aitamurto is a journalist and a Ph.D. student studying collective intelligence in journalism. She has studied innovation journalism at Stanford, and has degrees in journalism, social sciences, and linguistics. Tanja advises media companies and non-profit organizations about the changes in the field of communication. As a journalist, she specializes in business and technology. She contributes mainly to the Huffington Post and to the Helsingin Sanomat, the leading daily newspaper in Finland, as well as to the Finnish Broadcasting Company. Tanja splits her time between San Francisco and Finland, her home country.
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April 24 2010
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Study shows comments fail to raise level of debate
One of the final presentations at ISOJ looked at the content of comments.
The study, Comments in News, Democracy Booster or Journalistic Nightmare (PDF), analysed comments on newspaper websites in Catalunya in Spain
David Domingo, Universitat Rovira i Virgilli (Tarragona, explained that the analysis was based on Habermas: were comments an expression of a democratic debate, expressing logical and coherent arguments.
Most users only left one comment in a debate. Domingo said this showed us that people were not following the conversation.
“They drop in, leave a comment and never come back,” he said.
Domingo said participants never articulate an argument. Rather they expressed feelings about an issue.
There were, he noted, a diversity of viewpoints. But many users expressed disdain about other comments.
There were very few instances of users saying they valued the contribution of other commenters.
The evidence suggests that comments are not adding to a democratic debate.
Domingo said that the rules for participation set by newspapers set the groundwork for a democratic debate. But the news sites did not set the necessary measures to ensure these principles were followed by users.
Rather comments were motivated by economics – to increase traffic and reader loyalty.
The study found two approaches. Hands-off moderation that allowed users to rant. But there was not a higher level of debate on the sites with strict moderation.
Domingo concluded that newspapers incorporated comments as a business decision, rather than as a way of fostering democratic debate online.