The face of civic journalism

What is civic journalism? It’s news that engages people. News that reaches out and is directly applicable to the lives of people in the communities covered. At its simplest, it’s news you can use.

Many of the conversations that take place about civic journalism are about how can people be engaged in the reporting; how can the conversations we have while writing the stories involve the people who are going to read them. The common design mentality, how the paper looks when it comes to “good ol’ journalism,” does not reflect these conversations.

My favorite time of year to be at work in a newspaper visuals department is November. Why? Election season. What better time could there be to practice a bit of civic journalism? I’ve worked two election seasons at the Missourian. Each election, I focused the design work I was doing on finding alternative ways to engage Columbians in the news.

In 2004, the presidential election had people about as engaged as they can get about routine news. There wasn’t much for me to add to the story as a local graphics reporter. Instead of trying to add more information to a fairly saturated discussion I set about creating a companion piece with the goal of encouraging people to feel like they were a part of the election night coverage:

My goal was to create a bit of a fanfare for something the Missourian had essentially been hyping for months and creating a tangible, visceral package to encourage readers to feel like they were active participants in their own democracy.

The following year I found myself, again, working as a designer on the paper during an election. The ballot this time around was all issues. Without any really tangible topics to talk about in the paper, I set about creating a cover story spread previewing the election. This time around, my focus was on using parts of the ballot itself to illustrate the story:

My hope was that someone who picked up the paper and began to just skim through it could glean enough information from the display text and images to figure out what was on the ballot and have a basic understanding. My best hopes were that people could read through the piece and by the end not only know how they wanted to vote but also be able to walk into their polling places on Tuesday and know exactly which bubbles they wanted to check and where they were on the page.

Finally, I took the cover to that package and designed it so that readers who only saw it in newspaper bins might even gain something. I tried to come up with catchy visual icons for each of the main issues on the ballot and tried to summarize them:

The entire section was designed around creating lots of small chunks of information to accompany longer stories. Those stories read like normal journalism pieces, and wouldn’t have struck anyone as especially notable as civic journalism. However, I feel the design came together to create an accessible package which would encourage readers to learn something about the issues they were being asked to vote on, even if they didn’t want to read deep into a traditional narrative.

So, is civic journalism just “good ol’ journalism?” It should be what we’re constantly striving for, but from a design standpoint, there’s a lot more that many papers can do on a regular basis to make readers feel more involved in the news, to make the news feel more immediate to readers. It doesn’t take large election spreads to do this, but the traditional design of slapping together headlines, photos, captions and stories just doesn’t cut it here. Info graphics, sidebars, decks and other types of display text are the designers key tools of the trade in making the news not only accessible but something that highlights the civic reporting the writers are doing everyday.

Civic Journalism

Diego Sorbara
Who do we reflect in our writing?
At the corner of Capitol and Babcock streets in Hartford, Conn., is La Paloma Sabanera, a hub for the massive Hispanic community of the captial and the surrounding towns and cities in the Connecticut River Valley. At its Web site, www.lapalomasabanera.com, La Paloma describes itself as a third place for the Hispanic community.
La Paloma is a block from the intersection of Capitol and Broad streets, the main office of The Hartford Courant. In over a whole summer of sitting there for an hour or two before work, I never saw anyone there from the paper itself, except the paper’s only Hispanic columnist. And in reading The Courant, you could tell that was the case. Aside from the blowout pieces about crime and murder, the Hispanic community is barely covered.
This is a failure of journalism. The rise of civic journalism, especially using the theory of third places, is an attempt to bring real people back into the news, to bring the stakeholders back into the process. But we must also realize that to properly engage in civic journalism, we must plumb the whole racial range of our communities, not just the citizens that seem the most approachable.
In class, we discussed how some believe that civic journalism shouldn’t even exist because its tenets should be part of our everyday reporting. In theory, that’s a wonderful argument because it’s true. But in reality, we are woefully lacking in real people as sources. Separating civic journalism brings more attention to the need that we need to have a better variety of sources; in fact, the lack of vigilance on the part of journalists to bring in more diversity of sourcing is part of the fuel for the nascent citizen journalism movement. People feel disenfranchised by the media, thus they create their own outlets to be heard. If you look at a majority of articles written on important issues such as development and taxation, most of the sources are the old white men in power. Seldom does a reader see himself or herself reflected in the story.
Although the intentions of the video we watched in class are good, the video fails to mention a rather important point: race. While that Maryland diner would be an excellent place to gauge opinions of average people, did anyone realize that all the people there were predominantly older, white men (who like reading the Washington Post)? Reporters should take into account that there is more to civic journalism than just seeking out the average people; just because an issue isn’t specifically about the Hispanic or black communities doesn’t mean we shouldn’t seek out opinions from Hispanic or black people. Take our own Missourian, for example; you would never guess the wide diversity that Columbia has from reading most of the articles in a standard A-section.
Oftentimes, reporters will go up to sources of their own race, age and gender, bringing back opinions and thoughts that really mirror their own; to truly make civic journalism this ideal of bringing more voices into the conversation, reporters have to be unafraid to tread into new neighborhoods, talk to different people and make new connections across gender, racial and age barriers; even if this means bringing along someone to interpret in order to cross the language barrier, so be it; just because a source doesn’t speak English doesn’t mean they don’t have a valid point to make.
Civic journalism is good old-fashioned journalism; it’s shoe-leather journalism, if you will. But in order to really make it work and connect with the readers, there needs to be a broader representation of people. Going to a third place is a good start, but it’s only when the journalist crosses those difficult gulfs of gender, race and age that it really becomes sincere civic journalism instead of just lip service.

What Ayn Rand taught me about civic journalism

A large portion of Ayn Rand’s seminal book, The Fountainhead, focuses on a newspaper publisher who increases readership through several successful, albeit questionable, methods:

1) Focusing on sensationalist and scandal-driven journalism
2) Creating news by having reporters commit crimes
3) Launches in-depth “crusades” against certain ills of the city

Through his efforts, the newspaper publisher goes from a homeless street tough to one of the richest and most successful men in New York City.

Of course, The Fountainhead is a work of fiction by a highly controversial author who commands barely an iota of respect in the academic or philosophical world. But when we were discussing the role of civic journalism in modern journalism by looking at what the Dayton Daily News did, it was impossible to analyze the topic without think of Rand’s newspaper publisher character. While the second option doesn’t seem to be a way to attract readership anymore, the first and third continue to play a huge role in determining placement and focus in the modern-day newspaper.

If we take the example of the Dayton Daily News started to curb youth violence, we see the two aforementioned elements use to create increased interest, and therefore increased readership, in the newspaper. First, the editors of the paper found a tangible and real problem propagating throughout the community. The statistics don’t lie – scores of youths were being brutally murdered by other youths, something that is without question beyond the pale of conventional wisdom.

The paper could have chosen the option of reporting these incidents one by one in a fairly conventional writing style, etching out a common lede, the same police sources and possibly a description of the incident. Although this type of story is without question a newsworthy event, it might not garner the interest of the reader, especially if they are far removed from the trend.

Instead, the paper decided to magnify and intensify coverage of youth violence as a systemic problem in the community, rather than dozens of isolated incidents. By encompassing violent and shocking writing into a more extensive project, the paper forced its readership to take notice of the problem. It could be argued that the newspaper was using a form of alarmist, and perhaps even sensational, methods to shine a light at the problem. But there is little doubt that increasing the coverage and intensity of a certain issue increases the amount of attention paid to it by a community.

But still, it makes me wonder whether a newspaper would decide to engage in a civic journalism project if the issue didn’t involve sensational aspects. Would we see non-stop coverage and convergence on an issue as dry as, say, zoning malfeasance or street sign repair? Probably not.

Even though these issues likely affect more people than brutal murders on behalf of teenagers, it involves minutia and complicated aspects that the public might not be able to comprehend. Moreover, unlike the Dayton project, it’s unlikely a majority of the public would be able to contribute to this project, due to either a lack of institutional knowledge or interest. Which proves that Dayton’s example of civic journalism project can be enormously fruitful for a newspaper, and ultimately, a community.

A reporter's civic duty

As a reporter covering state government in Jefferson City, I learned many valuable things about writing a readable and effective story. I interviewed the “bigwigs” of the Missouri legislature on a daily basis, and Matt Blunt would even call me by name when I raised my hand in a press conference. It was kind of a thrill – being in a historic building and recording the goings-on made me feel important and quite mature. However, after about a month of this, I began to realize my writing had become completely formulaic: cover the meeting/issue on the floor or in committee, talk to the proponent, opponent, and maybe an activist or expert or two. While my stories were balanced, they lacked much depth – very much he said-she said reporting.
Talking about civic journalism in class got me thinking about the reporting stint at the Capitol building. I think I would have found the experience much more rewarding if I had gone outside of the grand edifice and spoken to more people who may not have known the ins and outs of the legislative jargon, procedures and politicking. This is not to say that the capitol beat can’t be an exhilarating and a constantly changing experience, but I think it would have been a lot more meaningful if I had talked to more people.
I did talk to a lot of citizens who came to Jefferson City to have their voices heard, but these were people who wanted to have their voices heard. This is not to say that these citizens aren’t ordinary people – but they are people who keep up with what’s going on in the state. What if I had talked to someone who had no clue about the changes that were being made? That perhaps would have given a whole new layer of complexity and depth to my government reporting – after all it is in theory the people who are being represented in the legislature.
I think it is a common ailment of news people to forget about the “normal” people – it’s much easier to talk to people who know how to effectively articulate their opinions – especially when you have a good idea of what their opinion is. After a few weeks of working in Jeff City, I knew exactly who to go to if a civil liberty was being threatened, or who to speak with if big business was under fire. I didn’t like that aspect of my 6-month reporting experience, and perhaps contributed to my shift from writing to visual journalism.
Civic journalism need not mean ignoring the higher-ups, but simply acknowledging people who are affected or who are experiencing the issue at hand. These are the people we want to read our newspapers and watch our TV shows, and yet they aren’t usually well-represented in reporting. Including them in the conversation is perhaps a throwback to the days of community gatherings and discussions of topics. While the old adage of “shoe leather reporting” may be changing with technology, the skills of asking questions and engaging the average people in conversations about their views and their take on the world shouldn’t change.
While I know that giving a voice to the people is a noble goal for any journalist – we have to be careful not to cross the line and become entwined in the issues – unable to separate observational commentary from personal feelings. While getting emotionally invested in a topic can often result in well-written and in-depth reporting, but becoming too attached to the subject matter (or the people) is overdoing the concept of civic journalism. The reporter becomes a part of the story, rather than the passive observer of it. I don’t mean to discount personal accounts journalists write – some of them are incredibly powerful – but these stories should be labeled as personal accounts, otherwise we are trying to persuade the public instead of informing them.

Journalism takes work?

Can anyone be a journalist? Certainly anyone can communicate. Beyond that, with recent technological advances just about anyone can communicate to a broad audience. Given that the physical barriers to journalism have begun to come down, the real question asked here is: are journalists anything more than pundits talking to the public at large?
Clearly there are issues when newsmakers try to also be reporters. This isn’t generally journalism, no matter how objective it is, but is public relations. But what about the common citizenry? It’s one thing to exclude the people involved in the news from covering it, but a wholly different thing to say that the average person can’t cover it. In this sense, anyone probably can be a journalist. The problem is that just because someone can do something doesn’t necessarily mean he or she is going to put in the necessary work to do it right.
Earlier this week we discussed the concept of balancing access with integrity. During the discussion there were many bets hedged, because, despite everyone taking a black-or-white, yes-or-no stance, most of us know that ethical issues like deciding when and how to take information from sources are complex issues and need to be decided on a case-by-case basis. Anyone can do this. People make ethical decisions everyday. In journalism, like other professions, the new guy doesn’t get to make those decisions. Generally no one person makes those decisions. Editors with years of experience and an understanding of the ramifications news might have talk over these decisions and try to get a variety of opinions before going with any one course of action.
Of course there is also the argument that if everyone can be a journalist, and enough people do take up that mantle, then the sheer number of voices in the marketplace will offset such issues. While it does seem likely, if there were an essentially unlimited number of journalists covering topics, that things like integrity and access would naturally balance out as different people took different approaches, there are still the technical skills required in the trade. Gillmor talks at length about the benefits of turning to our readers, because they are simply better informed in a lot of circumstances. But what about highly technical matters? Seasoned legal and business reporters are good because they’ve spent years learning the ropes and can offer insightful analysis. The other people that the public could turn to for news from this area generally can’t provide it to them. Generally, people informed enough in these complex issues are informed because it’s their job to be. The either are covering them or making the news here. Beyond the issues of maintaining neutrality, business and the law also have special regulations that regulate the flow of information and render many of the people in the know unable to actually share that knowledge.
It is also important to consider the market place of ideas and how it functions to support a democratic state. It is possible that the amount of information publicly available could become functionally limitless. At some point, there could be enough information on any given topic that it would be impossible for any one person to synthesize or process it all. That’s not journalism. Journalism is deciding what information is relevant and deserves to be prominent and what, unfortunately, might have to slip between the cracks. It is also trying to do the best job possible of exploring that information and conveying it to the public. If there is an unlimited amount of information of available, produced by people who simply enjoy writing about it and happen to be experts from their everyday experiences, the depth of coverage required to be a journalist becomes less valuable and the editing and decision-making skills become more important. In this way, bloggers are journalists. Linking to the facts and portraying them for people is a logical extension of letting quotes and facts speak for themselves—something most professional journalists would claim they try to do. The problem, currently, is that there is a limited number of information available, and even less credible information. That means it still takes work to find the facts and synthesize things together to provide context. When everyone is their own PR person, and all that information is more publicly available it will be far easier for people to put up lists of links or write about their days’ events to create real news coverage.
Yes, anyone can be a journalist. It’s not even necessary to have a fancy journalism degree to do it. What is necessary, however, is taking time to balance ethical issues, hopefully involving other people in that decision-making process, and properly immersing oneself in the subject matter that is going to be covered. It is also helpful to pick up skills in areas such as news judgment, editing and visual presentation—but even professional journalists demonstrate how these things can be of varying importance depending on who the audience is and who the speaker is. So, yes, anyone can be a journalist, but it does take a certain amount of time and work.

I'm not a journalist, but I play one on TV

Diego Sorbara

Can Anyone Be A Journalist?

Can anyone be a journalist? Short answer: yes. Long answer: no.
From the outset, nobody is born a journalist. There’s something within each person that makes him want to tell the stories of others rather than go into more prosperous and well-paying careers, such as brain surgery. On a metaphysical level, that’s all that separates a journalist from everyone else.
So then, shouldn’t everyone who really wants to tell the stories of someone else be considered a journalist? In class, we came up with a list of qualities that included being fair, objective, curious and informed, which describes a wide swath of the population. But journalists also play many different roles. In class, we drew up a fairly lengthy list of roles: chronicler of opinions, preserver of democracy, informer of the public, to name a few. These are roles that are not to be taken lightly and well out of reach for a common citizen; they entail a full-fledged job that demands a certain skill set. Curiosity is a great start, but in order to hunt down stories, journalists rely on interviewing skills developed at a journalism school or on the job. To remain a watchdog and a preserver of democracy, journalists attend countless meetings, many times coming back to the newsroom with no concrete story but with a notebook full of ideas to hunt; an average citizen doesn’t have the luxury to devote so much time to the process of writing. The process of journalism demands a copious investment of time and will, well beyond what an armchair citizen-cum-reporter can give.
The obvious counter to that idea is the rise of the blogger. If you can’t be a full-time journalist, working for an established newspaper, the Internet and a simple blog account can serve as a way to be a sort of journalist. Not so. First off, we determined in class that there are various elements that journalists have and bloggers don’t, such as reach, resources, training; we also mentioned that bloggers tend to skew more toward a certain political ideology and that they don’t have as much a compunction to truth and inscrutable accuracy as do most journalists. In “We the Media,” Dan Gillmor even states that, “Blogs and other modern media are feedback systems.” The blog is not the source of news, but a reaction to the news. But even in the eventual evolution of the news industry, Gillmor carefully hedges his comments about blogging: “Yes, this new media has created, or at least exacerbated, difficult issues of credibility and fairness.”
However, bloggers have redefined how we consume news. With outlets like the Drudge Report, news consumers have new avenues to finding exactly what they want; someone interested in newspaper design can get the latest industry news at www.newsdesigner.com whereas someone interested in grammar can check out nstockdale.blogspot.com. These sites not only feature posts straight from the blogger’s mind but also serve as a collection of links to articles in newspapers and other news sites.
Bloggers, however, have added to democracy by being an unofficial check on the Fourth Estate. Remember that it was bloggers who questioned the documents Dan Rather showed on “60 Minutes” that called into question President Bush’s service in the military. The very opinionated nature of bloggers gives them a chance to act as critics for a media that goes largely unchecked and that relies on a tacit agreement with the public to present the news objectively and without bias. Thus while not acting specifically as journalists, they keep journalists in check and in turn help preserve democracy just as much.
Moving beyond blogs, what we find today in citizen journalism Web sites such as MyMissourian.com is in no way akin to citizens being journalists; while it is a step forward to create a vessel for people to write and contribute their own news, it often turns into a collection of tedium or submissions of little interest. Among the recent highlights of another site similar to MyMissourian, Dan Gillmor’s own Bayosphere, are updates about a comics convention and “the most boring Macworld ever!” So-called grassroots journalism Web sites are skimpy on substantial news or even on news that can help the community.
However, there is a middle ground. As theories of news develop, the gulf between citizen and reporter doesn’t have to widen any further. In an interview with Minneapolis/St. Paul City Pages, Craig Newmark, creator of Craigslist, emphasized the need for a balance and merging of professional and citizen journalism. He maintains that while citizens can post anything to the Web, it’s not a substitute for the product professional journalists produce: “The deal is, there’s no substitute for professional-level writing and fact-checking and editing. … People have gotten too excited about citizen journalism, and they’re not addressing the balance well.”
The world of a journalist and the world of a citizen will never overlap perfectly. The role of a journalist is one that everyone can play but one that few have the luxury or resources to play well. However, the world of a journalist and the world of a citizen can dovetail well. The future does not lie in empowering citizens to become journalists; rather, it lies in bringing citizens into the process of journalism. Thus, while not everyone can be a journalist, everyone can be involved in the gathering and disseminating of news.

Journalist with a Capital “J”

When talking about journalism, I often take a kind of pride in my knowledge of the field and how it operates. I have after all spent quite a bit of money learning just what being a journalist is all about. In the age of bloggers and BlackBerries I’m afraid that the ideal I’ve held about what being a journalist means is under siege. This is not to say that technology and the Internet are not effective ways to communicate – but these people are NOT journalists by nature. As a journalist, I hold my news senses higher than most, as I think most journalists do. This is not to say that everyone must spend thousands of dollars to learn the trade – but I do feel they have to be trained, and learn how to effectively and accurately convey the news. Most reasonable people would realize a news story when they see it – but not everyone can see the context and implications of a news item. It is this sharpened macro sense of the news that gives the journalist something more than the average joe.
The role I feel I am best suited is one in which I am informing and presenting the news in the most appropriate way possible.

In this information society, the most important aspect of obtaining that information is determining the credibility of the source. Why I may find it interesting what a blog has to say, I’m not going to rely on it fully as the most relevant source of information. Blogging is by nature a subjective and opinionated enterprise, and likening it to journalism does the trained and learned journalist a disservice. In its defense, it has become a useful tool for newspeople to keep their readers updated – but in these cases the reader knows that the person’s work they are reading is credible – they’re working for their favorite news source.

I read a column George Kennedy wrote a few months back, defending the idea that anyone can be journalist when they live in a country conducive to public discussion and democracy. I found this a little shocking – Professor Kennedy is a prominent and well-known journalist with oodles of formal training. When I read more closely, however, his point was simply that members of a community should have a right to participate in the discussion that the media and journalists have about the goings-on in the world. While I fully support this participatory view, particularly as a policitical science double major, this is not Journalism in my understanding of the word. My Missourian is a wonderful and useful outlet for Columbia residents to write about their lives and their pursuits. That’s great! But its labeled as “citizen journalism,” which serves an entirely different purpose than a newspaper (or any other news medium) does. (Kennedy, George “Let’s define journalism broadly,” 12 June, 2005, 7A)

This is not to say that citizens should not get involved in their communities, or that their points of view are not valid. My point is that citizens should react to the news and get involved. But how much the citizen should be involved should be a choice left to them. A hybrid of the two could potentially be fruitful, although there is a danger that a sort of slanted agenda setting could occur which would not do much good for either party involved, as the news would no longer be objective. Democratic societies work in their prime when citizens get involved – but the value of the news is something that could be severely compromised if the journalist regards to intently what every person has to say.

Technology, and our increasingly digitized world have dictated that journalists change, and now perhaps that journalism itself change. With access to the Internet in the palm of our hands, information flies swiftly from source to reader (or viewer), and thus we have to work twice as hard to give the public information they can’t get anywhere else. Herein in lies what I think makes professional journalists a powerful force – we have access – and a desire to objectively and diligently find information and share it with the world.

Although I do hold my profession in the highest regard, I acknowledge that the professional American journalist often receives a negative view from its consumers, or as Dan Gillmor notes “we journalists enjoy roughly the same public esteem as politicians and used-car salesmen (Gillmor 127).” In this way the role of the journalist is often dictated by the view the public holds of them. This less-than-friendly view of journalists is perhaps why citizen journalism has become increasingly important to many people. As I have outlined here, I think that well-trained and professional journalists are an indepensible part of our democracy, and their role, however chanigng, remains as crucial as it ever was.

The Role of a Lifetime?

If I strip down my role as a reporter to the barest bones explanation I can think of, it would be to report the news of day within a specified deadline. In a strict abstract sense, I could hypothetically write the nut graph of an event and be finished with my work. I reported the news. I can go home and watch television.
Of course, if every reporter reported the news in one or two paragraphs, newspapers would cease to exist – after all, if ten stories were all reported at a total length of 10 paragraphs, it would shrink the actual newspaper to the size of a one-page newsletter.
Space concerns aren't the only reasons why newspaper reporters are taught to fill their stories with multiple sources, etchings of dialogue, statistics and back-story. All of these elements give more information to the reader, allowing them to be more informed of what's going on the community and around the world. As such, the citizenry is able to know the issues, important or not, that are bound to affect them.
True, the newspaper isn't strictly meant to transmit the happenings of 24 hours. It is also a vehicle for entertainment, practical knowledge, humor, announcements and advertisements. And many of these elements are the primary reasons that individuals continue to read newspapers (for example, a reader might want to find out what's on television or how to cook a ham for Christmas).
Perhaps the greatest challenge that journalists face now and in the future is to get these casual readers to get interested in their community and the world. There are many ways to pursue this goal. For one, present the news that has an engaging, easy-to-read writing style. Ultra-serious pieces about county and city government aren't going to be particularly helpful for citizens who don't understand what the municipal or state employees are talking about.
Another way to produce a newspaper that more people will read and look to for news is to make sure that an assigned news story either has justifiable impact to people in the surrounding community. Often, reporters will venture out to do “feature” stories on road signs, a person with an unusual story to tell, etc. While these stories have room inside a daily paper, when they become the dominant motif, the news value and informative capital to the public is diluted.
Our role as journalists will obviously evolve with changing technology. But it is essential that we maintain a quest to make our copy more understandable, more engaging and more attractive to an audience whose focus is not necessarily square on the news. We’ve got to find and pursue stories that chronicle every day people, while still using our expert sources to give our readers perspective. This can be especially tricky, considering that newspaper journalists tend to use the same sources often as a force of necessity and habit.
It seems that if we don’t take it upon ourselves to earn our audience, we will lose it. Due to the increasing interactivity of blogs and lightning-quick Internet news services, newspaper journalists are essentially on barrowed time. Especially with the emergence of solid, albeit partisan, conservative-leaning media outlets like the Drudge Report, National Review Online and (to an extent) Fox News, not to mention their liberal counterparts (Daily Kos, the Nation, etc.), news junkies with a certain political leaning will likely look for their information and rhetoric from mediums that suit their needs, rather than a “non-partisan” newspaper.
What is at stake if the newspaper industry fails to keep up with the changing landscape? Plenty. If seasoned writers and reporters are cast aside and replaced by inexperienced and partisan observers, the public will not have a true picture of what is going on around them. When we talked in class about the pros and cons embedded reporters during a time of war, we have to wonder whether a blogger or a political analyst could tag along with an army unit and still record their trek with as much depth and fairness as a traditional reporter. Depending on their perspective and their training, the public might not get a complete idea of what is going on during a time of conflict. Instead, their getting a filtered view of a situation cast from the eyes of somebody with a specific agenda (i.e. publicity, money, the advancement of a certain point of view).
The “new” media of bloggers and politicized analysts will likely have trouble producing in-depth, investigative pieces. For one thing, the sheer amount of resources available to a traditional reporter allows him or her to conduct fairly substantial looks into aspects of government and society untenable to ordinary citizens. They also have the tools to ask hard questions if necessary. Also, the “new” media will have a tougher time being a watchdog for anything other than the people or entities they are against. Would a blogger with ads for the Democratic Party write a furiously critical post on the Democratic Party? Would a citizen who is pro-life print an article on extremism within the movement? Probably not. Although the “traditional” new media has been criticized for being either too liberal or (in rare cases) too conservative, it does a far better job at attacking both sides of the political spectrum than a blogger.
Ultimately, the role and the place of a newspaper reporter will likely change even more as technology and competitors continue to capture more of the public’s attention. But by focusing on improving our writing and getting to know who our audience is, there will likely be a place at the table for newspaper reporters for a long time to come.

The roles of journalism and journalists

Diego Sorbara
Where are journalism and journalists headed?
Despite the new avenues that the Internet and other emerging media have opened, the course of journalism is steady. Take a look at what the mission of journalists from several decades ago and compare it to the mission of journalists now. From Woodward and Bernstein at the post to the somewhat-dubious Dateline NBC child predator stings, the elegant mission is to inform people more about their world and the dangers therein. The goal is to make a more informed citizenry; this was the ideal from the time of Thomas Jefferson.
What is changing is the way the mission is being undertaken. While most newspapers are discovering declining numbers of subscribers (the News & Observer [Raleigh, N.C.] is a notable exception), the Web presence of those papers is gaining more and more readers; according to a report from the 2006 World Economic Forum Annual Meeting, Arthur Sulzberger Jr., chairman and publisher of The New York Times, said that there are more readers of the Web version of the Times than of the paper version.
And now we are facing a slew of avenues for transmitting news outside the big three: television, newspaper and radio. The Internet has already been maturing, but even more outlets have grown from it.
The largest off-shoot of the Internet as a news vessel is the blog. Etymologically, the beginnings of blogs (in a conventional sense, not blogs as records of requests handled by Web servers) can be traced to the late ‘90s, according to the electronic edition of the Oxford English Dictionary. (See end of post for the OED entry, just for fun.) Beginning mostly as records of day-to-day events, you can find blogs attached to just about any news site. The public editor of the New York Times has his own blog; you can even find a list of mid-Missouri bloggers.
Beyond that, the portability brought about by iPod and other portable audio players has spurred podcasting, a mélange of multimedia to push more information for people on the go. Working better for feature programs, podcasts are popping up not only through newspaper sites but also from radio stations (this includes KBIA’s “Global Journalist” and “Views of the News.”)
And of course, that’s just the tip of the iceberg. But the important question is what this means for journalists. Can a journalist fresh out of school make it in the industry having the skills to just write a story for the print product? Can a designer make it just knowing how to design for print? Harvey Remer, the copy desk chief of The Hartford Courant is wary: “Think about what newspapers and other media might look like 20 years from now and make sure you have the skills to be a desirable employee. Or switch careers altogether. I don't suggest these things lightly. I think newspapers are definitely dying and aren't likely to come back even if the economy does.” However, Adam Sapiro, a copy editor at The Courant, makes a case for emerging technology as the future: “I've been arguing here that we need to start doing a lot more online, with the goal of going paperless in 5 or 10 years. I think we should eventually go paperless all but two days a week (Thursday and Sunday, the biggest days for the ad circulars) and pour some of the savings back into CONTENT (all the reporters and columnists we've lost over the years). We should charge subscribers the same amount as the actual paper, supply them with a computer if they don't have one (like the cable companies supply boxes for a fee), make the interface user-friendly and the content easily printable (like with eMprint), and boost local coverage (and keep it updated). Then, down the road, if it's working, we should go paperless seven days a week. I'm glad you kids are on the case. The news business won't die, but newspapers will if they keep getting rid of reporters and columnists to cut costs. The content is the most valuable thing we have to offer.”
So the new purpose for journalists is to fuel the changing media. Like Downie explains, making new online news outlets is, for now, doomed to failure (with examples of the Motley Fool and Slate). And in fact, most sites are still relying on conventional Associated Press reports for breaking news. What is happening, though, is a natural evolution in the world of news, where news starts adapting to new technology. Rather than journalists forcing the evolution unnaturally, journalists should instead being gaining the skill sets as they become necessary.
It’s impractical to try and predict what’s next, and it’s impractical to start training journalists in school on what will, at the pace we’re going, become obsolete. Instead, journalists should maintain their roles and transfer the skills of newsgathering from print to the next big leap in media. The role of a journalist, to present the news and put it in context, will never change. If the role somehow does change, we won’t have journalists anymore. What is changing is the way the message is conveyed. There is where attention has to be focused.

OED Blog Entry:

A frequently updated web site consisting of personal observations, excerpts from other sources, etc., typically run by a single person, and usually with hyperlinks to other sites; an online journal or diary.

1997 J. BARGER Lively New Webpage in alt.culture.www (Usenet newsgroup) 23 Dec., I decided to start my own webpage logging the best stuff I find as I surf, on a daily basis:..www.mcs.net/~jorn/html/weblog.html. This will cover any and everything that interests me, from net culture to politics to literature etc. 1998 Village Voice (N.Y.) 8 Sept. 33/3 Jorn Barger's Robot Wisdom WebLog..might not be pretty, but it's one of the best collections of news and musings culled from the Weband updated daily. 2000 Independent 23 Oct. II. 9/1 A weblog is simply a site where you post your thoughts whenever the muse strikes. 2002 Times (Electronic ed.) 14 Jan., There is a way to be stupendously well informed... Scour the highlights in..weblogs.

Today's news, tomorrow's journalist

One of the first things I remember learning about being a journalist was the concept that “news is new.” As true as that is about the writing and news selection process, it’s beginning to ring all too clear for how we consume and present the news. It seems a constant phrase I’ve been hearing lately is that print journalism is “dead.” While this had me concerned about the future of my career, I realized that even if the medium of newspapers begins to dwindle, I will always have my fact-finding and news skills, which carry over into whatever method of information consumption is popular at the time.
It became very evident to me how different the role of the journalist is becoming when my roommate decided that she was going to enroll in the convergence sequence. I have to admit; I thought this idea was rather odd. Why learn how to do so many things when you could specialize in one? Then I saw all the innovative things her sequence was doing: listening in and watching KOMU meetings through Internet video, pitching their stories to them over the Internet. Then my own Missourian began to do text casting, which by most accounts, was exceedingly popular.
I got to experience this kind of convergence in Jefferson City last year, by turning all of my print stories into radio stories for KBIA and posting both versions online. It was really remarkable how well our newsroom worked together, everyone sharing information, and making sure that all the stories we produced were of the highest quality. Although I have now switched to the presentation side of the news, that experience of using a wide variety of tools to make new and information available was invaluable.
We discussed in class all the different ways that we consume information in 2006. The idea that struck me the most was how information-hungry our society (specifically my generation) is. The Internet facilitates the ability to leave CNN.com on your desktop and hit the “refresh” button every so often and never be out of the loop on all of the world’s happenings. The Internet may ease the ability at which we can access news, but is this decreasing news values? Perhaps it allows the trumpeting of details, an inadvertent problem that aren’t necessary. Just a little over a decade ago, people received their news only a few times a day when it was “given” to them, in the form of a daily newspaper, radio report or newscast. In this case, news may be new, but is it necessary?
In their book “The News About the News,” Leonard Downie and Robert Kaiser note that while many thought the Internet would be the beginning of a new brand of journalism, it has instead been the most quick and effective way to distribute journalism. Although this may be true, it is also has limitless possibilities – not only the amount of people that can be reached, but also an ending supply of visual and print media that don’t have the constrictions of a TV set, radio or newspaper. The opportunities of this tool are undeniable, but Dowie and Kaiser warn that using it to its full potential will only occur “if the owners of the news organizations are willing to support the evolution of this new medium and take advantage of the opportunities it offers” (Downie and Kaiser, 218).
The next question that arises in my mind is what will the Internet look like in another 15 or 20 years. Computers will progressively get smaller; perhaps everyone will have all-in-one devices that will allow instant access to everything – well I suppose those are available now. As Dowie and Kaiser observe, consumers will be able to “watch whatever they want whenever they want it.” Regulations may change so that the Internet won’t even look the same anymore. I think its safe to say that journalism will still continue, and perhaps have an even better market to cater to. But with this access to information comes a serious danger: That news will lose its objectivity and credibility if we allow anyone to claim themselves to be a journalist. This is not to say that civic journalism is inherently without credibility, but if it isn’t labeled as such, the potential for news becoming skewed and inaccurate is inevitable.
The eMprint edition of the Missourian is a really great example of how the news can mold to fit whatever medium its readership needs. The ability to have newspaper-style presentation that most people enjoy, combined with the convenience of the Internet, as well as other capabilities shows just how cutting-edge the newspaper business could be. I am fully confident that we, as an industry, are clever enough to keep up with the demands of a new market, even if it comes in a format we ourselves aren’t too keen about. As a member of the next generation of journalists, I have no fear that we always find ways to communicate the news and keep our communities informed, no matter how we communicate it.

Journalism's role.

In The News about the News the 260 person staff at the News & Observer is broken down to help describe just who makes those morning miracles that we call newspapers happen. The biggest chunk of those staff members is clearly the reporting staff (100), followed by the sixteen photographers and eight researchers. At the end of this sampling of journalism jobs are six graphic artists who make up a little over five percent of the workforce at the paper.

It’s not hard to understand why people talk about reporting and reporters so much when they think of newspapers. It’s easy to talk about what the future of journalism will look like in terms of how stories will be told and via what media people will get those stories. What gets overlooked much of the time is how people get to those stories.
In class on Wednesday we spent a lot of time talking about a few distinct types of online media outlets that people gravitate toward. A lot of points were made for each news source, but in the end it seemed like personal preference was a bigger factor than any sort of objective measurement. Reporting is extremely important, and the backbone of any good newspaper, but design is key to getting people back to read the news day to day.

Journalism shouldn’t just be about exposing issues and informing the public. Yes, these things are at the very core of the industry’s role in our democratic society, but if journalists want to compete they’re going to need to do more. Journalism has to compete with a culture more pervaded by high-impact entertainment everyday and people who would just as soon watch infotainment and reality TV programs in order to get their fill of the real world on any given evening.

Journalists need to develop the ability to enthrall readers and not just inform them. It’s good and well to be blown away by high sales numbers on days like Sept. 12, 2001, but journalists have so many technological tools to draw readers in that they should be trying to get people reading about the news everyday.

Downie and Kaiser describe broadcasters as the purveyors of news and print outlets as the ones who dig up the news and describe it in detail. Why do people turn to television stations time and again? TV stations know they cannot compete with newspapers in terms of coverage, depth or detail and in stead have embraced the short form story. Bite-sized news is the name of the game over the airwaves, with lots of bell and whistles to attack the story from multiple angles at once. Photos, video, voiceovers and news tickers all come together to bombard the reader with a plethora of information in a short timeframe.

Newspapers can do this. Short form stories can, and should, run next to the longer explanative pieces. Design and graphics should come together to highlight facts and tell stories in ways that are quickly accessible to readers and can entice them not to just read the longer story, but also to keep coming back to the paper. In order to do this, newsrooms need to continue to become more collaborative. Researchers, photographers, artists, designers and editors need to sit down at the same table and have open conversations throughout the entire process. Reporting shouldn’t just be about reporters. The facts that these journalists uncover shouldn’t be looked at in a vacuum. How do all the parts of a story interact? What can every person at a newspaper do to improve storytelling?

Everyone at a newspaper should be contributing to how each story is told. Reporters should be sharing facts, designers should be making stories accessible, photographers should be showing the news and editors should be examining the facts. The essential role of journalism isn’t going to change tons in a persistent democracy, but journalists will still have to continue to reinvent themselves and figure out how to tell every story from every angle and give every reason something of value.

Future of blogging

I didn’t know what a blog was three years ago and now I have one. Apparently they started in the 90s, though that’s news to me. The proliferation of blogs, in my mind, has never been as strong as it is now. Google blog and “state of the union” and you will get nearly 5 million hits. They’re probably not all actually blogs, but the number of blogs out there is astounding, and their influence more profound than ever before.

I was watching TV on a rare night I wasn’t stuck at the Missourian into the wee hours, enjoying Conan when he started to talk about Finland. Seemed odd, but he’ll do anything for a funny bit, so I waited on, and it focused on his resemblance to a Finnish presidential candidate (female). Ha ha, whatever, but intrigued by the idea I did a little research. The Finnish elections are remarkable not by this conincedence but because of several candidates use of blogging as an election tool. It seems that more than one were using a blog to personalize themselves to readers/constituents/potential votes. The blog had become a mainstream campaign tool- one that not more than a week later my mom mentioned Finland’s presidential blogs to me. When I lived at home I had to check her email for her. She is the epitome of computer ineptitude and she was talking blog.

I digress, but the point is that the power of this new internet tool is undeniable. It’s use for journalists is debatable, however. What journalists use it for and how they use it is still evolving. I don’t think that blogs are, nor should be, held to the same journalistic standard. That’s based partially on personal bias- my perception is that blogs are an individual’s account, not necessarily fit to publish- that says transparency and objectivity in blogs aren’t on the same level as the newspaper. And that’s okay. Blogs can offer insights, different perspectives and maybe even editorialize. The fear there is that media outlets can show bias through affiliated blogs damaging their overall credibility. Worse yet, they might not care about their journalistic integrity, use their influence over the reader without proper disclosure, and alter public opinion. As concerning as that is, I’m not sure that blogs should be the sole concern. Outlets can exercise such indiscretion through any medium, and in some cases I believe do. The benefits of a blog are too numerous to ignore.

I read some of the classes posts before writing this, and Sadie’s tale of the editor with cancer stood out. It’s precisely what Finland’s presidential candidates were trying to do; curry favor with the public through access to their private lives. In the political campaigning spectrum, that seems logical and contrived. In a grass-roots journalism (gone technological) sense, I would like to think it’s genuine and heartfelt. Allowing a glimpse into the paper’s employee isn’t wrong, and if it helps reinvigorate newspaper reading than it’s great. Blogs can be hard-hitting, they can give analysis and can recap current events. But so can the daily. We don’t need to, and should not put a diary in NewSunday, but if we have this other place we can have someone talk candidly about news and maybe themselves, what’s wrong with using it.
I don’t remember the date of Katrina, how many people died (other than it wasn’t thousands, and I only know that thanks to Nagin’s quote about thousands dying) or the details of what levee’s broke when or where. The coverage that stands out most in my mind is the blog on digmo from the reporters the Missourian sent down there. What they saw, who they met and what they felt. The emotion of those accounts were more powerful than any factual, inversed pyramidical recanting.

Drew Bruno

Technology will define print changes

When interviewing with the Rockford Register-Star, I got into a fascinating conversation with executive editor Linda Cunningham. For over 17 years, she had reveled in a job she only expected to keep for two. And throughout the ages, she’d seen many aspects of the business change, especially the rise of technology that make transmitting the Register-Star’s message beyond its traditional area of coverage.

Much of our conversation centered on many things we talk about in class. For example, she inquired about my first memories of Internet usage. The answer to this was American Online – a product that is struggling to keep up with the lightning quick speed of the technological curb. Broadband broke down institutional gates keeping the speed, and therefore, the enjoyment out of the Internet. But it also broke down the stranglehold of the primary players in the media game – print, television and radio.

No longer would these transistors of information be the only way to get a grasp of what was important in the world.

But even a powerful tool like the Internet has palpable limitations. It needs some sort of expensive machine – such as a laptop or a high-end cellular phone – to operate within the peak performance. This reveals a significant cost barrier, one that keeps the less affluent members of the population to be left out, and therefore reasonably committed to newspapers, television and radio. While the Internet has already been partly merged with the out-and-out function of television (through services like DirectTV), we have yet to see paper and computer technology merge.

But that doesn’t mean it’s not happening.

As we discussed in class, technology experts are hard at work perfecting “liquid
paper,” which would automatically update as the news cycle goes forward. When and if this technology becomes inexpensive enough to be implemented and spread to the masses, it will be the most revolutionary change ever to come to the newspaper industry. Not only will it allow papers to concentrate their resources away from heavy materials like ink and paper, cutting cost dramatically, but it will also allow the static information usually on paper to become dynamic and up-to-the minute, thus making the industry a fairly substantial competitor to internet and television.

Of course, this technology needs to be perfect and perfected again in order to be a feasible reality. It also needs to be relatively inexpensive for the average citizen, which will likely be difficult, considering the technology being forged will likely be fairly attractive to the public. This technology will likely be a huge challenge for smaller newspapers, which might not be able to afford to adapt to the new technology for years after it’s implemented. I can see a lot of small town papers going out of business or being absorbed by bigger papers.

I also see the newspapers growing closer together as far as ownership goes. I see a lot of different news sources banding together with this technology to bring the reader completely national coverage under one “paper.” I envision a sort of Google news on liquid paper – fast, entertaining and customizable.

Technology is changing fast now, but I feel that the greatest change to the newspaper industry lies ahead. It is a change that will shake the very foundations and definition of what it means to be a “print” publication.