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Journalism That Matters: An Emerging Cultural Narrative

The following article appeared in the Sprint/Summer 2009 issue of Kosmos

It reflects the themes that surfaced through the many conferences.  Since then, additional themes include:

  • Journalism is still about the public good; and now it is entrepreneurial
  • Small organizations bring heart. Large organizations bring credibility.  Collaborate!
  • Communities can take responsibility for their own narrative.  One strategy: embed journalists in the community
  • Librarians and journalists share common cause for engaging the public in civic life.
  • In the digital age, news and information will look as different from newspapers, TV, and radio news, as these innovations did when pre-printing press, news was delivered from the pulpit.  Think investigative journalism delivered via hip hop and video games.

******************

Journalism that Matters:
An Emerging Cultural Narrative

by Peggy Holman

What does it take to change a social system, an industry?  Like journalism…

 

For nine years, Journalism that Matters (JTM) has:

*            Invited people from all aspects of journalism: print, broadcast, and new media; editors, reporters, bloggers, audience, reformers, educators, and others;

*            Created space for conversations among peers about what matters most to them;

*            Worked at the emerging edge of the new news ecology.

We have witnessed a new story of journalism being born as the old story is dying.  At its heart, that new story stays true – and enlarges on – a purpose many journalists hold dear: “to provide people with the information they need to be free and self-governing.” (Kovach and Rosenstiel, 2001)

The Beginning

For me, Journalism that Matters started with an act of violence.  In 1999 a mass shooting happened at a Jewish Community Center in Los Angeles.  I was working with Appreciative Inquiry, a process based in the idea that positive action follows positive images.  In other words, stories of danger make us hunker down, while stories that illuminate possibilities inspire and activate us. I thought, “the stories we are collectively telling ourselves, through journalists, are not serving us well.”

A friend introduced me to Stephen Silha, a free-lance journalist. Stephen connected us with Chris Peck, incoming president of the Associated Press Managing Editors. During our first conversation, Chris asked an ambitious question:

“What would it take to have a national conversation about the future of journalism?”

Stephen, Chris and I created a plan. We were subsequently joined by Bill Densmore, of the Media Giraffe Project.  While it has unfolded completely differently, Journalism that Matters has convened twelve conversations among more than 800 people from the evolving ecosystem of journalism.

Since we began, technology has radically altered the nature of our communications. The Internet enables anyone to publish, shaking old assumptions of who is a journalist and what constitutes journalism. Social networking technologies such as Facebook ushered in an age of many-to-many connecting.  We no longer depend on a few publishers and broadcasters to set the collective agenda. More than passive recipients of information, we are now active participants shaping our cultural narrative.

For generations, newspapers — and then television — gave us the news, telling us what needed our attention.  As we became “consumers” of news, the stories began to change, no longer providing what we needed to know as citizens.  Perhaps, this, as much as changing technology, has created a generation that finds no connection between journalism and democracy.  For many under 40, the information they need to be engaged citizens does not come through traditional journalism.  As aggregators like Google News use algorithms for choosing what stories matter, our cultural narrative arises from what we collectively follow.  So newspaper circulation and ad revenues decline, and broadcast news viewers age (think ads for Viagra and Boniva for bone loss).  Does this decline threaten the health of democracy?  Or has journalism as we know it passed its time?

Journalists struggle to understand their changing role in a context where anyone can publish, people engage each other about what matters to them, and technology aggregates the agenda.  The rest of us struggle with shifting from consumers to co-creative citizens.  Though it will be a while before we have a clear picture of journalism’s new story, its role in democracy, and our role in it, many exciting experiments give us clues to that future.  Through JTM we are learning about

*   the essential purpose of journalism,

*   the nature of storytelling,

*   who is involved,

*   how it is practiced,

*   how it is taught, and

*   how it is financed.

The Essential Purpose of Journalism

If journalism’s old story was to provide people with information they needed to be free and self-governing, in the emerging story, journalism not only informs, but engages, inspires, and activates people to play their roles as free and self-governing citizens.

The nascent beginnings of this expanded purpose are visible through “place bloggers”, online sites providing community news, information, and electronic conversation spaces in which residents exercise the muscles of civic engagement.  People share their stories. They see connections with local governance and with each other.  As the hosts of these local communities meet – as they did at JTM’s 2008 Minneapolis gathering (www.newpamphleteers.org), they make connections that re-knit the fabric of democracy from the grassroots out, feeding our larger sense of nation-as-community and even world-as-community.  No longer a one-way communication from journalist to audience, journalism sparks community conversation.  This changing role reveals some new characteristics of journalism:

TRADITIONAL NEWSROOM NEW NEWS ECOLOGY
Journalism as…
lecture conversation
central authority community connector
knowledge-centric relationship-centric
one-to-many many-to-many

The Nature of Storytelling

If journalism has an expanded mission – to inform, connect, and inspire action — then the nature of journalistic storytelling itself is changing. Tom Atlee of the Co-Intelligence Institute offers a model that, among other things, can help assess the likely effectiveness of a story or a news organization by asking:

*   Does it inform? (a primary focus of traditional journalism)

*   Does it engage? (a primary focus of the social networking)

*   Does it inspire? (almost virgin territory, but hinted at by the idea of “possibility journalism” described below)

*   Does it activate? (almost untouched terrain)

*   Is it part of a process that facilitates collective learning-from-experience by the community?  (integrating all aspects as a cycle)

The Sixth “W”

What is possible now?.  An example of “possibility journalism” emerged from a project launched following JTM-Kalamazoo, called the Common Language Project (CLP), www.commonlanguageproject.net.  CLP puts a human face on complex, international stories.  Sarah Stuteville, JTM alum and CLP co-founder offers this story:

I was in the Middle East talking with a Palestinian about frustrating, polarizing material. He kept repeating the same ideas over and over so I asked that magic question: “given what’s happening, what’s possible now?” It shifted the interview completely, as our contact began envisioning the situation in a completely new way.

By adding “What’s possible now” to the traditional five “W’s” of journalism – who, what, when, where, why, and how — stories call forth hopes and aspirations.

Who is Involved

At JTM-Washington, DC (www.mediagiraffe.org/wiki/index.php/Jtm-dc) there were fierce conversations between long-time journalists and newcomers.  One journalist had a change of heart about “citizen journalists” when their conversations made clear that the primary difference between pros and serious amateurs were (1) who gets paid; and (2) professionals COVER stories, citizens SHARE THEIR stories.

Journalists are no longer gatekeepers to the stories that matter, though many have been so busy guarding the gate that they have not noticed the fence is gone.  Still, with the vast increase of sources, the role of making sense of a complex and rapidly changing world is more vital than ever. And the range of options for receiving and making sense of news has exploded, becoming more confusing in the process.  Traditional sources — newspapers, television, and radio — are supplemented by blogs, video blogs, and Internet radio.  Sense-making often occurs through conversation, as social networking sites and local platforms for civil discourse support fact-checking and collective meaning-making.

For JTM-Silicon Valley (www.newstools2008.org), which brought together journalists and technologists, two maps were created: 1) the primary roles in a traditional newsroom and 2) a preliminary sketch of emerging roles.

We began the emerging news ecology map with three roles: community, beat blogger, and sense-maker.  Given the growing emphasis on conversation,  “community weavers” skilled at hosting civil online (e.g., www.westseattleblog.com) and face-to-face conversations were soon added.  These roles are clearly just the beginning.

How Journalism is Practiced

Virtually every aspect of journalistic practice is changing, with self-publishing, 7×24 coverage, social networking, crowd-sourcing, Twitter, blogs, mainstream outlets, and more.  Multi-media reporting skills become essential as stories are distributed via computers, cell phones, and iPods.  As distribution goes “high tech”, sourcing stories goes “high touch”.  Public radio’s Public Insight Journalism engages ordinary people to cover news in greater depth and uncover stories not otherwise found (www.americanpublicmedia.publicradio.org/publicinsightjournalism).

No longer are events the only trigger for a story.  For example, JTM alum, Ilona Meagher (www.niu.edu/PubAffairs/RELEASES/2007/aug/ilona.shtml), unexpectedly found herself an expert on Post Traumatic Stress Disorder because she started writing about the interconnections she uncovered by researching a subject important to her.  Now she is in journalism school, learning the craft that adopted her.

More people are involved in telling stories today.  Tapping into networks of bloggers to bring complex stories into focus as “beat bloggers” (www.beatblogging.org) do, journalists move from outside the system to being key connectors within a system.

TRADITIONAL NEWSROOM NEW NEWS ECOLOGY
 

Stories sourced…
from within the news organization from many people and places
from events from events and noticing emerging patterns
are deadline driven are continually unfolding
 

Stories disseminated…
media specific multi-purpose (e.g., print, broadcast, web, podcast, cell phone, etc.)
 

Content that…
publisher owns and creates public owns and creates
answers who, what when, where, why and how answers who, what when, where, why, how, and what’s possible now
pours around the ads serves a greater good
follows the inverted pyramid is edited for readability
offers an A vs. B narrative expresses a systemic narrative (A relates to B, influenced by C, contextualized by D, E, and F)
informs informs, connects people and ideas, inspires, and activates
editor-centric community-centric
arouses inspires engagement
 

Journalist as…
outsider community member
gatekeeper sense-maker
focused on the external world focused on both inner life and external world
expert, arbiter of truth coordinator, facilitator, convener, evaluator, refiner
professional, dispassionate professional and citizen, passion in the mix
content creator content creator and guide
skeptical of experimentation innovator

How Journalism is Taught

How do you prepare a new generation when the field is radically changing?  Some exciting insights emerged at JTM-DC, captured by Dale Peskin:

Of particular interest are the three roots:

*   broad-based media literacy

*   journalism tools, including traditional craft and values, and emerging values and skills, such as transparency and multi-media reporting

*   the art of engagement – convening community both online and face to face.

 

How Journalism is Financed

Likely last to emerge will be a viable economic model.  Among the ideas and experiments:

*   Community-supported journalism (e.g., community radio, Democracy Now)

*   A utility model (funded as a basic service, like water and power)

*   Community-owned (every citizen has shares and citizens retain oversight authority)

*   Crowdfunding: JTM alum, Dave Cohn, funded by a Knight Challenge Grant created www.spot.us, “that allows an individual or group to take control of news in their community by sharing the cost… to commission freelance journalists.”

Changes to the economics include:

TRADITIONAL NEWSROOM NEW NEWS ECOLOGY
 

Economics…
ad supported multiple sources of support
high cost production and distribution low cost production and distribution
most of the cost is not journalism costs mostly journalism related
profit-driven mission-driven

Open Questions

Two important questions for deeper exploration in JTM conversations:

How do we engage an increasingly diverse audience? And how do we ensure investigative journalism – community, national, international – is done well?

I now believe that journalism is too important to be left solely in the hands of professionals.  Even as journalists struggle with their new role, it is up to us citizens to determine our place in the new media landscape.  Ultimately, the emerging news ecology will serve its purpose well only by answering the question:

How can journalism inform, engage, inspire, and activate us — materially, intellectually, emotionally, and spiritually — to be free and self-governing citizens and communities?

Bibliography

Kovach, Bill and Tom Rosenstiel, The Elements of Journalism.  Crown Publishers, New York, 2001, p. 12.

Thanks to Steven Wright for the visual recording.

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Value Network Maps

Created originally for Newstools 2008 in Silicon Valley, we re-made the value network maps for Journalism in the New News Ecology at the Poynter Institute.  Here are the new images, along with the original text.

Old News Story: Value Network Map

For 150 years the editors of American newspapers ruled the media landscape.
The men at the helm of newsrooms, and most editors are male, set agendas.
They directed massive staffs of journalists whose work poured through an assembly line of cultivating sources, writing, editing, production, printing and delivery.
They operated as esteemed members of The Fourth Estate, imagining themselves as independent counterbalances to the forces of power.
The work of reporters, photographers, and editors became more than a craft. It grew to be a profession, with professional wages, benefits and perks.
The public’s appetite and loyalty to their work was immense.
Huge consumer audiences built around the newspapers at the first half of the 20th century. The newspapers pronounced, and the masses listened.
Later, as audiences shifted to television, which broadcast one way, and every household in America tuned in.
Through it all, the words, photos and editorial judgments of the newspaper and television newsrooms, editors, and reporters continued to set local and national agendas.
And it was a hugely profitable business model. Major department stores, auto dealers, and job-seekers aggregated around the news pages and the news content.
Profits for both commercial television stations and monopolistic newspapers rose to 30% or more as massiveadvertising dollars poured in a mass medium.
Then the world changed.

– Chris Peck

An Emerging News Ecology: Value Network Map

At the beginning of the 21st century, the World Wide Web changed the business and information distribution model for all media.
No longer were printing presses and transmission towers the only means of communication.  A laptop and a broadband hookup did the same work, thank-you.
Journalists for a day, a weekend, or a cause began to supplant journalists at desks, with their pensions and a boss.
The audience formerly known as newspaper readers and television viewers awoke to the freedom of connectivity in a digital age. Virtual communities and international communities of interest transcended geographic communities and the sense of place.
In a flash, media expectations, models and roles all changed.
Media morphed into many-to-many conversations. Content emerged raw and unedited, rather than as carefully parsed verified tidbits produced by trained journalists.
Stories grew on their own, without an editor. Photos were shared without a darkroom.
Bloggers filled content gaps left open or once occupied by paid, professional reporters. User-generated content both encroached on and enriched the media.    Money that once went to news content writers and editors began to flow instead to those who aggregated the news, but did not create it.
Public policy could be shaped by Matt Drudge working in his basement or by a YouTube video captured on a $100 digital camera.
The old media world staggered.

New roles and a new vocabulary have begun emerging.
Some reporters become “beat bloggers” tapping into networks of bloggers to bring complex stories into focus.  “Community weavers” create a sense of community among the former audience and with formal news entities.  “Information architects” make intelligible the vast amounts of data and images now available.  While editorscontinue to be sense makers, connecting facts and making story lines visible, ultimately who filters news from noise, how it happens, and who pays for it is still unfolding.  Even the definition of “news” is up for grabs asmemes — cultural units of information equivalent to genes in the body — replace an event orientation to story.
The new media world has opened the floodgates of opportunity.

– Chris Peck, Peggy Holman, and Stephen Silha

The Map Makers:

  • Kara Andrade, Maynard Institute
  • Sherrin Bennett, Interactive Learning Systems
  • Dave Cohn, spot.us
  • Kaliya Hamlin, Identity Woman
  • Peggy Holman, Journalism that Matters
  • Ytaelena Lopez, Maynard Institute
  • Chris O’Brien, San Jose Mercury News
  • Chris Peck, Memphis Commercial Appeal
  • Martin Reynolds, Oakland Tribune
  • Stephen Silha, Journalism that Matters

Value Network Mapping and Analysis

Prepared by Kaliya Hamlin
www.unconference.net
kaliya@mac.com

Value Network Mapping and Analysis is a tool developed by Verna Allee that displays a holistic picture of a system.  This tool was brought to News Tools 2008 to:

•    give those unfamiliar with the ‘traditional’ newsroom a clear map of how news was produced and value flowed;

•    give those familiar with the “traditional” newsroom an explicit articulation of value flow in that system in contrast to emerging systems of news sourcing and distribution;

•    give everyone a common “language” or “mapping tool” to consider the emerging news ecology and how new roles and value flows can help create a thriving environment.

The first step in the process is to identify roles in a system and the second step is to map the value flows.

Roles are real people or groups of people that generate transactions, send messages, engage in interactions, add value, and make decisions.  The journalism maps include “reporter” “editor” “source” “community weaver” “advertisers”.

Once these roles were identified, we considered two kinds of value exchange:

Tangible value: All exchanges of goods, services or revenue, including all transactions involving contracts, invoices, return receipt of orders, requests for proposals, confirmations and payments are considered to be tangible value. Products or services that generate revenue or are expected as part of a service are also included in the tangible value flow of goods, services, and revenue.

A simple example is a customer (this is a role) goes to a store and buys groceries from the cashier (role). Money is paid in return for goods – vegetables.  If the customer lives in a small town and has an ongoing patronage relationship with the cashier, there might be an intangible value exchange of information about their families and the neighborhood.

Intangible value: Two primary subcategories are included in intangible value: knowledge and benefits. Intangible knowledge exchanges include strategic information, planning knowledge, process knowledge, technical know-how, collaborative design and policy development; which support the product and service tangible value network. Intangible benefits are also considered favors that can be offered from one person to another. Examples include offering political or emotional support to someone. Another example is a research organization asking someone to volunteer their time and expertise in exchange for the intangible benefit of prestige by affiliation.

Once the roles and value flows are mapped, the picture of the whole system can be used to facilitate relationship management in an ecosystem, consider the business web and ecosystem development, consider options for process re-design, support communities of practice, or consider cost benefits and risks in existing and emerging systems.

For more information on Value Network Mapping, visit www.value-networks.com.

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An ecology of story for the well-being of community and democracy

Submitted by PeggyHolman on Wed, 06/04/2008 – 9:00am

My friend and colleague, Tom Atlee, founder of the The Co-Intelligence Institute, developed a map of stories entitled Whole System Learning and Evolution — and the New Journalism
that I think has great potential as a way of thinking about what is
required for both great stories and great story-telling organizations.
In the version below, I changed a few terms (e.g., “community” became
“connect” to create consistency of form) and I added four verbs (in
blue) that, framed as questions, I think could provide a tool for
assessing the likely effectiveness of a story or a news organization.
The questions that Tom’s model sparked for me:

• Does it inform? (a primary focus of traditional journalism)
• Does it engage? (a primary focus of the emerging social networking sites)
• Does it inspire? (almost virgin territory, but hinted at by the idea of “possibility journalism”)
• Does it activate? (also exciting terrain)

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Six Questions that Matter to Journalism

Submitted by PeggyHolman on Sat, 05/31/2008 – 3:32pm

As I read people’s registration comments for NewPamphleteers/New Reporters – the upcoming JtM gathering in Minnesota, it struck me that people were asking questions and bringing expertise in six areas:

  • Business models
  • Cultivating community
  • Partnerships
  • Content choices
  • Craft
  • Technology

Here’s a picture of what seems to be emerging:

We’ve now got a twitter stream for Journalism that Matters: jtmstream. Join us from June 4-5.

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Possibility Journalism: An Emerging Trend?

Submitted by PeggyHolman on Thu, 05/22/2008 – 9:00am

As I reflected on Journalism that Matters-Silicon Valley,
it struck me that my favorite subject – the power of story to inspire
and engage, was a very quiet theme at this particular gathering. It got
me thinking about the need to say something about what is emerging is
this arena.
It began for me with three threads of the Journalism that Matters-Memphis session:

  • Geneva Overholser, Hurley Chair in Public Affairs Reporting, University of Missouri, introduced herself saying:

“I had been depressed. A couple of years ago, I resolved
to find hope. When you open yourself to possibility you are willing to
experience stuff you haven’t experienced before.”
What a fabulous discovery: finding hope is a choice. Could Geneva’s comment be indicative of an emerging trend?

  • Then I saw a quote from Martin Luther King, Jr. at the National Civil Rights Museum:

“But I know, somehow, that only when it is dark enough, can you see the stars. …”

What a profound insight when so much coverage is about the dark! Why not also look at the stars in the story?

  • The capper was witnessing two veteran reporters interview the
    mother of Josh Wolf — the video blogger who went to jail for refusing a
    federal grand jury’s request to turn over video he shot of a burning
    police car during last year’s G8 protest. The interview prompted me to
    ask her a question that struck me as a way to see the stars:

“Given all you’ve experienced, what the best possible outcome you can imagine?”

I was stunned by her powerful and cogent response — that she hoped
Josh’s situation provided clarity about the application of first
amendment rights to emerging types of journalists — because it shifted
the interview’s tone from frustration and defeat to hope and
possibility.

It made me wonder what would happen if the essential questions of journalism added something to

who? what? when? where? why? and how? — namely,
What’s possible now?

And then Stephen Silha and I interviewed Journalism that Matters alum Sarah Stuteville and one of her partners, Jessica Partnow about theCommon Language Project, a startup that took shape at Journalism that Matters-Kalamazoo. CLP puts a human face on international stories.

To my surprise, Jessica told us that asking “what’s possible now”
has become central to their style of reporting. Sarah then told us this
story:

The first time I used “what’s possible now” was reporting in little
Pakistan in Brooklyn. I was hearing about the experience of families of
deportations, mostly young men. I was talking to that community and to
the non-Pakistani community who had very different feelings. People
felt strongly on different sides of same issues. I think the first time
I asked “what’s possible now”, may have come out of frustration. It is
hard to have conversations and not get anywhere. I threw my hands up
and said ok, “what is your ideal solution?” And everything changed. (the interview)

Sarah then offered a second story:

We – Jessica and I – were in the Middle East, talking with a
Palestinian about frustrating, polarizing material. He kept repeating
the same ideas over and over so we asked that magic question: “given
what’s happening, what’s possible now?” It shifted the interview
completely, as our contact began envisioning the situation in a
completely new way. (the interview)

The stories we tell ourselves shape the way we see the world. And
that shapes our behavior. A trend towards asking “what’s possible now?”
follows the energy towards our hopes and aspirations. Sounds to me like
a trend worth amplifying!!!

A coda to this story: Josh Wolf attended NewsTools 2008. Here’s a video interview done by David Cohn during NewsTools. In a second interview, by From the Frontline, Josh describes an interesting idea for a live internet news network that harnesses live video broadcasting tools like Qik,Flixwagon and Ustream.tv coupled with the microblogging tool Twitter and Skype call ins.