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Journalism for Navigating Uncertainty: The Diversity Principle

Innovation demands diversity, using our differences creatively.

I was speaking with an African-American colleague about the news. Growing up in an economically disadvantaged part of Los Angeles, the stories never reflected his reality. So he never developed a news habit.

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His story points to a key aspect of diversity — diversity of voice. The Maynard Institute’s Fault Lines consider race, class, gender, generation and geography. Religion and political persuasion, the roles we play and our different world views are also dimensions of diverse voice.

In the context of news and information that serves communities and democracy, diversity of form and funding also play a role.  More on them shortly.

Why Diversity of Voice?

If you want innovation, engage the diversity of people in a system. The usual suspects tend to have the same conversation and reach the same conclusions.  In the U.S., traditional media has never reflected the public’s diversity. The American Society of News Editors (ASNE) 2013 census showed 12% of newsroom employees are of color when, according to Wikipedia, the minority population is 28%. Emerging media is creating a similar demographic mix. J-Lab’s 2009 database of new media makers identified about 10% of foundation money – a principle funding source for new ventures – went to those focused on communities of color. That funding mix merits changing!

Journalism that helps us understand multiple perspectives on complex issues helps us navigate through them. Welcoming conditions and possibility-oriented questions set the stage for diversity that sparks creativity. Action is easier because no one needs to be “sold.” Everyone can find themselves in the desired outcomes and works to realize them. For example, the Oakland Tribune is discovering a new relationship with its audience through Oakland Voices, which trains residents as citizen journalists.

In system change, a turning point occurs when we see how we fit together as a whole. We begin to operate as a social body, using differences to discover solutions none could create on their own.

Consider a sports stadium for experiencing many angles. The scoreboard shows the state of play. Cameras spotlight action on the field and in the audience. Television extends reach. Statistics online let professional commentators and ordinary people put activities in perspective. Immersed, we understand the experience from many perspectives.

Imagine journalism that makes the state of the economy, education, or a war that visible. What if we could see how different populations, ages, functions, ethnicities look at it? Shared goals and aspirations emerge along with increased willingness to hear other perspectives. Compassion deepens. We become creative partners to reach wiser answers to the challenges of a complex world.

 

Why Diversity of Form?

Beyond newspapers, radio, and TV, social media, like Twitter and Facebook, are growing forms of distribution. Smart phones and tablets create new opportunities for how we get news. Less obvious forms for sharing stories include comedy, video games, and hip-hop.

These forms reach people who opt out of traditional news sources. In 2012, Pew Research Center found the Colbert Report and The Daily Show were the most watched news shows for those under 30. As in the days when troubadours brought news to town, Jasiri X raps the news. Using an editor to fact check stories, he reaches an audience most newspapers never will.

American Public Media (APM), content provider to National Public Radio stations, developed an online game, Budget Hero, to balance the federal budget. The game educates players on the consequences of their choices. With participant demographic data, APM can report on perspectives across the spectrum of age, geography, political party, and other dimensions. Isn’t that an exciting basis for a conversation?

Not every form is great for every type of story. Yet each form has something to contribute to the larger discourse. Imagine the role that Twitter would have played had it existed when Watergate was unfolding. To engage a wider diversity of voices, consider emerging forms.

 

Why Diversity of Funding?

With advertising waning, who will pay for quality content? Numerous experiments, including subscription services, pay walls, co-ops, member donations, and government funding are all being tested.

When journalism provides the news and information we need to be free and self-governing through engagement, a possibility orientation, and a diversity of voices using a diversity of forms, the public will fund journalism in ways that no one has yet envisioned.

So how do we get to such a state? While I have an answer, I know something about the path. Join me next time to explore this question. But first, here are a few tips on working with diversity.

 

Tips on Diversity

  • Be curious. A desire to know, to learn, to be open to the unknown prepares us to engage with difference.
  • Clarify intention. Why go to the trouble unless there is something you value? Intention—purpose—acts as a compass, setting direction while you travel in the wilderness.
  • Consider who/what makes up the system. What functions, constituencies, or roles are involved? What mix of race, class, gender, geography, and generation is important?
  • Go where people different from you live and work. Be humble. Listen. Learn. Reach out. Show that you are interested in partnership.
  • Invite others. Complex challenges require us all.  Reach out to those who ARE IN — with Authority, Resources, Expertise, Information, and Need. People notice different aspects of a situation. With a shared intention, more eyes and ears, hearts and minds, increase the chances of uncovering the gems.
  • Take a risk.  New outcomes come from new actions.  By definition, that involves the unknown.
  • Say “yes” and welcome what comes. Working with the unexpected increases the likelihood of creative outcomes.
  • Expect messiness. Difference brings disruptions. Use them creatively by working through issues that surface. It prepares you for increasing scale and scope.
  • Develop equanimity. Being calm in a storm increases the likelihood of surviving and bringing others with you.

 

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Reflections on last week’s post: The Engagement Principle

Mike Fancher, retired Executive Editor, Seattle Times and Journalism That Matters board member, offered a resource: Participatory Journalism: Guarding Open Gates at Online Newspapers by Jane Singer and others. He said the authors spoke to the idea of “people inside and outside the newsroom communicating not only to, but with, one another.”

Check out the comment from Kevin Fleming, Master’s Student in Mass Public Communications and Technology at Colorado State University, at An Expanded Purpose for Journalism. He writes about the potential for newspaper involvement in deliberative engagement with the public.

I asked people to respond to what makes something newsworthy in a word or phrase.  Via Twitter and LinkedIn, you told me.  In a Wordl, here’s what you said:

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What’s working in your community?

While the challenges facing journalism are widely universal, the solutions toward expanding audiences, improving engagement and bolstering financial viability are often unique and unexpected.

Many of these initiatives were designed for specific applications or particular communities, but the lessons learned along the way can frequently be applied to other environments. The Illuminations Project is built around highlighting these sorts of solutions, and today Journalism that Matters is announcing a call-out to showcase as many of these success stories as possible.

Do you know of a news site or publication that’s doing something that others should follow? You could earn up to $250 by sharing their story on the Illuminations Blog.

There are three ways to participate:

1) Complete a story about an example of a journalistic initiative or publication that’s found a formula for success, and send us your draft. If we like it, we’ll publish it and give you $100.

2) Send us a short pitch for a story you’d like to contribute for The Illuminations Project. We’ll look at your pitch and if it seems like a good fit for the site, we’ll offer you anywhere from $100 to $250 for the completed piece. If we accept your pitch but we aren’t able to develop a successful article through the editing process, we’ll give you a $50 kill fee.

3) If you’d rather let someone else do the writing, then send us ideas for stories about what’s working in journalism that you’d like to see others write. We’ll give you $25 for every detailed idea that develops into a story on the site.

For more details, or to submit a pitch or story please send us an e-mail.

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The Weekly Illumination — Issue 6

Welcome to the the Weekly Illumination, a JTM newsletter offering a quick look at the week in journalism with a focus on what’s working in today’s news ecology. The Illumination is a curated collection of stories about journalism innovation, notable job opportunities, grants and updates about Journalism that Matters.

The newsletter is distributed to e-mail subscribers, through the JTM Google Group, and posted to the Illuminations blog. In this week’s Illumination we’ll look at native advertising, changes to the law governing how start-ups are allowed to raise money, and further explore how to cultivate an engaged audience committed to civility.

The engagement principle

In the latest installment of her series on the emerging news and information ecosystem, Board Member Peggy Holman looks at how journalism is more powerful as a two-way conversation and presents a list of tips that anyone can use to improve engagement on their Web site. 

New York Times repeats same mistake after 25 years

In 1988, the New York Times reported that Mario and Luigi, the beloved Nintendo characters, were employed as janitors. Somehow the Times managed to make the same mistake when it published its obituary for Hirsohi Yamauchi, the former president of Nintendo when it quoted the 1988 article. While the person responsible for the first mistake was likely unfamiliar with the Super Mario Brothers, whoever made the mistake last week probably grew up playing the games.

The search for civil comments

Online comments have become a part of almost every news site and with online comments comes trolls and other abusive behavior that can make meaningful conversation impossible. In this week’s column for The Illuminations Project, I look at how Popular Science has abandoned comments and examine research into creating a more civil space for users to participate in journalism.

Is “branded journalism” an oxymoron?

More and more ad copy is being written by working journalists employed by news organizations. It’s often referred to as native advertising or branded content, but a story on NiemanLab.org this week is using the term “branded journalism” to describe Ideas Lab, a Web site owned by GE but populated with content from Atlantic Media.

But with branded content increasingly meaning a path of survival for failing news publications, the burgeoning form is pushing to encroach further into the rest of the editorial content, as Michael Sebastian reports in Ad Age.

The newspaper business through the eyes of Google

During a presentation in Italy, Hal Varian, Google’s chief economist, described the realities of the newspaper business with such clarity that Matthew Ingram headlined his story: Google’s Chief economist understands media better than some industry executives do.

“What sorts of ads can a newspaper show next to a “pure” news story on an earthquake in Haiti or a bombing in Baghdad? “Pure news” has very high social value to interested readers, but has low commercial value due to the difficulty of showing contextual relevant ads,” said Varian. “Traditionally, newspapers made money from ads in the finance section, home and garden, automotive, entertainment, travel, classified and fashion sections. Why? Because that’s where advertisers could target readers interested in those subjects.”

The more you sell the more you make

There are two ways to make a profit as a business with products to sell. You can sell a lot of the same product, or you can sell a few of many many different products. Traditionally newspapers have essentially had only one thing to sell, but the New York Times and the Washington Post are about to lead a charge of news outlets offering more things for people to buy, says Ken Doctor at Nieman Lab.

The events business has helped a number of publications to thrive. The Texas Tribune stands to bring in more than $1 million this year from events alone, reports Justin Ellis for Nieman Lab.

The new journalism site Beacon has an interesting business model that rewards writers’ entrepreneurial efforts while hopefully creating enough money to help the 23 well known writers on the site make their rent each month. To learn more check out Caroline O’Donovan’s article at Nieman Lab.

New rules allow startups to beg for change

Until now, it’s been illegal for startups to ask investors to bankroll them, and companies were limited in how they are allowed to discuss their fundraising activity. Now the rules have changed and startups can actively solicit investors through the Web or other public channels.

Job(s) of the Week

Nate Silver’s FiveThirtyEight.com, which is now owned by ESPN, is looking for a managing editor.

For the past 75 years, the Nieman Foundation has offered one-year fellowships. Applications are still available.

Each week, The Illumination will include links to jobs, grants and fellowship opportunities. If you are hiring or know someone who is, send me an e-mail and I’ll gladly list it here. If you’re looking for a job, let me know what kind of work you are looking for and I’ll try to post anything I come across that could be a good fit.

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Fighting Comment Cancer

troll_bridgeLike a malignant tumor, trolling comments can quickly take over online conversations and transform them into a poisonous well of noise and animosity.

That’s partly why Popular Science announced this week that they are turning off comments on their site, but journalism has always depended on an ongoing conversation with its readers, and comments provide a way for anyone to participate.

How can publications provide that opportunity without spending the massive resources needed to police the trolls and spambots who threaten to destroy any meaningful dialog?

Last month, we looked at how the San Francisco Bay Guardian attempted to quell the anonymous inflammatory comment storm by shutting down the feature for an entire week. In lieu of online comments, Editor Steve Jones invited the unknown number of nameless trolls — and the paper’s supporters — to show up in person at a community meeting to express their criticisms and suggested that people consider sending in a signed letter to the editor. Not surprisingly, the trolls stayed home and silently endured the weeklong vacation, and they have since returned.

Screen_Shot_2013-09-27_at_3.10.01_PMIn response, commenter(s) are leaving “troll barriers” to point out comments deemed unacceptable. Unfortunately, since there isn’t an objective standard for what constitutes a troll, the short-sighted solution can resemble the behavior that it professes to resolve.

When an anonymous individual left a comment on an article about gentrification that expressed support for San Francisco’s changing demographics, it spawned a “troll barrier.” In response, someone using the handle “Chris” pointed out that merely expressing a disagreeable opinion does not constitute trolling.

“This is a discussion forum that the SFBG has chosen to open up to the general public, and posters will express a wide-range of views, some of which I will agree with and some of which I will not,” said Chris in his post. “I absolutely appreciate the idea that racial epithets, LGBT slurs, and other such comments have no place in a civilized public discussion, but comments that one simply disagrees with are simply part of having an open discussion about issues.”

Popular Science shut down its comments after concluding that they may be bad for science. While the suggestion may at first seem far-fetched, Online Content Director Suzanne LeBarre cited research that a field of hostile comments at the bottom of an article can polarize how readers feel about the subject matter of that article. Even “firmly worded (but not uncivil)” disagreements played out in comment threads can impact perception, said LeBarre.

“Because comments sections tend to be a grotesque reflection of the media culture surrounding them, the cynical work of undermining bedrock scientific doctrine is now being done beneath our own stories, within a website devoted to championing science,” said  LeBarre in a statement announcing the decision. “Commenters shape public opinion; public opinion shapes public policy; public policy shapes how and whether and what research gets funded–you start to see why we feel compelled to hit the “off” switch.”

At the Annette Strauss Institute for Civic Life at the University of Texas at Austin, Natalie Jomini Stroud is researching “techniques for engaging online audiences in commercially-viable and democratically-beneficial ways” as part of the Engaging News Project. The project published a report in June that looked at possible ways to mitigate comment incivility. The study looked at how a concluding question will impact the comments generated and also explored what happens when the reporter participates in the comments.

The experiment showed that although concluding with a question for reader may increase the amount of time spent on the page (the results were not statistically significant), it did not generate more comments. But, the research did show that “closed-ended questions, in particular, seem helpful for inspiring civil interactions.”

Some news outlets are attempting to improve civility by requiring people to register and use their own names, said the report. In evaluating the effects of journalist participation in comments, the researchers pulled the data from the Facebook page of a local television station. I imagine that one could expect similar results using Facebook’s Comments Box, which allows anyone to embed Facebook comments (which require an active Facebook account) on their own site.

“The chances of an uncivil comment declined by 15 percent when a reporter interacted in the comment section compared to when no one did so,” said the report. “When the station interacted, it had no effect on the incivility of comments. … It is possible that seeing a recognizable reporter from the news broadcast — as opposed to a generic station logo accompanying each comment — sparked additional civility.”

It looks like Google may soon offer its own way for sites to replace their existing comment systems to one with greater accountability.  The company is already changing the way YouTube handles comments, and If YouTube’s new approach to comments proves successful it may soon spread across the Web. With the new system, comments will no longer be shown in chronological order. Instead, they will feature better moderation capabilities to help people maintain civility on the comments for their submissions. Using Google+, comments from any friends or acquaintances will get top billing and be posted to the user’s Google+ page as well. Google+ comments are already available for people using Blogger, and there are even 3rd-party hacks to extend that functionality to other sites.

Of course this solution would require that visitors have an account with Google+, a similar problem to using Facebook comments, and there is no way to have any sort of verified account that doesn’t have the same hurdle.

One possible substitute — which I’ve never heard discussed in relationship to replacing comments — is a live video chat. Would strangers in an online room engage in civilized conversation if they can look each other in the eye?

If requiring real names can improve a forum’s civility, I’m sure seeing their real face would do even more to create an environment where meaningful conversation can flourish.

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Journalism for Navigating Uncertainty: The Engagement Principle

Engagement increases respect, appreciation, and partnership between journalists and communities.

NewsEco-Journalism-as_croppedIn 1775, the American Revolution launched an experiment in engagement called “democracy”. That sparked a critical need for an informed public and ignited a mass literacy movement.

Today’s technological wonders are generating a “media literacy” movement that is fueling a new level of engagement. Journalism is no longer a one-way communication from journalist to audience. It is a conversation. News and information is created, published, curated, used, archived, influenced and more by anyone.  And many use social media to communicate and make meaning from news and information with friends, family, interest groups, and strangers.

As the founders knew when they shaped the First Amendment to guarantee free speech and a free press, engagement is essential to democracy and to vibrant community life. As Reynolds Journalism Institute Fellow, Mike Fancher, puts it, public trust grows through public engagement.

The Lawrence Journal World’s WellCommons.com, is a great example. Its chief architect, Jane Ellen Stevens invited the public to help define it.  According to Stevens, they set a goal to be the go-to place for news and information on health and wellbeing in the region. Half of the content comes from community members and half from professional reporters. The site has changed the community’s conversation about health and caused a more solutions-focused style of reporting.

Like many other professions, journalists are renegotiating their roles and responsibilities as professionals. Among the new roles: community hosts, data wranglers, and beat bloggers. Consider some shifts in who provides content:

NewsEco-Journalist-as_croppedPersonal storytelling. Schools, libraries, and even journalism organizations are teaching skills to the public to help them discern quality, reliable content and to support people in creating their own stories. For example, through the “Living Textbook”, Arab American seventh graders learn journalism skills and tell stories about identity and how they see the world.

Community and organizational storytelling. With fewer professional journalists, communities and organizations are taking charge of their stories.  For example, the Colorado Health Foundation created the Colorado KaleidosCOpe, a “statewide storytelling campaign designed to shine a bright light on the good work of our grantee partners and the people whose lives they impact.”

Professional journalistic storytelling. Professionals still contextualize, deepen and amplify stories.  They can tell complex stories that take dedicated research and do the analysis and communication to help tackle tough subjects. They can help us make sense of the overwhelming amounts of information by showing us patterns and trends that shape society.

Because of these shifting roles and cultural changes, both journalists and the public they serve are asking a key question:

What is newsworthy? 

No longer solely controlled by journalists, how shall we –journalists and the public – discern what stories are critical for our communities and democracy? Journalists want to be relevant and trusted. The public wants important and trustworthy information. Imagine a full partnership: journalism of, by and for the people. That requires engagement.  The principles that follow speak to how to make that happen, where you are in the system.

Tips for Engaging

Whether online or in face-to-face conversations, some strategies to remember:

  • Invite the people who care about the issue, then welcome who and what shows up.
  • Ask real questions — meaningful ones for which you don’t know the answers and are genuinely curious.
  • Make it simple and easy to get involved. Consider accessibility. In person, handle parking and daycare.  Online, be crisp, brief, and able to participate with one click.
  • Make it fun. We’re more creative and collaborative when having a good time.  In person, have food.
  • Make space for individual expression and connection with others. We all crave to be authentic and to belong.  Support both.
  • Work in cycles. Offer context and a question. Invite a response.  Feedback or reflect together on what you learn, likely triggering another cycle.
  • Treat disruptors with compassion and respect while being firm and clear about appropriate behavior.  They likely have something important to contribute but lack the skills to communicate it.  Welcome the message while handling bad behavior.

Just as engagement is key for successful system change, diversity fuels innovation and a sense that we’re all in it together.  Stay tuned for more in the next post.

In the spirit of sparking engagement: enter a word or phrase on how you decide what is newsworthy in the comments below.

Got something to contribute?

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Unless you explicitly request otherwise, I will post comments sent via any of the above in the comment space below.

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