New Money, New Media, New Hope?

More from the NewsTools2008 session in Sunnyvale, CA. where journalists from the Bay Area and beyond are mulling this question: What kind of journalism does our democracy demand?

The journalism business model has not been reader-focused, instead it’s been one where journalism organization sells the loyalty of its local readers to businesses who want to sell goods, services, or even points of view to them.

So, if journalism is important to democratic institutions, then why not have the public fund the collection and analysis of information? Is there a model, used by National Public Radio and Public Broadcasting.

David Talbot started Salon in 1995, hooking up with progressive Silicon Valley investors to produce forward-thinking journalism. He’s now at the San Francisco Free Press, a nonprofit online journalism model. He feels that “wiki” journalism isn’t viable because you do need to pay people a living wage at some point.

And of course, talking about living wages, leads us to think of how journalists are categorized as professionals. Should journalists be credentialed in order to receive public funds?

There’s a lot of conversation about giving citizens want they SAY they want and what they REALLY BUY. It’s the journalism conundrum. When they answer a survey, or talk to a journalists, are they saying what they SHOULD say, rather than what they want. If you follow the money, then the top selling newspaper is USAToday, and top circulation magazines include Better Homes & Gardens and National Geographic.

Can journalists really become entrepreneurial without looking like sell-outs? It’s poison for journalists who uphold independence, fairness and objectivity, to then have to jump over the money wall to get paid for what they do. We don’t want to pander to writing for hire, yet smaller organizations must do that to stay alive and to fund the journalism that has no “advertising niche.”

And how about grants, specifically foundations that want journalists to do certain types of coverage, include seemingly general topics like poverty or education? Ten years ago, some in mainstream media didn’t want to accept funds from the Pew Center to fund civic journalism. Now there’s a lot of conversation about mainstream media accepting funds. Now, it’s true that radio and TV have long been audience-funded media. So, are there new rules about who we, as journalism organizations, accept money from now? Or is this just another ethical slippery slope? First, we accept one grant, then it’s easier to accept a more restricted grant.

In my class at the University of Missouri, we talk a lot about public funding, even tax support for media. How can we get government funding without the taint or reality of government control? Are there models for this? How can the models evolve?

Teaching Students the Journalism Biz

How to help students create the journalism of the future.

Dinosaurs are teaching the next generation of journalists. How do we adapt what we know to help facilitate the next generation of journalism, and best train the next generation of journalists. We need to understand that stories are being told in a different way now ---abandon the linear storytelling form in favor of a non-linear approach, which means each element must tell a mini-story. Learn to use the tools yourself to increase your credibility with students, and to better help them achieve a better outcome.

What are the skills/values that should be passed on:

• Encourage curiosity
• Encourage skepticism
• Push them to put down their computers and cell phones to get up close and personal with sources
• Develop critical thinking skills – by teaching them to deconstruct and debate
• Teach them about truth, accuracy and fairness.
• Emphasize the importance of diversity of viewpoint in their stories
• Tell them to make up nothing
• Embrace multi-tasking and use their computer skills to teach computer assisted reporting
• And discuss how to use these tools to tell stories
• Talk about the impact of journalism and help them see the impact of their stories to develop passion.
• Talk about the role of journalism in a democratic society and explain how they will fulfill this role, and the watchdog role, in the future --- alongside citizen journalists and bloggers.

Particpants:

Mike Williams
Nancy Benson
Vikki Porter
Ed Cray
Michelle Fizhugh-Craig
Larry Pryor
Mary Fallon
Marty Steffens

What is ……
breakthrough journalism?

Linda Fantin Brant Houston Sharon Waxman Chris Barr Teresa Puente Vera Chan Dennis Burgierman Stephen Silha Olga Loma Marty Steffens

Exploring Public Insight Reporting, which brings citizens into the newsgathering process tapping their expertise, comments and insights to find better stories. How do you harness the intelligence of your audience to do better journalism?

How do we define breakthrough journalism? How do we use technology to enrich and enhance journalism?

Some thoughts:

• It’s creating new knowledge. The context helps us shape our understanding and THAT’s how it turns into knowledge. Why is it meaningful?

• How is connecting the dots (or an Aha! Moments) – the New York Times story on Pentagon Pundits is an good example of an Aha! Moments, in legacy media.
• Lesson moment: Giving us the back story…

• Unique methods of reaching the audience.

• Jules Verne more than a century ago felt there was a way for citizens to ask questions directly of newsmakers, taking off the journalist filter. One might ask, doesn’t the internet do this now? In a way, yes, and we’re seeing legacy media do this, with response to stories. Do these responses to stories lead us to a new paradigm for a stronger conversation?

• On these responses, we want to ask bloggers and responders: How do you know that? What is your credibility?

Questions to ponder:
Has journalism really changed? Or has just the packaging changed? What are we breaking through?
Is conversation really journalism?
Is crowd-sourcing and other methods being pushed by declining newsrooms?
How do we get democracy to serve journalism? How do we make citizens part of the news process where we just aren’t asking for opinions?

How do we preserve the sense-making role of journalism? How do we have a constantly updated nutgraf?

How do we ensure great stories get wide distribution? A new way to disseminate information to allow for impact and prioritization of news would be breakthrough journalism.

If the Center for Public Integrity produces great journalism, but no one hears it, is it great journalism? There is INTEREST vs. RELEVANCE, and CURIOSITY vs ESSENTIALITY

We used to call things that were relevant, NEWS YOU CAN USE.

How can you take the “Britney Spears” user – and use that audience to do more useful journalism? That would be breakthrough.

There are part of communities that no journalism serves – those communities aren’t served because of lack of advertising support. There was no connection of relevance.
If we build bridge, we can reach these island communities.

In the age of the Internet, there’s no excuse for fragmentation.

We need to create a business model for community based news organizations. Create a space where citizens can create their own news. There are not enough reporters to follow every tip. (One example of who’s doing this is Northwest Voice (the Bakersfield Californian at Bakersfield.com)

The New York Times is perceived as monolithic, it represents the elite and liberal. WE DECIDE, we might ask you, but we decide. This type of arrogance leads us down paths where some stories unfairly dominate, such as Jeremiah Wright, Monica Lewinsky, etc.

We can put information out there, but is it our job to make people act on it? We’re trying to move from a priesthood to a partnership. WE TRY TO CONNECT THE DOTS, SEE THE TRENDS.
How do we go from being priesthood model. How do we have a checklist? Make a built-in accountability for citizens to act on things of public interest? Can you create a tool for that?

Meaningful tools: Hand people voice recorders/video recorders. Match journalists with citizens. Are there media who give citizens a partial byline?

The good thing about sources is that you know their biases and background. Journalists do have value as experts in spotting expertise and bias. Columbia College (Chicago) students are partnering with community members to find stories. FINDING real stories has been lost.

Talking heads doesn’t give you meaningful journalism. That’s a great idea, but what do you mean by that? Would that be creating an unmanageable time suck for journalists? How can we make sure comments from knowledgeable people?

Struggling with niche vs. mass audience? Are things relevant on a personal level? Meida is still sitting the agenda by ASKING the questions? What isn’t breakthrough journalism is REACTIONARY journalism. In the blogosphere, you’re just reacting. It’s NOT helping me have a more meaningful lives?


Chicken and egg: Did we lose audiences because we lost relevance? Or did the lost audiences cut our staffs and we became less relevant? Or did the audience just go elsewhere, like to our website?

How can we find stories instead of sources?

By finding the Be-spot: The intersection of Knowledge, Relevance and Audience

This morning I stepped onto the podium to help ring the Opening Bell for the New York Stock Exchange. I'm here with 38 other educators learning how the market is changing, and moving more into an automated exchange.

About 9:15 we were summoned to go down to the bell podium overlooking the main floor of the exchange. John Thain, CEO of the exchange, accompanied our group. We looked out over the floor with our eyes on the digitial clock right in front of use. Traders gathered to watch, as our group representative, Chris, a teacher from Brighton, Mich. pressed the green bell button precisely at 9:29:50. A focus of concentration, he pressed the button for 10 seconds, and when the bell stopped it's clang, trading began.

The sound is deafening, let me tell you. And we all hoped for an up market, though the futures market, which had opened earlier, was down. Not a good bellwether.

See us: http://www.nyse.com/events/1187606558606.html

At the end of "our" day, the NYSE did close down (the NASDAQ closed up) but more than 3 billion shares were traded, contintuing to buck the usual trend of slow trading days in August.

Check back for more information, live from the NYSE.

--Marty Steffens

Transparency is the new trend

The website, trendwatchng.com, today talks about the newest trend, which is that today’s consumers demand as much transparency as possible. In the news business, how can we make our news more transparent?
Should we have an editor’s note or behind the scenes note with every story, much as magazines do? Should we do video cam broadcasts of story meetings? Should we list a “bibliography” of resources that we use for every story? I know we usually cite the sources of direct quotes, but should we run the sources for all information used in the story. We are transparent when we run reader comments, but should we not allow screen names, and only real names on reader comments?
Should we also do more bio information on our story tags. Such as Jane Roe covers real estate for the Daily News, and has written 281 stories on new home sales in her five years on the beat?
Food for thought. I’d love to hear your comments about increasing transparency in reporting and business reporting.

--Marty Steffens

Thoughts on David Halberstam

We mourn today the passing of David Halberstam, a writer who elevated meticulous reporting to inspirational heights.

I had the chance to meet David on Saturday, in Berkeley, where he was the keynote speaker at a conference I was attending on “Where History and Journalism Meet.” Earlier that day, I also had a chance to brush past Kevin Jones, the graduate student who was driving David to Menlo Park on Monday when another car broadsided his, instantly killing David.

At his lecture Saturday night, Halberstam shared with us that he’d just finished marking up the final galleys on his latest book, The Coldest Winter, his long-awaited book on the Korean War. The book was long in gestation. In fact, his newest publisher, Scribner, had first announced a 2002 publication date. Halberstam felt this latest book was his best — better than the 21 he’d written before — and better than his highly acclaimed first book, The Best and The Brightest.

He talked at length about how the two books were connected, and interlacing two of his graceful long fingers to demonstrate, he commented that The Longest Winter’s last chapter neatly dovetails with the first of The Best and The Brightest.

The nearly full house at Arthur Andersen Auditorium heard Halberstam offer advice to young journalist, which I quickly scribbled down to use in my “closing ceremony” speech on the last day of class for my capstone seniors.

He said his secret of success was to always work on your weaknesses. A stronger writer, he said he lacked the reporting skills of others (like Bill Kovach and John Siegenthaler) that he saw around him at the Nashville Tennessean. So he worked to overcome his shyness in making cold calls, learning the “legwork” of journalism. Most basketball players, he said, work on the best parts of their game during the off season. But he said that Michael Jordan, the subject of Halberstam’s 2000 book, Playing for Keeps, spent his summers working on weak points, which made Jordan transcend the game.

He also told students to write with authority, and to focus on the “why” as well as why things “do not happen.” He said the most important interview question was the last: “Who else should I see?”

In his years as a journalist, he feels newspapers have become daily magazines, with an ever-increasing need for analysis. He lauded the “pro-bono” spirit of today’s bright young journalists, who forgo higher paying careers to serve their faith in democracy. But he felt the monetary sacrifice was worth it, as journalists are given the spiritual gift to go to work to “learn every day, questioning every thing.”

But he was also saddened by the power that journalism has lost. Halberstam felt media today is weaker than when he was a NYTimes reporter more than 30 years ago. Mostly, he said, because of the loss of readership in the age of new media disruption. But also, after 9/11, media has lost its punch in a struggle not to appear patriotic. The fall of grace by once-esteemed reporter Judith Miller is “the worst wound in the life of the New York Times,” a wound far worse than the Jayson Blair scandal, he says.

As I left the lecture Saturday night, he put out his hand and introduced himself. I told him I taught at Missouri, and he responded, “Fine school.” I shared a quick story about a couple of our mutual acquaintances, and told him I’d use his words for my students.

And so I will share those word with my class, a last legacy of a great man who died too soon. Was he among the last of The Greatest Generation of Journalists? I hope not.


Marty Steffens

Writing on the birth of Venture Capital

Berkeley, April 21—I’m here today on the campus of the University of California to attend a workshop on how journalists can write history.

One speaker is Spencer Ante of BusinessWeek, who’s writing a biography of Georges Doriot and the birth of the venture capital industry. Doriot is considered to be the father of the U.S. entrepreneurial economy, working mostly in the pivotal post-war era.

Born in France, Doriot came to the U.S. to get an MBA and extended his stay, working for an investment bank and teaching at Harvard Business School. A popular course was one on starting a business.
Over a 40-year teaching career, he would influence thousands of top students, including the founder of FedEx, Fred Smith.
His book will be published later this year by the Harvard Business School Press.

His tips for retelling major business events? Find photos, find correspondence, and don’t overlook libraries like presidential libraries and the Library of Congress that store original documents.
Also, go for tours of the homes in where they lived.

“Go to the places – absorb the light and ambience,” he says. He also got great help and wonderful stories from Doriot family.

What else did he find? That Doriot was an inventor himself, conducing experiments at home as a young student. He appreciated the imagination of others, and sought to fund them.
--Marty Steffens