The Changing Conversation

NEW SCHOOL

The world was revolutionized several times over in the past few years when world events broke not through reporters, but through tweets. The Iranian Green Revolution, the Egyptian Uprising, the Libyan Rebellions, and the London Riots are all examples of the people taking phones in hand and showing the world what the reporters wouldn’t, or couldn’t, show. The result was extraordinary and so fast that some people were catching up weeks later.

In order to be in the journalism business these days, you have to be as fast as Michael Phelps is in water. But what underfunded and understaffed news organization can afford to keep reporters everywhere while keeping content honest, credible, and meaningful?

DigitalJournal can. DJ is a new form of media slowly taking prominence in the information-delivery industry because it is citizen-based. You are the journalist, you are the writer.

What began as a little idea in 2006 is now a world phenomenon. Journalists, or enthusiasts, write what they’re passionate about. If there is a writer in Egypt witnessing the revolution, that goes on DJ; if there is a rabid NASA fan, that goes on DJ; if someone is a die-hard Maro the Cat fan, that goes on DJ – after certain editorial fact-checking procedures, of course.

Citizen journalism is about user-generated news and participatory media. It is also faster than traditional media, which has been struggling to keep up with projects such as DJ and OpenFile. Any user can go through the process of becoming a Digital Journalist, but not every Digital Journalist will be well-received or well-paid.

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“That’s an important thing for journalists to understand: they’re no longer in the hallowed halls position of power and exclusive knowledge”

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“We give a lot of power to our users, and we can only suggest assignments in our assignments tool. We can stress to certain writers that they should try Op-Eds because they have a good opinion on things, but we can’t really say, ‘You have to do this,’ or ‘You have to do that’. Part of DJ is that we’re democratizing news: we’re letting people decide what they want to read and what they want to write,” admits Silverberg, with an earnestness that solidifies his obvious belief in the idea.

Social media is a big part of their marketing strategy and overall process. In fact, DJ would not be possible without the community it has built up on the web through social media and social networking. “A lot of newspapers are moving online after failing to define a community in print,” says Silverberg, adding that their community comes from having a “clutch social media strategy”. This includes: posting at the best time for feedback on Facebook and Twitter (4 p.m. on weekdays, 11-1p.m. on weekends), posting questions instead of statements, and asking for responses to surprising or eye-catching stories.

Ultimately though, the issue is not when you post, but what. Silverberg says, “the thing about journalism is that readers always know more than you as a reporter.” That is what makes citizen journalism so appealing, and user-oriented news so engaging. The conversation around a news article, thanks to social media, jumps from paper-based to user-focused. “I think that’s an important thing for journalists to understand: they’re no longer in the hallowed halls position of power and exclusive knowledge,” admonishes Silverberg.

The new process of writing, Braganza notes, “doesn’t necessarily end the day the story is published. It remains a living thing.” OpenFile is another new company leading the charge in user-driven content. “We ask readers to open a file with us or to suggest a story to us – things that matter to them locally, stories that they think larger news organizations aren’t necessarily paying attention to,” says Braganza.

This file is, like the name, “open” for as long as readers are interested and contributing: they can add photos, pose questions, and leave comments for the author, the editors, or others to reply to. The story really becomes a living thing – reactive, questioning, growing.

With social media in the mix, it also becomes a tool for social change. In 2008, the Ontario government repealed their proposed restrictions on teenage drivers due to a Facebook campaign, and it’s not the first time that Facebook campaigns have affected reality. Hell, Harper even went on Facebook to name his cat.

THE DOWNFALL

With so much information being produced daily, the input quickly becomes overwhelming. The challenge becomes news curation: how to separate the insight from the rest of the drivel being exposed on the internet like an unwanted flasher. Not only are we overwhelmed by the news, but we are underwhelmed by the quality of it, and frustrated at its accuracy (think celebrity gossip, or twitter-mergencies).

“When we heard about the Arab uprising in Egypt, there was a lot of news coming out of Twitter really fast, and people writing furiously about what they were seeing on the ground, but no way to verify whether what that person said was true or not,” notes Silverberg. This means that reading, not only participating,“has to be a really active process for the reader.”

While there is no excuse for shoddy reporting, when citizen journalists are involved, the question very quickly turns into, “Who do I trust to tell me the truth?” This forces people to put in their own filters, and obtain a little skepticism where it matters. Some news outlets, like OpenFile, have hired News Curators to ease the mental burden on their readers.

These are people who hold a myriad of responsibilities that differ from those of the journalist: “Are they going to find out and tease out the things that are truthful, add some context to it, give it some perspective, point out things that are ludicrous?” asks CEO of OpenFile Wilf Dinnick. That is what he’s hoping his new hires will do, even though his company deals mainly with recognized reporters who know how to craft the right type of story.

“People are hungry for the human curation as opposed to machine curation to filter out what’s important to them, what’s repetitive, and what’s irrelevant,” adds Silverberg.

IF THE MEDIUM IS THE MESSAGE

What does social media say about the message news organizations send out?

Dinnick thinks that, “the crux of the entire premise is that news is no longer a product. It’s not the 6 o’clock news, or a morning newspaper: it’s a service.” If news is a service, then, how do the responsibilities of our new servicers change?

“It says that the power of news is being wrested out of the control of corporations, and given to people who are experiencing the news themselves, and want their voices to be heard in am meaningful way,” says Silverberg, “So much so that corporations will flounder and die if they ignore these changing rules, and flourish if they bring those kind of people into the news conversation.”

ARB Team
Arbitrage Magazine
Business News with BITE.

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