Nearly nine years ago, I came to Poynter to talk about
how the Web was changing journalism
–- and how it wasn't. I said that this era's new technologies and news
sources posed challenges, but maintained that we could meet them with
basic journalism tenets, from writing great stuff to using our offline
instincts in assessing information found online.
Poynter asked
me to revisit what I said then. What did I get right? What did I miss?
And do I still think journalistic values are the best defense?
A
lot of my advice strikes me as more or less today's common sense. I'd
like to say that's because I was a far-sighted sage, but I think it's
just that the world has changed, with 2000's online marvels now the
stuff of daily life.
I said then that journalists could learn
from online communities, but they had to take time to understand them
and verify whatever didn't pass their smell test. That's hardly
earthshaking advice now, because online communities are no longer
exotic -- many journalists spend time in them as part of their daily
lives, and they've learned that their "feel" for what's true and what
isn't works pretty well online, too. (See this post from BeatBlogging for a great example of unlocking the power of online communities.)
I
said then that journalists had to beware of sacrificing accuracy and
context for speed, and avoid the temptation to erase mistakes by
republishing. Still an issue, but by now a familiar one -- witness The New York Times's recent examination
of how it covered the circumstances of Caroline Kennedy ending her
Senate bid. (For me, the most interesting question there wasn't about
the Times, but the Paterson
administration: Did it exploit the Web news cycle by launching an
attack designed to get early play and then be erased by a more-nuanced
take? I couldn't help thinking of the Roald Dahl story in which the
police search a house in vain for the blunt instrument used by the
killer -- and then are served a leg of lamb fresh from the oven.)
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Lanette Miller/Poynter
Jason
Fry was at Poynter in August 2000 for a "Newspaper Writing &
Editing" seminar. At the time, he told seminar participants that their
best defense against the noise and challenges of the Internet is to
rely on journalistic values. |
But while the journalism
principles may be the same, the rules of engagement are changing.
Thinking about what I missed, two things jump out at me.
I
didn't see that stories would no longer be discrete things -– packages
of text, headline and art prepared for print and adapted for online.
They now increasingly flow from one form to another, and this is a
question not only of timing but also of format. Yes, stories go from
short Web takes to fuller accounts, which may be frozen in print at
some point. But they're also beginning to flow from words to video to
beat blog to related links to topic page to discussion to reuse by
readers, with the reporter shepherding the story through the process,
if he or she isn't tripped up by technological barriers along the way.
I also didn't see what a two-way street the Web would become. And this may be the biggest change of all.
Back
in 2000, most news -– however you defined it –- was still handed down
from the few to the many. That's changing as blogging, social
networking and Web-enabled devices move from the techie fringes into
more and more American lives. Facebook didn't exist in 2000; its
founder was 16. Nor did I mention blogs, which since then have gone
from the stuff of starry-eyed revolution to supposed scourge of
journalism to simply one of many ways we get information.
All
these things have made the publishing world far more muddled but also
far more interesting. If journalism was once a mountain from which we
delivered our pronouncements, now readers have set up shop on the
slopes. Sure, they're now publishers in their own right if they want to
be, which has provoked much hue and cry in newsrooms. But I suspect
that ultimately, the fact that a few readers now create their own
content isn't nearly as important as the fact that many readers now
comment on, share and re-use content. By using content as raw material
and by voting with their feet for new forms of journalism, readers are
doing as much or more than publishers to determine what journalism will
become.
And journalists are learning that they have to come down
from the mountaintop to meet those readers. I still insist, as I did in
2000, that the best way to grab the reader is to write great stuff –- this Michael Lewis story
kills in print, over nine Web pages, or engraved on stone tablets. But
Web readers gravitate to writers who engage them personally. In a sea
of information noise, personality is a welcome bit of signal.
More-personal writing won't work for everything -– the account of the
City Council meeting probably shouldn't be a personal narrative –- but
beat blogs, video, chats and discussion forums all offer opportunities
for making a more personal connection that journalists can build on.
Such
big cultural changes are challenging for many journalists, and our
industry is experimenting with what works and what doesn't. But these
changes won't be the death of journalism. There's nothing about life on
Facebook or a sideline blogging that will trip up a journalist with a
working ethical compass. Nor will they be journalism's salvation.
Salvation is a rather abstract concept for an industry going through
today's brutal resizing. They'll just be different.
So, an
update for my 31-year-old self: Yes, I still think great reporting and
writing is central to what journalists do. I still think a few
newspapers -- in whatever form –- offer a wider perspective valuable in
a world of many niche publications. And I think basic journalism values
are effective tools for tackling digital-era challenges. And thank
goodness for all that. But we have to add to those values and skills by
learning to help a story unfold in new forms and by engaging readers in
new ways. Our readers are demanding no less, and they will determine
our industry's destiny.
Oh, and learn to stand up straight, kid. That picture still makes me cringe.
Jason Fry is the Web CMS evangelist for EidosMedia,
a supplier of cross-media editorial platforms for news organizations.
He spent nearly 13 years at The Wall Street Journal Online and has also
worked for the New Orleans Times-Picayune and the Fresno Bee. He co-writes Faith and Fear in Flushing, a blog about the Mets. Visit his personal site, or contact him via Facebook or Twitter.
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