The futures — plural — of journalism
Like a stylized Kabuki play, this past weekend’s “We Make the Media” conference on the future of journalism in Oregon unfolded with stern audience rules, well-known actors reciting their lines and a conclusion largely predetermined by the event’s structure. organizers.
Not that it wasn’t a commendable, honest effort by people who care about preserving strong, watchdog news media. It was all that.
But the all-day gathering of 130 people in Portland was most remarkable not for the results it produced, but for the vast cultural gulf that opened between the establishmentarians who organized the confab and the Twitter-savvy bloggers, students, reporters and new-media mavens who found the organizers hopelessly stuck in the previous century.
And in that cultural gulf, I suggest, are the futures — plural — of journalism.
What both sides agree on is that traditional news media are caught in a downdraft that threatens their existence. But the proposed remedies are utterly different. The establishmentarians, I would argue, want to save the best of the status quo: investigative and beat reporting, as well as the voices of credibility and authority, that have defined the community’s public issues. The media pioneers see the impending collapse of traditional journalism as an opportunity to replace it with journalism models that are new, experimental or have even yet to be imagined.
Both sides mistake the fact that they need to find viable revenue models as common ground for their quests. But in fact, with some exceptions, they have starkly different goals. That’s why the conference produced so much frustration.
Here’s what I witnessed Saturday that led me to my conclusions. The conference began with an admonition from the moderator to turn off all cell phones — the very tool that journalists of the near future will likely use more than any other. It ended with a plenary session in which the remaining 60 to 80 conferees voted on proposals and created workgroups — the very kind of structure that the Internet excels at undermining.
But a fascinating thing happened despite the stopwatch precision of the event. As the conference opened at 8:47 a.m. (as scheduled) and the keynote speaker, longtime newspaper editor Steven A. Smith, began his speech one minute ahead of schedule, at 9:01 a.m., a separatist group of participants started a parallel conference on Twitter. With limited access to the microphone and the agenda, they launched a back-channel conversation that, two days later, continues with more than 130 participants and 1,300 tweets.
At the end of the day, moderator Joe Smith, a Portland lawyer with a long, distinguished history of civic service, thanked participants for their civil discussion of the issues. But, in fact, it hadn’t been civil at all. The tweets were a boisterous marketplace of ideas — by turns funny, profane, thoughtful, rude, brilliant and befuddled. Many wished the tweets had been projected on the big screen at the front of the room, so everyone could see the raging debate.
The Twitterati demonstrated new media in action: a non-linear, many-to-many, simultaneous conversation in which anyone can speak, anyone can listen and any idea can be heard.
“We Make the Media,” in contrast, assumed that innovation is a linear process — one that can be placed on an agenda, debated, legislated and passed by popular vote, according to Robert’s Rules of Order. Ironically, the conference also relied on an old-school communications style — one anointed voice speaking to many captive listeners — which is one reason mainstream newspapers are in decline.
Many — maybe most — in the room wouldn’t have approved of the snarky tweetstream, which was closer to “Mystery Science Theater 3000″ than to The New York Times. At least one person, a break-out group facilitator, defiantly declared that no one could follow him on Twitter.
But that bit of denial misses the point. Like it or not, the media revolution is here to stay, and each player — old and new — is responsible for finding ways to either preserve the best of the old or to explore the best of the new. I’m reminded of the fall of the Berlin Wall and the stunned faces of those who had spent a lifetime guarding it and those who suddenly had won their freedom. I don’t mean to imply that old newspaper veterans — I’m one of them — are equivalent to East German border guards. My point is that the moment the seemingly indestructible wall fell, neither side knew quite what to do next. So they set to work figuring it out.
That’s why I particularly like The Columbian reporter Libby Tucker’s one breakout group’s idea of a journalism incubator, which is one of several ideas to emerge from the day. No one knows what will work, but an incubator at least starts generating possible futures. In the post-monolithic world of journalism, in which there are many species of journalists, audiences and technologies, those futures might even include some hope for the status quo.
I want to quote your post in my blog. It can?
And you et an account on Twitter?
A great reporting job of the cognitive dissonance of a meeting planned with the best intentions.
Great summary Steve. Getting the idea out there is really just a first step toward accomplishing the group’s goal of creating a network for independent journalists. I’m excited about the conversation that’s now happening in our Google Group http://groups.google.com/group/wemakethemedia/topics. We’re starting to sketch out the next steps for the incubator with the idea that it could someday expand into a more formal venture!
Libby
I really like this, Steve.
One quick thought that I won’t have time to phrase more elegantly until at least Thursday: we should all be cautious of the stiffening narrative that the Young Twittering Turks have some monolithic point of view as a group.
If you read the stream closely (instead of recoiling from it in general, as several people seem to), you’ll see that even our super-smart, chatty naysayer Matt Davis was transcribing on his Twitter stream the ideas he liked and found interesting. But he also delighted in stirring up trouble by echoing other people’s frustrated outbursts. So people came away with the conclusion that the young folks were angrier and less solution-oriented than we (I’ll group myself with the young folks) actually were.
Personally, I found the whole concept of solving an entrepreneurial problem with a big-D-Democratic process infuriating. (Fascinating, but infuriating.) I think Buel and the other organizers should consider the fact that their method for building a durable institution — a great big meatspace meeting — is no longer the only way to get the job done.
In general: Young people should see more than gray hair on the old people. Old people should see more than laptops on the young people.
And I think we’re almost all trying.
T.A.: I agree that Ron, Joe and all the organizers deserve much credit for putting in a lot of selfless time and energy for an issue they consider vital to the public discourse. Believe me, I also hope they find some concrete solutions. After all, Nozzl Media’s whole reason for being is to build new revenue streams for newspapers.
Michelle: Thanks for the clarification about the incubator idea. I also love the small-group idea. I’ve been thinking in recent years about the possibility of a freelance copy-desk firm that contracts with newspapers. The idea could be expanded to other journalistic specialties and structured like a physician or law firm, which could contract with multiple publications that can’t afford full staffs. Sorry if I’m repeating stuff you’ve already talked about. I’ll read the #wmtmsmall tweets to see your group’s discussion.
part of what Joe Smith & the rest were trying to do was come out of the day with tangible action items, not a list of good intentions. knowing Joe, he has no problem with the results going off in directions the planners did not foresee. he’s doing the best he can, as we all are. at least he, Ron Buel and the others made the effort to make this event happen. given who they are, they were able to bring together a unique collection of persons, and they did it in a way that allowed those of us who want to, to create our own set of plans, ideas, experiments moving forward.
btw, love the MST3K analogy. it was fun. but the event was not a bad movie anthology, just one of a particular perspective & scope. and it did initiate some good things.
Thoughtful analysis Steve. I’d agree that there will be no single right path in the future, just as vastly different models, of journalism and how it’s funded, have existed in the past.
I’d like to point out, however, that the idea of an incubator bubbled up during one of the breakout sessions (the one devoted to exploring how a bunch of solo journalists or other small groups could work separately but also together) and wasn’t really just Libby’s idea, though she definitely contributed to the concept and did a good job articulating what our group discussed.
Michelle Rafter