Jounalisted

Nieman lab discusses new site that gives readers info on journalist, so can assess cred, experience, etc. Possible end game – j builds following and revenue, hires staff, etc.?

Gatekeeping ecology

Further thoughts on the news ecology model — I just finished reading “Gatekeeping Theory” by Pam Shoemaker and Tim Vos, and they make a plea for models that push the five hierarchical levels of influence on media messages to include impact of history, or time. That’s just what I’m working on, so I was gratified to see these accomplished scholars see value in it.

If we envision a model that explains development of new news media forms, moving from variation to selection to retention, we can see that the six hierarchical levels of influence (individual media worker, work routines, organizations, social systems and culture/ideology) will be relevant to a greater or lesser degree, depending on where they fall along the evolutionary cycle (and it is a cycle, as new media entities form, persist and then become deaf to change, opening the door to new variations…).

So, early in the cycle when news media entities take more of an instrumental orientation (oriented toward marketing, strategizing within markets, monitoring and responding to reader desires and competitors’ behaviors), we’ll see that individal-level influences will be more salient and effective — managers strategizing, for example. Later on, as variants form stable populations that bond with external institutions and with audiences, through shared understandings about forms and practices, media routines become more relevant. Organizational inertia sets in as news entities develop complex but relatively stable relationships with source institutions, community leaders, advertisers, and even with loyal audiences. And social institutional influences are more important at these later stages too.

So, can we merge Shoemaker’s model with organizational ecology theory, while also making room for the possibility that orgs suffer from bounded rationality, may pursue public legitimacy more than economic worth, will buffer themselves from changing environments.

Get your news in the novel

Listened to an insightful interview on Bob Edward’s Sunday show on PRI. Richard Nash, founder of “Cursor,” talked about the future of independent book publishing in a digital age. Many memorable comments, but the one that stuck with me concerned thinking of books as interactive communities, with a lead author and a host of contributors (as well as contiguous experiences, such as book discussion communities, classes related to book content — i.e., cooking classes for cook books, etc.).

Nash emphasized the nonlinear nature of digital literature, open to wiki-like info produced by members of these book communities, or experts who find their way along networks to these communities. So, if someone reading Moby Dick came across some grafs related to rigging ships, books would be linkable to extra info online, much as (some) news articles are.

Got me thinking — why couldn’t journalists be paid by publishers or directly by adventurous novelists to dig up and prepare up-to-date info that supplemented the reading of these books, whether fiction or nonfiction? They could look up recent news on court cases for legal thrillers, political info on foreign countries for espionage stories taking place in distant places, even boil down the latest findings from physicists for science fiction writers.

Obviously there would be some cultural clashes between the fields of journalism and literary fiction, with their distinct sets of norms and values…

One more thing — I always liked Bob Edwards on NPR, but I thought he was really tone deaf in the interviews he did on his show. All his guests were fascinating, no thanks to his occasionally ham-fisted interviewing.

Blogpapers

Gawker posting: How (and why) blogs are becoming more and more like newspapers. Author says social networking is contributing to this phenomenon b/c traditional blog form of rehashed news and snark doesn’t play well as at Tweet:

“Blogs, like this one, used to get away with quickly repackaging content and adding a penis joke. But, as our proprietor Nick Denton explained in an internal email, “any treatment [of a story] can work, really, except for the old-school blog item, that rehashed news story with a dash of puerile snark. Nobody links to that.”

Some provocative comments in reply to the posting as well.

The new news media ecology

Be careful where you step — the Net is crawling with new species of news: citizen sites, hybrid msm-citizen efforts, foundation-supported news orgs, journalists’ volunteer collectives (for the out-of-work journalist), and corporate sites trying to look like news.  There’s also the  granddaddy of them all, the news blog, which come in community, corporate and news org flavors. If we’re talking organizational forms of news, we should really add the social network community. Journalists are being encouraged (required) to Tweet and Facebook short bits from their reportings and musings, and many are gaining followers — if not orgs with formal hierarchy and division of labor, then at least substantive nodes in the news network. And of course, mainstream news media also populate the system.

So, what are all the “populations” of species out there? And more interesting, how and why did they form? Are they showing staying power or are they endangered? How do they compete and collaborate within and across niches, and what kind of impact does all this development and interaction have on society, communities, readers and the powers that be (who do most of the news viewing)?

Theory from the sociology of organizations can shed some light on these questions. Here’s an outline of the theory from a paper I submitted to AEJMC for the 2010 convention:

Organizations and other social collectives exist within a changing ecosystem, as members of wider “populations.” Organizations and their populations are porous relative to their environments and it is probable, though not determinedly so, that they will change in order to better fit these environments for purposes of gaining resources and legitimacy (i.e., both economic and cultural capital). The approach includes the notion of “agency,” in that actual people (managers, owners, etc.) select changes, though with varying levels of intent and often within taken-for-granted frames and structures. Though the impetus to fit environment through selection is an underlying driver, selections benefit fit only to varying degrees. Change may be pursued via routinized, institutionalized and/or arational paths that buffer from good fit with environment, and trajectories followed in the past can constrain future decisions. The perspective assumes “punctuated” rather than continuous change, meaning a high degree of inertia often follows selection of change, as social collectives retain and reproduce changes over time, only tinkering with change via mimicry during these periods. Predicted changes within this approach include practices and forms, as well as “vital rate” variables at organizational and population levels, such as foundings and mortality, transformation and mergers.

Work by sociologists Glen Carroll and Michael Hannan deserve the lion’s share of credit for the approach, though Howard Aldrich does a nice job of laying out the theory in detail in his book Organizations Evolving. Organization ecology is a substantial subfield in the soc of orgs. It’s well-researched and generally well-supported. And I think it’s applicable to news forms.

So, I’m setting out on a large-scale research effort that involves (1) identifying and establishing boundaries and niche areas for populations of new news forms, (2) tracking foundings, transformations and “deaths” of these forms (populations) over time, (3) developing a model that explains the foundings, transformations and deaths of news forms and their populations. The impetus toward an institutional orientation (seeking wider social, political and economic legitimacy) or toward an instrumental orientation (seeking resources and turf) are key predictors in the development of populations and organizations.

I will be studying these forms on a national scale, but also conducting several case studies of ecological communities of populations. These “communities” include a geographical community and the domain of local news; an occupational community and the domain of photojournalism; and a community of interest (topic community) and the domain of health/medical news. All of these communities should be rich with intermingling news populations. How do they play together and/or compete, why, and to what effects?

One of the main contributions of this approach to our understanding of news production is that it accounts for development over time, and not merely constraints, motivations and resources across fields within the same time period (as with hierarchical models by Shoemaker and Reese, and McQuail, and Peterson’s Production of Culture perspective). Orgs pursue certain forms and practices because of path dependence, because they develop competencies over time and fall into “competency traps” that leads to the displacement of stated goals for pursuit of routines for routine sake. And orgs born during certain time periods evolve differently than those born at other times. It’s these dual dimensions of time and field interaction that lend power to this approach. More to come, as I continue getting my thoughts together on this project.

z

The iron cage of blogging?

More and more people seem to be noticing the phenomenon of blogs turning into organizations. Scott Parrott (MA student headed to UNC) and I presented a study in the fall at the AEJMC Convention that revealed evidence of blogs hiring staff, developing formal rules, chasing ad revenue — just the sort of stuff that mainstream news organizations do. While many claim we live in a networked, post-bureaucratic society, the bureaucratic form ain’t dead yet. Just think how many bureaucratic institutions affected your life today… It seems blogs are showing signs of organizational structure. It’s just nascent for some, but quite developed for others (HuffPo).

On top of the evidence for org structure, we found pretty strong correlations between the degree to which blogs acted like orgs and the degree of formality and caution in their blog postings. Blogs with org structure were more likely to offer balance in their posting, do first-hand reporting and less likely to use snarky slang and four-letter words. Grammar improves too.

A series of indepth interviews I conducted a couple of years ago suggested this study to me. The bloggers we talked with emphasized the intense pressure to update (others have noted this too), and the drive for revenue, and all indicated development of work routines. Revenue allows hiring of staff, and increased reporting and more frequent updates, which tends to bring traffic. The more eyes on the blog, the more bloggers feel the need to strive for legitimacy — that elusive fairy dust that sociologist Max Weber valued so highly. Authority needs more than just capital — an org built on capital alone will erode without legitimacy — a general shared, taken-for-granted understanding and social and cultural acceptance of the org’s forms and practices.

Sports Tweets

Nice article by SI’s Stewart Mandel on increasing importance of social media in shaping sports reporting. Mandel talks about how the Brandon Spikes eye-gouging incident came to light via Twitter…

Threat chasers

Check out “Crisis Mappers,” a loose network of individuals and companies interested in using collaborative, open source social networking to “map” crisis areas around the globe, from disease epidemics, to high crime areas, to tense cross-national border areas. I gather that “maps” are both visual and textual…what kinds of uses for journalism? Many are being tried. One is called “Watchfire” and is an alert network for neighborhood watch groups — a good idea for community journalism. And according to Robert Kirkpatrick of Crisis Mappers, they’re encouraging participation by news orgs too:

It is now recognized that in the aftermath of a natural disaster, information is as critical to the response as food, water, or shelter. The Thomson-Reuters Foundation and InSTEDD have begun collaborating on a free and open source software platform that will empower local media organizations to participate effectively in crisis communications as never before, linking journalists, responders, and ordinary citizens in a seamless flow of timely, relevant and credible information. We now have a working prototype . . .

Quality conversation

Students and profs at Northwestern have come up with a creative way to relate news and also encourage productive feedback — I think this format has potential for a community news environment.

The project, “Newsmixer,” was launched in fall 2008 but appears to have fallen into disuse. No doubt this is because the grad students driving the site have graduated. That’s the way it usually is in academia — student innovators and producers come and go, and the next batch have their own ideas. So, other people’s “babies” get kicked off the doorstep (sorry, that was harsh imagery!) Still, it’s created a stir among movers and shakers, so some of these concepts may actually survive the 3-month lifespan of most journalism innovations/trends. And besides, these ideas have real merit.

The site was a student response from a challenge by NW prof Rich Gordon:

“Nobody’s been particularly happy with the remarks appearing in comment boxes or thinks they further public discourse. By creating a site with richer opportunities for interactive comment, we hope to improve the quality of online discussion that takes place around local news content. We also hope the Facebook connection increases young adults’ engagement with local news.”

The site is an amalgamation of a number of hot social media of the moment. If they choose, readers can interact with the site via a Facebook ID that personalizes the “newsmixer” experience. They may  leave what amounts to “tweets” on stories, and can tag any story paragraph with a question to the journalist — hopefully followed by an answer, newsroom resources permitting! The site also allows “old fashioned” letters to the editor (similar to the extended comments on the end of stories). I wonder if the latter was encouraged by their seaseoned profs.

I’m glad to see that editors on this site  would still have the potential for shaping discussion. They can answer reader questions and they can “highlight” certain reader responses. My philosophy on community journalism is that it only happens when journalists listen carefully to their audiences (Newsmixer allows for at least the possibility of this), AND when journalists “lead” by attempting to tell a community what they think the community “means,” by telling it what journalists think the community holds as important, holds dear, and rejects (i.e., journalists setting an agenda). Newsmixer has the potential to do both of these.

But I’d like to see more of the “third leg” of community journalism. That’s the part where community journalism  encouarages authentic interaction, helping individuals find their way around the community (whether geographical or virtual). Perhaps newsmixer could include a geographic mapping tool with stories in which location is relevant. Perhaps newsmixer could offer links to events going on in certain areas, or contact info for relevant advocacy groups/govt services, citizen orgs, neigborhood clubs, etc.  Encourage serendipity! Newsmixer does that in an online environment by connecting people via Facebook, but they could also do this geographically. Geography and bricks and mortar organizations are still very much alive and relevant in our lives, and people in an insanely busy world that increasingly encourages naval gazing, protecing one’s own and isolation, must have encouragement to connect in a substantive way.

</blockquote

Be flexible (in a cognitive kind of way)

A couple of years ago I conducted some experiments with different formats of online news stories. One was a site inspired by Cognitive Flexibility Theory, used by people who study psychology in education. The theory says that if knowledge is formatted in such a way that it encourages folks to “crisscross” the conceptual landscape by reading different case examples of a knowledge area, and by interpreting these cases in light of multiple perspectives — then, folks will more likely make sophisticated interconnections. They’ll understand knowledge areas more deeply, and they’ll understand that issues have gray areas. Online, linkable “nonlinear media” (in other words, Web sites) are perfect for this kind of format.

Here’s an example of a site used for history education: “EASE HISTORY.”

The cognitive flexibility news site

I tested my COGFLEX WEB SITE on the news issue of “cloning”, and I found:

• Readers who knew more about cloning going into the experiment, and who felt more involved with the issue of cloning, learned more and more efficiently from this format.

• But readers who were not knowledgeable about, or involved with, the cloning issue performed abysmally when using the cogflex site. They did much better with the simple “linear” traditional news story.

• So getting too fancy with the nonlinearity and linking can become a real problem for those who aren’t as well informed.

• Readers also tended to enjoy using the site — but overall, they also recalled less story info from memory when using the cogflex site. It’s an ongoing problem with such nonlinear formats for news stories. Readers just don’t click on everything, and so they miss content in many of the various “clickable” nuggets of info — as opposed to having all the content included in a 50-inch running news story. When these formats are used in school classes, they work better because students are expected to read it all and they know they’ll be tested. I don’t think news readers would put up with tests…

At any rate, I still think a format like this has some promise in journalism, especially in an era in which readers increasingly read short nuggets of info, deriving from many different sources (news sites, Google, social media).

What if the news media took complex issues like cloning, the Middle East, health care — and created open source sites that offered readers numerous short news stories that were interlinked with multiple perspectives on these issues. It would be demanding on journalists. But journalists could become the “sense-makers” of a wild and wide-ranging conversation about these issues, offering new stories, and perspectives, but also suggesting a priority for these stories and perspectives based on journalists’ knowledge, background and understanding of these issues.

Such a site would allow a great deal of openness in communication but would also reign it in, and so help stave off the daunting chaos and impossible breadth that accompanies such openness. Such an approach might also challenge journalists to become more expert in their coverage areas.