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.

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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.

Looking like the news

I’ll use this blog to jot down thoughts related to news media, media’s role in community and society, news work and news technologies — and anything else that occurs to me along the way.

First thoughts: News media are struggling to change because too many others want it to stay the way it is. I’m not talking necessarily about audiences here, though they count as some of these “others.” I’m talking about the interests that other powerful institutions have in news products looking, sounding, reading like we think a credible news source should. If the news changes too much, it loses public legitimacy because it slips away from our shared, legitimated image of “the news.”

A government institution, a powerful politician or political party, a large company that wants to advertise, need a publicly legitimated source through which to send their messages. Their own PR wings won’t serve. The news makes their messages sacred in a sense, cleans them up. So it ain’t so easy to change because of interdependencies that hold journalism in place. Changing the news means changing the way others feel the way they need to do things.

And of course, audiences too have something of a stake in the news looking, reading and sounding like news. Change violates shared understandings,  and poor cognitively challenged creatures that we are (both audiences and journalists), we can only handle so much change before confusion sets in.

Does that mean change is impossible? No, but it probably requires more than just in-house tinkering to really make a difference. In-house tinkering often leads just to “window dressing” kinds of change that don’t touch the core. Or maybe mimicry of what others are doing. Again, we’re back to the pursuit of legitimacy — this time changing to look progressive.

Sociologist Max Weber understood the special importance of attaining legitimacy. Those who would have authority or control over others or even over their work must have cultural and social legitimacy too. Money is not everything (though legitimacy and money aren’t mutually exclusive in a capitalistic society). For journalism, legitimacy can come from merely “looking like the news,” from accord with the accepted, understood view.