The New new
journalism

Charlie Beckett, POLIS

Tom Wolfe’s New Journalism was essentially about a revolution in style rather than substance. I would argue that New Media, combined with other socio-economic forces, is going to reinvent journalism in a much more thorough-going way. Style will change but so will news gathering and news dissemination. And as journalism becomes more networked, the whole production process will change. Some of what we currently understand as journalism will look the same. Indeed, some ‘Old Media’ formats such as feature- length documentaries and non-fiction books are thriving amidst the new technologies.

But Polis research with media practitioners and the public into the future of news over the last two years indicates that journalism is undergoing a kind of revolution. Some of it will become radically ‘disintermediated’. The journalist will disappear. But our research suggests that the bulk of the news media will hybridise into something called ‘networked journalism’. It will still carry out the editing, filtering and packaging functions. It will still report, analyse and comment. But the whole production process will become much more open and participatory.

As the power shifts from the professional to the public this will challenge a whole range of journalistic assumptions about authority, impartiality, accuracy and quality. Instead of relying on a narrow concept of trust, the journalist will have create relevance. As the journalist’s monopoly over news is shattered, the media will have to justify its social value in a free marketplace of data and ideas. The new journalist will be a network facilitator, a marketeer of meaning, a channeler of information flows.

Politicians must address a democratic deficit produced by long-term social shifts and the bankruptcy of the old model of political organisation. Likewise journalism must regain public attention. This is partly by changing style and formats, but underpinning it must be a change in the very relationship with the public and the idea of news itself.

Tessa Mayes

Investigative journalists are presented with an opportunity as well as a mindfield as the internet gets uber-interactive. New technology allows journalists to mine new sources of research, quicker, cheaper and from all over the world. It has changed the content of some investigations and given birth to all kinds of new collaborations whose content is interactively ever-changing. Fantastic. At the same time, however, the role of the investigative journalist is in danger of being transformed from a journalist who gathers evidence to reveal the truth about reality as he sees it to being a manager of information, frequently flagging up a technical method as the key, vibrant, ‘new’ element of the story. While there is a place for all kinds of approaches – and investigative journalism isn’t ‘dead’ but alive and kicking and winning prizes – there is a problem. Why are there so few investigations that challenge the new orthodoxies such as the censorious laws on hate speech, the consensus on political solutions to global warming or, the assumption that legal, military interventions in to other countries are justified? Technology isn’t king, it’s just a means to an end. An essential ingredient of investigative journalism should be critical thinking and we shouldn’t forget that.

Bill Thompson

Karl Marx tells us that changes in the economic base of a society inevitably lead to changes in the social, cultural and political superstructure, even if we cannot predict the shape of the resulting society. Joseph Schumpeter tells us that innovations in manufacturing processes create opportunities for new entrants to seize opportunities that incumbents deny themselves because of their aversion to risk, resulting in creative destruction. And William Gibson tells us that the street finds a use for technology.

The digital revolution has brought us a globalised economy, low or even zero cost ways of collecting and distributing information, and a range of tools that would surprise even the most imaginative SF writer from the 1970s, and so it is hardly surprising that the business of journalism has been transformed. The new technologies have turned every eyewitness into a potential reporter, challenging professional journalists to reinvent themselves in order to remain relevant. They allow stories to be assembled and published as they happen, putting new pressures on old editorial structures and processes. They question the assumptions of expertise and privilege that were embedded in twentieth century journalism. And they undermine the business models that made journalism profitable in the industrial world.

The technology-powered wave of creative destruction that has swept through the newsrooms and editing suites is already crashing at the boardroom doors, and the innovators now are not only competitive businesses but every citizen with a cellphone and a Blogger account. And it is far from certain that anything remotely resembling a ‘journalist’ will be around to watch it recede.

Julia Whitney, BBC Future Media & Technology

Just as new technologies don’t replace the old, but rather alter the ecosystem in which both then co-exist, so too the practice and output of old and new journalism is in constant inter-relationship. The essential user needs for news remain the same (to be informed, to understand the world in which we live, to share a common experience, to use knowledge as social currency, and so on.) We must continue to meet these needs, just as we always have. But added to the mix is an undeniable shift in possibility, roles and expectations of how news is gathered, delivered, found and filtered, and the user’s role in all of these activities. As a result, we need to meet emerging needs as well – often all on the same page. The forms and practices of the new new journalism are constantly evolving, along with the affordances of new media platforms, and every shift should be met by the closest of collaborations between technology, editorial and design, so the potential within each discipline can contribute to a sum that is greater than each part.

In response to the optional registration question ‘Is there a theme or issue you would like to be considered in the programming of the event?’, the responses we have had so far include: social marketing a la Federated Media; the future of curating and anonymity; ‘slow’ journalism, or any other antidote to the herd mentality of swarming around a particular story to the exclusion of related and equally worthy issues. Other issues:

• What are the key changes taking place in journalism, reporting and commentating?
• Is the changing role of journalism the product of changes in society or technology?
• What innovations in forms of journalism, reporting and commentating have been created building on new technical and design possibilities?
• How are journalists and editors are sharing research, and collaborating with and debating the people formerly known as the audience?
• What visions do we have for a new journalism and to what extent have they been realised?