2008 Ruhl Lecture
Participatory Media
Challenges to the Conventions of Journalism

Speech by Jan Schaffer, J-Lab Executive Director
May 8, 2008
University of Oregon School of Journalism and Communication
Eugene, Ore.

Importantly, it calls for journalists to get off automatic pilot. We need to re-imagine what we do and how we do it; we need to test drive new ideas day in and day out. We need to expand our “tribe.” We need to pay better attention to what consumers find valuable and not assume we always know what’s best. We need to rethink some of the rules of the road and not take for granted that the way we’ve always done it is the only way that it can be responsibly done.

Citizen media makers don’t aspire to be big-J journalists. They are the small-J plankton in our new media ecosystem. So, who says they have to play by the same rules that produce the very kind of journalism from which they are seeking relief?

Most citizen media makers are motivated less by covering community and more by building community. Is that unethical? Are news organizations allowed to have such aspirations?

Finally, the world of journalism needs to entertain story frames other than “conflict” or “gotcha” frames, or keeping that giant scorecard in the sky. Habits that used to safeguard good journalism just might now be getting in the way of good journalism. I believe that we can figure this out if we just pay attention.

Are we allowed to rethink and redefine what we do?

Today, “newsworthiness” more often is decreed by the consumers rather than the suppliers of news. Heading into the future, news becomes less of a concrete deliverable - a story or package of stories occupying some form of real estate online or on the printed page - and it becomes more of an ongoing process, a back and forth, of imparting and learning about information. The process of involvement in the news, whether it’s an interactive consumption or a proactive creation, becomes as important as the output.

The goal is to relay and exchange information that meets any number of benchmarks - but not necessarily all at once. The information should:

• Yield useful knowledge.
• Grow that information or knowledge.
• Surprise or enlighten.
• Move citizens to do their jobs as citizens.
• Hold public officials accountable.
• Do a better job of holding citizens accountable.
• Help people navigate their daily work and personal lives.
• Empower others to discover or share their own stories.
• Engage people in opportunities to participate in either the process of news - newsgathering, news analysis, news reaction - or in addressing public problems and issues.

This is tricky terrain. For many of you, it may feel too messy. It’s so much easier to turn on the auto-pilot and continue cruising down the road we know so well. We need to ask more often why we do things the way we do. Is it only because that’s the way we’ve always done it? Or is there a better way? Amid all the handwringing about the future of journalism, I am an optimist.

Many of you are communications researchers. I hope I have sketched out a menu of research opportunities for you today.

And I close with this admonition: Let us not be so sanctimonious in our lip service to ethics that we fail to understand that others have ethics, too. Ethics and a desire not just to cover community life, but to help community life go well.

As Pogo said: We have met the enemy. And, maybe, just maybe, it is us.

PAGE 1 | PAGE 2 | PAGE 3 | PAGE 4

Newsletter Sign Up

Privacy Policy

About J-Lab

J-Lab helps journalists and citizens use digital technologies to develop new ways for people to participate in public life with projects on innovations in journalism, citizen media, interactive stories, entrepreneurship, research, training, and publications.

E-Learning Portals

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons
Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5 License.
J-Lab is a center of American University's School of Communication in Washington, D.C.

Subscribe to J-Lab's RSS feed (What is RSS?)

Print this page | Site design by Hop Studios