The “New” News

Presentation by Jan Schaffer
Executive Director, J-Lab: The Institute for Interactive Journalism
November 15, 2002
Dynamics of Convergent Media, University of South Carolina

When we talk about “convergence,” so much of the emphasis is on new media and multi-media platforms. And we tend to focus on such things as:

• Speed—Who’s first?
• Delivery—What platforms should we use?
• Mix—International, national, local.
• Revenue—How can we make money off of this?

The emphasis is always on:

• Immediacy
• Incremental Developments
• Hot links to related information
• “My news” or ways to customize information for the individual user.

When you think about it, this really puts the focus not on the consumer, but on the supplier. It becomes Us vs. Them.

Our work in the civic journalism arena has tapped into a public appetite for other kinds of news and information. And this appetite has big ramifications for distinguishing between noise—and there is a lot of noise out there—and meaningful information.

Moreover, I suggest that information becomes meaningful when the user develops some kind of attachment to it or involvement with it. Let me repeat that: Information becomes meaningful when it is accompanied by attachment or involvement.

Digital stories offer all kinds of new opportunities for enhancing the news experience. And I offer these goals for building those attachments. We need to think about constructing ways to add:

• Utility, or usefulness.
• Practicality.
• Connections.
• Ownership, developing a stake in a problem or issue.
• Community Building.

The focus then changes. Instead of focusing on Us, the journalists, we need to pay attention to Them. This means thinking about:

• Our readers.
• Relationships with readers and news consumers.
• Interactions with them.
• Participation opportunities—entry points for them to engage actively with the news.

Notice the words interaction, participation—you could add “involvement.”

Digital storytelling entails introducing a level of interactivity into our story telling. Building some entry points for ordinary folks to participate—then letting that interaction improve the journalism.

That participation gives consumers some attachment—and ultimately some ownership of the learning process. It’s just like anything—once you get involved in something, you tend to form some attachment, care about it and want to learn more about it.

This process of interactivity, I think, really distinguishes what we can offer in a digital age.

And I think it changes the construct a bit from what journalists have traditionally done.

You could think of it this way: Future News might well be less about story telling—the stories we journalists want to write, produce or tell—and more about story making—the stories that our consumers are assembling for themselves via their own process of gathering information, sifting through the onslaught of daily info-bits and participating in learning about things.

Less about storytelling—and more about story making.

Future news will be, in part, be about building the components that help users co-author the story.

It’s not an Either/Or but an And. And it will include linear narratives, visual information, news bits, and interactive information.

A news organization’s Web site becomes:

• Not just something you READ.
• But also something you DO.

Such a shift in purpose requires a rethinking of journalists’ relationships with the public. And this calls for really thinking out of the box, which is hard to do both in newsrooms and classrooms, which tend to take a conservative view of the world. It calls for different thinking going INÉ as well as different products coming OUT.

People nowadays are able, thanks to new technology, to co-author or co-produce their own stories. Think about it: They are building their own internal master narrative of events or issues by assembling information from various points.

• From public radio in drive time.
• From traditional newspaper stories.
• A bit of TV at night.
• E-mail from friends.
• Various Web interactions.
• Even Jay Leno.

And, remarkably, they do a pretty good job of ferreting out the truth.

So, instead of thinking of our audiences as users, readers, viewers,customers or consumers, we need to think of them as co-authors, co-producers, active citizens.

I know that to some degree this is heresy to a conventional journalist. Our standard mantra is that we must tell people what they NEED to know, not what they WANT to know. And, yes, that is almost always true.

We just don’t like to admit that people can be pretty smart about what they don’t know and what they need to know. Editors are supposed to be the arbiters of that, right?

But ordinary people have great—and empowering—capacity to find out what they want to know. And unlike a lot of pundits and experts, ordinary people are not afraid to admit it when they don’t know something.

What we see developing around the country is an appetite for a level of interactivity that is very much informing our story telling.

Indeed, in a poll the Pew Center released in 2001, found that:

• 90 percent of top editors said the future of the news business depends on MORE interactivity with readers.
• 73 percent said they were not happy with their current level of interactivity.

From the input side: People are getting used to talking back because, quite simply, they can. They can email, fax, voicemail, instant poll. And they like it.

So how do you involve people?

• By showing as well as telling.
• By providing knowledge as well as news.
• By providing entry points.
• By not just providing space for the stories we want to tell them, but also providing space for them to tell their own stories as well.

Now there are two kinds of journalists: Those who hold their noses at interacting with the public. And those who have discovered that it can be real asset.

• They get tips.
• They get stories first.
• They develop sources.
• And they offer people some kind of connection—some kind of attachment, some kind of involvement. People pay attention more. It helps break through the noise.

When people have some participatory stake in a story, you get intelligent interaction.

Civic journalism has morphed significantly in this direction since the early 1990s. At its heart, civic journalism has always entailed some kind of interaction with ordinary people. Through various entry points, including:

• Polling
• Town Hall meetings
• Focus groups
• Pizza Parties
• Book Clubs
• Action teams
• Study circles
• Mock juries

Then in the mid 90s, came one-on-one interactions through civic mapping.

So when the Internet came on the media scene in a big way in the 1990s, it was an easier transition for a lot of civic newsrooms.

Now, those civic interactions are moving into the digital arena. And we have seen the creation of entry points that connect with news audiences in new ways.

Some of the interesting interactions include:

• Blogs
• E-letters
• Games
• Crime trackers
• Tax calculators
• Clickable maps
• Choices exercises
• Simulations
• Matchmakers

Examples:

Spokane Spokesman-Review’s Blog coverage of State B high school basketball tournament
Tampa Bay Online’s Crime Tracker
New Hampshire Public Radio’s Tax Calculator
AOL’s Presidential matchmaker
GothamGazette.org’s “Searchlight on Campaign 2001”
WXXI-TV and NY public television’s Redistricting Game
Wisconsin State Journal with U-Madison’s Engineering Dept.—Energy Simulator
Everett Herald’s clickable map on waterfront development options
Myrtle Beach Sun News’ growth game (developed by Smashing Ideas Inc. - www.smashingideas.com)
Lawrence, Kansas—The World’s year-by-year growth maps
KGW-TV in Portland, Ore.—sprawl in your neighborhoods (Register or log in. Then srcroll to bottom of page under header “Your Neighborhood, Your Future.” Under Resources, select Slideshow: Metro Growth.)

Visuals and photos are great entry points and let people tell their own stories, literally through their own lenses.

For instance, Portland, Maine’s 20below.org photo gallery.

Webcams at KDVA-TV in San Antonio in the homes of viewers who become neighborhood correspondents and hubs for the community.

Not enough feet on the street? Put a computer kiosk out there instead like the Missoulan newspaper in Montana.

Dynamic Databases also present a lot of potential for interaction, like this one listing all the uses of coal severance taxes in the state of West Virginia, created by the Huntingdon Herald-Dispatch.

The challenge for the future is to bypass meaningless conventions and construct meaningful interactions that help people learn and get engaged.

One producer at New Hampshire Public Radio, offered this observation on their current efforts. “I don’t have a word yet for what we are doing. I know that it’s not just journalism.”

When pressed to offer some ideas, he said: “We’re a convener, a catalyst, an intermediary.”

The focus, then becomes less on Craftsmanship. More on connections. And you build the connections by developing entry points that let people participate in the news. The participation builds attachments. The attachments build relationships. And the relationships build audience.

The ultimate goal is Less Noise, More Intelligent Interaction.

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