The Future of We Media

Many of us are joining the ranks of main stream media with regular frequency. What began as a blog started to share information, learn, publicize our business and skills, has provided a bridge to the pages of known publications. For example:

• Steve Rubel writes for AdAge
• David Armano contributes to BrandWeek/AdWeek
• John Moore contributes to BrandWeek
  

You might be interested in learning that when I tried to search for posts by David and John on BrandWeek, I came up empty. I knew about their contribution as they both post links on their blogs. It puzzles me that although these publications invite the contribution from established writers, they would do such a poor job at retaining that content for future reference.

Conversely, there are many journalists who have been open to new media and started personal blogs. I read two regularly:

• Bruno Giussani, Lunch Over IP
• Robin Hamman, Cybersoc.com

Clearly main stream news media has come a long way from just a few years ago when:

• In April 2003, The Hartford Courant required a travel editor and former columnist, Denis Horgan, to stop posting commentary to his weblog.
• A month earlier, CNN reporter Kevin Sites was told to discontinue posting to his blog, which featured first-hand accounts of the war in Iraq. According to a CNN spokesperson, "CNN.com prefers to take a more structured approach to presenting the news. ... We do not blog."
• Similarly, Time magazine editors instructed reporter Joshua Kucera to stop posting reports from Kurdistan to his weblog.

Yes, online publications have added blogs to their indexes. And as we learned in our conversations with BusinessWeek and the BBC, these are authored by journalists on staff. But this also means that we are still crossing over on a regular basis to each other's domains -- if there is such a thing these days anymore. Bloggers generally don't get paid to author articles for main stream publications; journalists who have their personal blog do so outside the compensation agreements with their employers.

2003 was the year that Chris Willis and Shayne Bowman of Hypergene, a media consulting and design firm, penned a white paper titled We Media on how audiences are shaping the future of news and information. The premise:

We are at the beginning of a Golden Age of journalism — but it is not journalism as we have known it. Media futurists have predicted that by 2021, "citizens will produce 50 percent of the news peer-to-peer." However, mainstream news media have yet to meaningfully adopt or experiment with these new forms.

Historically, journalists have been charged with informing the democracy. But their future will depend not on only how well they inform but how well they encourage and enable conversations with citizens. That is the challenge.

If you take the time to dive into the chapters you will probably be as surprised as I was to find much of the content is still relevant today.

Citizens have become stakeholders in the news process.

[image from chapter 1]

Does participatory journalism — the process of collaboration and conversation between media and the audience — ultimately help create better stories and better storytellers? My vote goes to yes. Whenever the voice of the writer behind the story comes to the fore, the story comes alive. And of course we know that the blogosphere keeps those stories alive for much longer than a news cycle. Some have talked about the echo chamber effect.

Have main stream media news organizations changed as a culture? I'd love to ask journalists who read this blog the question. Have they embraced the fact that they do not own the story?

I am reminded of famous theater director Peter Brook who treats theater less as a product than as a process: a collaborative means of exploring life's mystery. When interviewed he once told of an African man who said "I put my story down so that someone else may pick it up."

Many questions still remain open.

What happens to the news organization profit model now? Will we keep diving into micronews (Matt calls it micromedia) and hyper local formats with witness-generated content? What is new media? Will new media re-imagine journalism?

It seems to me that we have come full circle "I put my story down, so that someone else may pick it up." All this is the future of we media.

UPDATE: Bruno Giussani left a very comprehensive comment with reflection on journalism and international media. An excerpt: The key question remains: how will the necessary journalism be organized and be paid for in the future? The best journalism on TV today is either paid for by the public through mandatory fees (BBC) or paid for by philanthropic and corporate-social-responsibility money (Bill Moyers on PBS): is that the model of the future? more

Comments

[David Armano]

Good post Valeria. And let's not forget our friend Robert Scoble who has crossed over full fledged into MSM while still crossing back over into social media. He acts as sort of a two way conductor.

Some related thoughts (and visuals) here.

http://darmano.typepad.com/logic_emotion/2006/07/the_new_pr.html

[Valeria Maltoni]

Good reminder for Scoble, David. I've often felt him a kindred spirit -- work on the corporate site, association with Fast Company on a contributing level, and who knows what I come up with next in my career. Promise I will stick to my knitting, though.

He's also a very likeable person who has taken to time to develop tons of knowledge. I'm on a learning curve with the tech part of things. Then again, my mastery is over words and language. To each their own domains.

Very cool diagram, which I remembered. Glad you pointed it out. In the last several months I have been working on bringing our PR strategy up to speed on new media realities. As you know, a cohesive change takes time, esp. when selling ideas at so many levels of an organization.

[Karen Hegmann]

Valeria

Interesting post. I think you raised the key question by asking what happens to the news organizations profit model with the influx of new (or we) media.

As you suggest, traditional news organizations rely heavily on a top down approach of content being delivered to a heterogeneous mass audience. Their model is based almost solely on ad dollars.

The "We" approach treats the audience more like a community. Instead of a heterogeneous mass audience, you're now dealing with the thoughts of individuals. This may not be such a bad thing for advertisers. Whatever people may think about Second Life, companies have still been able to infiltrate this virtual world with new and innovative ways in which to advertise.

With the advent of "We" media, the power of the news organizations and the advertisers will transition from the masses to the individuals. The fact that technology allows for a high degree of interactivity means that organizations will be able to customize their products/services/news stories to appeal to people at the micro level.

This will still lead to profits, however the way in which these companies track profits may change as there are now more stakeholders involved who operate at many different levels.

[BG]

Good post Valeria, and thanks for the mention -- and for the reminder of the absurd way established media looked at blogs just 5 years ago.

I agree with pretty much everything you wrote (I actually wrote something that could fit right into your column back in 1997 already: "The role of the journalist is changing into a more central figure, a mediator. He directs traffic, explores, becomes a facilitator of discussions. His new power will depend on his ability to animate a group of people, to develop methods and means to enliven the community, to organize information-gathering and use with the participation of the members of the community."
http://firstmonday.org/issues/issue2_4/giussani/index.html )

Truth is, we're in an era of hybridization of media, and that goes two-ways. Newspapers and magazines and broadcasters have been opening up to everything form blogging to crowdsourcing. Conversely, many blogs have become almost traditional media (in terms of business model and structure -- take Gawker, or DailyKos, or TalkingPointMemo: they have more flexibility and smaller overhead, but they're basically traditional publishers) and it's telling that of the three examples you mention, David and Steve work for communication firms and John is a consultant and speaker, ie they derive their paycheck from sources other than journalism. They do "journalism on the side", including their columns for AdAge etc. Those are great additions to the conversation, but aren't necessarily great additions to journalism, in particular to the journalism that a democracy needs to function -- long reporting, researching, travelling, taking risks, exposing corruption and lies, going up against established powers, etc. Sure, everybody can make a long list of examples of bloggers doing some of this work (from the Dan Rather story to the AG scandal to local happenings) and a similarly long list of established media with lots of resources screwing it up (NYT on Iraq, just to mention one). But still the key question remains: how will the necessary journalism be organized and be paid for in the future? The best journalism on TV today is either paid for by the public through mandatory fees (BBC) or paid for by philanthropic and corporate-social-responsibility money (Bill Moyers on PBS): is that the model of the future?

A second caveat is: while all you write applies perfectly to the US media landscape, it doesn't necessarily apply to the rest of the world, where media habits, market structures, and roles are different. In many African countries, the best journalism today is often done by bloggers -- because they have a space for freedom that newspapers don't (it's easier to shut down a printing plant: read the difficulties Andrew Mwenda encountered trying to print his newspaper: http://blog.ted.com/2007/12/andrew_mwenda_l.php ).

In Europe, newspapers' and magazines' sites dominate the online space and conversation (with the possible exception of Italy, where http://www.beppegrillo.it has emerged as a major political force, mostly because television news has turned into irrelevant political banter and most newspapers are going the same way).

[Valeria Maltoni]

Karen:

The projected greater spend for online advertising shows that the ability to track intended recipient better is not lost on advertisers. As I discussed elsewhere, there is still a need to figure out how we (citizens, readers, even content producers) can afford in depth news coverage of the kind Bruno Giussani talks about in his remarks here.

Our media consumption habits influence the decisions that are being made, even though we may not be completely aware of it.

[Valeria Maltoni]

Bruno:

Thank you so much for offering your thoughts. As you know, I have been following your work for some time. This line in your 1997 article was particularly stimulating to my thought process:

"By redefining the way we think and write, this new structure redefines all of our culture. I agree with New York sociologist Neil Postman that

New technologies alter the structure of our interests: the things we think about. They alter the character of our symbols: the things we think with. And they alter the nature of community: the arena in which thoughts develop."

We are probably starting to think liquid as PR and social media consultant Geoff Livingston defined it. You ended with:

"So as a journalist what I believe our first and most urgent task ahead is to create the appropriate language to describe - thus to understand - the digital revolution. Recognizing that it is not only about microprocessors and fiber optic cable, but above all about brains connecting to other brains, about collective intelligence. A human, political and cultural endeavor."

I will be thinking about that article and your comment to continue the conversation is a subsequent post. Thank you for your contribution and for leading the conversation.

[Shaping Youth]

Excellent article/diagrams, thought prompts and guests; inspiring minds indeed.

As far as rev gen models go, this month’s Wired magazine’s 'life cycle of a blog post' diagram http://www.wired.com/special_multimedia/2008/ff_secretlife_1602 talks a bit about the print/new media journalism paradigm shift that hasn’t fully evolved yet, and even uses the example of ‘those deforesting paper rectangles’ (aka the subscription card blow-in’ biz model) as a cheap but effective medium to snag subscribers/boost ad numbers, etc.) Firmly agree that the ‘we’ aspect of community building and participatory journalism can heighten conversation into a richness and multi-faceted experience that goes far beyond techno gizmos and Twitterdom into Doug Engelbart’s ‘knowledge repository’ concept of collective intelligence.

Just look at the MySpace/MTV debates flinging questions and receiving hands-on feedback from the online youth audience. That beats a press conference or one-way conversation any day because all parties can refine/correct and converse on the spot to be understood in a ‘community’ setting rather than have a skewed POV or reframed context w/an editorial agenda. (though some of the MSM journalist/blog pundits have gone on record saying they ‘never even read the comments on their stories much less respond’ which is utterly confusing to me in terms of adaptation to the new media opportunity for growth and understanding)

As a former journalist and current blogger myself, new media’s potential for two-way dialog and open ended conversation (which BG puts in brilliant context on a global scale) is a huge asset in data pooling pragmatics and reporting as well. (sites like Ushahidi filter vital data locally/abroad, particularly in crisis) We’ve been using our blog to stream this kind of info to our Kenya colleagues from gwln.org and e-blast assistance/info e.g.: http://www.shapingyouth.org/blog/?p=1021 while NPTech bloggers enroll others who want to help in the conversation by using digital media to take action pronto: i.e. http://tinyurl.com/33bsbj

Finally, I’m living proof that NONE of us ‘own the story’ anymore, using my recent accidental NYT/Target brouhaha as an example, one of my nonprofit board advisors encouraged, “look, you’ve seeded the story, planted the idea, and enabled new conversation to take root, and hopefully, it will eventually bloom into the original context you intended rather than the thorny, tangled vine where it’s living now.” That is where digital media has legs far beyond linear, one-dimensional prose.

[Valeria Maltoni]

When MSM and others do not read nor respond to comments they miss out. The opportunity is there for the taking to learn and have your thinking evolved as a result. I am learning a great deal from you and all the generous people who share their experiences and take.

It might go back to needing to manage risk -- if you say nothing in response, they might go away. To me the comments is where the action happens.

You are absolutely right on not owning the story. I will be talking about my experience on that in the next week.

Thank you for an enriching and thought provoking angle.

[Tiffany Monhollon]

Valeria,
I agree that the value of comments in the whole equation is immense. It's interesting, isn't it, how the communication model of "we" media works. By closing the feedback loop, information can become both stronger and more relevant to the community participating in the conversation and also to those who interact with information at an observer's level. If, indeed, a participatory model is beneficial to the quality of the content itself, then everyone wins, right?

I need to get my hands on the book that hierarchy chart came from for my thesis research! I can't believe I haven't run across it yet with a 2000 pub date.

[Valeria Maltoni]

Tiffany:

Many journalists and writers have written using a participatory tone and voice. While at the same time working to uncover, investigate, expose facts from which we are called to participate in with the choices we make.

Words can be equally powerful whether we engage actively or we are sitting on the sidelines. It's the being available to it because they are available to us that really matters -- the discourse of democracy.

With the active voice, we now have a greater opportunity to help tell the story. Another reason why I so love the work the Institute for the Future is doing with stories and foresight to insight to action. We will revisit your collective ideas from year end about their work in the coming weeks.

[Andrew Nachison]

Valeria, I enjoyed the post, and yes, the economics of traditional journalism institutions are bleak, especially in the U.S. But the future of journalism itself may not be so bleak - and not merely because blogs and amateurs are somehow filling the void.

It's important to think hard about two things.

1. What's the point of journalism? Is it an end in itself? Is the point of journalism to do journalism? Or is it to seek and distribute information and knowledge as a means to making the world a better place for more people?

It may be that journalism institutions are losing audiences and influence because they have lost their way - especially in the US.

Meanwhile, along with eroding trust in media institutions,

(see: http://ifocos.org/2007/02/15/we-media-%e2%80%93zogby-poll-most-americans-say-bloggers-and-citizen-reporters-will-play-a-vital-role-in-journalisms-future/ )

I see a rising tide of people who don't call themselves journalists, and they also don't call themselves bloggers, but they are starting to use the tools and techniques of media to make the world a better place for more people.

2. What's the "We" in We Media all about? It's about the empowerment of everyone to be media. The first wave of We Media may have been the rise of blogging as a platform, avocation and cultural force - but the next wave will be about other ways people - and institutions - can achieve something through media. Nonprofit groups will be investigating and monitoring human rights - and promoting campaigns to address their findings; civic groups will be creating their own media and using the tools of media to connect with and inform their communities.

Media institutions will need to figure out their place in this highly networked culture.

By the way, some of these questions, but by no means all, are the subject of the annual We Media conference (www.wemediamiami.org), coming up later this month in Miami.

(Disclosure: That's a shameless plug - I'm one of the organizers).

[Valeria Maltoni]

Andrew:

I've been thinking about your comment here on US (esp.) journalism having lost its way and equating that to the problem marketers also have. People are just fed up of sameness, lazy attempts at talking at them, topics and products that do not interest them.

And today they have a way of letting you know -- choices and the ability to create content are rebalancing the equation.

Having said that, there is definitely a need and a role for skilled writers, storytellers, seekers of facts, etc.

You say the next wave will be about achieving something through media. Meaning. When I ask younger professionals what it is they are looking for -- the UPenn study on happiness itself says it -- we want meaning. Conversation, like technology, is a tool.

What we see on the other side is the ability to find that which each person and organization in the end is looking for. So perhaps we need to gt much better at asking the right questions vs. having all the answers up front.

Thank you for joining your voice and for the information on the conference.