This is adapted and expanded from the Inaugural Lecture I gave to the incoming class at Sciences Po école du journalisme in Paris, September 2, 2010: their first day. You can find reports on the speech in English here; in French here and here (with some video.) It was given to French students, but it is really intended for anyone studying journalism today, or attempting to re-learn it.
Typically when people like me—a professor of journalism who is deeply involved in the digital world—advise people like you—students just starting their careers in journalism—we say to you things like:
You need to be blogging.
You need to understand search engines.
You need to know Flash and perhaps HTML5.
You need to grasp web metrics like Google analytics.
You need to know how to record audio or edit video
You need to “get” mobile. (“Mobile is going to be big!”)
And all of those things are true. They are all important. But I want to go in a completely different direction today. Ready? You need to understand that the way you imagine the users will determine how useful a journalist you will be.
A shift in power
It turns out that the original title I gave myself, The People Formerly Known as the Audience and the Audience Properly Known as the Public, is a problem, because the word for “public” in French is the same as the word for “audience.” We have to work around that. And to help I have a clip from a movie I want to show you. It’s from the 1976 film Network, which is about a crazed television newsman named Howard Beale who begins to act out his craziness on the air. This is probably the most famous scene in the film. (It takes five minutes to watch.)
What is this scene “about?” In my reading of it, the filmmakers are showing us what the mass audience was: a particular way of arranging and connecting people in space. Viewers are connected “up” to the big spectacle, but they are disconnected from one another. Or to use the term I have favored, they are “atomized.” (See Audience Atomization Overcome.) But Howard Beale does what no television person ever does: he uses television to tell its viewers to stop watching television.
When they disconnect from TV and go to their windows, they are turning away from Big Media and turning toward one another. And as their shouts echo across an empty public square they discover just how many other people had been “out there,” watching television in atomized simultaneity, instead of doing something about the inarticulate rage that Beale put into words. (“I don’t know what to do about the depression and the inflation and the Russians and the crime in the streets. All I know is that first you’ve got to get mad!”)
The reason I showed you this clip is that it makes vivid for us a great event we are living through today: the breakup of the atomized “mass” audience and a shift in power that goes with it. What would happen today if someone on television did what Howard Beale did? Immediately people who happened to be watching would alert their followers on Twitter. Someone would post a clip the same day on YouTube. The social networks would light up before the incident was over. Bloggers would be commenting on it well before professional critics had their chance. The media world today is a shifted space. People are connected horizontally to one another as effectively as they are connected up to Big Media; and they have the powers of production in their hands.
The public becomes thinkable
This kind of shift has happened before. And now I want to take you back 250 years, to events in France and England that gave birth to the modern public.
Before there was a public that could be informed by the press, before there was anything like “public opinion,” before there was any political journalism at all, politics was considered the king’s business, le secret du roi. It was owned and operated by the king, and secrecy about everything that happened in government was the normal state of things. There was publicity too, but not about what was actually happening in the halls of power. In the words of Jürgen Habermas, it was “publicity that is staged for show or manipulation,” rituals in which the majesty of the crown and the glory of the nation could be vivified or put on display. Absolutism gave ownership of politics to the crown; and that included virtually all information about affairs of state.
In 1764, for example, the King of France ruled it illegal to print or sell or peddle on the street anything about the reform of state finances—past, present or future. It’s not only that there was no freedom of the press. That was true, but more than that: The king’s mystery was not considered the people’s business. The whole idea that the affairs of the nation belonged to the people of that nation had yet to be accepted. Without an idea like that (today we would call it “the public’s right to know…”) the very practice of journalism is impossible—in fact, unthinkable.
But by 1781 Jacques Necker, finance minister to the King of France, had published the first ever public record of the state’s finances, the Compte rendu. Three thousand copies were sold on the first day. Most historians say he failed to give a true picture of how deeply the crown was in debt, and that he hid the cost of borrowing. But simply by publishing the Compte rendu Necker helped to raise the curtain on a new idea: public confidence required transparency. Public opinion could not be ignored. There was a public “out there,” and even princes had to appeal to it.
So what happened between 1764 and 1781? The answer to that is complex and worth a book in itself. Fortunately we have one: Jurgen Habermas’s Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere. Here I will simply list some of the factors responsible for the shift:
* The growth and spread of printing, which was bound up with the market for printed books. This meant, for example, that what was illegal to print or sell in France could be published in Holland and smuggled in.
* The rise of the periodical press. Newspapers and pamphlets—some legal and restrained, some clandestine and unrestrained in their rhetoric—spread the concept of public discussion of public affairs. This was difficult to contain.
* Closely related to that were the literary salons in which discussion of what was read became normal, providing a template for public opinion as commentary on what is in the press. (In England this role was played by taverns and coffee houses.)
* The emergence of international capitalism, which created what Habermas called the “carrier class” for the public sphere, the literate bourgeoise: merchants, traders and businessman who were not impressed by “publicity staged for show or manipulation,” but who might buy French debt if they were persuaded that the government could repay it on time. Necker no doubt had these people in mind when he published his record of state finances, and when he called public opinion “an invisible power that, without treasury, guard, or army, gives its laws to the city, the court, and even the palace of kings.”
* The spread of enlightenment ideas, in which reason was supposed to be sovereign, not the king and his court. Public opinion, when it was praised by people like Necker, meant reasoned, settled opinion, not the violent swings in mood that frightened so many aristocrats.
* The search for other sources of authority beyond divine right and despotism. Necker worked for the King of France. He was trying to find a way to reform and legitimate the continued authority of the crown as it came under increasing attack in the last decades of the ancien régime. That is why he called public opinion a “tribunal,” and said “princes themselves [must] respect it.”
This complex shift from one constellation of ideas to another was put into words by the historian Keith Michael Baker: “From the public person of the sovereign to the sovereign person of the public.” Something like that has to happen before journalism can even be conceived. In fact the rise of the periodical press, the emergence of the public as an actor in politics, and the power of public opinion such that even princes have to respect it, are not so much parallel developments as three aspects of the same event. Together, they made modern journalism thinkable.
The people out of doors
In England during the same period, a similar event occurs. If we could listen in on Parliament in 1750 we might hear a phrase in common use then, “the people indoors.” It referred to the members of Parliament themselves when they were gathered in session. In what way did this small and elite group represent “the” people of England? Not through popular election; that didn’t really happen until the next century. Parliament thought of itself as the people because the King had to consult with Parliament and when he did he was consulting with the whole nation.
This was a fiction, of course, but it was the ruling fiction at the time. “The people indoors” were quite aware that they were not representative of the whole population. That is why they also referred to the people “out of doors,” another phrase in use at the time. This meant everybody else. The king didn’t have to consult with them. Nor did the people out of doors enjoy freedom of speech or freedom of the press. In fact, it was illegal to publish what was said in Parliament or to attack the King in print.
For the “people indoors,” freedom of speech was protected within the halls of Parliament itself. A member could call the king’s policies foolish and not be held to account, whereas a printer who put that sentiment in a pamphlet could be arrested the next day. I am not going to go into the whole story, which involves the printer and politician John Wilkes and the right to report on debates in Parliament (established in 1771.) Suffice it to say that in England, too, politics as the exclusive possession of the king, his ministers and Parliament gave way to a much more open system, in which the newspapers could report on what was happening, a literate public could discuss it and public opinion could form.
Ignoring the public became harder, gestures toward transparency more common. Rights fundamental to the practice of journalism—politics as the people’s business, freedom of speech and of the press, the right to record what was said in Parliament and publish it in the newspapers—began to be established, though it took a long time for them to be secured. The people out of doors grew up and became the public, the one that has a right to know. These things have to happen before there can be a profession of journalism worth joining. That is why I am telling you about them.
The engineering of opinion
I am conducting this tour at the level of ideas. But one could also say ideals. The all-inclusive public that is fully informed about what is happening… and argues about it in public settings…. so as to form an independent and reasoned opinion… which is then listened to by the people in power… this has never been a description of how public life in a competitive democracy actually works. The fight has been to make it truer and truer for more and more people. That fight goes on. When we compare the reality to the picture, we can tell where we are, and perhaps where we need to go.
Meanwhile, there are endless complications to weigh. For example, the same tools that make an informed public possible allow for manipulation and propaganda on a national scale. As we enter the modern age this becomes very obvious. Let’s jump ahead to Paris in 1919 and the Peace Conference that ended World War I. Something new was seen at Paris. At previous international conferences intended to conclude wars and settle borders, the diplomats would negotiate in secret and emerge weeks later with a result which was then conveyed to the home countries as a more or less finished product. In Paris a new pattern was seen. The American delegation was accompanied by over 150 newspaper correspondents. They shocked the diplomats by demanding entrance to the opening session.
Even when their demands were resisted, the reporters were a factor in the event. Word of what was being proposed by one country or discussed by several would find its way to the correspondents, who would put it into their dispatches, which were then telegraphed to the home country to be published the next day in the newspapers. Over the same wires (but traveling the other way) came word of public reaction once the news was published. This increased the pressure on the statesmen in Paris, who in Britain, France and the United States (the victors) had to face the future prospect of elections and no-confidence votes. Just imagine how simple it would be for the editor of a tabloid newspaper to take fragmentary word of what was being discussed in Paris and use it to sell papers in London. As public opinion becomes more powerful, the incentives to engineer it also grow.
In the twentieth century we have the rise of the modern mass media—cinema, radio, television, followed by cable—all of them huge industries that are intimately connected to state power. So much so that the way you make a revolution in the twentieth century is not by storming the king’s castle but by taking over the broadcasting tower. The idea of the informed public and public opinion as the final court of appeal never got extinguished, but it had to compete with a related formation: the mass audience and the business of appealing to that.
The journalists formerly known as the media
But today the mass audience is breaking up. This makes new things thinkable. And that’s why I wrote my 2006 post, the People Formerly Known as the Audience:
The people formerly known as the audience wish to inform media people of our existence, and of a shift in power that goes with the platform shift you’ve all heard about. Think of passengers on your ship who got a boat of their own. The writing readers. The viewers who picked up a camera. The formerly atomized listeners who with modest effort can connect with each other and gain the means to speak— to the world, as it were.
Today I want to introduce a companion idea. Because the people formerly known as the audience have arrived, the journalists formerly known as “the media” are here, too. And this is what you—the next generation of professional journalists—have a chance to define for the rest of us. The digital revolution changes the equation. It brings forward a new balance of forces, putting the tools of production and the powers of distribution in the hands of the people formerly known as the audience. And so you have the opportunity to become the journalists formerly known as the media, carrier class for a new understanding of the people “out there” on the receiving end of what journalists make. I say “new,” but it is really just another chapter in the long struggle to make good on the idea of a public that knows what is happening because it pays attention, informs itself and argues about what should be done.
Let me try to sharpen what I mean by “the journalists formerly known as the media” by calling on one of my favorite lines in all of media studies. They originate with Raymond Williams (1921-1988) a writer and sociologist in the U.K. who was well known for his studies of mass media. “There are no masses, “ Williams wrote in 1958, “there are only ways of seeing people as masses.” To illustrate, Williams compared the way local newspapers addressed their readers—as inhabitants of a common world of homes, schools, jobs, streets they walked, politics they could participate in—to the way those same readers were addressed by the mass circulation dailies and tabloids that sell throughout the U.K.
Seeing people as masses is the art in which the mass media, and professional media people, specialized during their profitable 150-year run (1850 to 2000). But now we can see that this was actually an interval, a phase, during which the tools for reaching the public were placed in increasingly concentrated hands. Professional journalism, which dates from the 1920s, has lived its entire life during this phase, but let me say it again: this is what your generation has a chance to break free from. The journalists formerly known as the media can make the break by learning to specialize in a different art: seeing people as a public, empowered to make media themselves.
My advice…
Now I will explain what this phrase—seeing people as a public—means to journalists for your generation. Here are some of its implications.
1. Replace readers, viewers, listeners and consumers with the term “users.” What do we call the people on the other end of the journalism transaction? My suggestion is to be less platform-centric; rather than naming them for the tool you are using to reach them, just call them the users, a term I borrowed from the way Dave Winer employs it. Users is a more active identity, it works for all platforms, and as I said earlier: the way you imagine the users will determine how useful a journalist you will be.
2. Remember: the users know more than you do. I adapted this from Dan Gillmor’s famous declaration: “My readers know more than I do.” It means that, in the aggregate, the people on the receiving end have more knowledge, more contacts, more experience and more good ideas than a single journalist can ever have. This was always true, it was true in the 1950s, but the Internet allows those people-—the ones who know more than you do—to actually reach (and teach) you with that knowledge. Look at it this way: The most valuable thing the New York Times owns is its name and reputation. The second most valuable thing it has: the talent and experience of its staff. The third most valuable thing the Times “owns” is the knowledge and sophistication of its users. And if it cannot find a way to get some of that flowing in, so as to improve the editorial product, then it will have failed to capitalize on an immense strategic advantage. And I am convinced the editors of the Times know this.
3: There’s been a power shift; the mutualization of journalism is here. This is Alan Rusbridger’s idea: “the mutualised news organization.” He’s the editor of The Guardian in the U.K. What he means is…
We bring important things to the table – editing; reporting; areas of expertise; access; a title, or brand, that people trust; ethical professional standards and an extremely large community of readers. The members of that community could not hope to aspire to anything like that audience or reach on their own; they bring us a rich diversity, specialist expertise and on the ground reporting that we couldn’t possibly hope to achieve without including them in what we do.
We bring important things to the table, and so do the users. Therefore we include them. “Seeing people as a public” means that.
4: Describe the world in a way that helps people participate in it. When people participate, they seek out information. Information providers would do well to recognize this connection. As I told The Economist:
My own view is that journalists should describe the world in a way that helps us participate in political life. That is what they are “for”. But too often they position us as savvy analysts of a scene we are encouraged to view from a certain distance, as if we were spectators to our own democracy, or clever manipulators of our fellow citizens. Weird, isn’t it?
As a writer for The Economist said after this was published: “Perhaps ‘political’ is unnecessarily limiting. More generally, it is the job of journalists to describe the world in a way that helps us participate in all life—political, local, civic, cultural, etc.” Correct.
5: Anyone can doesn’t mean everyone will. Students of social media and behavior on the Net are highly aware of the one percent rule, which has been observed in a wide variety of online settings:
It’s an emerging rule of thumb that suggests that if you get a group of 100 people online then one will create content, 10 will ‘interact’ with it (commenting or offering improvements) and the other 89 will just view it… So what’s the conclusion? Only that you shouldn’t expect too much online. Certainly, to echo Field of Dreams, if you build it, they will come. The trouble, as in real life, is finding the builders.
My way of putting this is, “anyone can doesn’t mean everyone will.” But the fact that “anyone can” is still important because you can never predict who will accept your invitation. Knowing this rule helps us keep our expectations in check. Seeing people as a public doesn’t mean deluding ourselves about what they are willing to do. It’s important to neither under-estimate nor over-estimate what the people formerly known as the audience are up for.
6: The journalist is just a heightened case of an informed citizen, not a special class. Journalism isn’t like brain surgery, or piloting a Boeing 747. A professional journalist knows how to get information, ask questions, tell stories and connect isolated facts. These are not esoteric or specialized skills, just heightened versions of things any smart citizen should be able to do. We see this most clearly when citizens have a chance to substitute for reporters and ask questions of candidates during debates. They generally do as well as or better than professional journalists. That is a clue.
7: Your authority starts with, “I’m there, you’re not, let me tell you about it.” If “anyone” can produce media and share it with the world, what makes the pro journalist special, or worth listening to? Not the press card, not the by-line, not the fact of employment by a major media company. None of that. The most reliable source of authority for a professional journalist will continue to be what James W. Carey called “the idea of a report.” That’s when you can truthfully say to the users, “I’m there, you’re not, let me tell you about it.” Or, “I was at the demonstration, you weren’t, let me tell you how the cops behaved.” Or, altering my formula slightly, “I interviewed the workers who were on that oil drilling platform when it exploded, you didn’t, let me tell you what they said.” Or, “I reviewed those documents, you didn’t, let me tell you what I found.” Your authority begins when you do the work. If an amateur or a blogger does the work, the same authority is earned. Seeing people as a public means granting that without rancor.
8: Somehow, you need to listen to demand and give people what they have no way to demand. The Web effortlessly records what people do with it. Therefore it is easy to measure user behavior: what people are interested in, what they are searching for, clicking on, turning to… right now. What should a smart journalists do with this “live” information? I just told you: you should listen to demand, but also give people what they have no way to demand because they don’t know about it yet. In fact, there is a relationship between these things. The better you are at listening to demand, the more likely it is that the users will listen to you when you demand of them: pay attention! You may not think this is important or interesting, but trust me… it matters. Or: “This is good.” Ignoring what the users want is dumb in one way; editing by click rate is dumb in a different way. Respect for the users lies in between these two. Get it?
9: In your bid to be trusted, don’t take the View From Nowhere; instead, tell people where you’re coming from. Treating people as a public means refusing to float “above” them. Instead of claiming that you have no view, no stake, no perspective, no (sorry for the academic term) situated self, try to level with the users and let them know where you are coming from. As David Weinberger puts it. “transparency is the new objectivity.” You may find that trust is easier to negotiate if you don’t claim the View from Nowhere, but instead tell them where you’re coming from. (Here’s my attempt to do exactly that as a critic.)
10: Breathe deeply of what DeTocqueville said: “Newspapers make associations and associations make newspapers.” Alexis De Tocqueville, a Frenchman, visited the United States in the 1830s. Among the observations he made was: “newspapers make associations and associations make newspapers.” What I think he meant was: wherever people have a common interest and wish to discuss it, there lies an opportunity for a smart journalist. Today one of the things that is fast changing our world is the falling cost for like minded people–people who share the same interest, problem or fascination–to locate each other, share information, pool what they know, and publish back to the world the results of their interactions. The Net makes this act increasingly common. For example, people with a health problem that medical science has been unable to treat will find each other over the Net and begin to discuss their condition. They’re an association. Smart journalists will pick up on this and realize: there’s a story there. Want to be useful online? Find a previously atomized group that shares a common interest and create a space for their association.
I conclude: The struggle to make the fiction of an informed and engaged public more factual—that is, realer—continues on. When technology and markets change, new things become thinkable within that struggle. And so journalism itself has graduated to the next stage of its development. Bonne chance!
Anonymous
Sep 07, 2010 @ 17:01:24
An excellent overview of the past, present, and future of the media. And as a young journalist, I can tell you that we’re all on board 110%– after all, we "Milennials" are children of the Internet age. Interactivity, connectivity, and utility are our bread and butter when it comes to the information that we consume, let alone produce as journalists. But I can also tell you that the best young journalists I know are leaving the "professional" media in droves. Amidst so many layoffs, experienced journalists are settling for lower-level jobs, and others are working as freelancers. Good luck breaking into the "media" at all, or even trying to be "entrepreneurial" when people with more experience and professional reputation are trying to do the same exact thing. How do we convince the "public" that paying for "professional" journalists is a worthwhile investment in their community?
Anonymous
Sep 07, 2010 @ 17:59:42
Mike, I don’t know if @jayrosen_nyu will reply, but I share your frustrations and at 30, I’m not even that young. I think that a lot of the problems stem from the fact that many media organizations are huge, swollen conglomerates, much the way that, say, the Detroit automakers were. Some are similarly encumbered by unions (and there’s nothing wrong with unions inherently, but they make change excruciatingly slow). Some are having difficulty making even the most basic technological changes, and on and on. I think we are also all well aware of the difficulty with monetizing content online. This is still a puzzle that is slowly being put together. We also still have people making HUGE salaries at media companies, both in the newsroom and outside of it. The industry has had it so good for so long that these companies just don’t know or don’t care to run a lean operation, to really analyze if they’re getting the most from each dollar, etc.
Anonymous
Sep 07, 2010 @ 18:22:14
Dear Mike: If I had a solution to the business model crisis in journalism, I assure you, I would have made my speech about that. I’m sorry, but I don’t. This remains an unsolved problem. Simply persuading people to pay is not enough of a solution; there is also the problem of adding more value so that the product is worth paying for. The results of many decades of complacency and under-investment are being felt today, especially in the newspaper business.But I still believe there are opportunities for young people, despite the trends you cite. Please don’t get discouraged.
SJ
Sep 07, 2010 @ 20:33:48
Perhaps professional journalists can find their niche in in-depth investigative reporting. Despite all the virtues of citizen journalism, not many ordinary citizens have the commitment and resources to engage in investigative journalism that often requires institutional support and monetary resources. Readers (Sorry, I mean, "Users") would be willing to pay for such in-depth investigative journalism.
Anonymous
Sep 07, 2010 @ 21:34:21
I can think of more than a few people who work for or run news companies that would benefit hugely by reading this.
markpoepsel
Sep 07, 2010 @ 22:02:57
SJ – I wish that I could find something to back up the claim that investigative journalism garners user investment.
markpoepsel
Sep 07, 2010 @ 22:04:46
Perhaps if it were considered part of the infrastructure of Democracy you could get public funding for it (McChesney).
markpoepsel
Sep 07, 2010 @ 22:08:00
Also we’ve got a collective action problem-to produce a public good. Maybe we could add value by adding convenience.
markpoepsel
Sep 07, 2010 @ 22:09:04
But then it’s no longer a public good in the strictest sense. It’s more of a "club good" because access is restricted.
markpoepsel
Sep 07, 2010 @ 22:09:34
Anyway, ideas welcome – markpoepsel at gmail.
Sandra_Sully
Sep 07, 2010 @ 22:58:13
Good piece on Journalism and the road ahead
Anonymous
Sep 08, 2010 @ 14:26:25
I thought I would point out here the passage I see as the most important in this piece. In a sense I wrote the whole thing so as to say this…Seeing people as masses is the art in which the mass media, and professional media people, specialized during their profitable 150-year run (1850 to 2000). But now we can see that this was actually an interval, a phase, during which the tools for reaching the public were placed in increasingly concentrated hands. <i>Professional journalism, which dates from the 1920s, has lived its entire life during this phase, but let me say it again: this is what your generation has a chance to break free from.</i> The journalists formerly known as the media can make the break by learning to specialize in a different art: seeing people as a public, empowered to make media themselves.I added the italics.
Anonymous
Sep 08, 2010 @ 15:36:18
Jay & Everyone else-Great insights, and believe me, I’m not expecting a fix to the whole industry to come anytime soon. And I’m definitely not discouraged. I’m currently working at Chicago’s public access network (CAN TV) as an Americorps VISTA, and I think that the community media folks have been working with empowered citizens/media-makers for decades. From my experience here it seems like their strengths (and weaknesses) are very complimentary to those of traditional media. For community media, their strength is working WITH ordinary citizens to help them be a part of the media and to DO IT WELL. Their weakness is that of their platform- as with all nonprofits, their focus is on serving the people, not on developing compelling content. Compare that with "traditional" media, whose strength has always been that of the platform (although that’s taking a hit) and they’ve been very bad at engaging the public beyond "Letters to the Editor."So does working with an empowered public mean bringing them into the fold, like they already do in community media, and not just taking their content and selling it for free, but actually INVESTING in users need to be a part of every "media" organization? I’m beginning to think so.
tkatsumi06j
Sep 08, 2010 @ 15:37:21
Great. At least I know I’ve translated the right portion of your post!
BrutlYuth
Sep 08, 2010 @ 18:19:53
I want to address #8 on your list of advice regarding demand ("give people what they have no way to demand") with a memorable quote I got while interviewing Garth Ennis, one of the most creative comic writers working today: "Don’t give the readers what they want, give them what they don’t know they want." It’s the writers job to keep users engaged with the material. Over the years this quote has stuck with me, especially as many retreat to networks/sites/publications that reinforce their views as opposed to challenge them. It’s not easy to make everything engaging. It takes a lot of thought, effort and ingenuity, but it’s possible. The flip side is once the non-demanded story gains traction, and people demand more of it, the vultures will descend and pick it to pieces. But by then you’ll be on to your next scoop. (Yes, I said scoop. I’m feeling old timey. And Network is my favorite movie. I love the quote: "You’re beginning to think that the tube is reality, and that your own lives are unreal." Paddy C. was a genius.)
Glen Frost
Sep 10, 2010 @ 07:20:46
Jay; a wonderful presentation. For your younger journalism students it may be worth mentioning that every industry goes through it’s own "paradigm shift" at some stage. The workers in the telecom sector have recently moved from state owned analogue monoploies to competitive IP-based networks; the energy sector is moving from coal to renewable; all face massive changes to the business model from new technology, and most importantly for "the workers" is that their skill-set needs updating or they are unemployable. The internet is doing this to Journalism and news.The internet has already "disintermediated" various sectors – we buy books online, so bookshops have been disintermediated. The web is disintermediating traditional media. The Economist would probably say the increased competition in the media sector from "new media" and bloggers -including the better technology for delivering news to consumers any time, any place, any platform is a good thing, because you can serve your customers better – and that’s they key in business. The "consumers" of news today are better educated than their parents and grandparents so require better quality news and analysis (hence rising sales for The Economist, falling sales for tabloids), consumers own and use technology, so compete with Journalists as bloggers – and this will increase. The key messages for Journalism students are therefore:1. You are entering a pool of commentators/writers/bloggers that is growing at a massive rate; think about how you can stand out from the crowd.2. Therefore, your biggest opportunity is to start your own online publication and take a business/marketing course along with Journalism so you’ll know how to market "you" – you will need to be a brand, with followers3. Journalists need to be experts in their field; simply running with a PR release and getting two differing opinions is no good; your readers know more than you, and to expect them to pay (or to attract advertising) for your copy means you’ll have to deliver something they don’t know.4. Newspapers and other traditional media are already recruiting bloggers and trying to work out how to incorporate blogger content into the online mastheads, but so are companies, who are looking to engage in "blogger outreach" programs… nowyou candisintermediate the person formerly known as The Publisher and disintermediate the person formerly known as The Editor. You, the media
yongle
Sep 10, 2010 @ 10:09:21
I LOL when I consider that newspapers are trying (in 2010) to "incorporate" new media. As a Rural Press hack in the early 2000s we had no access to the internet – only the editor was allowed access. AND all emails came thru (his) machine. We could not open attachments and were basically living in a digital-rationed police state. NOW they want to incorporate new media – but that window of opportunity has passed by…
Anonymous
Sep 10, 2010 @ 12:30:37
I’m advising a newspaper company that, at the point new management took over a year ago and made sweeping changes, was working with some Windows95 machines. Many editorial workers had no access to the Internet. They couldn’t get email at work, etc. There was no training budget, either. That’s why this post is about journalism, not newspapers.
Glen Frost
Sep 10, 2010 @ 12:44:54
Interesting. I pitched a proposal to an Australian media company that involved a start-up with one of their staff and some external investors. They didn’t go for it, which is a shame as many Journalists have lots of great content ideas – and I feel are held back by the old style, and usually older, management attitudes. And eventually the good journalists will leave to start their own businesses; better for the traditional media to have 50% of something than 100% of nothing… how many other opportunities have they missed? If I was a shareholder I’d be asking this question at the AGM. Too many Directors just coasting along perhaps?
Chris Spurlock
Sep 10, 2010 @ 15:05:50
Jay, thanks for the great post. If anyone is interested in reading the thoughts of a young student-journalist, I wrote a blog in response to this post. You can check it out here: http://bit.ly/dk34hDYour thoughts and comments are appreciated.
WilliamCB
Sep 10, 2010 @ 19:42:28
I think the things you’re interested in actually happened almost a hundred years earlier in England. During the civil way in the middle of the 1600s there was a period when a free press was tolerated by the government, and fully taken advantage of. There were systematic reports of proceedings in Parliament, the first newspaper (or more accurately, subscription newsletter), wild comment in pamphlets that like todays blogs pushed their opinions to extremes to win readers. Clearly the horizontal connections were there because underground churches like the Quakers crystallised rapidly, as did social movements. Indeed, the war was arguably between two groups of the upper classes who disagreed over the best way of keeping the tumult under control.So I’m not saying the 1700s and what happened then weren’t important, and different. I just can’t see anything in what you think is important in France in the 1700s that wasn’t there in England in the 1600s – before censorship was reimposed.
Barbara Rick
Sep 13, 2010 @ 14:17:00
Brilliant, powerful, clear: bravo.
Anonymous
Sep 13, 2010 @ 17:10:10
Well done Jay – you sharpen the saw every week – I like the point #4 a lot – Describe the world in a way that helps people participate in it – I think that the way the media has worked until now has made us more and more helpless – its POV has been abstract and has removed the person from events.A POV that leads to an action that is possible by me is surely now empowering and may enable us to get to the root of many of the complex problems that confront us
Robert Cohen
Sep 13, 2010 @ 19:24:12
Great talk/essay, Jay. I learned some history I didn’t know as well. I’m curious, though, if the background on the crush of American newspaper reporters attending the 1919 Paris peace talks was drawn from Margaret MacMillan’s book, "Paris 1919."
Amiso George
Sep 14, 2010 @ 01:26:22
Excellent speech by Jay Rosen! He is spot on! I also learned a lot of new information and will make this article mandatory reading for my students. Thank you!
Anonymous
Sep 14, 2010 @ 01:47:09
<a href="http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F50E1FFD345411738DDDAB0894DC405B828EF1D3">Something new</a> was seen at Paris, the piece says. Click the link, Rob, and you will see the source for that section.
Robert Cohen
Sep 14, 2010 @ 02:55:31
Thanks Jay!
Maarion
Sep 14, 2010 @ 21:14:51
Thank you. I watched on science po website some of your video. I am no journalist. I am a young researcher in microsystems, far away from this interesting ideas…Excuse my poor english ( i am french :D) and the fact that this respons might not be the right place.It’s been three years now that i am searching the website/journal i am willing to pay to inform me. A lot of articles i found are for me just feeds or raw materials. Taking a food comparison, I have the impression that in terms of general information (state of the world, of the economy,…) journals give me raw food when i would like a cooked meal. I have no time to read news feed every 4 hours and i am tired of journals articles looking like an AFP-news with more sentences to give the same idea/news. For example on a hot subject in france: retirement, i have no idea of what the REAL issues are meaning i have no idea apart from the beliefs the governements or the syndicats wants us to believe in… I am waiting from the journal i read to give me the correct piece of information so i’ll be able to form an opinion. Over three years i stopped reading journals and begun to read the reports of the parliament, "cour des comptes",etc….but this is not my job and i have not enough time to cover the whole range of subjects to my taste.So if you have a advices for a good journal that gives me reflexion, i’ll be the first one to pay :D.
Josh
Sep 15, 2010 @ 23:59:48
You’re right on with your assessment of the changes in the industry, but what do we do with readers, er, users, who either cannot distinguish the difference between an amateur effort and professional journalism or, more frighteningly, don’t care one way or another? I certainly don’t think we’ll struggle to top blogs or content mills in terms of quality, but what happens when that quality is completely lost on the general public (something that is readily apparent in my twentysomething peers who prefer quantity over quality and immediacy over accuracy)?
Anonymous
Sep 16, 2010 @ 09:00:40
Josh – are you saying that the general public were traditionally interested in high quality journalism? Also that some of the young are not?
Antonin Boileau
Sep 18, 2010 @ 03:53:21
Point 4 is absolutely essential. I’m not kidding : it seems journalists are more and more engaged in elaborate efforts at role-playing Olympians — aloof, stoic, somewhat contemptuous. As if nothing touched them directly, or their own background were insubstantial to their coverage.Public participation in politics must focus on associations or projects not readily election-oriented, whereas journalists commonly envision politics entirely in the language of sports, in the manner of intellectual discourses with no factual interface with social or economic reality. And finally, give people information, not only "he says, he says". When someone is lying through his teeth, no debate is to be had, only stern correction — except if your idea of public space is one dominated by myths and misunderstandings.
asim
Oct 07, 2010 @ 01:32:00
So if the public is the producer/consumer, more and more angles on a story (a truth) will come out , further atomizing/ islolating masses in their opinions or pov’s…. no? so how will the power of "new" media benefit the new public?
Anonymous
Oct 07, 2010 @ 12:42:02
Now we have a binary choice usually false too – more voices offer a pattern – only way to "see" complexity
casino
Jan 31, 2012 @ 12:03:34
The best person to give you medical advice about liver disease is your doctor. Best thing we can do is recommend perhaps a good doctor if you need a second or third opinion.
criminal justice degree online
Feb 09, 2012 @ 01:04:47
give you medical advice about liver disease is your doctor. Best thing we can do is recommend perhaps a good doctor if you need a second…
jibran
Feb 09, 2012 @ 08:15:45
This is a fantastic website and I can not recommend you guys enough. Full of useful resource and great layout very easy on the eyes. Please do keep up this great work. <a href="http://www.dvdsreleasedates.com/">new on dvd</a>
dubai business consultants
Feb 11, 2012 @ 07:33:58
You need to understand that the way you imagine the users will determine how useful a journalist you will be.
Ephedrin
Feb 11, 2012 @ 13:14:13
It was given to French students, but it is really intended for anyone studying journalism today, or attempting to re-learn it.
Josephine
Feb 12, 2012 @ 09:21:39
but it is really intended for anyone studying journalism today, or attempting to re-learn it.