Scripting News: Opening the newsroom, Step 1 (Scripting News)
jfobes
· 10 months ago
Seems like the right energy/intent. However, plan needs to add more flexibility, because experts won't likely be able to work like full-time employees. Resistance will be met from reporters first, editors second, because plan forces a new reporting team and journalistic philosophy.
dave
· 10 months ago
People do. You'd be amazed at the caliber of people who show up at fellows programs at major universities. You think they're getting paid to do the work -- they aren't.
jfobes
· 10 months ago
OK, if you get that level participation at univ level. On the street, most impassioned, thoughtful volunteers have more limited time. But no matter, the principle is the same, and way cool: pro/am collab, enhanced by Internet's directives -- report, search & aggregate (better than "search and destroy," no?).
anonontheashram
· 10 months ago
Where's the value proposition to my readers, financial stake holders and employees, Dave? Go ahead and break the rules bubbi. but first you have to fund and produce your own media outlet., Defining yourself publicly as a "reporter" doesn't pass muster with sources, Dave, you have to dig in provie you can be trusted and gain acceptance among various peer groups.
Good luck, Dave! Jim Forbes
dave
· 10 months ago
Of course I've funded and produced my own media outlet Jim, and please stop condescending, you're smart, but you're not the only smart guy here.
anonontheashram
· 10 months ago
"condescending?" I think not.But I am very realistic about it Dave. I did it for 35 years. I started my own publication, got funding and made a profit in the sale of thatr property. The last two sentences of my post are Godspell truth in media. And over the years i"ve had to deal with "instant" reporters enough times that I have a lot of experience with it. Never said I was "smart." Never ever defined myself that way. I was, according to my peers, "tenacious and bull-dogged" when it came to chasing stories and I specialized in "eneterprise reporting"-- where you look for leads outside the bullseye and then follow those logically to the target. It's that career defining skill specifically that is taught in real life newsrooms. i learned it first at a small SoCal daily and refined it in a much larger outlet in SoCal I enjoyed your post a great deal! thanks for the reply, David. Best, jimF
dave
· 10 months ago
At the risk of being a bit condescending myself (for which I apologize in advance) -- all that experience and 50 cents used to get you a subway token in NY, but now it gets you bupkis -- bubby. :-)
News in the future won't be like it was in the past. Tattoo that on your forehead, put a post-it on your monitor. We're all going to be writing the news, so let's get started. And let's preserve the authority of those big brands, or else we're just going to have to invent some new ones.
anonontheashram
· 10 months ago
Dave, I was writing news that got picked up by CNN and ABC as six homes were burning to the ground on my street during the Witch Creek Fire here in Escondido. Are bloggers being read and picked up by the mainstream media. hell yes they are. Did I have persistent connectivity during my firestorm blogging period? Why yes I did. Will affordable persistent connectivity be a big force in your transformational model? Again yes. And eventhougfh I"m handicapped and now 60, I hope I'm around for it. Something else, If this happens, I hope it revives community news.that's most likely where the first model than can be monetized will be. And in that model, Google could own the world, providing they can get people to sell sub regional demographic market. Soirry if I seemed like an asshole, Dave. Good pair of posts. jimF
dave
· 10 months ago
No problemmo -- it's all good. :-)
malatmals
· 10 months ago
Take it to the extreme. Your mom writes a newsletter and it happens to be on the table when you go over for a visit and some breakfast. Are you going to sit there, eating and drinking her coffee and not be compelled to read it?
Another example - suppose instead of the Seattle newspapers going out of business they opened the doors to anyone - not even experts. Wouldn't you get that paper just to see who showed up to write in it - even if it was complete rubbish? Readers could filter way better than any editor ever could. And so what if the paper started taking on a liberal or conservative bias - couldn't you just go there and write an article yourself saying it was taking on a liberal or conservative bias?
Value proposition to employees: you'll have jobs tomorrow - and maybe some of your laid-off coworkers could help you out while waiting for regrowth (of course doing a good job would increase their odds of success).
Value proposition to readers: articles with a human dimension, greater depth, potential for their opinion to be heard. Place to organize thoughts and coalesce strategies. Readers have spoken and they are leaving and will never return unless something compelling and completely different emerges. Facebook proves there can be something worth reading, even if your friends don't consist of a panel of world renown experts with flawless journalistic integrity and skill.
Value proposition to financial stakeholders: What are you still doing here? You should have left long ago. You should have bought like a million lbs. of cheese a year ago (because I just saw a 2 lb brick of Tillamook on the shelf for over $14). Oh but wait, instead of folding up shop and saying sorry for loosing all those millions, we have one last plan. And well it might work because none of us thought it up. It came from a grassroots outside-the-box effort of a lot of people who for some [crazy] reason genuinely care about the news - kind of like you did (do?).
Dave asked yesterday in twitter - what if the nut has been cracked? Would anyone listen? Which got me thinking that the nut probably has been cracked. Maybe not even by us. Maybe someone out there is screaming out the solution and all we need is a way to find them. I keep finding more screamers out there but it might help to get them all on the same page.
andrew_feinberg
· 10 months ago
Dave,
You are halfway there. But you're not seeing the true problem that plagues so many of today's news outlets -- the death of the "beat reporter" -- the guy (or gal) who knows who to call, who to quote, and how to tell the story in a succinct, accurate way without making the news organization part of the story. The metaphorical fly on the wall.
Take, for instance, David Simon's book on the year he spent with the Baltimore Police Department's homicide unit. Yes, the one that inspired not one -- but two -- t.v. shows. In describing the process he used in writing the book, he says he became "part of the furniture."
Not only did Simon become part of the furniture, he also became an expert on his assigned beat. And when things happened, he knew how to write it in a disinterested manner, and to get enough from the "real" experts to give the story context from all sides. That's the job. To be part of the furniture. If you do it right, you don't get noticed. And because you don't get noticed, you get trusted. Because it's not about you, if you do it right. Circular, I know. But that's how it is.
I think you are confusing the "news organization" with the phenomenon of the "celebrity reporters" you mostly see as talking heads on cable news. They work for the Times, or the Post, or (here in DC) Politico or Roll Call or Congressional Quarterly. They're good at their jobs. And until recently, you would probably pass them on the street and have no clue as to their identity or profession.
But the 24/7 Cable News Beast needs talking heads, and the people who know the most about things are generally either the "experts" or the print reporters who have managed to not lose their jobs. And once they go on T.V. and start talking about the story, in your mind they've become part of the story. That's not their fault, and it's not your fault, either.
You've offered an interesting solution to something. But what problem does your solution solve? What does breaking "as many of the rules of the news business without breaking the one sacred rule..." have to do with seeing "the news organizations as part of the story with a critical eye?"
What don't you trust, and how can "experts" make you trust it more?
dave
· 10 months ago
I'm not trying to solve anything Andrew -- what I am trying to do is move the ball forward in a direction that I'm pretty sure will work, because to a certain extent it's already working.
Pretty sure the news biz is going to be very different in the future from the past. But in some ways it'll be better. Let's enhance those ways. I believe in accepting reality and going with it and not spending a lot of time lamenting what's past. What's gained by that?
andrew_feinberg
· 10 months ago
I'm not so sure I'm "lamenting" anything as questioning your definition of how "experts" should be used as a best practice in journalism.
Spend enough time reporting on a subject and you become pretty expert. But that doesn't make it OK to offer an opinion. It just makes you more aware of what is important and what is not.
The problem with news isn't the stories that get told, it's the stories that get missed because reporters don't know what to look for because they haven't invested enough time in the subject. Bringing in subject matter experts won't fill the cracks, because the people who go after the news are generally of an entirely different breed than the people who become part of the news themselves.
dave
· 10 months ago
Hope you read the followup piece. You're coming from Sacramento heading east. I guess from what you say we'll have to start in Omaha and head west.
cshotton
· 10 months ago
I'd agree -- partially. I've watched the local weekly newspapers (used to be dailies) suffer as the kid reporters with the energy to delve into local stories all "graduate" to daily newspaper and magazine work. It is very hard to find timely, accurate local news anymore. The critical mass isn't there to collect and distribute it the way national and international stories get hounded.
That said, I have always felt the problem is the distribution mechanism. Newspapers have had a solid, wide-spread existence for 3 centuries on the marvel of the printing press. Nick Negroponte said it best in "Being Digital" that industries die when moving physical goods (atoms) can suddenly be undone by simply moving bits. The newspapers are the prototypical example of this.
I think one thing that would really save the industry would be a technology leap in electronic paper. Newspapers were (are?) valuable because of their portability and ubiquity. An eye glasses mounted display or a very convenient e-Paper device would make me much more interested in reading a continuously updated news feed in newspaper format than having to place myself physically in space before a reading device (laptop, desktop) or use a substandard viewer like a smartphone.
The Kindle's odd success shows that given a compelling device, people will voraciously consume content for it. In the presence of a high demand for content, how can the existing newspaper content collection and creation engine not be more than just a little successful? They of all people understand how to generate timely content. They are currently hobbled (destroyed) by the need to distribute it physically and essentially only on a daily news cycle. Given a continuously updating page (think Drudge) and multiple new media types not available in print, you'd think there might be a hint of success in there somewhere.
malatmals
· 10 months ago
lets take this 40000 years in the future. there are no trees hence no newspaper. Kindle is seen as something to start a fire again.
If I want to know what happened at some time or place I need only to think of it and I'll have a fully 3d image surround me, wherever I'm at, complete with commentary, consensus, experimental results and opinions both condensed and raw. As I approach a coffee shop I'll know where every penny of my cup of java is about to go; down to the kid in school, the tax on the owners public transit budget and I'll know what percentage of that tax is going back into my pocket etc. Because your output is expected to balance fully with your input.
There are no politicians, no lawyers, no criminals, no journalists, no banks. Those were all constructs created when people had no knowledge of what others were doing or why or for whom.
Ok, snap back to reality. Isn't the 'journalist' just the eyes and ears of everything? Do we need investigative reporting when so much is open? Wouldn't we get more benefit now from a million average joe's than a 1000 overworked Pulitzer prize winners? Shouldn't journalists be compiling, distilling, displaying data in a million different ways? Recording what worked and what didn't? More at scientists than english professors. Maybe there's room for 'information gatherers' as well as 'information distillers' Why wouldn't journalists want all the help they could possibly get in any way shape or form? I didn't see an editor in the Hypercamp scenario.
Isn't "problem solving" the issue here whether its journalism, the american auto industry or politics? I just look at who's solved most of our problems to this point. Science. And I look at who went into business, non-scientists... and I see a correlation.
Dave Two things right with this idea: - the community experts will leave the experiment with an insiders knowledge of - and connections within - the newspaper biz, which will make them far, far more effective at getting their voices/ideas heard in the future. Win. - Their expertise will deeply enrich the quality of the reporting (if you've found the right people) and teach the newsroom an awful lot about the subject. Win Two things wrong with this idea: - In most fields/beats/ongoing stories, the very people you'd want to pluck for this experiment are the least likely to participate - because they are already highly effective, deeply involved, and probably most of them couldn't afford to work for free for a month. Fail - We'd have a very, very hard time convincing readers that these experts were engaging in journalism, as opposed to advocacy - there's a reason reporters are supposed to stay out of the story.
Your idea partly mirrors an ongoing experiment I began at my newspaper. Before moving out of the newsroom on a series of technology-related projects in 2007 I had spent two years building a "poverty" beat for my paper. One of the most successful parts of the beat was a blog "No Excuse" that I used to gather together a community of folks - in poverty, fighting poverty, etc. When I moved onto my other projects I approached my editors with a novel idea - why not turn the blog over to the community? They agreed, I put out a call and got about a dozen volunteer bloggers stepping forward. I gave them 2 hours of training, assigned them an editor who would do what editors do and off they went. It was still the newspaper's blog, but not it was a group-authored blog and none of the authors were journalists. I've learned a lot from this experiment. The blog is still going (http://poverty.thespec.com) but it has really struggled to achieve the level of influence, the quality of conversation - the impact - it once had. Lot of reasons for this, i think, but one of the most important is this: while I ran it - it was THE PAPER. It had the newspaper's implicit authority behind it. And the fact that the city's big newspaper was paying attention to poverty issues meant that those issues, and the people working on them, were validated. That's the "up" side of the authority the paper wields. One of the things our experiment suggests is that when you give that authority away, share it, you risk diluting it to the point where it loses its value. This is a great conversation to have, and the only way to advance it is to try things, to make the mistakes, learn from them and try again. Fail early, fail cheap.
Michael_Josefowicz
· 10 months ago
Great discussion. My couple of cents... "- In most fields/beats/ongoing stories, the very people you'd want to pluck for this experiment are the least likely to participate - because they are already highly effective, deeply involved, and probably most of them couldn't afford to work for free for a month. Fail"
Experts usually suffer from "If you only listened to me, then ...." They also build their personal brands by being quoted in the media. A personal + a monetizable incentive that might move it to a "win"
- We'd have a very, very hard time convincing readers that these experts were engaging in journalism, as opposed to advocacy - there's a reason reporters are supposed to stay out of the story.
Since most people, most of the time don't read. They scan and search, this may be true for a niche audience. There is a real question of how much authority media has been able to salvage after a decade of mostly rewriting press releases and repeating the headline du jour. I think that most recent "who do you trust" public surveys, puts journalists down near the bottom.
Agreed that there is some residual authority and it differs in different regions. But the issue is as much regaining authority as diluting authority.
"What does breaking "as many of the rules of the news business without breaking the one sacred rule..." have to do with seeing "the news organizations as part of the story with a critical eye?"
Outside experts, who are not mostly interested in furthering their brand, hard to find, provide a critical viewpoint. If two experts diagree even better. The journalist's job is to move the conversation forward. Clarify for the reader where exactly the disagreement lies. In best case, the journo supplies new facts to bear on the expert analysis.
"Newspapers were (are?) valuable because of their portability and ubiquity."
Yes, but physical newspapers have an additional defensible value. They are the best search platforms in physical space yet to be invented. The double page spread of a broadsheet provides a much larger field of vision than any electronic device. Compare and contrast, the engine that leads to new ways of looking at the world is much easier in print, than on a screen..
"Readers could filter way better than any editor ever could."
That might be true in the aggregate because sooner or later the different biases cancel each other out. But in any individual case, it takes an experienced well trained editor to separate the signal from the noise.
"Value proposition to readers: articles with a human dimension, greater depth, potential for their opinion to be heard. "
Everybody wants to be heard. But how many people are worth listening to? I think I read that the overall average readership of a blog is 1.3. It's the everybody has a story to tell, but very,very few have a story that other people want to hear.
"because experts won't likely be able to work like full-time employees." Exactly! They don't have to waste their time going to meetings, filling out forms, and worrying about whether their jobs are secure. Given the right communication ecology, that's the feature, not the bug.
Michael Fraase
· 10 months ago
Okay, call me stupid but why in the world would a recognized expert give up four weeks to donate time to a news operation? Unless, of course, she has an agenda. And where does that get us?
I work as an editor in a higher-ed environment and I work with a lot of design experts every day. Very few of them consider making their work understandable to a general, intelligent audience worth anything at all -- let alone four weeks of their lives. Of course, that's higher-ed and only one set of disciplines. YMMV.
dave
· 10 months ago
I would do it for the opportunity to learn.
Keith F
· 9 months ago
When I read the title of this post about "opening the newsroom," my immediate thought was to open the original source materials the newsroom generates. The newspaper could write the article it wants to write, but also put up the entire audio of all the interviews that went into the article as well on a central site or as additional "footnote" type links following the article.
Then the site software could allow others to reference snippets of the same audio for other purposes, and write more articles from the same source material. Fact checking the experts. Fact checking the reporter's representation of the interview. Pulling out other interesting parts of the interview that weren't relevant to the original article but worth discussing on their own.
It's a bit like what happens today with blogs commenting on news articles. The article gets published and then bloggers excerpt and pick it apart, augmenting or arguing as they wish. However the article is a distillation of lots of content that the reporter waded through. Most of the source material (99%?) is lost and never riffed on by blogs because it isn't accessible to them.
In the new world of news, let's go back to working with the 100% instead of the 1%. This will enable the world to get a lot more value out of the news gatherers than they do today. And perhaps if the news gatherers can deliver more value, they will be considered more valuable. Perhaps you won't refuse to be interviewed anymore if the article on texting at weddings becomes one of 20 different articles your interview generates...
All Comments
programs at major universities. You think they're getting paid to do the
work -- they aren't.
Go ahead and break the rules bubbi. but first you have to fund and produce your own media outlet., Defining yourself publicly as a "reporter" doesn't pass muster with sources, Dave, you have to dig in provie you can be trusted and gain acceptance among various peer groups.
Good luck, Dave!
Jim Forbes
condescending, you're smart, but you're not the only smart guy here.
I think not.But I am very realistic about it Dave. I did it for 35 years. I started my own publication, got funding and made a profit in the sale of thatr property. The last two sentences of my post are Godspell truth in media. And over the years i"ve had to deal with "instant" reporters enough times that I have a lot of experience with it.
Never said I was "smart." Never ever defined myself that way.
I was, according to my peers, "tenacious and bull-dogged" when it came to chasing stories and I specialized in "eneterprise reporting"-- where you look for leads outside the bullseye and then follow those logically to the target. It's that career defining skill specifically that is taught in real life newsrooms. i learned it first at a small SoCal daily and refined it in a much larger outlet in SoCal
I enjoyed your post a great deal!
thanks for the reply, David.
Best,
jimF
advance) -- all that experience and 50 cents used to get you a subway token
in NY, but now it gets you bupkis -- bubby. :-)
News in the future won't be like it was in the past. Tattoo that on your
forehead, put a post-it on your monitor. We're all going to be writing the
news, so let's get started. And let's preserve the authority of those big
brands, or else we're just going to have to invent some new ones.
Are bloggers being read and picked up by the mainstream media. hell yes they are.
Did I have persistent connectivity during my firestorm blogging period? Why yes I did.
Will affordable persistent connectivity be a big force in your transformational model? Again yes.
And eventhougfh I"m handicapped and now 60, I hope I'm around for it.
Something else, If this happens, I hope it revives community news.that's most likely where the first model than can be monetized will be. And in that model, Google could own the world, providing they can get people to sell sub regional demographic market.
Soirry if I seemed like an asshole, Dave.
Good pair of posts.
jimF
Another example - suppose instead of the Seattle newspapers going out of business they opened the doors to anyone - not even experts. Wouldn't you get that paper just to see who showed up to write in it - even if it was complete rubbish? Readers could filter way better than any editor ever could. And so what if the paper started taking on a liberal or conservative bias - couldn't you just go there and write an article yourself saying it was taking on a liberal or conservative bias?
Value proposition to employees: you'll have jobs tomorrow - and maybe some of your laid-off coworkers could help you out while waiting for regrowth (of course doing a good job would increase their odds of success).
Value proposition to readers: articles with a human dimension, greater depth, potential for their opinion to be heard. Place to organize thoughts and coalesce strategies. Readers have spoken and they are leaving and will never return unless something compelling and completely different emerges. Facebook proves there can be something worth reading, even if your friends don't consist of a panel of world renown experts with flawless journalistic integrity and skill.
Value proposition to financial stakeholders: What are you still doing here? You should have left long ago. You should have bought like a million lbs. of cheese a year ago (because I just saw a 2 lb brick of Tillamook on the shelf for over $14). Oh but wait, instead of folding up shop and saying sorry for loosing all those millions, we have one last plan. And well it might work because none of us thought it up. It came from a grassroots outside-the-box effort of a lot of people who for some [crazy] reason genuinely care about the news - kind of like you did (do?).
Dave asked yesterday in twitter - what if the nut has been cracked? Would anyone listen? Which got me thinking that the nut probably has been cracked. Maybe not even by us. Maybe someone out there is screaming out the solution and all we need is a way to find them. I keep finding more screamers out there but it might help to get them all on the same page.
You are halfway there. But you're not seeing the true problem that plagues so many of today's news outlets -- the death of the "beat reporter" -- the guy (or gal) who knows who to call, who to quote, and how to tell the story in a succinct, accurate way without making the news organization part of the story. The metaphorical fly on the wall.
Take, for instance, David Simon's book on the year he spent with the Baltimore Police Department's homicide unit. Yes, the one that inspired not one -- but two -- t.v. shows. In describing the process he used in writing the book, he says he became "part of the furniture."
Not only did Simon become part of the furniture, he also became an expert on his assigned beat. And when things happened, he knew how to write it in a disinterested manner, and to get enough from the "real" experts to give the story context from all sides. That's the job. To be part of the furniture. If you do it right, you don't get noticed. And because you don't get noticed, you get trusted. Because it's not about you, if you do it right. Circular, I know. But that's how it is.
I think you are confusing the "news organization" with the phenomenon of the "celebrity reporters" you mostly see as talking heads on cable news. They work for the Times, or the Post, or (here in DC) Politico or Roll Call or Congressional Quarterly. They're good at their jobs. And until recently, you would probably pass them on the street and have no clue as to their identity or profession.
But the 24/7 Cable News Beast needs talking heads, and the people who know the most about things are generally either the "experts" or the print reporters who have managed to not lose their jobs. And once they go on T.V. and start talking about the story, in your mind they've become part of the story. That's not their fault, and it's not your fault, either.
You've offered an interesting solution to something. But what problem does your solution solve? What does breaking "as many of the rules of the news business without breaking the one sacred rule..." have to do with seeing "the news organizations as part of the story with a critical eye?"
What don't you trust, and how can "experts" make you trust it more?
the ball forward in a direction that I'm pretty sure will work, because to a
certain extent it's already working.
Pretty sure the news biz is going to be very different in the future from
the past. But in some ways it'll be better. Let's enhance those ways. I
believe in accepting reality and going with it and not spending a lot of
time lamenting what's past. What's gained by that?
Spend enough time reporting on a subject and you become pretty expert. But that doesn't make it OK to offer an opinion. It just makes you more aware of what is important and what is not.
The problem with news isn't the stories that get told, it's the stories that get missed because reporters don't know what to look for because they haven't invested enough time in the subject. Bringing in subject matter experts won't fill the cracks, because the people who go after the news are generally of an entirely different breed than the people who become part of the news themselves.
east. I guess from what you say we'll have to start in Omaha and head west.
That said, I have always felt the problem is the distribution mechanism. Newspapers have had a solid, wide-spread existence for 3 centuries on the marvel of the printing press. Nick Negroponte said it best in "Being Digital" that industries die when moving physical goods (atoms) can suddenly be undone by simply moving bits. The newspapers are the prototypical example of this.
I think one thing that would really save the industry would be a technology leap in electronic paper. Newspapers were (are?) valuable because of their portability and ubiquity. An eye glasses mounted display or a very convenient e-Paper device would make me much more interested in reading a continuously updated news feed in newspaper format than having to place myself physically in space before a reading device (laptop, desktop) or use a substandard viewer like a smartphone.
The Kindle's odd success shows that given a compelling device, people will voraciously consume content for it. In the presence of a high demand for content, how can the existing newspaper content collection and creation engine not be more than just a little successful? They of all people understand how to generate timely content. They are currently hobbled (destroyed) by the need to distribute it physically and essentially only on a daily news cycle. Given a continuously updating page (think Drudge) and multiple new media types not available in print, you'd think there might be a hint of success in there somewhere.
If I want to know what happened at some time or place I need only to think of it and I'll have a fully 3d image surround me, wherever I'm at, complete with commentary, consensus, experimental results and opinions both condensed and raw. As I approach a coffee shop I'll know where every penny of my cup of java is about to go; down to the kid in school, the tax on the owners public transit budget and I'll know what percentage of that tax is going back into my pocket etc. Because your output is expected to balance fully with your input.
There are no politicians, no lawyers, no criminals, no journalists, no banks. Those were all constructs created when people had no knowledge of what others were doing or why or for whom.
Ok, snap back to reality. Isn't the 'journalist' just the eyes and ears of everything? Do we need investigative reporting when so much is open? Wouldn't we get more benefit now from a million average joe's than a 1000 overworked Pulitzer prize winners? Shouldn't journalists be compiling, distilling, displaying data in a million different ways? Recording what worked and what didn't? More at scientists than english professors. Maybe there's room for 'information gatherers' as well as 'information distillers' Why wouldn't journalists want all the help they could possibly get in any way shape or form? I didn't see an editor in the Hypercamp scenario.
Isn't "problem solving" the issue here whether its journalism, the american auto industry or politics? I just look at who's solved most of our problems to this point. Science. And I look at who went into business, non-scientists... and I see a correlation.
Have you seen http://www.examiner.com/about_examiner/? They are getting local people to blog and write news for them for the share of the online ad revenue.
Two things right with this idea:
- the community experts will leave the experiment with an insiders knowledge of - and connections within - the newspaper biz, which will make them far, far more effective at getting their voices/ideas heard in the future. Win.
- Their expertise will deeply enrich the quality of the reporting (if you've found the right people) and teach the newsroom an awful lot about the subject. Win
Two things wrong with this idea:
- In most fields/beats/ongoing stories, the very people you'd want to pluck for this experiment are the least likely to participate - because they are already highly effective, deeply involved, and probably most of them couldn't afford to work for free for a month. Fail
- We'd have a very, very hard time convincing readers that these experts were engaging in journalism, as opposed to advocacy - there's a reason reporters are supposed to stay out of the story.
Your idea partly mirrors an ongoing experiment I began at my newspaper. Before moving out of the newsroom on a series of technology-related projects in 2007 I had spent two years building a "poverty" beat for my paper. One of the most successful parts of the beat was a blog "No Excuse" that I used to gather together a community of folks - in poverty, fighting poverty, etc. When I moved onto my other projects I approached my editors with a novel idea - why not turn the blog over to the community? They agreed, I put out a call and got about a dozen volunteer bloggers stepping forward. I gave them 2 hours of training, assigned them an editor who would do what editors do and off they went. It was still the newspaper's blog, but not it was a group-authored blog and none of the authors were journalists.
I've learned a lot from this experiment. The blog is still going (http://poverty.thespec.com) but it has really struggled to achieve the level of influence, the quality of conversation - the impact - it once had.
Lot of reasons for this, i think, but one of the most important is this: while I ran it - it was THE PAPER. It had the newspaper's implicit authority behind it. And the fact that the city's big newspaper was paying attention to poverty issues meant that those issues, and the people working on them, were validated. That's the "up" side of the authority the paper wields.
One of the things our experiment suggests is that when you give that authority away, share it, you risk diluting it to the point where it loses its value.
This is a great conversation to have, and the only way to advance it is to try things, to make the mistakes, learn from them and try again. Fail early, fail cheap.
"- In most fields/beats/ongoing stories, the very people you'd want to pluck for this experiment are the least likely to participate - because they are already highly effective, deeply involved, and probably most of them couldn't afford to work for free for a month. Fail"
Experts usually suffer from "If you only listened to me, then ...."
They also build their personal brands by being quoted in the media.
A personal + a monetizable incentive that might move it to a "win"
- We'd have a very, very hard time convincing readers that these experts were engaging in journalism, as opposed to advocacy - there's a reason reporters are supposed to stay out of the story.
Since most people, most of the time don't read. They scan and search, this may be true for a niche audience. There is a real question of how much authority media has been able to salvage after a decade of mostly rewriting press releases and repeating the headline du jour.
I think that most recent "who do you trust" public surveys, puts journalists down near the bottom.
Agreed that there is some residual authority and it differs in different regions. But the issue is as much regaining authority as diluting authority.
"What does breaking "as many of the rules of the news business without breaking the one sacred rule..." have to do with seeing "the news organizations as part of the story with a critical eye?"
Outside experts, who are not mostly interested in furthering their brand, hard to find, provide a critical viewpoint. If two experts diagree even better. The journalist's job is to move the conversation forward. Clarify for the reader where exactly the disagreement lies. In best case, the journo supplies new facts to bear on the expert analysis.
"Newspapers were (are?) valuable because of their portability and ubiquity."
Yes, but physical newspapers have an additional defensible value. They are the best search platforms in physical space yet to be invented. The double page spread of a broadsheet provides a much larger field of vision than any electronic device. Compare and contrast, the engine that leads to new ways of looking at the world is much easier in print, than on a screen..
"Readers could filter way better than any editor ever could."
That might be true in the aggregate because sooner or later the different biases cancel each other out. But in any individual case, it takes an experienced well trained editor to separate the signal from the noise.
"Value proposition to readers: articles with a human dimension, greater depth, potential for their opinion to be heard. "
Everybody wants to be heard. But how many people are worth listening to? I think I read that the overall average readership of a blog is 1.3. It's the everybody has a story to tell, but very,very few have a story that other people want to hear.
"because experts won't likely be able to work like full-time employees."
Exactly! They don't have to waste their time going to meetings, filling out forms, and worrying about whether their jobs are secure. Given the right communication ecology, that's the feature, not the bug.
I work as an editor in a higher-ed environment and I work with a lot of design experts every day. Very few of them consider making their work understandable to a general, intelligent audience worth anything at all -- let alone four weeks of their lives. Of course, that's higher-ed and only one set of disciplines. YMMV.
Then the site software could allow others to reference snippets of the same audio for other purposes, and write more articles from the same source material. Fact checking the experts. Fact checking the reporter's representation of the interview. Pulling out other interesting parts of the interview that weren't relevant to the original article but worth discussing on their own.
It's a bit like what happens today with blogs commenting on news articles. The article gets published and then bloggers excerpt and pick it apart, augmenting or arguing as they wish. However the article is a distillation of lots of content that the reporter waded through. Most of the source material (99%?) is lost and never riffed on by blogs because it isn't accessible to them.
In the new world of news, let's go back to working with the 100% instead of the 1%. This will enable the world to get a lot more value out of the news gatherers than they do today. And perhaps if the news gatherers can deliver more value, they will be considered more valuable. Perhaps you won't refuse to be interviewed anymore if the article on texting at weddings becomes one of 20 different articles your interview generates...