Before I go into the why, let’s not bury the lede. I am joining AJ+ as an Executive Producer. Specifically, I’ll be focusing on the app, engagement and social.
It was not easy leaving Circa where I was the Chief Content Officer. As the first non-technical hire I helped set the editorial tone for where Circa is today. I couldn’t be more proud or excited for its future. I am also thankful to Matt, Ben, Arsenio and the entire Circa editorial team. I learned an enormous amount during my time there. Where does one go after working on a project like Circa? As I’ve said before, “creating a news product is how you critique the press today at an institutional level. That’s how you make a statement on what you think the future will feel like.”
I’m always motivated by questions and challenges and part of the appeal of AJ+ is about tackling two big ones head on.
Traditional broadcast media, specifically television based operations, need to figure out their future.
Television is the main source of news for most Americans. Love it or hate it — that’s the situation. But the expertise and skills developed to package news for broadcast mediums don’t necessarily translate to the web and certainly not mobile. I’ve called it the Screenularity. It’s the moment when the functional distinction between the screen in your living room is no different than the screen in your hand or in your lap. When that happens — television news operations will need to compete against the rest of the web. And the question is — are they equipped? Right now, I think the answer is no. But that’s where projects like AJ+ come in.
Engagement, lost but not forgotten
I’ve also recently written about trends in conversations around engagement. From 2001 to roughly 2011 a big thrust in the conversations about how journalism was changing centered around the changing relationship between audience and producer. Jay Rosen calls them “the people formerly known as the audience.” Dan Gillmor wisely pointed out “my readers know more than I do.” These revelations brought on interesting experiments and a golden age in re-thinking the process of journalism to make it more transparent and participatory. Mobile news is now well into its second generation. Flipboard, Zite and Pulse were the first wave with Circa, BreakingNews, YahooNewsDigest and NowThisNews representing a second generation of mobile apps. This new wave is less about aggregation and has a stronger editorial sensibility. As AJ+ enters the fray, it is in position to carry the mantle of engagement that was so important to the journalism conversation on desktop but has not yet been championed in a mobile setting.
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