A few weeks ago I was invited to speak at the Cronkite School of Journalism in Arizona by my friend and mentor Dan Gillmor. It was a gathering of journalism professors from around the country who are going to build their own curriculum to teach entrepreneurial journalism. Dan asked me and Mark Luckie to come speak about our experience going from J-school to startup. It’s a different career path from many and the point is to show professors that it’s a viable path.

Without a doubt it is a real path. I’ve been living it for so long (even before Spot.Us I had been working on “experimental projects”) it doesn’t even seem like a question to me. Sometimes I am looked at as a poster-boy for entrepreneurial journalism. And on those occasions I’m happy to evangelize what is a totally viable path.

But one of the professors at the Cronkite J-school gathering asked a very important and a totally fair question. I’m paraphrasing here: “I know it’s a real path, but it can’t be all butterfly’s and kittens. What are the tradeoffs? What are the hard parts of going down this route? I don’t want to send off students without a healthy dose of reality.”

Sometimes those of us who have drank the entrepreneurial Kool-Aid like to point out success stories and perks without mentioning just what you have to give up to go this route.

I wouldn’t change a thing about the career path I’ve chosen. It has absolutely worked out for me. But if I were to advise a younger me – I would be remiss in my egoistic duties if I didn’t convey both sides of the question “should you go out on a different kind of career path.” There are plenty of positive things I would say. I often shout out about how awesome it is to start your own project, blog, company, nonprofit, etc. But that’s not the purpose of THIS blog post. I’m playing the contrarian so that our Carnival isn’t one big “yes we can”-fest. With that in mind there are THREE big areas that somebody who is thinking of going out on this path should keep in mind.

1. There is a time burden

I used to joke “that the Internet doesn’t sleep and so neither can I.” I’ve gained some wisdom on how to balance certain aspects of work/life but if you have gone out on your own to start something up it is not a 9-5 job. It is not a Monday-Friday job. “What you gain in freedom, you lose in free time.”

2. There is a mental burden

The buck stops with you. There is no “boss” to complain about. If things have taken a turn for the worse, the only person you can blame is yourself. In fact, as other people start to rely on you for a paycheck it becomes an even bigger mental burden. You don’t want to let anybody down. You must learn to live with that mental pressure. What you gain in potential reward you lose in mental security.

3. There is a path burden

It is a career path. Once you start walking down that road, it is difficult to go back. When I made the choice to go down this path I was a hard working tech-reporter. I have followed some of my tech-reporting peers and admired their careers. In fact, my replacement at Wired is still there holding down a solid job. It is a path I could have gone. If I wanted I could still go back to being a reporter/writer – but after several years being out of that game, I’d have to do some backtracking. I’d have to work underneath that guy at Wired (ironically enough, I interviewed/hired him). I’d have to sharpen my skills again. It is difficult to go back. Moreover – you might not want to go back. There is a bit of the “take the blue pill or the red pill” aspect to striking it out on your own.

As you probably picked up – there is an upside to all of these downsides. As with most things in life it isn’t black/white. There are shades of grey and you have to be prepared to paint with those shades. It’s amazing what you can do with only a few colors.

(image credit)

I am once again on the advisory board for the SXSW Accelerator which is in its fourth edition to showcase some of the web’s most exciting innovations. And here’s the kicker – it could be your startup!

This event provides an outlet for companies, (and there is a specific news category), to present to a panel of industry experts, early adopters, and representatives from the angel / VC community.  Past judges have included Tim Draper of DFJ, Chris Hughes of Facebook and Jumo, Paul Graham of Y Combinator, Craig Newmark of Craiglist, Robert Scoble of Rackspace and Scobleizer, Jeff Pulver of 140 Conference, Chris Shipley of Demo and Guidewire, and Tom Conrad of Pandora.

We invite your company to join us for this incredible event, as we highlight the technology market’s most impressive new innovations.  The application deadline is Friday, November 18, and the event itself will be March 12-14, 2012 in Austin, TX.

Please apply at http://sxsw.com/interactive/accelerator. Then let me know that you’ve applied, and I’ll do what I can to help you get in!

Let’s see some great news startups apply and win the SXSW Accelerator!

One could argue that this is one reason why journalism and the media are so important. They set the agenda for local and national conversations. It gives us space and a reason to face ourselves, confront topics and converse with our neighbors. With the help of the Whitman Institute sponsorship Spot.Us is exploring how we talk about the news with our colleagues, what we discuss and why. The results of our last 200 person survey are below with some analysis. See the first Whitman Institute survey here.

Our next Whitman Institute survey just went up. You can go to Spot.Us and click “free credits” on any pitch. Taking the survey not only informs what we know about how you think/use the media – but funds an the independent reporting project of your choice!

As always it’s important to note that Spot.Us is not a polling company, but these do represent real answers from unique individuals.

Our first question was just to see if indeed people do discuss the news with family, co-workers or friends. Only 1 percent of respondents didn’t discuss the news at all. The majority (57 percent) of responders say they discussed the news on a daily basis with another 25 percent saying they discussed the news “a few times” in the past week.

The next question we wanted to ask was about the nature of the conversation. So much of our political discourse is polarized. We wanted to get a sense of whether or not that was the case in our every day lives too. Do conversations around the news get too heated? Or are we simply talking with folks we already agree with avoiding any debate or confrontation?

According to the survey results about half of the conversations we have on the news are “a back and forth conversation, cordial with disagreement.” Only 5 percent report having a heated debate with another 32 percent saying that the conversations were cordial because “we saw eye-to-eye on the issues.”

There are many ways to interpret these results. That half of our conversations are cordial with disagreements does show a strong contrast with what we are presented on television, where almost every conversation turns into a shouting match. And yet roughly a third of our conversations are with people that we already agree with. While I think we could use less polarized bickering on cable television, perhaps we could use some more heated (but healthy) debate in our everyday conversations?

All bar graph results mean that individuals could choose multiple answers. This means the total possible number of ‘votes’ was out of 200 instead of a percentage in a pie chart of 100.

When we asked individuals who they discussed the news with, it turns out that the winner was “friends.” Nearly 80 percent of all respondents or 157 individuals discussed the news with their friends in the past week. Family was a close second and only 94 individuals (nearly 50 percent) discussed the news with co-workers.

Something the graph below doesn’t show was where answers overlapped. Almost all individuals that discussed the news with co-workers also discussed it with friends. If you discussed the news with family you were more likely to also discuss it with your friends than co-workers. It was these two predispositions that allowed “friends” to come out as the most popular answer.  Only 25 percent of respondents felt comfortable discussing the news with all three types equally.

Funny enough the most popular “other” example that was given was – strangers; either in person (on a bus) or online.

The survey results here were surprising because it goes against everything we hear about news preferences online. Instead of niche news (topical, including sports) being the most popular, it was the least. Perhaps because Spot.Us is a self-selecting community the most popular news to discuss was national and local news with international news following right behind. This could also be because during the survey the debt ceiling news was reaching a fever pitch and international markets are in turmoil.

The immediate positive aspect of this pitch is obvious. When discussing the news we feel stimulated. But because these answers are not mutually exclusive we also feel anxious, depressed and invigorated almost equally.

A total of 41 individuals or 20 percent of respondents said they only felt either depressed or anxious. Meanwhile 90 individuals or 45 percent felt either only invigorated or stimulated (51 individuals ONLY felt stimulated).

The news we discussed was overwhelmingly abstracted from our deeply personal lives. The vast majority of the news we discussed impacts us in a broad sense ie: the national debt ceiling. But some of the open ended answers about what news we were reading shed light on this further. The 20 percent who discussed the news that did have a direct impact on their life felt a deep connection to the stories whether it was Carmageddon in Los Angeles or a local shooting.

OPEN ANSWERS: “Tell us about the story you discussed.”

These are the full answers about news stories discussed by Spot.Us community members, but their names have been withheld.

What DON’T I discuss? I’m obsessed with the Murdoch takedown. OBSESSED. I have discussed the debt crisis, local crime, the governor of my state and what he’s up to…I’m a big chatty newsy person. I love to talk about all the news all the time.

Carmageddon, obviously. Even my parents back in Boston had heard about it. I was actually kind of amazed it was national news, so we talked about that.

The women’s Soccer World Cup, the News of the World scandal,and a local issue concerning the merger of my city’s CVB and Office of Cultural Affairs

Michele Bachman and the catholic church

Schools, government (FL), peak oil, doom

Rupert Murdoch’s impact on politics in the UK and the US. The US national debt. Republicans.

Discussing impact of sunspot activity, global weirding + local weather

Political wrangling going on in Washinggton.

One story was about Seattle City Council passing an ordinance allowing food trucks on streets and not just private lots. Another was about the Women’s World Cup final game. Another was about the Seattle Sounders match.

Too many to mention. one that still stands out is a radio show on the situation of human trafficking, and the apathy of many that goes along. also the bay area seems to be an international hub of sorts for such illegal activities. who knows about such?

Police shooting of 19-year-old boy by SF Muni police.

I discuss news stories at least twice a day. Usually more often. This particular news story is regarding the fires in the Southwest, specifically New Mexico. Our drought. And the causes of the fires and drought = climate change.
Discussing news is helpful….it informs life and makes us better, engaged people.

Without trying to add to the preamble – This exercise (which will continue in February) is truly inspiring, humbling and I believe a great way for us to mingle with colleagues. Future hosts might not be able to summarize EVER post. But for this first few – I will attempt to try.

Let the Carnival Begin!

Yin: I’d like to start by highlighting Brian Boyer‘s post as a benediction. What happens in a sci-fi future. “What is media literacy in that world? What does journalism become, when everything is ephemeral, when the Tweets wash over your mind, neighbor to your own thoughts?”

Yang: Contrast this with Chris Wink from Technically Media. You’d be hard pressed to find somebody who loves Philadelphia as much as this guy and it shows in his post which tries to imagine what Temple University would look like now if it took on the mantle of being an information hub in its communities today.

Re-Yin: Matt Thompson, who has a voice of gold, points to an interesting future where education itself is revolutionized through the “Wikiversity.” This provides fertile ground upon which college courses can include the community in a two way mutually beneficial relationship. Josh Braun, my old Seed Magazine cohort, brings up similar issues and wonders how this future where online education takes hold might divert University attention to national communities of interest.

Re:Yang: If you’re ever in a Jon Stewart rally Andrew Pergam is a great guide through the crowd. If you want to imagine a world where universities leverage their brick and mortar space in collaboration with newspapers read Andrew’s post. “It all seems so logical: If you want to connect with your neighbors, invite them over.” Megan Taylor chimes in here as well – suggesting that certain courses be open to the community of non-students.

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Yin: Jessica Partnow from Common Language Project gives us the history of her foray into academia as a startup nonprofit adopted by the University of Washington. “And, many meetings and classroom visits and a yearlong trial period later, the CLP’s three cofounders became full-time employees of the University of Washington in September 2010. A year and a half into our partnership, we’re finding a balance that we think could become a model for partnerships between journalists and universities all over the country.”

Yang: Dan Sinker, who I pray has not shaved his beard, gives us a candid look inside the academy from somebody who worked for 13 years at a punk magazine and is now an assistant professor. The post is filled with interesting tidbits including “things are awesome when they’re complicated. And right now, few things are as complicated as being a journalism student.”

Yin: The ever fun Kim Bui from KPCC explains her dive into journalism via the student newsroom. Her post echoes parts of Dan’s in its “best of times worst of times” assessment of curriculum. “I feel for students these days. But I also know that those requests for more knowledge come from this: We need journalists with a sense of experimentation.”

Both Chris O’brien, my virtual neighbor on Farmville, and Adam Tinworth share positive feelings about the position students find themselves in provided that universities become/remain safe heaven for students to try new things and, to be blunt, screw up from time to time.

Student Views

The indefatigable and recently graduated Suzanne Yada had a blossoming of links that give us the students view of j-school in her first post. In her second post (over-achiever) she creates a scenario for how a university program could become its own publisher.

Picking up where Suzanne left off: Lauren ‘future designer of all things cool’ Rabaino started with two questions: ‘Why’ and ‘How’ do universities play a role in our community? In a thought experiment she examined how university information was disseminated before (academic studies, journals) and how it is spread today – directly. “Everyone can find a way to give back to the community in more ways than just publishing information…..The big challenge comes in getting universities to change the way they’ve always shared information. There needs to be incentivization.”

Much like Lauren – Daniel ‘better hire me later in life’ Bachhuber started with the Why and How of universities role. This was a great post – the first four graphs are insight wrapped in clarity. This is followed by sharing specifics and learnings from the much talked about Local East Village NYU journalism project. p.s. Seriously dude, hire me when you’re basically in charge of it all.

Natalie Yemenidjian writes a no holds barred assessment of what you can get from a journalism student and tells her own true story.

Mai Hoang gives honest regrets about her student experience and some recommendations for how programs can institutionally address where it seems she got the short end of the stick. She also points to her experience with Open Journalism and the Open Web, perhaps fitting into Matt Thompson’s post earlier.

From the Professors

While on the opposite side of the academic fence (recent professor) Seth Lewis uses almost the same words as Suzanne Yada, “Create opportunities for students to fail – in a good way.” And that was just one of two direct recommendations Seth makes in his post.

Chris Anderson, also the recent professor, contributed by un-earthing a post he wrote in 2009. Two funny things stand out about this. First: Everything still holds water. Second: I commented on it back then!

Personal hero Steve Fox (at night he fights crime under the name “The Silver Fox”) focuses on media speed advocating for a slow accurate news. As his old boss said “I would rather be second and right than first and wrong.”

Meanwhile Alfred Hermida, if memory serves was an original Carnival-blogger, gave us a view of teaching from the University of British Columbia. Go Canada!

Reading Andy Dickinson always made me smile. It’s probably the delightful British accent (in my mind). This month’s topic set his mind racing, dreaming up an ideal scenario for his students and pacing back and forth about the realities of media literacy training, the benefits, who it’s for and more.

Carrie Brown-Smith has a litany of fantastic to the point recommendations. My personal favorite “consider making riskier hires of younger and digital-savvy folks with big ideas…”

While we often focus on the general big ideas Mark Berkey-Gerard wrote a post that brings to light many of the barriers in between ideas for student journalism and reality. Journalism students need room to make mistakes but the public deserves great reporting the first time around. How can we mitigate these?

Related – Charlie Beckett, a name that I love as it rolls off your tongue, shared a cautious view about the state of media literacy and the barriers that exist to achieving it. “This is not a counsel of despair or pessimism….I agree with the Knight Foundation that we should “integrate digital and media literacy as critical elements for education at all levels through collaboration among federal, state, and local education officials.” But if we do so then it has to be more than programming night schools and lap tops in elementary classrooms.”

Nicole Blanchett Neheli a professor in highlights a program in Dublin called “FOMACS” which she says can be an integral resource for a community. Perhaps it’s a program that has flow under the larger journo-education radar?

Lyn Headley who has to suffer the weather in San Diego shares some insight into the impracticality of academics but how it meets/creates and can even deflate a tension with the uber practicality of journalism.

Jack Rosenberry shares his plans to start the first community-facing student-led journalism work in his community at the University of Rochester. Good luck Jack! Hopefully some of the other posts will help your thinking.

Donica Mensing sees “journalism faculty and students acting as facilitators, connecting communities of particular needs with appropriate faculty and students in the university. In the process, greater two-way information flow will foster more applied and more relevant research and teaching.”

The outlier views

Always the positive contrarian Conor White Sullivan seems to be suggesting that the mission of universities has changed in response to how we view “learning” and what people go to college for. Tuition paying students want: a Network, a coming of age tradition, accreditation, external pressure (get outta your mom’s house) and curriculum. This leaves little room for serving a community. Ideas are shared on what it could look like, but again it requires a re-think of what we call ‘education’ if it’s to serve the broader community.

Related Lisa ‘I quote her too often’ Williams hones right in on the money of universities and frankly – how much of it they have. They’re sheltered from some economic realities. Just like Spiderman; with great power comes great responsibility.

Matt Bernius writes a brief meditation on what Anthropologists can do to increase journalistic activities. As a self-proclaimed “non-journalist” this is an IMPORTANT post for us to look at closely if we expect other disciplines to take up journalistic mantles.

Ying: Fellow Columbia J-school alum Vadmin Lavrusik made a specific recommendation that I conquer with, journalism schools should partner with real world practitioners to give journalism students real experience.

Yang: Eliot Caroom takes the Yang side of student/professional collaborations pointing to various barriers or pitfalls when you partner a university journalism program with a private outside partner.

Sally Duros wins the ‘most reported out’ blog post award. Her contribution includes several quotes from a professor at DePaul University on how growth and change is sometimes stunted within academic institution.

Jack Lail, who I met via the first COJ, shares an historical tid-bit about how in 1994 the University of Tennessee helped play an informing role for the community creating something called KORRnet (which sounds awesomely T-2ish. I’m glad it didn’t become self-aware).

If you feel like you want some visual elements check out Paul Bradshaw’s post which includes a video and slideshow. I particularly liked the section on “community isn’t post code.”

Juana Summers post doesn’t talk about universities because, as she argues, at that point it’s too late. Instead – she hones in on what is possible and should be taught re: media literacy in high-school.

Also focusing on media literacy Will Sullivan, my housemate extraordinaire, pointed to Stonybrook as a leading pioneer in the space. He also offered me a Red Bull to keep me up so I could do this wrap-up.

Finally: Several posts including one from Jason Barnett, Jake Dobkin, Ellyn Angelotti, Victoria Baranetsky and Anneke Toomey were collected in this “confetti” post.

Ryan Sholin, now twice a father (correct?) writes about Santa Cruz. “What happens when thousands of undergraduates looking for a good time seasonally invade a small California town with its ethos firmly planted in 1968 and its economy floating unabated in the real estate bubble of 2004-2007? Find out on the next episode of “Keep Santa Cruz Weird.”

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How fitting…. from their lives.

It’s no surprise that our Canadian friend Craig Silverman focused on a specific aspect of news literacy; bullshit detection. It’s a great read and spot on. “Bullshit, you see, is everywhere.” He finishes with two concrete suggestions – make bullshit literacy (echem… media literacy) a core course for university students and make fact-checking a core component of journalism courses. If you find an error in Craig’s post you win 10 journo-points.

Michael MuckRock Morisey cuts right to the chase with four specific recommendations including a cut of potential intern-ponzi schemes (something that I think is on everyone’s mind) to letting researchers blog directly or even share primary documents.

From Andre Natta a nugget at the end of his post which caught my eye: “The university may just become one of the most trusted voices in the community as the number of outlets continues to rise….”

Harking on this same thought Denise Cheng, who has a smile to light up the room, asks “who are you serving” when it comes to larger universities. Not be outdone her SECOND post focuses on the role of the college newspaper, how it can help serve those communities as well as the students. Take a moment and recall your college newspaper then read Denise’ piece. Makes me nostalgic #journo-nerd.

Steve Outing focuses on the innovation call for univiersities, a fitting call for him to make with his first hand experience running the  Digital Media Test Kitchen at Boulder. Also chiming in for innovation is Hans K. Meyer. “I remember the lessons from MyMissourian and Dr. Clyde Bentley: Universities need to push the journalism envelope when the industry cannot.”

Jacob Caggiano points to some of the interesting work being done in Washington (and also points to Jessica’s Common Language Project). Breaking down Knight Foundation’s specific recommendations we see how a few programs coming from The University of Washington are hitting some of them square on the head.

Michelle Minkoff’s data-driven philosophy might be the cornerstone of the preamble to her post which imagines journalism students not focusing on breaking news but in-depth explainer pieces. It could tie in nicely with both Steve Fox’s and Mark Berkey-Gerard’s questions about where student journalism can go wrong. “But data doesn’t just mean numbers. It’s the solid facts behind what makes a system work.”

Using her little brother as an anecdote Erica Zucco hits home and puts into perspective changes in the media environment children inhabit. Not to be an old grouch, but to point out just want media literacy entails now. I love the HAKAS reference!

Jen Reeves, who has more energy than most, writes about the blessings and curse of working in a newsroom. Again with great power as a journalism teacher comes the responsibility.

In order to foster a strong round-table I wanted to spur conversation among this group BEFORE the event takes place. In an effort to do this – we re-started the Carnival of Journalism. Welcome to the party! The first few rounds are on me!

Below will be my humble contribution as an individual. Soon I’ll do a wrap-up post that links to all the other participants who joined us in discussing this topic and wow WHAT A GROUP! I’m excited to see what happens as the “COJ” moves forward. I’m a big believer in social media, Twitter, Facebook and all our fast moving conversation. My hope is that the COJ might give us space to reflect on larger issues. So wait for the wrap-up post which will appear here and at Carnival of Journalism soon. Then, feel free to digitally meet your fellows carnival goers, mingle, drink, be merry, debate (at a high level of discourse) then go fourth and journalize.

This month’s topic and my humble contribution: The changing role of Universities for the information needs of a community: One of the Knight Commission‘s recommendations is to “Increase the role of higher education…..as hubs of journalistic activity.” Another is to “integrate digital and media literacy as critical elements for education at all levels through collaboration among federal, state, and local education officials.”

My post here will be greatly surpassed by the aggregation of everyone’s thoughts. But since this is my blog – here we go!

Universities have a unique advantage in this “changing media environment.” They are sheltered from economic realities. True – they do have a bottom line, but it is not governed by the same forces. Journalism programs don’t need to focus on the ad-spending rates of print vs. digital because it impacts whether or not a professor will have a job. They focus on it to the extent that it impacts their students lives once they leave the hive. With that advantage comes great responsibility. Yes, just like Spiderman.

In addition to this unique advantage – Universities have a distinct disadvantage. The reporting is done from within a university. When I went to Columbia’s J-school I worked on a project NYC24. It’s a great way to learn skills but the finished content felt as though it was placed behind a glass case – it was museum work. Aside from my parents and other class mates who stared at it – the impact was minimal. Being voted the EIC of this site was like being the hallway monitor (Our EIC went on to be do PR for Karl Rove – not a joke). Combine this with trying to get a call back when you say you’re a journalism student and you’ll understand what I mean by saying – it’s implication and attraction to the rest of the world is null and void. I like programs like News21.org, but I fear it’s more of the same. Now instead of just one j-school website behind a glass wall, we have several j-schools.

Taking those two things into consideration – I would make two specific recommendations for the changing role of Universities in regards to the information needs of a community.

ONE RECOMMENDATION: There are a few University projects that have shed the “museum” feel. In the Bay Mission Local is a bright shinning example. In Los Angeles check out Neon Tommy. I credit it almost completely to Lydia Chavez and Marc Cooper respectively. But since cloning them isn’t a strategy, I’d guess the following elements also helped.

(a. Neither are seen as ‘necessarily’ associated with the university. Rather – the sites have a unique flavor and they ‘happen’ to be associated with a university. Again, this is a tough nut to crack and I think requires individual professors like Marc and Lydia to be given the space and resources to produce independent sounding/standing projects.

(b. Partnering with other news organizations. This is a touchy subject because for some it sounds like student labor to prop up failing organizations – flooding the market with cheap labor so professional journalists can’t get hired. See UC Berkeley’s collaboration with The Bay Citizen. Watch carefully Patch and other universities.

Bottom line: I see almost NO reason why there should be a “student” newspaper at the graduate level. Or why any “student” work should remain such. It’s the real world. If journalists want to complain about pajama bloggers – why not add journalism students to the mix

On a broader level I want to talk about universities outside of j-schools.

RECOMMENDATION TWO: Universities play an important role in their communities beyond just being diploma mills that collect tuition. UC Berkeley is, historically, a great example. (See “Berkeley in the 60′s). In relation to this journalism students should be working with students from history, communication and other departments to train them. Yes, you heard me. Journalism students should be teachers. Journalism is no longer the art of story-telling. It can also be the art of story-enabling. If there was one change I’d want to see in curriculum across the board it would be to envision a class whereby journalism students find ways to get the broader student body involved in media projects. This, I believe, is the biggest change that needs to happen.

Or flip this on its head: History, communication, sociology, etc – all these departments should include journalism into their curriculum. Journalism doesn’t need to be done by big J-Journalism students. At the undergraduate level why isn’t every history major tasked with creating a blog and covering one local issue or partnering with journalism students? After all what is history but really really slow journalism

In short – the first recommendation implies concrete implications from student work. Call it an “Ameri-corp” if you will, although I hate that analogy (hoping Conor from Localocracy picks up this topic as I’ve heard him champion it before).
My second recommendation: We’re too involved in our own journalism programs. Knight (or some other entity with a ton of money) should find a way to lobby/change curriculum in other departments to include elements of journalism. EVERY student should leave college with some experience of reporting and writing.

And for extra credit!

Check out what Jarvis is doing at CUNY. There needs to be more of this. The goal here is not to cover a region, but to innovate. And not just in an academic setting. For some students his class even turned into real funds to start a project. Obviously we can’t do offer that at every journalism program – but we can create space to be creative.

Journalism is an interesting thing to teach in the first place. We call it a craft and yet I have a “Masters in Science” of journalism. It’s everyday history and yet it’s a blue-color practical job. The academics of it and the application of it are two distinct things.
For the sake of how Universities can get involved in the information needs of communities – they have been and always will be hubs. In the 60′s that mean giving a space for picketing. That lead to the shooting at Kent State, a tragedy for sure, but also a national moment. A space for the country to face itself in the mirror. Universities need to provide the same digital space today.

Public media has been on the minds and lips of a lot of Americans. Certainly the last few years have seen a growth in public media across the board from Corporation for Public Broadcasting entities (PBS, NPR) to less formal public media entities like PRX and PRI. Recently, as a follow-up to the work of the Knight Commission Barbara Cochran wrote a policy paper “Rethinking Public Media: Mort Local, More Inclusive, More Interactive.” From the Knight Commission blog post:

At a time when government funding for public broadcasting is hotly debated, Rethinking Public Media: More Local, More Inclusive, More Interactive, a new policy paper by Barbara Cochran, offers five broad strategies and 21 specific recommendations to reform public media.
It’s an excellent piece of reading that breaks down some of the roadblocks and opportunities that lay ahead for public media.

Beyond white papers, however, it’s important that the public be able to speak their mind about public media. That’s why thanks to the support of the Aspen Institute Communications and Society Program, the institutional home of the Knight Commission on the Information needs of communities in a Democracy, Spot.Us surveyed 500 members about the state of public media in their community.

The goal was to find out where public media is strong, weak and what suggestions the public might have for public media. Not only did this survey raise awareness about the growing role of public media, it supported media as well. Every member of our community that took the survey was given $5 in credits to fund the story of their choice on our site.

And The Survey Says….

How Big Is Your Community?
Before we can examine the survey in depth I should remind folks that this is a sponsored survey of a somewhat self-selecting community (and our community is perhaps more media-savvy than other websites). That said, our first question was aimed at getting a sense of where people lived. One of the trends we often hear is that major metropolitan areas are better served by public media than smaller locations. Our survey affirmed this.

Just over 60 percent of respondents were from major metropolitan areas. Another 17 percent were from large cities. Only a handful (12 percent) came from towns with a population of 50,000 or less. Our survey skewed toward major metropolitan areas and in total they were happier with public media than folks in more rural areas. This should be kept in the back of our minds when we dive into the remaining question and answers.

Spot.Us community member Mike Labonte summed up the frustration with public media in small towns when he wrote his suggestion to improve public media in his town: “Presence. The only public media in my city of 70,000 is the local public access cable TV station.”

The next question in our survey allowed for multiple answers: “Who has an influential role in shaping media in your area?” It’s an important question to ask because while the ecosystem continues to change many charge public media with the role to unite various media forces together. The results of this question were interesting proving once again; as much as things have changed — they also stay the same.

Newspapers and national broadcast television were considered influential by the most respondents. Just over 75 percent of people who took the survey selected papers as being influential. Local bloggers garnered 188 votes or just 37 percent of those that took the survey. While that’s still a hefty number, it was the lowest concrete choice (it performed better than “other”) and came in just below “elected officials.”
Community member Laurie Pumper noted: “One small but telling example: Public radio went out of its way to keep a citizen journalism organization from providing livestreaming of a gubernatorial debate in Minnesota. If an organization accepts public funding, I expect better cooperation with other sources of media.”

Next we asked how people got involved in public media. The respondents had three overwhelming answers: Social media, the general website and donating. The overlap between these three was also very strong. Almost everyone who said they donated engaged through the website and social media. Although the reverse trend was not as strong (i.e. somebody who engaged through social media might not donate) there was still a correlation.

In light of the number of respondents who said they volunteer or worked for public media, the number of people who attended events at their local public media station seemed a little low. Getting out the word can be very important as community member Ben Melançon said : “Dedicating the resources to come and ask what’s up, once a month. Taking matters of interest common to multiple local areas they cover and doing very in-depth reports on them.”
Next we got to the heart of the survey: How effective is public media at serving the needs and interests of diverse members of the community? While the responses to this aren’t an abysmal failure, it does show large room for improvement. A total of 11 percent thought public media in their community was doing a poor job of reflecting diversity. The vast majority of responders selected either “good” (33 percent) or “fair” (32 percent). Because these two combine for 65 percent of all responders it’s worth examining the exact language of this answers choice:

• Fair — There are occasional examples of diverse programming, but it’s not the norm.
• Good — While not perfect, there are obvious efforts to make programming more inclusive.

While these lukewarm answers were the majority only a handful of responders thought public media was doing an “excellent” or “very good” job of reflecting a communities diversity.
And then came the meatiest question: “How well do public media do of informing you about local issues?”

Again we find mixed results, but the overall trend was positive. A majority 69 percent said public media was doing either “average” or “above average” at covering local issues. While it’s great to see so few select “poor” (six percent) or “below average” (17 percent), there is still lots of room for improvement when we note that only eight percent of responders thought public media was doing “fantastic.”

In an interesting contrast with an earlier comment, community member Alexis Gonzales said this about the size of a town:

Because I live in a large city, news media — including public media — just don’t cover ‘neighborhood’ issues. Frankly, I stopped expecting them to do otherwise until I spent time in smaller-but-not-that-much-smaller city (Portland for example) and noticed how public media seemed so much closer to and integrated into the local community. I think Public Media could do a better job of covering local issues by reconsidering what is newsworthy … i.e., neighborhood issues can be of broader interest to the greater community.

Taxes

The survey also threw in a playful question regarding taxes. Since public media’s funding has been a topic of discussion, why not ask the public what they think? The question was arguably loaded, but still worth asking.

The exact language was: “British citizens are taxed $80.36 a year to support the BBC. United States citizens are taxed only $1.36. Knowing it would mean more taxes you believe the following.” Then respondents could decide if they wanted to lower taxes to $0 or raise them to “beat the British.”

This question was asked in part to educate, since many people don’t realize how little our media is subsidized by taxes compared to other countries and in part to provoke responses around a hotly debated topic.

About 20 percent of responders thought the taxes should stay the same or even be lowered to $0. Nearly half thought of expanding the taxes a little either doubling it to $2.70 or expanding it to $30. And perhaps because of how the answer was worded  (“Let’s beat the British”) a whopping 34 percent wanted to raise taxes to $80.37 to fund public media. Either the Spot.Us community has lots of public media fans or a reminder that the British public media is out-funding ours 80-to-1 was too much to bear. (Also note 49 individuals who took the survey work for public media according to their answers to question #3).

From the public’s mouth

Finally, our last open ended question sought advice and input about how public media could improve at the local level. We received 500 responses and below I have republished some of the best with the survey respondents’ permission.

Wendy Carrillo

I live in East LA / Boyle Heights. It’s very rare that good positive stories are told about my community via TV news. LA Times covers some good stories, but it’s not the norm. I would like to see my community being covered w/ national issues other than immigration. Like Latinos who serve in armed forces, or those who are making a difference in the classroom.

Tom Davidson

Engage the emerging local blogosphere — providing them promotion/audience and, potentially, revenue via bundled sales using the bully pulpit of public media. In other words, why can’t a local PBS or NPR station serve the same role as a TBD.com in Washington?

Tim Gihring

They could spice up the reporting. The no rant/no slant approach is appropriate, but the reporting is often simple, dry, and probably not engaging as broad an audience as possible as a result.

Henry Jenkins

Right now, Los Angeles seems poised to lose its PBS station, which is going independent. This is a good news, bad news situation. Some of its best current projects are local and these will continue and grow. But we will also lose some of the programs from PBS which we have come to expect and they will be missed.

Ruth Ann Harnisch

Deploy the resources of journalism majors and graduate students in the many universities and colleges located in and around the major metro areas. Collaborate with universities and colleges to cover more beats, produce more stories, create more outlets, uncover more potential advertisers and train better journalists.

Tom Stites

My community, Newburyport, Mass., is an hour north of Boston, a half hour south of Portsmouth, N.H., and an hour and 10 minutes south of Portland, Me. I listen to public radio from all three, and no one covers Newburyport or its surrounding area. In fact, we’re in a fringe reception area for all the stations. What would be really cool would be to have a low-power, listener-supported station right here in Newburyport. There’s a local AM station that plays old music but has no local news presence.

Perhaps where I live makes me an outlier, but I suspect that my situation is quite common — most public radio stations are in big cities or on university campuses in smaller places. That said, most smaller communities, including mine, don’t have colleges.

Jake Bayless

Public Media is largely the only not-for-profit trusted local and regional source of info, and source of curated content. I’d like to see that trust “capital” realized — my local station is in the process of retooling for the new media revolution — it’s not easy to change the battleship’s direction. More and amplified info like that from the Knight Commission needs to be put out there. The public at large doesn’t yet understand how vital public media SHOULD be in their lives as info consumers. Public Media orgs all should adopt “Community Media Projects” in order to learn, listen and meet the information and democratic needs of the communities they serve… everything else is broken, untrustworthy or unsuitable.

Arthur Coddington

Awareness that public media is frequently a partnership between national providers (NPR) and local stations. Those that don’t understand this partnership can dismiss the programming as not locally relevant. Visibility. Police who are present and interacting with local residents can generate greater trust and participation in public safety. Similar thing could be true of public media. If they are visible — if they are not “they” — then we feel more connected to the stories, more possibility to reach out to them when new issues arrive, etc. Engagement. Partner with schools, libraries and service orgs to unearth essential local stories, create broadcasts about them, and follow up to track impact.

Andria Krewson

Be more aggressive about giving up old ways (and sometimes long-time staffers) to free up resources and time to explore new ways of sharing information. Note on the tax question: I’d support more taxation for public media, but I’m discouraged about the track record used to spend tax money recently and would need total transparency (and some influence) on how money is spent in order to support more taxation.

Chris Mecham

We have a very active NPR-supporting community here but the simple fact is that they are charged with providing service to a huge, mountainous geographic area and while we may, as a community, have an above average rate of contribution, we also have greater infrastructure expenses than many other areas. Considering what Boise State Public Radio does with their resources I think they are doing okay. One of the features of public broadcasting funding in Idaho is that up to a fairly generous limit our contributions are counted as a tax credit. Not a deduction. A credit. “Do I want to give Butch Otter my money or do I want to give Terry Gross my money? Hmmmm.”

Lisa Morehouse

Experiment. Be willing to try and fail at new shows, new ways of delivering the news. Invest in reporting. Pay freelancers a fair wage so that journalists without financial support can enter and stay in the profession (not possible now).

Bill Day

Public media should pioneer efforts to build real-time citizen journalist networks. Using low cost distribution and collation tools, public media could become hubs for high-quality, low cost information sharing — school test scores, water quality, traffic needs, etc.

Sabine Schmidt

Through reaching out to organizations and individuals representing under-served parts of the community, especially economic and ethnic minorities. The demographic makeup of my metro area is changing rapidly due to growing Hispanic, Marshallese, and Hmong populations; except for some Spanish-language newspapers and radio stations, few media outlets report on issues such as immigration, wage theft, bilingual education, etc. Public media could a) report more extensively on those topics — not as “minority” issues but as issues affecting members of our community; this would require b) establishing a broader definition of what our community is; and c), public media could offer internships and fellowships to young and/or freelance journalists, especially because the local NPR station is run by the university’s journalism department.

Antonio Roman-Alcala

I like the Bay Citizen model, and the Public Press … one for exposing local issues to a broader audience, the other for in depth local news for locals. I don’t know if that counts as public media? Overall, I don’t pay much attention to TV news, even public channels…so I’m not sure about that. Public media seems generally underfunded; I’d like to see more funding for it, as well as movement towards a more public-serving private news media (though we know, of course, that’s easier said than done).

Alexis Gonzales

Because I live in a large city, news media — including public media — just don’t cover “neighborhood” issues. Frankly, I stopped expecting them to do otherwise until I spent time in smaller-but-not-that-much-smaller cities (Portland for example) and noticed how public media seemed so much closer to and integrated into the local community. I think Public Media could do a better job of covering local issues by reconsidering what is newsworthy … i.e. neighborhood issues can be of broader interest to the greater community.

Kaitlin Parker

Find positive happenings to report in communities that are typically only covered when something negative happens there.

Anthony Wojtkowiak

For lack of a better phrase, they need to grow some balls. My town in New Jersey is influenced by political boss George Norcross, the unions, and the mafia. And that’s not even the corruption and hubris that goes on in the city itself. What our reporters really need is assertiveness training, media law training, and self defense courses. But most of all, they need the courage to use all of that stuff.

Todd O’Neill

Our public radio and public television are separate entities that don’t work together. Although our public radio is beefing up it’s news reporting it seems simple to bring that reporting over to television. But public media is NOT JUST NPR and PBS. We have struggling cable public access community (no funding or support from the city) here and a number of online only community journalism operations (including a Knight grantee) that are all doing their own thing without coordination. Big Public Media (NPR/PBS) should be a leader to bring all of these “under the tent” and provide a real media public service to the community.

Charles Sanders

Actually, local issues aren’t my concern. I wish public media reinforced its international coverage and improved its drama, comedy … content. I envy the BBC.

Martin Wolff

As someone who listens to public media daily, it is sad that I have to try hard to think about a local issue being covered. In that respect, almost anything would improve the coverage as it feels almost, but not quite, non-existent. When local issues are covered they seemingly come in only two forms: 1. A feel good issue that is barely an issue and will create nearly zero discourse in the community. For example, holiday-lights festivals. 2. Wimpy. The interviewer/broadcaster will do nothing while two sides of an issue actively lie to the community and directly contradict each other. Fixing #1 is easy — nobody really terribly cares, so we don’t need 10 minutes of coverage about a mayor flipping the switch and lighting a tree up. Fixing #2 is harder. The public media must stand up for itself better and call out the guilty parties. The public media must step up its role as a sort of police officer of society and arrest those who break the rules.

Yvette Maranowski

ALWAYS retain vigorous capacity for citizen reporters. Fund them with equipment and training. People are busy now and have to work independently, but with lifelines keeping them connected to their media outlets. Use McChesney and Nichol‘s idea of $200 in tax credit going to every citizen, so that the citizen can donate their credit to whatever organization they choose — such as journalistic ones. Constantly produce and air/publish material about the importance of journalism — keep hitting the public with that message!

Andy Edgar

Survey people in the neighborhood for their backgrounds, locations and topics of interest, get them interested in issues that affect everyone. Focus on things like air and water quality, advice on picking up litter and why it’s important not to litter, community events, getting to know neighbors’ talents/skills, healthy alternatives to fast food and big box grocery stores. Community based ways to prevent crime/hate acts should be talked about explored and tried.

William Forbes

In my community (Minneapolis/St Paul, MN), “Public” radio and television are HUGE cash cows. They do a good job and are influential but the real inclusive and diverse media that truly serve the under-represented populations of our area are Community Radio Stations, in particular KFAI. MN Public Television/NPR/MPR/PBS could do a much better job but they are more concerned with maintaining (and increasing) corporate and government funding than with covering issues that don’t always have universal appeal.

Michael Hopkins

In its current state, public media is dangerous because it offers the illusion of complete objectivity and truth. Too many people listen to it uncritically because of this. I would like to see public media representatives ask much tougher questions of everybody and hire a much more diverse staff of journalists. The illusion will still be there, but it will match reality more closely.

Jeffrey Aberbach

My community now has a Patch website. It’s too early to judge how successful it will be in reaching out to our diverse community, but so far it appears to be more successful than the established, corporate-owned media outlet in town (a poorly staffed small daily newspaper that generates little local content).

Jeddy Lin

In my area, despite being close to a large university, not much of a public media movement exists. A more visible public media would go a long way towards creating a more progressive, diverse community.

Kitty Norton

They could provide better coverage for schools. They seem to report statistics and not real life goings-on in our schools to the community.

Luke Gies

I don’t have any television or newspaper service, so I am somewhat “self isolating” from our local media. I get most of my news from the internet, so I think one area of improvement for local media would be to increase the content and improve the usability of their websites. That is more of an improvement in distribution than in “covering the issues,” but distribution is a key component to the reporting of news.

Let’s start with the praise: Jeff Novich wrote a well thought out critique of citizen journalism. It’s more than I can sum up quickly but he hits all the major points.

• It’s trite: “See, snap, post” – there is no depth.
• People are stupid. Or as he diplomatically put it “most people don’t understand the tenets of journalism.” But read that section of his post and you’ll see what he really wants to say is “people are stupid.”
• It’s more about sharing than anything else (see: “see, snap, post”)
• It doesn’t really accomplish anything – certainly not fact-checking the media (see: “See, snap, post”)
• It’s not paid – so the quality is crap.
• Too much bias. It isn’t accountable.

The list goes on. Again, my hat is off to Jeff for writing a well thought out analysis that I believe captures most of the major criticisms of participatory journalism.

I still call bullshit.

Megan Taylor did a good point by point response “Citizen Journalism Is Not Useless.” But a critique like this is not best met trying to go point-by-point. While I can easily name moments when citizen journalism had real tangible value – this is not an anecdotal pissing match. Besides, most of the anecdotes can be interpreted however you want to see them.

Instead I’d like to chime in on what I think was the most important point Megan Taylor made.

Throughout the post, Jeff seems to be confused on what his point is. That citizen journalism is not a proxy for professional journalism? I agree. That citizen journalism is useless? I disagree.

In the end it all comes down to what values you are trying to suggest citizen journalism (I prefer participatory journalism as the term) should uphold or represent. Allow me to once again use my baseball analogy from a post “Can Professional Journalism Ever Replace Citizen Journalism.”

Can citizen journalism ever replace professional journalism? No. But what I want to point out is the silliness of that question and pose its opposite.

The silliness of that question: If Major League Baseball stopped tomorrow would all the little leagues in the country be able to replace it? If industrial sweater factories shut down tomorrow would knitting hobbyists be able to replace them?

Nobody would ever ask these questions because the goal of little leagues and knitting groups isn’t to replace their professional counterparts. Instead, they are to create a sense of community, a positive activity for children, to make personalized gifts, etc. If they were to disappear there is no way their professional counterparts could replace them.

So I ask: If citizen journalism activities were to stop tomorrow could professional journalists replace them? My answer is no – and that will be part of my response to this question from now on.

I have also come to really like Clay Shirky’s discussion on the stupidity of LOL Cats juxtaposed with their general benefit to society over simply watching re-runs of Giligan’s Island.

The argument from Clay goes something like this.

(a. Acts of creation are better than acts of passivity.

(b. LOL Cats are the single dumbest thing a person can do online.

(c. LOL Cats are an act of creation.

The choice is yours: What is better for society – thousands of people participating in LOL Cats or those same people sitting on their hands watching Jersey Shore?

The only argument I can imagine in response is that acts of citizen journalism aren’t just dumb – they actually HURT society. That somehow they have a negative impact and therefore being passive would actually be a net gain.

Otherwise I call bullshit – and that’s without even trying to defend citizen journalism (which can be done) again Jeff’s critiques. Even if I GIVE Jeff all his points above it still doesn’t turn citizen journalism into something “useless.” It all depends on the “use” and who is judging.

Sure – a snobby journalist can hold their nose up and point out shoddy work.

A major league baseball player can laugh at any high school kid’s swing.

A professional basketball player would probably dust me on the court and point out my lack of balance. Should I not play? Am I “useless” when playing a pick-up game with my friends? Sure, I’d be useless in the NBA. But when I play on Sundays with my friends I have a blast and get a good cardiovascular workout.

I understand there is frustration that the economics of content have changed – but it’s important to keep in mind that one man’s exploitation is another man’s civic engagement. The greater irony. If Jeff is correct, his blog post, which was not reported – but mere opining (as was this post) is…. useless.

Profits are killing journalism.

Publishers and editors care more about the bottom line than the quality of their reporting.  Newsrooms are shrinking, as a result, and good stories have gone untold.  The public is worse off because of it.

So goes one argument, at least, in the debate about public funding of journalism.  It’s a hot topic that appears immune to any clear-cut solution, and it’s shaking the foundation of what it means to do journalism and the best way to do it.  Among the big questions are:

Should public funding expand to cover the gaps left by the shrinking private news business? Could it expand without government support, and would this create conflicts? Would a heavily subsidized public media serve us better than the private media?  If so, how?

With a sponsorship from Free Press, we asked the Spot.Us community to tell us what they thought.  Then, we invited the 407 users who took the survey to decide where the sponsorship dollars would go, which is to say, we handed over a part of our budget to them, in return for their two cents.

SURVEY RESULTS

Keep in mind, the survey was not scientific, and there was a degree of audience self-selection, i.e., the Spot.Us community.  Nonetheless, with several hundred respondents, we did get a diverse set of answers. One interesting thing to note is that while a previous survey showed a split (almost 50/50) in the “objectivity” debate this survey on public/private media showed a much more one-sided response. This might be because, as previously suspected, Spot.Us’ community overlaps with the “public media” demographic.

To begin, the majority of respondents reported that they listened to NPR (71 percent), read the news online (79 percent), or used nonprofit news sources (58 percent), while the minority reported that they received a newspaper at home (37 percent) or donated to nonprofit news media (41 percent).  From these numbers, we can see among other things that, although the majority listen to NPR or use nonprofit news sources, there is a sizeable gap between using nonprofit media and donating to them.

In response to a question about programming—“In general, how would you rate the quality of
news, arts and education programming on public media versus commercial media?—the vast majority (74 percent) said the programming on public media is of higher quality.  A mere 19 percent said the programming on public and private media is of equal quality, and only 5 percent said public programming is of lower quality.

Half way through the survey we even switched the ordering of these potential answers to ensure no undue influence. The first half of the respondents saw the answer “public media is of higher quality” first and the second half saw that answer last. In either case – the majority viewed the programming as higher quality.

When asked if they would support the creation of a public media endowment to increase funding for educational programs, arts, and investigative journalism, the respondents overwhelmingly said yes (84 percent), with only 3 percent saying no and the rest undecided.  Likewise, they would support overwhelmingly (93 percent) the creation of a matching grant program that would combine foundation grants with public funding to support innovation and investment in local news and journalism.

So far, all of this suggests that the respondents like to use nonprofit media; they believe public programming is of higher quality than private programming; they would support public endowment and matching grant programs to increase funding; however, they do not necessarily make personal donations to those ends.

The respondents, with their generally favorable view of public media, also said more conflicts arise in journalism that relies on commercial advertising than in journalism that relies on taxpayer funding.  Fifty-seven percent believed that to be true, while 12 percent said taxpayer funding creates more conflicts, and 31 percent said neither creates more conflicts and that strong firewalls between funding and journalists can prevent bias.

We also asked a few open-ended questions.

The first one was, “What should be the role of public and noncommercial media in the future of journalism?”  Below are a few anecdotal responses from Spot.Us members who gave us permission to publish their views.

Journalism should be supported by the public, but traditionally the expectation by newspaper executives has been to not ask for the public to support their product. Journalists and news executives have an obligation to build better arguments for the public to support the news. In order for that to happen, though, journalism needs to demonstrate value to readers.
– Denise Lockwood

Non-profit and other alternative funding models will increasingly have to make up for the loss of advertising funded journalism. NPR has done this already but more needs to happen. There will need to be a broader range of non-profit media orgs than we have right now, and non-profits focused on substantive issues (environment, human rights, etc.) will increasingly become news providers themselves. Hopefully, some of these new iterations will be exemplars in terms of how to establish and benefit from partnerships and collaborative models. We may see more “temporary” journalism outlets as non-profit news outlets spring up and die out in this transitional period.
– Melissa Wall

Journalist(s) need to figure out how to make their product of value to the community. While I love NPR and that model, nothing is wrong with a profit. Good journalism should be able to support itself, but for decades now people have ranked journalist right up there with lawyer, car salesman and politician. That has to change and we need to be honest why people feel that way.

– Eddie North-Hager

Ideally, publicly funded media should focus solely on communications that are not commercially viable. However there has to be focus on what the public is interested in, not just what is in the public interest. Without remaining relevant and interesting, public media becomes irrelevant.

– Spot.Us Community Member

Another question should be what is the public’s role in public media. I think public media should be a place where people can go to tell their stories (think storycorps) where discussions can happen where people of all sides can hear each others voices (think bbc’s have your say); chicago’s vocalo is interesting in this way. Recent “pubcamps” are interesting in this way. NPR opening up its API is interesting in this way, in that they invite programmers and technologists to participate. I think the quality of public broadcasting is high, but airtime is at a premium, they should find ways to put MORE programs on the web and open up the airwaves for new talent. I think funding is an issue too. I live in Paris and stream programs live from any number of stations; I also podcast my favorites. I don’t know which station I should support, I know I want to support specific programs. I know I want to support NPR; but I don’t have a local station and I don’t know that I want one.

– John Tynan

The second open-ended question was, “In the past, government has provided tax breaks to media companies, given broadcasters free licenses for public airwaves, funded PBS and NPR, and subsidized newspapers through legal ads and postal rates. What should be the government’s role in the future?”  Below, again, are a few anecdotal responses:

Regulation is necessary (else, the commercial media could say anything they wanted, regardless of effect or truth), but I don’t like the government’s involvement in the money behind broadcasting.  Things start to sound like China with its enmasse censorship of media incoming and outgoing. Free speech should remain free – free of censorship and influence. If you think publishing or reporting a story will keep the government from sending you extra funds, you aren’t likely to print it. Thus, the free press becomes the mouthpiece for a government and nothing more.

This said, I think government subsidizing of NPR and PBS is important because these are services funded by donations from watchers/listeners, and that is who they (should) have loyalty to first because that is where the money is coming from, rather than political parties or politicians.

– Kaylene Narusuke

The old models don’t work because in the 1980s, newspapers made a lot of money from ads and became very profitable, changing the expectations from the owners. Those expectations haven’t changed while the competition for ads has. Newspapers adopted the USA-Today model, dumbing down stories, writing shorter and more shallow stories. People want deep, well written stories in any format. Government agencies could support investigative reporting, specialty reporting, and reporting on the arts, but the public has to be willing to pay for responsible journalism.

– Yvonne

Government should recognize that high-quality journalism is an important part of a healthy democracy, and that well-informed citizens are more engaged and more likely to vote. Government should expand direct funding for public media beyond PBS and NPR by creating a grant program for organizations developing new kinds of public-media models.

– Lila LaHood

I don’t see a problem with calculated tax breaks for the media industry whether it’s limiting taxes on the purchases of paper products or electronic devices. To me that’s no different than oil companies, banks, light manufacturing getting financial breaks or incentives to conduct business. Those who represent converged or multimedia take issue with this, citing these as out-dated mediums with failed business models. Therefore, they should not be buoyed with tax dollars and in a true capitalism, failed businesses disappear and make way for newer, better models.

– Kevin Smith

All of these things are helpful, but American journalism really needs something more revolutionary right now. Stop thinking about tax breaks and advertising and start thinking about something equal to the National Endowment for the Arts, but replace ‘Arts’ with ‘Journalism’. I hope our leaders act now before we lose the 4th Estate, and a generation of enthusiastic young journalists.

– Daysha Eaton

So there you have it, the views of the Spot.Us community on public vs. private journalism.  Any of it surprise you?  Confuse you?  Bore you?  Tell us your thoughts in the comments section!

The First Chapter

The first post on this topic hinged on the idea that transparency is necessary for public participation in journalism.

This Wikipedia quote puts it bluntly. The argument for transparency then isn’t ethical so much as practical. It’s a second order argument. The process of journalism must be transparent if we expect people to participate in a meaningful way. This assumes, however, that we want people to participate.

If we can reason that participation in journalism is ethical and transparency is necessary for participation to occur, it follows that there is an ethical argument for transparency.

Which means the next step is to examine the base of this syllogism: There is an ethical argument for participation in journalism.

The Goal of Journalism

What is the purpose or goal of journalism? In philosophy I might pose this as, what is journalism’s Telos — its purpose, aim, end and/or design.

The reason this question (and blog post) is important is that if you look at the current understanding of ethics in journalism you can see that it is more along the lines of a professional code than an ethical debate or analysis. Public accountability is mentioned in many of the existing code of ethics. As is the rightful dissemination of information to the public. But in almost all of these cannons of journalism the public is acted upon and is rarely an actor.

When I ask what is the goal of journalism I am not interested in the journalism industry or a journalism company. The goal for both of which would be the same for any industry (protecting itself as an economic good) or company (increasing revenue).

The tagline for my blog is “journalism is a process, not a product,” and that continues to be my rallying cry. Too often our ethics, ideas of success and end goals are determined by journalism as a product, industry or company. I am more interested in the process of journalism. What is the end goal for an act of journalism?

Now here I have to posit a question: If an act of journalism is committed but never published, is it an act of journalism?

Many people don’t know this, but I used to be a musician. I’ve actually recorded at least two albums. But I never promoted my work. So if a work of art is not shared, is it art? What is the distinction between art and hobby? Related: If an act of reporting occurs but is not shared, is it journalism? What is the distinction between journalism and journaling?

I ask this question because it gives me the platform to pose a possible end goal of journalism — to inform. Journalism, which is a tricky thing to define, is the process of collecting, filtering and distributing information that has meaning. One caveat of course is that the information is non-fiction (true and accurate).

If we take away the “distributing” of information we no longer have the process of journalism. It is the final step in the process because it is the final Telos of journalism — to inform our fellow human beings. Size of the audience aside, journalism is fundamentally a process of education. But when we look at the conversation about journalism, those two words are most often coupled around journalism education (journalism schools) and rarely about how the two endeavors are intimately tied.

Informing is Participatory

So the goal of journalism is to inform people about events in the world. This is fundamentally a social act and would remain the goal of journalism if we lived in a democracy, republic or any other kind of society.

Historically speaking, the “participation” of journalism consumers was to consume. That is a form of participation, but not necessarily the kind that I wan to justify. If it were, this blog post could have been much shorter: “We can justify transparency in journalism because people need to be able to read it!”

The kind of participation that I want to argue for is more engaging. Members of the public are not participating by the sheer act of be informed, but they are self-informing. It’s the difference between roads that make public transportation possible and roads that make all forms of transportation possible.

Why Individual Participation is Ethical

And herein lies the base of this whole thought process. It comes down to the individual. It is the individual, as part of a collective, that journalism seeks to inform. The individual should be actively participating in the dissemination of information for several reasons:

1. On a utilitarian level, they will become more informed and help inform more people. If the good of journalism is to inform, then letting more people participate will inform more people. Similarly, the mission of roads is to enable travel/transportation, not to safeguard public transportation. (There could be unintended consequences, of source, such as pollution.) The mission of journalism is to inform, not to safeguard journalism companies. A network has infinity more connections and that requires active participation and self-informed informants.

2. They have a moral right as an individual to participate to the extent that they do not hinder others from participating. (See individualism).

Anti-climactic?

So, to review:

• Transparency is required for well-informed participation to happen.
• Participation is needed because….
• Journalism’s end goal is to inform other people.
• More people participating in the process of journalism means more people being informed.
• Combine this with individual rights and …

The journalism industry has a moral obligation to make the practices and processes of journalism more transparent so that the larger citizenry can participate.

Behind the lack of climax

Perhaps I could have shortened this blog post. I made every attempt to go step-by-step and lay out my line or reasoning.

Why?

Too often our discussion of participatory journalism, citizen journalism, etc takes an industry or company view. Either citizen journalism is good or bad because of its relationship to a bottom line.

Slighter better arguments are that participatory journalism is good/bad because of its quality (or lack of).

What I’m suggesting is that participation in the media is a net positive because of its intrinsic value.

If one can make an ethical argument for participation in journalism and that transparency is necessary for participation to occur, then it follows that there is an ethical argument for transparency.

For a long time I’ve had a post inside of me dying to get out. A few months ago I was invited to speak at the International Symposium of Journalism with Dan Gillmor, Ethan Zuckerman and Jan Schaffer. The presentation I gave is here. I got a great chuckle from the second and third slides.

But there was one slide which almost made me re-do the entire presentation. Because it struck me as something worth exploring. It was slide seventeen on “Transparency” seen below.
This quote comes from Wikipedia.

“For well-informed participation to occur, it is argued that some version of transparency, e.g. radical transparency, is necessary, but not sufficient.”

Perhaps it stood out to me because of the “necessary, but not sufficient” which flashed me back to logic class when I was a philosophy undergrad. For whatever reason – I dwelled on it.

I’ve dedicated the majority of my career to two things in this order: Increasing participation in journalism and increasing transparency in the process of journalism. Something I’ve zenned out on recently is how connected the two are and how we often treat them as mutually exclusive.

I’d argue that we need transparency in order for journalism to become more participatory. How can we expect people to participate in the process of journalism if that process is opaque? Only a fool dives into muddy water.

If one can make an ethical argument for participation in journalism and that transparency is necessary for well-informed participation to occur, then it follows that there is an ethical argument for transparency.

Which means the next topic should be “An Ethical Argument for Participation in Journalism.”

Now a confession: It’s late at night and I’m tired. In fact, the only reason I started this post is because I can’t sleep. Perhaps now that I’ve started this thread, I’ll count some ZZ’s. But you, dear reader, can help me. What is the ethical argument for participation in journalism as you see it?