As Lotan noted, the most effective way to give voice to a broader population is to make sure it’s possible to find them, since everything published online is equally accessible but not equally findable; Steve Waldman noted that there are many community-related blogs in affluent Park Slope, Brooklyn, but few in poorer East New York. Thus the low-income bloggers likely get lost in Brooklyn’s search results.
To me, the future of good journalism depends more on visibility, or “find-ability,” of smart content. We need to help engineers counter biases inadvertently programmed into search engines and algorithms. And journalists must recognize, to paraphrase researcher danah boyd, that we are only using tiny portions of social networks and that relevant sources exist beyond them. We journalists may lose relevance unless we learn to work within rules we don’t always get to make.
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Kira,
It was so great to have you in the room (you were there right? You asked Ann a question.) I totally agree that we, whoever we are, don't get to make the rules. In my opening comments I described a world in which we surface the rules that already exist, or are currently evolving, in order to make our journalism more powerful.
That's what Tuesday was all about. Of the 20+people at the front of the room this week, only three (Huang, Tash and Deggans) are working in old school capacity. Several others (Paton, Guzman,) have a foot in both worlds. Everyone, however, is a hybrid on one sort or another (academic/practitioner, writer/thought-leader, researcher/teacher). They were invited because they all get some part of how journalism is or isn't working in service of democracy. Each of the speakers has been working on his or her idea for a couple months now. And I think they did a good job describing the journalism of today, without drawing too many comparisons to the past, except with it was necessary to point out that some pressures are not new at all.
Here's my big question: What are we missing? There has to be something or someone that we've overlooked.
#1 Posted by Kelly McBride, CJR on Fri 26 Oct 2012 at 03:26 PM
Hi Kelly,
I was there, and glad to be, though I didn’t ask any questions, at least not in front of the group.
And I agree that the attendees did a lovely job describing the way things are now in the industry. (Or, as CJR’s recent “future of media” issue coverline said: “this minute, at least.”)
As for what you (or, really, we) overlooked—that’s a great question, one that I hope everyone interested in journalism will continue brainstorming.
#2 Posted by Kira Goldenberg, CJR on Fri 26 Oct 2012 at 04:59 PM