The democratization of news and the future of democracy Nieman Foundation Journalism & Technology conference May 1994 Denise Caruso Editorial Director, Technology & Media Group, Inc. Premise: Effective democracy is predicated on the notion that the public is regularly informed about the characters and issues of the day. Journalism in the public interest will have to reclaim its authority in a world of interactive infotainment, talk shows and unfiltered video. Just what is the journalist¹s franchise and responsibility? One of the biggest mistakes media companies make today is to look at the online environment as just another package in which to distribute the information they already generate. Although the information itself may be the same to some degree, interactive media is fundamentally different from mass media. I will refrain from quoting McLuhan yet again, but very simply put, the message of this new medium is, ³I want what I want, and nothing more.² A low estimate of more than 25 million online consumers today choose and control the information they want. They assume interactivity and an active role in selecting precisely what they want to read or see. So you might say that interactive media is transforming our democratic "marketplace of ideas" into a shopping list of "topics" and "keyword searches." Is the interactive media-buying public better informed than we schlubs who still read the newspapers? I don't know, and I don't think they know, either. But since I believe that the successful practice of good journalism ‹ in whatever media ‹ is one of the best ways to ensure an effective democracy, first I'm going to edit myself and then I'm going to address only three issues (I'm sure there are 20 more) about electronic media that will have a profound effect on how successful journalism can continue to exist in a networked world. € The first is the proliferation of information on networks. In order to keep this brief, I am going to assume we agree that the means of media production ‹ and increasingly, electronic media distribution ‹ are in the hands of the people, as well as the media companies. Desktop publishing, fax machines and modems, and increasingly, desktop video and audio editing tools, are within reach of almost anyone, whether they buy or borrow them. The result in the print media is hundreds of new magazines, newsletters and alternative weeklies. The news business was one of the first beneficiaries of electronic production, but ironically, the efficiencies of electronic distribution have already shrunk its street value. By keeping an eye on the national wires, you can take great advantage of your time zone and your competitor's scoops and easily get your version of their story into the same day's paper or broadcast. Taking the "wire" concept a step farther into the online world paints an even grimmer picture. On a network that carries news wires from several news organizations, as most of them do, news has virtually no brand recognition: you type in the keyword "news" on America Online, for example, and you can see screen after screen of headlines with no source ID. PR Newswire, the Mercury News and a column by one computer columnist or another all look the same on the computer screen, if they all contain the correct topic or keyword. In today's popular electronic news environment, there is no equivalent of a newspaper's distinctive flag or typeface, or a TV network's logo. Last, and perhaps scariest to the profession, is the exponential increase in raw information being created by regular, non-journalist people. Reams of this "news" are posted every day in so-called "newsgroups" on the Internet and on various online services. Ordinary people can expect to be deluged with increasing amounts this pseudo-news, and it will become increasingly difficult for real news organizations to be heard above the din. € On-demand information. As the sheer volume of information continues to increase, people automatically recoil from the overload. Increasingly, they are dealing with it by using online technology to make contact with only the specific topics they request. As you know, this is called "information on demand." On-demand information has some troubling components for those of us who believe it is dangerous to let the people choose their news. If I just want to know the latest about Barry Diller and Time Warner, or AIDS research,I may not ever see what's happening in Rwanda or on the Supreme Court. And even if I did want to be more broadly informed, today I can't ask the network about something that I didn't know happened ‹ natural disasters, deaths, breaking news, etc. Information on demand raises many other questions as well. For example: € One of the sales pitches to consumers for online news is that you will be able to get more information on the stories you really care about, and less on the ones you don¹t. How do you support the non-trivial extra cost of reporting, producing and editing every news story to feature length? And there's another interesting problem for publications that have chosen to go online. One of the big selling points to customers is that they can have access ‹ direct access via their computers ‹ to the publication's staff. Great idea, except for one thing: who has the time? I personally don't know anybody in journalism who isn't working flat-out just to keep their heads above water. Now we're asking them to hang out on line with people who have been known to be incredibly vocal and unabashed about their ignorance. I would not be surprised if this became a guild issue. € Then there's the question of how you ask your customers to pay for on- demand information. The prevailing model for the future is that each of us will ³pay per view² ‹ we¹ll buy stories piecemeal, whether in print or broadcast ‹ instead of getting a pre-set package of news for the price of a subscription. Though this model might be useful for entertainment products, it has the potential to put news organizations at great financial risk. What happens if the staff has a bad run and no one reads or chooses to view your stories for a few days in a row? What happens if your server goes down? Your competition sabotages your network? Any break in your popularity on a daily basis, and you¹ll take an immediate financial hit. The pay-per-view model makes news organizations as volatile as the stock market. And I've not even addressed how you'll assign value to stories and collect the money, or how such a model changes the content of "marketable" stories, etc. € Last but certainly not least is the issue of Advertising and the Death of Subsidized Mass Media. On-demand, interactive media flips the traditional economic structure of mass media on its back. It removes a key component of what makes mass media work. It's called serendipity, and it's an integral part of how we consume media. Creating serendipity is the stock in trade of every editor, and creates as much value for the advertisers as it does for those who research and produce the stories. Editing and page layout are about encouraging people to keep scanning and turning pages; our eye travels from story to story, to the ad for a sale at Macys. Or you're sitting on the sofa, stunned by the latest onTonya and Nancy, when the Nike ad comes on. Both editors and advertisers want you to get a message you didn¹t necessarily set out to find. There is no electronic equivalent of serendipity. Without it, how do advertisers get their messages to your eyeballs ‹ and how do news organizations finance their operations? Especially since, as I mentioned earlier, on-demand information is likely to require that you produce some multiple of the amount of news you produce now. Embedding. Even more troublesome to news organizations should be the kinds of discussions underway in the advertising community about how to "embed" or directly connect advertising messages with specific pieces of programming. In an on-demand world where people are far less likely to request commercials as part of their media consumption package, advertisers see great opportunity in making their products a part of the landscape. So Murphy Brown might start looking more like a tournament tennis court than a comedy, with Compaq computers and Microsoft software prominently displayed on Steelcase desks, Pampers and Gap Kids stuff on the shelves of her office, maybe a big ol' poster for Garth Brooks' new CD on the wall near the elevator. What would be the equivalent in the world of on-demand news? If advertisers become accustomed to tying product pitches to other types of programming, won't they want to be sure their messages are somehow germaine to the specific news story that's been selected? And isn't that in direct opposition to the Chinese wall between advertising and editorial ‹ where it's considered to be a screw-up to put a car ad next to a story on the auto industry, for example? How long do you think they're going to be happy with a subtle little b/w button at the bottom of a screen, as Michael showed in Newsweek Interactive? Advertisers are NOT convinced this has to be volitional. So number one in my proposals for action is: 1. Deal with the advertising situation. Clearly this issue and all its ramifications is one of the biggest that news organizations face today. How can you provide clear, unbiased reporting if your information is subsidized by on-demand advertising tied directly to a specific message or story? But how can you move ahead in new media without subsidy? Making this bridge between old and new media requires that journalism re- engineer its corporate DNA and rethink its business charter. Work with your staff and with advertisers to invent a useful place for ads in the online environment. We know the Prodigy model ‹ sharing the information screen with an ad ‹ doesn't work. Come up with something that does work, and that doesn't compromise your integrity as a news organization. 2. Use your skills as critical thinkers to hone your strategies. You also must reengineer your editorial DNA. At a time when in-your-face, pack reporting has pushed journalism into the gutter of public esteem, where "cybersleaze" newsgroups can and do and will continue to proliferate, and where online news is just a pile of headlines on a screen, news organizations must take on the task of educating the public about the difference between journalism, public relations, eyewitness reports and analysis. Somebody should be talking about "good" information v. "bad" information, and the difference between informed and uninformed opinion. The journalism community is one of the very few groups in the world suited to teach these critical thinking skills. After all, one hopes that you employ them every day as part of doing your job. Being willing to meet your own standards is the first step toward moving out of ³commodity² mode into one that¹s based on added value ‹ which in an on-demand world is literal, not figurative. And at the most basic level, somebody should be working on how to "brand" legitimate news organizations on a computer screen. 3. Create electronic serendipity. In addition to its ability to create valuable editorial products, the journalism community holds an ace in a world of information overload: a stockpile of skilled editors who know how to separate wheat from chaff. In the lingo of the interactive world, they already are ³intelligent agents.² Many people won¹t want to drink from the firehose of information that¹s available; that's why they come to you now, whether they know it or not. Even outside of your existing products, a great business is waiting to be made by becoming a trustworthy nozzle. 4. Be very careful with whom you ally. The ³pack² mentality is just as obvious in the rush today to get ³online² as it is in the pages of the daily papers. One way to avoid the problem of getting lost in the crowd is to not become part of the crowd to begin with. Don't give away your most precious commodities ‹ your customer lists and your information ‹ in venues that do not serve you. 5. Use technology appropriately. Don¹t do electronic media just because everyone else is doing it. Have a compelling reason, a good idea, something that you know customers need, want and will pay for. Make sure that your message is consistent with the media you use to deliver it. As anyone knows who¹s covered Silicon Valley, those on the cutting edge run the risk of death by hemorrhage. In the long run, those who succeed are not always the pioneers but those with original ideas for products that solve a problem. As one market researcher says, "It is far more important to be right than to be first." 6. Don't chase the money. If you follow the discussions of organizations like the Electronic Frontier Foundation, on whose board I serve, and the Advisory Council for the National Information Infrastructure, which Del Lewis will talk about later today, you know one of the gravest concerns is that the networks of the future will only serve the rich. The same could be said of the content providers of the future, since information is what flows over those networks. It would be easy today to sacrifice your duty to inform the public in order to attain higher profits by serving the information needs of the wealthy few. God knows they have intense information needs; certainly no one on Wall Street would fault you for it, and of course without profits you cannot operate. 7. But keep in mind that the world is a very large place. In a world where both bandwidth and information are virtually infinite, I think it's a fabulous challenge to find a way to deal with abundance, rather than scarcity. We all stand to gain a great deal ‹ financially and personally ‹ by finding creative, supportable ways to keep more of the world, not less of it, properly informed. There is much to be lost if we set our sights too low as we head into the next century. RESPONDENTS Lou Ureneck: ASNE project. New Technology & Values committee. Understand impact of converging technologies upon journalism. 3phases: 1-Sept, chicago, convene a conference of journalists, editors and reporters, cross-section from nps, experts and novices. What's negotiable and what's not? 2-structured interviews with carriers/partners (cable ops, phone co execs, entertainment) re: their values & priorities. 3-talk to consumers, get their sense of a value set, see what their vision of new media is. First meeting impressions: most journalists don't have time to reflect on context of their work. Most interested in points/score, not the game. Reminds him of a group that's stepped into an intersection, light turns green and the cars are streaming at them. Questions from 1st meeting: value-add of newspapers? how do readers want info to be mediated? gatekeeper? unedited copy volumes? filter? how to filter? what happens to idea of common knowledge or community culture? what happens when dissemination is controlled by telco or cable? What are the traits of a good conversationalist and how does that affect what we do? Good listener, good storyteller and asks good questions. Impact of new technology on values and a toolkit. Ed Fouhy People find news wanting. They demand a voice in what we do. Civic Journalism project. We're losing viewers and readers because we've lost touch with them becauseour values are out of touch with them; no shared knowledge. That's because people have will to seek out information for themselves. People turn away from us and into custom services. But there is no shared civic life. New associations are forming in cyberspace but our civic life is poor. No serendipity destroys the mass audience. Journalists may become marginal as providers of information to make public policy decisions. Technology injects public concerns into the newsroom. Public officials. "media agenda is preoccupied with public officials" public interest in the actual workings of government just not enough time. Rethink our role as agenda setters. Re-invent a need for people to need what we're selling. Could become irrelevant. JEAN WILSON 35 million people on the net. Connections between political scientists without geographical boundaries. New Directions for News -- dedicated to helping the public. fear re: journalism - so disconnected from reality. Seems not to be engaged in two most important stories: 3 strong shifts: 1- environment/ecology, 2-social/cultural dynamic, 3-infotech. these will make the last 15 years look like a slow rollercoaster. Daughter says that IT is only interesting to journalists. Social dynamic: "creating New NPs for New USA" -- 5 underrepresented groups: women, adults--racial, ethnic, immigrant groups, 50+. Anxiety -- grandmothers named Heather & Bambi. People who create beyond their 80s, long-lifelearners. 1/6 of population is kids. Robust j. would know, There's 0 like this; tech has made it possible; birth control & antibiotics. People don't have to connect here, ethnically. These groups do not hold press conferences. A country is creating itself outside the line of vision of the rest ofus. Peple expect media to undrstand & to give meaning. Tch side: 2 entries explained about technology. One was an alternative newspaper (Pulitzer). We're not explaining our age, the outlines of the landscape where we live. We'd show up for better journalism if it were intelligent. Cameraman says, "You won't believe it, they're so smart." 119 languages spoken in NYC. Wrong Business. I've never covered the real stories. Disenfranchised because we don't keep current. Social shift/cultural dynamic & IT we can affect.