My story of digital journalism
Prior to my first senior year of college, I had a strong print mentality. I knew we needed online content and enhancements, but we still had a daily product that had to be produced. I’d served as the features/entertainment editor for almost two years with that mentality. In 2009, it changed.
On Jan. 20, a friend sent me an email titled “this will make you think..” The body was the URL to Jay Rosen’s “Audience Atomization Overcome.” It was interesting, but I didn’t understand all of what Rosen was stating. The day after that email, I signed up for Twitter — coincidence the two happened within hours of each other. I taught myself how to use it in my reporting and showed that I am a college student, too.
By the end of the semester, I wanted to go into web development and social media. The end of traditional print, I felt, was approaching and the internet had so many more possibilities. I planned on taking entertainment coverage online in the fall and was going to be a summer intern at the Fresno Bee in California.
Before leaving Iowa, I was still unsure exactly how much I knew about social media and web development, so I searched for some readings. Up popped Clay Shirky’s masterpiece “Newspapers and Thinking the Unthinkable.” His words about the future of publishing were life altering — seriously.
That is what real revolutions are like. The old stuff gets broken faster than the new stuff is put in its place….
And so it is today. When someone demands to be told how we can replace newspapers, they are really demanding to be told that we are not living through a revolution. They are demanding to be told that old systems won’t break before new systems are in place. They are demanding to be told that ancient social bargains aren’t in peril, that core institutions will be spared, that new methods of spreading information will improve previous practice rather than upending it. They are demanding to be lied to.
There are fewer and fewer people who can convincingly tell such a lie.
I did some reading every now-and-then for a while, but soon discovered the words of Jeff Jarvis and more from Jay Rosen. I now understood atomization. The rest of the summer was consuming the latest news and trends. Every morning began with what the new journalism ideas were and regular checks to a handful of blogs.
My journalism theories and ideas changed everyday. Some early things I learned:
Journalism was on a bubble. The Internet created an upheaval. Two manifestos set me straight on the “laws” and rules of the internet while another manifesto made the case on where the internet needs to go.
It’s been about a year since I read Jeff Jarvis’ “What Would Google Do?” It was the book that once I read it, I was done with my print journalism mentality. No turning back after that. Since then, I’ve read “Here Comes Everybody,” “Journalism Next,” “Blink,” “The Long Tail,” “Free,” and “The Digital Journalist’s Handbook.”
During the fall semester, I consumed just as much information and ideas. More ideas I learned
And I’ve debated if it’s all about storytelling anymore. We must assist building communities. I was especially challenged when the conversation switched to how to prioritize mobile as web first is outdated.
So for a little on my journalism ideas:
- I believe in the freemium model. News/basic content must be free. However, a specialized database for a select group is the best way to make money.
- Linking is the currency of the web. It is a “web,” after all.
- News organization must be more than content farms. They must curate content and let the best community-produced content rise to the top.
- Traditional print will not survive, and I say news organization, not newspaper.
- Niches are the future. Dozens, hundreds, thousands. The mass market is dead.
- We are living in/entering a golden age of news and entertainment culture.
- Mistakes are natural, so news orgs need to correct errors and openly admit mistakes.
- Bias is a natural human state. Journalists are humans, so we shouldn’t think we can be objective.
- I live publicly. Once something enters the cloud, the cloud only gets better, it will never rain and lose information.
- Transparency = Trust
- Advertisers are the new customers, readers are now the community.
I am also looking foward to the next age of the media. The world use to be in molecules, but now its thousands/millions of atoms. So I’m eagerly awaiting the web 4.0. I think it will be a return – though altered — to a molecular age.
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