We Got It Wrong
January 28th, 2010 by John Creighton in Dispatches
Tags: Citizen Centric, Harwood, Social Media
I was part of a Harwood Group Team which wrote the report Timeless Values: Staying True to Journalistic Principles in the Age of New Media in April 1995. We were commissioned to write the report for the American Society of Newspaper Editors. I re-read it this week. It was painful.
We were blind to the most fundamental change that would be brought about by new media platforms.
Consider what we wrote fifteen years ago as guiding principles for journalists considering new media (based on extensive interviews with citizens, leading thinkers, media executives and journalists):
#1: Stick to your knitting – the distinctive value of newspapers and journalists do not change in the new media world. Journalism is journalism.
#2: Focus on the community – the newspaper’s niche is the local news franchise. Community coverage should be its main focus.
#3: Connect to readers – newspapers and journalists will need to have a deeper understanding of their readers as consumers and citizens. Staying connected is an imperative.
#4: Be ready to adapt – new media will require newspapers and journalists to embrace new practices and skills, but within the context of their journalistic values.
#5: Make the leap, but don’t expect nirvana – newspapers and journalists should get involved actively in new media, but should not expect instant success or payoffs.
#6: Roll the presses – both print and new media have their own unique value and role in providing news and information. Make sure there is room for both.
What do you notice when you read this list? I notice an underlying assumption. We assumed that journalism is something that only people within institutions – i.e. news organizations – do. We described no role for people outside of news organizations. The community was only a group of people that journalists should get to know better. We still considered non-journalists to be largely passive.
We thought technology was the game changer. We were blind to the real game changer. When people have access to the tools of production and distribution… that’s what changes everything.
Chris Anderson describes it this way in the February Issue of Wired: “Transformative change happens when industries democratize, when they are ripped from the sole domain of companies, governments, and other institutions and handed over to regular folks.”
We never discussed Anderson’s axiom of transformation and its implications back in 1995. In the 1990s, few people understood how democratizing production and distribution changes the world. The music industry did not understand. Publishers did not understand. The movie industry did not understand. Traditional retailers did not understand. You name the industry or the institution… People just didn’t grasp what could happen when regular folks had access to the same tools as highly paid professionals.
I’m not confident we understand Anderson’s axiom any better today.
It is not easy to shift from an institution centric to citizen centric world. It is not easy for people working within an institution to give up doing things for people and shift toward supporting people to do things for themselves. It is equally difficult for many people to give up the role of passive consumer.
Early adapters are at the forefront of the transformative change Anderson describes. The majority of people want institutions to do things just the way it’s always been done… until they don’t. Back in 1995, most people we interviewed still wanted hard copy newspapers delivered to their homes.
I see this phenomenon all the time in education as a member of the local school board. Students, teachers, parents and community members are gaining access to the production and distribution tools that once only school districts could afford. Yet most public policy ignores this game changing fact.
Reform initiatives such as No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top largely ignore Anderson’s axiom of transformative change. Perhaps well intentioned, these reform agendas assume that the way to change education is to mandate institutional reforms. The reform mandates still view students, in particular, as largely passive players in the education process. The reformers leading these initiatives appear to be blind to what’s really going to change the game – just like I was blind back in 1995.