in a time of change Margaret Simons Director Centre for Advancing Journalism University of Melbourne ASTW Convention Keynote 5 September 2015 When everything is changing its worth considering the things that stay the same ID: 431917
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Slide1
journalism in a time of change
Margaret Simons
Director, Centre for Advancing Journalism, University of Melbourne
ASTW Convention Keynote 5 September 2015Slide2
When everything is changing, it’s worth considering the things that stay the same
Human beings make storiesSlide3
When everything is changing, it’s worth considering the things that stay the same
Whenever they come together, human beings share newsSlide4
So What is a Journalist? Journalists
Describe Society to Itself.
They
Convey Information, Ideas and
Opinions
They
search, disclose, record, question, entertain, suggest and remember.
They
inform citizens and animate democracy.
They
give a practical form to freedom
of expression.
(MEAA Code o f Ethics)Slide5
Two Key Ideas The job of professionally gathering and spreading news and information arises when communities become too big and complex to know themselves by word of mouth alone.
And
the business of professionally gathering and spreading
news and information
has always been
heavily influenced
by technology. Slide6
We are not determined by technology. We create it. We are shaped by it,
and we shape itSlide7
The printing press (1400s)
Made “mass media” possible.
Led to notions of the “public” as a body of people remote from each other, but sharing interests.
Led to the religious reformation.
To modern ideas of democracy.
To modern ideas of freedom of speech.
To newspapers – and journalists.Slide8
Revolution! In the 1600s, the breakdown of power under King Charles during the puritan revolution meant that the newspapers had previously unfelt freedom. The fall of the king, and even his execution, were freely reported.
“Who
kills a Man kills a reasonable creature, but he who destroys a good
Booke
kills reason it
selfe
. Truth and understanding are not such wares as to be
monopolioz’d
.”
John Milton 1644Slide9
More Revolution!Newspapers helped incite rebellion!The notion of the Fourth Estate originated during the French Revolution. (The other three estates being the clergy, the nobility and the commoners.)
The notion that the Press is the fourth estate rests on the idea that the media's function is to act as a guardian of the public interest and as a watchdog on the activities of government.
Depending on one's view of the media, this is either self-serving rationalisation, or an important component of the checks and balances that form part of a modern democracy.
- AustralianPolitics.com
http://www.australianpolitics.com/media/fourth-estate.shtmlSlide10
More Revolution!"No experiment can be more interesting than that we are now trying, and which we trust will end in establishing the fact, that man may be governed by reason and truth. Our first object should therefore be, to leave open to him all avenues of the truth".
Thomas Jefferson
Principal Author, US Declaration of Independence. 3
rd
President of the United States.Slide11
And Commerce…The first newspapers were often founded as private news sheets by merchants who wanted information about markets.
The first professional “foreign correspondents” were hired by them to provide information about markets and supplies.
Publishing information about business and prices made modern capitalism possible.Slide12
The Telegraph (1794)
Led to the need for brevity
For putting the most important facts first
To more immediacy
To faster newsSlide13
Radio (early 20th Century)Telling stories with soundInterviews“Actuality”
More speed
More immediacy
The need for accessSlide14
Television (mid 20th Century)
Pictures
Access to news
More immediacy
More speed
The need for television skillsSlide15
The World Wide Web (late 20th Century)
Lowered barriers to entry – anyone can publish
Other media converge – pictures, sound and text all delivered to web pages
More immediacy
More speed
The hyperlink – stories become portalsSlide16
And Now???
Communities of interest the members of which post and point each other to news
Niche media rather than mass media?
Distribution becomes more important than platformSlide17
“The medium is the message” - Marshall McLuhanSlide18
Technological DeterminismJournalism is “called in to being” by technologyThe journalistic method is formed and determined by technology
The technology of our own time may end journalism OR
The technology of our own time will make us all into journalistsSlide19
DeterminismTakes a narrow single track view – only one possible way
Lets society “off the hook”
Makes us passive
Misses complexitySlide20
…another view
“A knife can be used to cook, kill or cure.”
- Paul
Hodkinson
, Chapter Two, Media Culture and Society, an introduction (Sage, 2011).Slide21
Technology can both be “read” – telling us things about the society that created it.It also “writes” by influencing what it is possible for the society to do.Slide22
A Fifth Estate?Does the “network of networks” create a new “estate” that can help keep the fourth estate accountable? (Bruns 2013, Dutton 2014)
Or does it merely reproduce existing power networks?
Or will it lead to a new dark ages, in which we don’t know what is true…Slide23
A moment in recent history…Gillard’s “mysogony speech” 11 October 2012.Within 24 hours – 300,000 views on ABC News and YouTube
“Gillard” one of the world’s top trending words on Twitter
Headlines around the world
Slide24
…while in Australia journalists were dismissive“Gillard's judgment was flawed. All she achieved was a serious loss of credibility”
-Peter
Hartcher
,
Sydney Morning Herald
“
It sounded more desperate than convincing”
- Michelle Grattan,
The AgeSlide25
Crisis?It is important to keep in mind where the crisis IS, and where it is NOT.There is no evidence of declining appetite for news and information. Quite the reverse.
The crisis is in the business models that have supported journalism, not in the public’s appetite for journalism.Slide26
Storytelling (including journalism) as community work“The key to building community among residents of urban areas is residents’ storytelling about their
community. A complete “storytelling
neighbourhood
” network consists of residents, community
organizations
, and local media that together are generating and sharing stories about the community.
The
most effective thing that media and community organizations can do to strengthen community is
foster
storytelling about and within that community.”
-
Metamorphosis
: Transforming the Ties that Bind Slide27
Coming soon?Google Glass: Interacting and reporting at the same time – so that the boundaries between the two blurCollapsing boundaries between social media platforms
Implanted media devices – stories to your head
Story and meaning-making by sharing
Creativity resides in the collective, as much or more as in the individualSlide28
Journalists of the future…Generous of spiritInnovative
Sharers and community workers
Quick to make meaning
Happy to converse
Able to bind together the threads of story from many contributions
Highly valued, and highly sought afterSlide29
End of Empire….“The only media organisations that will survive will be those who know and accept that all the rules have changed. That the media business has gone from one of the most simple to
one
of the most complex. Only those who can see now what many generals only see after
devastating
loss – that the tactics that won them the last battle might just be the ones that
deliver
them defeat in the next.”
-ABC Managing Director Mark Scott. AN Smith Lecture, October 2009. Slide30
Seized by Hope “Journalists have never before been able to tell stories so effectively, bouncing off each other, linking to each other (as the most generous and open-minded do), linking out, citing sources, allowing response – harnessing the best qualities of text, print, data, sound and visual media. If ever there was a route to building audience, trust and relevance, it is by embracing all the capabilities of this new world, not walling yourself away from them.”
Alan
Rusbridger
, Editor The Guardian
Hugh
Cudlip
Lecture, 25 January 2010.Slide31
Who owns the stories?Who makes the stories?We do