Online Journalism Blog

Another one for the 5W+H scrapbook…

Hidden away on the Sun website when you do a search…

5 comments December 7th, 2007

iPM: have they been reading my model for a 21st century newsroom?

Over at BBC Radio 4’s iPM website there’s an interesting experiment going on - and some good examples of my 21st century newsroom ideas in practice.

1. Firstly, their ‘Rough Notes’ blog is a good example of the ‘draft’ stage of my News Diamond, with members of the team talking about what they’re working on (and comments facility for people to suggest stories - some very good ideas there, BTW). Also, posts labelled ‘In Production‘ allow you to see the work so far, while you can comment on the current running orders.
2. Secondly, they have a Flickr page where users can upload images. Distributed Journalism, perhaps? Well, more like simple community.
3. Thirdly, and perhaps best of all, they’ve made their del.ico.us account public, so readers can see what they’re reading. That’ll be the ‘What’ of my Five Ws and a H, then.

The blurb, BTW, is: “We’ll source what we do through the best blogs, passionate ‘ear catching’ online debate as well as comments and recommendations of others. So what ends up on air will be shaped by listeners and bloggers.”

2 comments November 13th, 2007

Help make ‘5Ws+H’ happen

I felt so strongly about the Five W’s and a H that should come *after* every story that I pitched an idea based on it to the Knight Foundation. It’s called the ‘Conversation Toolkit’, and it’s through to the second round of the Knight News Challenge. Think it sounds like a good idea? Have any improvements? Want to help make it happen, or test it out? Then log on to the idea wiki at http://bidideas.pbwiki.com/conversationtoolkit (password: idea) and add what you can, or contact me directly.

Here’s the text so far:

Describe your project: * (2075 characters maximum, approximately 325 words)
A series of plugins or bolt-ons that enables publishers to facilitate more productive conversation around a news issue. Based on ‘Five W’s and a H’, this allows users and journalists to address the following questions with a simple user interface:

• Who can I connect with? (e.g. social networking, etc.)
• Where did this happen? (e.g. Google Maps)
• Why should I care? (e.g. personalisation, databases, how international events affect us)
• When are events coming up that I need to be aware of (e.g. Calendar, Facebook Events)
• What did the journalist read to write this?/What have people said about this article? (e.g. links, documents, Trackback)
• How can I make a difference? (e.g. petitions, changes in personal behaviour or consumption, automatic email to politician)

Who would want to use it, and why? * (830 characters maximum, approximately 125 words)

Any news organisation or online content-based organisation. The toolkit would help facilitate user interaction, generate material and engender community around the issues in question. From a business perspective, UGC is known to be sticky and therefore attractive to advertisers; from a community perspective, it helps make information useful, and therefore attracts users.

5. What potentially bigger thing might happen if everything went perfectly and the stars all aligned? * (2075 characters maximum, approximately 325 words)

The plugins become an element in a majority of blogging platforms and news content management systems. Programmers mashup the technology to improve and build on it. Citizens are empowered and engaged with issues in the news, and work together to address problems.

6. How will you be able to measure whether or not your project has really made a difference? * (2075 characters maximum, approximately 325 words)

An open source download site will be able to measure downloads and contributions by developers; pilots using existing news websites and blogs will measure contributions by users. Discussion across the online journalism community will indicate how it is affecting newsroom cultures.

7. What unmet need does your proposal answer? * (2075 characters maximum, approximately 325 words)

An answer to the question what is news for. Until know we have rather complacently believed it contributes something to democracy. Providing tools which allow the audience to extend the news thriugh action as well as conversation will create a more direct link between the deomcratic intent of news and the reality in terms of actions. The need to move beyond the conversation; the need for empowerment and engagement in an increasingly disengaged and disillusioned public. For newsrooms, this fulfuls a need for technologies that facilitate user engagement - ’stickiness’ and loyalty.

8. What specific, unique opportunity do you see that will make this project more successful than others trying to fill that general need? * (2075 characters maximum, approximately 325 words)

Other attempts tend to address specific issues, or provide generic ‘blank pages’ for people to contribute ‘comments’ or improvements. This brings an editorial focus to the questions raised by issues in the news, and helps users to frame their responses in terms of particular, action-based routes of enquiry. It also brings together a number of technologies with potential for news: social networking; mapping; calendars; databases; social bookmarking; and automation - building on off-the-shelf solutions rather than trying to build from scratch.

9. How will people learn about what you are doing? * (2075 characters maximum, approximately 325 words)

The process will be covered on the Online Journalism Blog, which has a global readership across all five continents. I also write for Poynter in the US; Press Gazette and Journalism.co.uk in the UK, and Indian Online Journalism. From those it should be disseminated more widely through other bloggers, academics and journalists. The project should also attract some research coverage.

10. Do you have any other funding or investment? We’re interested in knowing who else is interested in your project. * (2075 characters maximum, approximately 325 words)

No.

11. Are you working with anyone else to complete this project? If so, please give names and what they would do? * (2075 characters maximum, approximately 325 words)

Nick Booth (details above) would be involved in conceptualising the project and liaising with pilot organisations. There is also potential to involve the BBC interactivity unit and any number of interested parties through the Online Journalism Blog.

12. Who else is working in this area? How does your work fit into the larger context of work in this area? * (2075 characters maximum, approximately 325 words)

Although a number of people are working in the wider field of social media - Steve Outing, Jay Rosen - this project is relatively unique in its focus on action and utility.

13. What do you guarantee will happen if you complete the activities in this proposal? * (2075 characters maximum, approximately 325 words)

A prototype plugin that addresses at least one of the six questions identified above, and facilitates user engagement and contribution through work-saving technologies. Along with this, a pilot study that attempts to test such a plugin. And ongoing reports and analysis via the Online Journalism Blog

4 comments November 13th, 2007

Five W’s and a H that should come *after* every story (A model for the 21st century newsroom: pt3)

So far this model has looked at sourcing stories in the new media age, and reporting a news story in the new media age. In this third part I look at what should happen after a news story has been reported, using a familiar framework: the 5 Ws and a H - who, what, where, why, when and how.

A web page - unlike a newspaper, magazine or broadcast - is never finished - or at least, can always be updated. Its permanence is central to its power, and relates directly to its connectivity (and therefore visibility).

Once out there it can be linked to, commented on, discussed, dissected, tagged, bookmarked and sent to a friend. That can take place on the original news site, but it probably doesn’t. The story is no longer yours. So once the news site has added comments, a message board, ‘email to a friend’ boxes and ‘bookmark this’ buttons, what more can it do?

Let’s look at conversations. Conversations are good. They help us work through our thoughts; they help us rethink ideas; put together compelling arguments; make connections; spot holes; negotiate; compromise.

But they’re only the start.

Have you ever been to one of those meetings where there is a lot of talking - but no action? That’s what most news websites and blogs are like at the moment. One endless meeting.

There are some hugely important issues right now. Traditionally news organisations have sought to explain what’s going on, to clarify, to investigate. But given the infinite space, the permanence - and, above all, the connectivity and functionality of new media - shouldn’t we do more?

Shouldn’t we be connecting?

So here’s what my 21st century newsroom does with a story once it’s published. It seeks to make connections - along these lines:

• Who can I connect with?
• What did the journalist read to write this?
• Where did this happen?
• When are events coming up that I need to be aware of?
• Why should I care?
• How can I make a difference?

I’ll deal with these one by one:

Who can I connect with?

The story is about recycling (local facilities are not good enough). Or the story is about chess. Or the story is about fertility treatments. Once someone reads it, they feel they want to talk to someone about it, or organise something, or just play chess.

Traditionally the newspaper/station may have broadcast or printed a telephone number of a traditional organisation - but that organisation had to exist in the first place; and they already have their own agenda. What if our readers want to connect with each other, without the middle man?

Social networking - in some cases crowdsourcing - should be working naturally off the back of these stories. Not just a message board, but a self-generating community of interest: ‘I read this story and wanted to connect’. It may be a pre-existing Facebook group, or a service to build your own social network (Ning and Elgg are just two), or something actively managed by the newsroom (the Community Editor’s role) - or it may be something built using your dating website systems, or your MyX platform. Whatever it is, help them do it.

What did the journalist read to write this?

This should be part of routine practice already, but through a combination of resistant journalistic culture; clunky CMS’s; and lack of time, journalists still don’t routinely link to their sources. So, we need a way to make this happen.

One way would be to make the journalist’s social bookmarking account part of their byline (and, of course, they should be social bookmarking). Unfortunately, it’s not obvious what bookmarks relate to any particular story, so we might need some AI-engineered way of pulling those under related tags. Or, better still, the journalist uses a story-specific tag when bookmarking, and that is used on the story. Readers can then use the same tag to produce more links.

Where did this happen?

Here’s a simple one, and it’s already happening: map your stories. When the California wildfires spread, news organisations tapped into the technology of GoogleMaps to inform their audience; the LA Times uses Google Maps to illustrate homicide data. But these are exceptional, so let’s take more workaday examples. In the UK, regional newspaper publisher Archant is geotagging its stories so readers can choose to read stories within a certain radius; the BBC is experimenting with GPS tagging of stories collected on mobile devices; or how about this map of local bloggers. Then there’s YourStreet, which is doing this with existing stories (US only). Google Maps Mania keeps a running record of experiments across a range of websites - we should be watching these and learning.

When are events coming up that I need to be aware of?

Another simple one. If I read a story about an upcoming festival/reading/demonstration, it would be nice to be able to easily add it to my Outlook/Yahoo/Google calendar - in the same way I can click ‘add to my RSS reader’. Or how about I can sign up for a mobile text alert ahead of the event taking place? Even better would be if I could add my own event that I happen to be organising on the issue being covered.

Some news organisations have events calendars - imagine what an essential resource that would be if your readers could add to it, and even classify with their own tags. Then what if your stories automatically pulled events with related tags? And then perhaps we could sell sponsored links like Google, and make a bit of money? Or charge for a mobile reminder to your phone? Wouldn’t that be nice.

Why should I care?

Possibly the biggest question (and perhaps one that should be answered before the article starts). So the lowest rate of income tax is being axed? How does that affect me? So they want to build houses on green belt land? I don’t live there. Why should I care what happens in Uganda, or Iran?

New media technologies - and databases in particular - offer amazing ways to personalise news and illustrate how it affects the reader. USA Today’s candidate match game is one example that matches you with a candidate based on your views, while the BBC’s Budget Calculator aims to tell you how a new budget will affect you. But we can do much more: if the Stern Review put a figure on how much environmental change will affect our economies, could we tell an individual reader how much it will affect their wallet?

How can I make a difference?

In a way, most of the above questions will go some way to answering this one. The reader can organise with other people; they can add events to their diary; they can raise awareness. But let’s ask this question explicitly: people are starving - what can I do? global temperatures are rising - what can I do?

Again, while there is a fine tradition of feature articles in this vein, this is about opening it to readers. The web offers easy access to online petitions and automatically generated letters to your MP on the more traditional side; while consumer action and changing consumer behaviour is made easy by the ability to switch services online. No doubt there are other examples I’m not including (smart mobs spring to mind). And yes, it’s about advocacy, which may be uncomfortable for journalists used to the principle of objectivity. But I think we’re past that, aren’t we?

Read part four of the model for a 21st century newsroom - News distribution in a new media age - here.

This is a work in progress. Please add your own contributions - are there other Who/What/Where/Why/When/Hows? Examples already in practice?

Note: Thanks to Nick Booth for helping work through these ideas at PICNIC 07

Update 1: Help make these ideas reality.

Update 2: Nico Luchsinger suggests the integration of a comment tracking tool (like CoComment), that “makes the journalists’ comments elsewhere available, possibly also with a tagging functionality, so that you can look at comments on a specific subject.”

Update 3: Vincent Maher makes a number of useful points:

1. Microformats, esp. calendar and contacts, are going to be great for this
2. The idea of social connections and context left on content like perfume is slightly weird but also potentially massive. So you go to a story, see a list of people who said they want to connect with others and why, and you can connect with them using something like OpenSocial, if they create a portable profile system, in whatever container you’re all in. Killer.
3. In this day and age everything should be geo-coded no matter how transient it may seem. The next great navigational device is the plan itself and history needs to be encoded into/onto it.
4. Tag aggregators like technorati are useful for pulling out related blog entries etc, but new orgs should agree to a a standard API for extracting tag-relational data from their own archives. So a standard way to publish the address of the remote methods, the input format i.e. a list of tags, a date constraint and some info on how to order the results. Then it sends back a list of headlines, blurbs, dates and URIs. Simple enough and this would enable bloggers to be able to do the reverse back again - i.e. instead of media linking to related blogs, be able to link to related media stories in a particular publication. News must stop being content and become a platform.

Update 4: read this post to see a mockup of these ideas in action and more detail

22 comments November 12th, 2007

A model for the 21st century newsroom pt2: Distributed Journalism

In the first part of my model for the 21st century newsroom I looked at how a story might move through a number of stages from initial alert through to customisation. In part two I want to look at sourcing stories, and the role of journalism in a new media world.

The last century has seen three important changes for the news industry. It has moved…

• from a world of information scarcity to information overload,
• from a world where commercial and government bodies needed the news industry to disseminate information, to one where they can disseminate information themselves.
• from a world where members of the public needed the news industry for information, to one where they can access - and produce - it themselves

In this environment the professional journalist can no longer justify a role simply processing content from source to consumer.

Instead, the modern journalist’s role needs to move above the content.

What does this mean? It means two things:

• Readers can access commercial and official sources online. Some journalists, then, need to collate , synthesise and verify reaction from the blogosphere and other sources. They need to interrogate sources more, to challenge assertions more, and to investigate stories that are going unreported.
• Readers can produce opinion, analysis and reporting online. Some journalists, then, need to develop a community management role, to manage content - to bring together bloggers and sources, to set up aggregation, submission and collaboration systems, and to crowdsource stories that would otherwise be impossible to cover.

A large part of both involves what I would call distributed journalism.

Distributed journalism

Distributed journalism means letting go of one asset - content - to build another: community. It means cultivating contacts, not just a contacts book. It means understanding communities, and sometimes being led by them. And it means creating tools and systems as often as creating stories.

Here’s the graphic - note that it is not top-down or hierarchical:

The distributed journalist uses a number of technologies to manage different ‘types’ of contributors. For the ‘brain’, the ‘voice’ and the ‘ear’ tools are central to monitoring and identifying the best ones; for the accidental journalist, the ‘value adder’, the technician and the crowd, systems are more important.

Tool-monitored contributors

• The brain: journalists already use experts extensively. Traditionally these have been accessed through professional bodies and ‘ivory tower’ academic institutions. But this often means these sources are part of a narrow, political elite, which can have vested interests. New media forms allow people outside of those circles to publish - and develop - their own expertise, and develop their own reputations based on that. In this space, an ‘expert’ is not always officially denoted as such by an institution or organisation, but may demonstrate expertise through hands-on experience or through well supported arguments. The distributed journalist monitors those experts, subscribes to their RSS feeds, quotes when relevant and commissions when they need analysis. There is also an argument for leading by example: a distributed journalist who blogs is demonstrating they want to be part of the conversation, while employing an ‘enthusiast-in-chief’ who brings a reputation with them to lead a UGC site is a proven way to attract contributors.
• The voice: New media forms allow anyone to publish their opinion, which stands or falls by its own qualities. Separate to the expert, the voice writes well, compellingly, often wittily or in an entertaining fashion, whether or not they have expertise or personal experience - much as the traditional columnist does. Or they produce compelling imagery, video or audio. The distributed journalist identifies the blogger with a voice, brings them into the news organisation when they can, and links to them when they cannot. There is also a strong argument here for integration with other services - if you can allow users to tick a box that publishes their material to Flickr or add their RSS feed to your system, etc. then you are saving them time and effort, and showing you’re not just stealing their content.
• The ear: someone, somewhere, knows what’s going on in a particular community of space or interest. They may filter that to their blog, or Twitter account, or mailing list - or they may simply note what they see in a social bookmarking account. The distributed journalist subscribes to the RSS feeds or mailing list, becomes ‘Facebook friends’, and supports and encourages this filtering by linking and contributing when they can.
• And don’t forget the silent population: not everyone has internet access; not everyone has time to do these things. The distributed journalist must make an effort to give a voice to those people too. Partnering with groups who are in contact with those people is one good idea.

System-facilitated contributors

• The accidental journalist: this is the person who stumbles upon a news story - the archetypal citizen journalist - and captures it on a mobile phone, camcorder, or simply with their eyes. You cannot cultivate the accidental journalist in the same way as habitual producers - but news organisations have the biggest advantage in attracting them: their brand, reputation and reach. This is important: when the Cutty Sark catches fire, you want to be the news organisation the citizen journalist sends their pictures to.
  So what can the news organisation do? Be available, be a trusted name, and have a budget to pay if you need to. Set up channels of access - include journalists’ emails in their reports; provide simple uploading facilities on your website; and invest resources in monitoring submissions both to your own site and to other user generated content sites like YouTube and Flickr - because the accidental journalist will not always know they have a story. Finally, get involved in media training with your community, so that a) they can spot a story; b) they produce something of decent quality; and c) they think of you first, because you’re the one who taught them to do a) and b).
• The value adder: the value adder is hot on facts, hot on grammar, hot on spelling (but not on style or legal issues, which is one reason why you still need in-house subs). They pick up the mistakes, and they clean up vandalism. They annotate, adding bits of information - comments, useful links, tags (internally if you have a tagging system for users and externally if they use services like Delicious or Digg), or votes on whether a story is ‘good’ or ‘bad’.
  Again, systems are key here - a responsive system for corrections; a commenting facility; tagging and bookmarking. And a culture of openness where feedback is welcomed and value adders thanked or recognised.
• The technician: this is the person who takes your stories, classifieds or raw data and maps them with Google Maps; who creates a comparison between your editorial agenda and what people are actually reading; who creates a Facebook app or a specialist RSS feed; or simply suggests an idea. The technician can add genuine creativity and value to content - but for them to do that you need to open up your systems - APIs, databases - so that they can mash them up with others, or make tweaks and improvements. You need to make the attributes of your story (location, age, score) available. And you need to provide support where you can.
• The crowd: the former audience is not just a group of people who can now talk to you. A conversation can only achieve so much. Crowdsourcing offers a way to cover issues and investigate stories that traditional journalism cannot match, by making users part of the newsgathering process.
  It seems to me that there are two main types of crowdsourcing project: one taps into a diversity of expertise (the engineer, the insider, the accountant) or experience; the other taps into sheer manpower - lots of people doing a small task each, like sifting through one part of a large amount of information, making a request for information, or conducting one interview. Systems that facilitate that process - like wikis, content management sytems, or even simple online forms - are important, but so is developing support structures and identifying the one percent of users who are regular contributors.

Naturally these categories are not exclusive - the brain may have a good voice (so to speak); the ‘ear’ may add value; being part of a crowd may lead someone to think of filming a newsworthy event when they stumble upon it. Investment in any of these areas should lead to feedback in others, not to mention knock-on effects on circulation, an issue I’ll deal with in part 4.

Read part three of this model: Five W’s and a H that should come after every story

14 comments October 2nd, 2007

A model for the 21st century newsroom: pt1 - the news diamond

A month ago, I used the Online Journalism Facebook Group to ask readers to suggest what areas they wanted covering, in an experiment with bottom-up editing (the forum for suggestions is still open by the way). Megan T suggested “Rethinking the production of newspapers”.

After researching, conceptualising and scribbling, I’ve come up with a number of models around the news process, newsgathering, interactivity and business models.

The following, then, is the first in a series of proposals for a ‘model for the 21st century newsroom’ (part two is now here). This is a converged newsroom which may produce material for print or broadcast or both, but definitely includes an online element. Here’s the diagram. The model is explained further below it

Building on the strengths of the medium

The strengths of the online medium are essentially twofold, and contradictory: speed, and depth.

New media technologies are able to publish news faster than the previous kings of speed: TV and radio. Think mobile and email updates. Think moblogs. Think Twitter.

At the same time, the unlimited space and time of the web, and its hypertextual and ‘pull’ properties, make it potentially deeper and broader than the previous kings of context and analysis: newspapers and magazines. Think Wikipedia’s coverage of Hurricane Katrina. Think the Daily Kos. Think hyperlocal websites. Think Chicagocrime.org.

The process model above proposes how a large news story might pass through a converged newsroom, from speed to depth, in the following steps:

1. Alert: as soon as the journalist or editor is aware that a story is breaking, an alert is sent out. This might be from their mobile phone, Blackberry, or wifi laptop. Subscribers to text or email updates, a Twitter or Facebook feed, would be notified instantly. This shows you ‘own’ the story; it reinforces your reputation for being first with the big stories; and for the smaller stories, it can provide an opportunity to add personality to your coverage (the ‘what I’m doing now’ approach of Twitter). And it drives readers to your website, newspaper or broadcast.
2. Draft: too rough for print or broadcast, but perfect for blogs. Backing up the alert, the draft report - like a wire report - gives initial names, places and details - and sources. It is updated as fresh details come in. The draft performs the important role of keeping the ‘Alert’ readers on your site, but it also serves to spread word through the blogosphere, bringing in more readers and helping your search engine ranking. Ideally it will also attract commenters and pingbacks which can add or correct details, or even provide new leads. Frequent updates - for instance linking to other coverage - help to prevent it getting knocked off the top of Google News (which looks for the most recently updated, not the first posted).
3. Article/Package: in between the two extremes of speed and depth where online excels, traditional print and broadcast media have these strengths: their documentary nature, and the very limitations of their time and space. Their ability to document a ’snapshot’ - an interim definitive account: the 300-word article or 3-minute package - is key to traditional news media’s appeal. The editorial decision that this story was worth a spot is important when compared to the internet’s infinity. At this stage, the draft turns into a package with higher production values, and which could be online, in print, broadcast, or all of those. The timing may be dictated by print or broadcast processes.
4. Context: back online, that infinite space has an important role to play in providing instant and extensive context: how many times has this happened? Where can I access previous reports? What does that concept mean? How does this scientific principle work? Where can I find more information about this person or organisation? Where can I go to for support or help? Hypertext is central here - the ability to link to a range of documents, organisations, and explanations - both from your own archive and from external providers - in a portal that provides an essential resource. The print or broadcast report may also draw on some of this context, but it should refer to the online resource for more.
5. Analysis/Reflection: after the report, comes the analysis. For online this may mean gathering the almost instant reaction taking place in the blogosphere in general, on your own blogs and forums, and proactively from the informed and the affected. The person covering the story may reflect on the whole experience on their blog, while podcasts are great for staging discussion and debate. At some point print and broadcast will take one or more snapshots for their production cycles.
6. Interactivity: interactivity requires investment and preparation, but can engage and inform the user in a way other media cannot, as well as providing a ‘long tail’ resource that generates repeat visits over a long timescale: a Flash interactive may take days to produce but can provide a compelling combination of hypertext, video, audio, animation and databases (they can also be dynamically updated); a forum can provide a place for people to gather and post experiences and information; a wiki can do the same but more effectively. Live chats can allow users direct access to newsmakers, journalists and experts.
7. Customisation: the final stage should be automatic: the ability for users to customise information to their own needs. At its most basic this might be to subscribe to email, text or RSS updates of that particular story. More advanced services might include social recommendation (’Other people who read this story also read…‘) or database-driven journalism that allows users to drill down into the information: ‘What happened to that street?’; ‘How many cases were there in my postcode?’; ‘What does this tax mean for someone on my wage?’. This means production processes that integrate things like metatagging, and interfaces that can run off a database, and last but not least, a culture that thinks in terms of these possibilities.

That news process in action

Let’s take a typical mid-range news story: ‘public figure makes controversial statement’ to illustrate the process specifically:

1. Alert: ‘Lord Smith: “stop ‘Mickey Mouse’ degrees”‘ - link to…
2. Draft: gives more detail, and is open to comments and discussion, linking to other blogs. One commenter points out that Lord Smith studied English Literature. Journalist seeks ‘official’ comment to put in the…
3. Article: two blog post comments incorporated into a version that goes in the printed newspaper.
4. Context: best links taken from blog post comments, as well as full transcript of speech, audio and some mobile phone video taken by one attendee. Tags (’LordSmith’) used to link to ongoing coverage and provide an instant ‘portal’.
5. Analysis: one particularly well informed blogger who linked to the Draft post is paid to write a longer piece for the paper. A commenter - an academic - is invited to a podcast discussion with Lord Smith.
6. Interactivity: website visitors are invited to ‘attempt an essay question’ from a ‘Mickey Mouse’ degree, giving a real first-hand understanding of what is involved in the subject.
7. Customisation: an RSS feed or email alert is available for any stories tagged ‘LordSmith’

The news diamond

This model can also be represented as an alternative to the inverted pyramid: a ‘news diamond’, if you like.

Just as the inverted pyramid was partly a result of the increasing role of the telegraph in the news industry, and dominant cultural ideas of empiricism and science, this news diamond attempts to illustrate the change from a 19th century product (the article) to a 21st century process: the iterative journalism of new media; the story that is forever ‘unfinished’. More than anything, it’s designed to challenge the dominance of the inverted pyramid, to illustrate its origins in the industrial era, and its shortcomings. And in the spirit of the ‘unfinished’, none of these models are final: please post a comment with your own contributions.

UPDATE: Part two of the model for the 21st century newsroom is now live.

71 comments September 17th, 2007