“This book is my manifesto for the media as a journalist but also as a citizen of the world. As a journalist you are constantly being told that the news media have enormous power to shape society and events, to change lives and history. So why are we so careless as a society about the future of journalism itself ?” [1]

This is how Charlie Beckett presents his book “SuperMedia: Saving Journalism So It Can Save The World” (Wiley-Blackwell, 2008), in which he tackles the main challenges to journalistic practice in our days, and its influence to maintain free and democratic societies .

Charlie Beckett is a journalist with a 20 yearscareer at the BBC and ITN, and he is also the founding Director of POLIS, a think tank about journalism and society at the London School of Economics. “SuperMedia” is a work that gathers and structures several streams of thought about the future of Journalism as a essential service to contemporary societies, and how the changes in the news industry, beyond inevitable, are necessary.

Alex Gamela posed a few questions to Charlie Beckett about his book (Portuguese version available here).

“I estimate that we have five years – perhaps ten – to save journalism so that journalism can save the world. “

So, why is journalism in danger? For Beckett, this is due to a “mixture of economic pressures, political repression ( [in] places like Africa, Russia etc) and the shift of people’s attention to new media alternatives”.

The traditional media have kept their relationship with the audience fairly unchanged in the past few decades, which seemed to work just fine, but with the coming of new technologies that relationship shifted, and the news industry seems to be having some difficulties adapting to the new circumstances.

I had to ask Charlie Beckett a question he himself raised in his book: “What is wrong with the media business?” “It is too formulaic, too closed, too limited.” In fact, the trouble and the fears are increasing in the “dead tree” industry: dropping profits, lower circulation, staff cuts, and the reluctance of many professionals to embrace the new ways of communication.

Despite all that, journalism’s job is still the same: to inform. And the flow of information in a free environment allows a better knowledge of what surrounds us, and a more effective interaction with it. But, for a long time, journalism took the part of the messenger that was never accounted for.

And what is its role nowadays?

“Journalism has many roles: entertainment, watchdog, informer, forum, economic medium and more. Societies with open and thriving news media seem to be richer and more well-adjusted.”.

At the heart of the news process are journalists, an ill-viewed class at the eyes of most citizens. Under such a pessimistic perspective on the function they perform, I asked if journalists had forgot about their responsibilities:

“Of course not”, says Beckett, “but a journalist’s priority is to do their job well. Wider responsibilities should be considered by the journalist and their organisations, but everyone will shape them differently. Networked journalism allows the public to help define and then share the responsibilities.”

Networked Journalism

Charlie Beckett spends a large part of his book talking about networked journalism. As he explained on BBC “Networked journalists share the news process with the audience right from the start: from information gathering to distribution, in active, participative way.”[2]

In a nutshell, Beckett described it to me as a “thorough-going change in journalism practice which challenges the basic assumptions of mainstream journalism. It synthesises the functions of editing, reporting and packaging with much public involvement throughout the process.”

As long as they have access to a computer or a cell phone, any member of the audience can collaborate with journalists as a citizen journalist, through wikis, blogs, or providing multimédia contents. Or they can just sit back and watch the results of this collaboration.

This implies new perspectives and an extension of the news agenda that expands with each participation. This synergy can rebuild public trust in journalism, and an increase of media companies’ knowledge about their audiences: “People are increasingly sceptical but that can be a good thing. Old Media didn’t take audience seriously because they never met them.”

But the participation of amateurs in the news process raises the content quality issue. For Charlie Beckett this does not apply: “There are vast amounts of rubbish on corporate media.”

Another one of the most discussed subjects on New Media is how they can generate revenue: “Much too big a question! If I knew the answer I would be very rich.”

We’ve been watching practical examples of this evolution: the celerity of how the Sichuan earthquake was reported on the web, the democratization of multimedia content, the development of social networks and virtual communities, etc. But more than a technological evolution, networked journalism is a philosophy: “(…)is a return to some of the oldest virtues of journalism: connecting with the world beyond the newsroom; listening to people; giving people a voice in the media; responding to what the public tells you in a dialogue. But it has the potential to go further than that in transforming the power relationship between media and the public and reformulating the means of journalistic production.”.[3]

The multiplication of ways to communicate means that there is a whole lot more information than ever before, where each individual can express himself according to his own agenda. I told Charlie Beckett that the media landscape looked like a broken mirror, with different platforms in different media, for fragmented audiences, using various applications. He replied: “What’s wrong with diversity and difference and distance? But generally more public participation allows greater voice and more connectivity.” Between people, and between audience and media companies. Are the new networked media outlets becoming the heart of communities? “Yes – but they might also be on the edges of communities or outside of them. NJ naturally works best when supported by groups of people but those communities might not be geographical.” The geography that we relate to now is the one of concepts, tastes, ideas.

In his book, Beckett extensively reports on how the networked media can influence the political conscience of citizens when mainstream media is alerted to subjects that usually would remain hidden under the stack of the news pile that fills newsrooms everyday. Networked journalism allows a reformulation of the news agenda, making way to news that are important to smaller communities, or society in general, but of which is disconnected for not being provided with information about that reality. The main example that Beckett uses is Africa: how can societies with few economical resources, educational and democratic deficits, and a low technology penetration rate can benefit from something like networked journalism? Africa does not have widespread internet network, but in most countries there are structures that enable a good cell coverage.

The participation of independent voices in the construction of a news image of Africa, created far from governmental pressures, may give us for sure more insightful perspectives than the ones provided by state media, or by correspondents that can’t reach everywhere. With the easiness of spreading information via mobile devices, Africa may become the perfect testing ground for networked journalism.

“It’s not the perfect testing ground. I said that it is the ultimate test, because so much old media has failed in Africa. Networked journalism offers a fresh opportunity that can be grounded in African’s own experience and expertise.”

But is this a path without risks? The power of networked journalism is to influence common people’s lives, but are there any dangers in this way of doing things?

“Who are the ‘common’ people? I honestly don’t see any real ‘dangers’ in new media trends that aren’t common to old media dangers. People will still be dishonest, biased and greedy online as well as offline, but I honestly don’t think that new media has any new threats compared to old mass media.”

Hyperjournalists

There are clear advantages in embracing new media: they’re cheap, fast, more effective, and their potential is almost infinite. Still, there is a lot of suspicion over them:

“People always resist change. New media means learning new tricks. Some jobs will go. And it challenges the assumptions of old journalism so some people will find that threatening.”

And what standard procedures journalists must follow in this brave new world? “There should be NO standard procedures. That is old thinking.” In “SuperMedia”, Beckett defends that versatility and the ability to adapt are the most important features for future communication professionals, not only to new Technologies and market characteristics, but also to their relationship with the users. The journalists of the future must know how to use social networks in their favour, create and package news in several formats, and know how to manage user contribution before, during and after publishing.

To Beckett, “Journalism likes to think it is a superhero when it is really Clark Kent.”[4]. A journalist’s superpowers are his ability to colaborate with the audience, but that doesn’t mean that his activity will become more precarious: “The journalist is just as needed because you need filters, editors, and packagers but they will have to become facilitators, connectors and enablers as well. It’s a more complex and interesting job and just as vital.”

Will the heightening of the complexity of journalistic activity make journalism more reliable, even better? Beckett believes that “it will be as reliable as the people who make it. ‘better’ is a very subjective word. But yes I think that public participation raises standards by increasing resources.”

Hyperjournalists training for Super Media reality should be “much more multi-skilled and work more on problem-solving to foster a craft of creative engagement with the public rather than spending months learning to copy journalists of the past.”

The problem is that the relationship of journalists with elements outside to newsrooms hasn’t been easy. Beckett wrote extensively about the journalists’ relationship with another emerging class, bloggers, that seem to be living above the rules imposed on journalists, and that rapidly won their way as information distributors. Have bloggers as many responsibilities as journalists nowadays, and should they have their own ethical code? Or will quality become the true regulator of their activity?

Beckett believes that bloggers don’t need an ethical code: “Most journalists ignore any codes they might have. The guarantee of quality or reliability is diversity, accountability and that comes with networked journalism.”

After all, we all can become journalists. As Beckett says, journalists are “people who report, analyse and comment on events and issues for other people to consume.” And it’s in the crossing of these relationships that Supermedia is created.

The SuperMedia Challenge

“Supermedia” is a networked book itself. Charlie Beckett resorted to the ideas by Paul Bradshaw, Jeff Jarvis, Jay Rosen and other new media thinkers – besides referring to other personalities that affected that reality to ground and develop his own concepts.

What comes out of it is a rather optimistic perspective (at least that is how it seems to me, despite the gloomy principle it stands on) that provides practical indications on how media, from corporate to personal, could and should develop. It’s a fundamental work in this period of transition and definition of what it is journalism, what is it good for and who is it good for.

Enriched with the author’s perspective about the social importance of media, it’s the perfect digest of several streams of thought on the ways industry and audiences should follow in the future. It’s not a complex book regarding concepts, but it is in the implications inferred, and i believe it will turn into an excellent guide for professionals and journalism students, to understand how we pass from a one way, corporate and limited communication, to another, networked, relational, costumized, communitary. And the questions raised in the book don’t have necessarily only one answer.

Above all, Beckett defends the increasingly mooted idea that the news is a service, not a product, therefore the public interest stands above all the rest. It’s a strange way to liberalize something that belongs to everyone, and that must serve the common welfare.

Like he says in his book, “journalism can be a greater force for good.” I asked him if that “mission, should we accept it”, is possible: “Of course anything is possible. But it is a choice. We get the media we create.”

You can buy “SuperMedia: Saving Journalism So It Can Save The World” here, or download the first three chapters from Polis website.

Alex Gamela looks at citizen journalism – or the lack of it – in the Portuguese media landscape

We’ve been watching a significant change in the Portuguese news media during the last few years. From national to local newspapers, radios and TV channels, everyone is building their presence online, with more or less aptitude or quality. Still, the effort is noticeable.

Portugal Diário is a exclusively online outlet that has recently gone through a deep redesign.

But this investment in new platforms of communication doesn’t mean the companies are following the latest trends, or leaving their somewhat conservative approach to the full possibilities of the web. The news websites in Portugal are mostly a repository for print content, since many don’t have exclusively online journalists, and the resources for online content are rather limited, especially as multimedia content is concerned, though slowly the tide is turning, mainly due to the efforts of major newspapers, that are trying to improve and take the step forward in online content.

This scenario, of slow and uneven development of new media content, is useful to explain why the interactivity between media and users is practically nonexistent. Many still don’t grasp the concept of participative/citizen journalism and community, but companies and newsroom managements aren’t the only ones to blame, since there are other factors to consider:

- Portugal has a low newspaper reading index, and despite an increase in the last years, it is still one of the lowest in Europe;

- the Portuguese, as a people, usually aren’t civically engaged;

- journalists, as a class, are quite protective about their job;

- there is no specific training for professional journalists regarding community management, content moderation, outsourced content;

So, if news information still runs downriver, it’s because there’s not only a structural problem, but also a passive-aggressive attitude towards citizen journalism: passive on the citizen part, aggressive on the journalists that defend their status as news bearers with tooth and nail, even if most don’t take any effort to understand the new reality.

To vouch for these changes and current mindset, I created a small survey in which I was trying to understand the conditions and openness of online media to citizen contribution. It was divided in 4 parts:

• company characteristics,
• main types of content and sources,
• forms of user participation, and
• a short opinion on citizen journalism.

This survey was sent to about 50 newspapers, TV and radios with online news features, sizing from national media groups to local companies. The response was baffling.

A quarter of the email addresses available for contact with the website or newsroom’s management were useless, and even after further attempts inviting the remaining ones that worked, only four companies replied and filled out the form.

The results are, therefore, inconclusive. But this is a good example to show how receptive most newsrooms and companies are to outside stimulation, even if it wasn’t only for the fact that the ones that replied are amongst those who are working to develop their presence online, in a well-thought-through, sustainable way, and embracing the new challenges posed by hyper-communication, while the vast majority is selling pigs in a poke.

Two newspapers (one national, the other local), one online news outlet and a TV channel responded to the survey.

• The local newspaper was the least resourceful, with no exclusively online journalists, against the online outlet with over 30 workers.
• The local newspaper had 30 to 50 thousand visits, against the over 330 thousand claimed by the TV channel’s online newsroom.
• All of them prioritized text over video, audio and photography, being video the less used format, except on the TV website, for obvious reasons.
• None used citizen or users as a source, sticking to the journalists’ investigation and agencies feed, although users’ images and videos were welcome.
• All are expecting to open their website to further user collaboration, and when asked about the future of citizen journalism, the best answer was “interactivity is one of the factors that increases the number of visits,(…) and the visibility and acknowledgement of the brand”. This line of thought is still a needle in the Portuguese news haystack.

The most recent reports on citizen journalism in the USA (State of the News Media 2008) show a decrease in user’s participation, though there are new websites and features popping up everyday, appealing to news readers to develop contents and create a tighter relationship with the online editions.

In Portugal, all the news related to media websites’ development is around announcing more multimedia and interactive features, for broadband usage: more video, more comments, more space for users’ opinions and input.

With very few notable exceptions, nothing is really changing; the main difference is that the contributions accepted by media companies are now being sent over the internet, instead of regular mail.

Portuguese users are actively creating their own media, such as blogs and podcasts; and commenting on the news websites, or sending small videos and pictures is still enough for most of them.

And on the day I’m writing this, Público presented a feature that links a news article to the blogs that refer to it, which may mean that the future is not necessarily in the embedding of citizen content, but by promoting the exchange of contents between corporate and citizen media.

But, apart from those small advances to integrate users in the building of the news landscape, there is nothing we may call citizen journalism in Portugal.

The reasons to proclaim citizen journalism as a part of the future of news media may be honest or pure marketing, but the fact is that it doesn’t rely solely on the companies’ shoulders. The main promoters of this movement must be the citizens themselves, and they should be the leading force in changing the face of corporate news, recreating the agenda setting, humanizing and lending depth to news content. The media outlets just have to be ready to accept that.

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After writing this article I even questioned how the local press is slowly commiting suicide. Assymetry is the main characteristic of our media landscape, which kind of follows the rest of the national economic and industrial scenery. The challenge is huge, and I don’t see many people facing it or even taking it seriously, with a few notable exceptions. But this setting is not ours exclusively.

Alex Gamela is the OJB’s Portugal correspondent. He blogs at O Lago.

What do they say it is?

“FORA.tv delivers discourse, discussions and debates on the world’s most interesting political, social and cultural issues, and enables viewers to join the conversation. It provides deep, unfiltered content, tools for self-expression and a place for the interactive community to gather online(…) enables a new, global media opportunity by aggregating a daily range of events, produced and electronically shipped by institutions or freelance producers, from around the world.”

What do we say it is?

A top I.Q. multimedia soapbox, where we can find the ideas of “poets, authors, policy experts, activists, madmen, government leaders, visionary thinkers”. A showroom for brilliance and discussion, in various topics from health to religion, from politics to arts. Video is privileged.

What’s great about it?

The content, the huge amount of videos for a so called beta version, and the number of posts at the forums. The quality of the videos seems to be pretty good also. And we must point out the will to open the site to various subjects and origins (geographical too). The team running the site is top notch. No amateurs here.

What could be better?

The organization of the website is a bit confusing, but they say they’re working on it. And what makes it great for some will be a put down for others, because it can look a bit elitist.

How is it going to make money?

This appears to be well funded, and they have advertisements from big companies, that also promote some of the events displayed on the website. Example: Pfizer.

Should I pay it any attention?

If you’re interested in think tanks, lectures, debates, and sky level arguments, fora.tv is for you. It can become a reference for specialized journalists and experts.

by Alexandre Gamela