21st C Post-boom social journalism

• By Matthew Fisher
• May 6, 2009

I was recently asked to speak to a class of soon-to-be graduating students in their Temple University Multimedia Urban Reporting Lab by Christopher Harper, Associate Professor and Co-director of the lab. I am not a journalist, nor did I study journalism, but I have been in the business of multimedia storytelling for a long time, so I guess I had a thing or two to say. Here’s what I told them:

Not only traditional journalistic entities, but also traditional industries across the board are hitting rock bottom right now, so it’s important that everyone resets their framework accordingly. Newspapers are disappearing, television and radio are hurting, yet American’s thirst for information is growing- however, when the economy recovers it will do so in a very different landscape than even our current one. Journalism is and will continue to become more relevant than ever, but not necessarily in the traditional sense.

The new breed of journalist must be a media producer- the more you understand and master a variety of aspects of storytelling across all mediums, from spoken and written word to visual narrative to interactive platforms, the better you will function in the new economy. The old model of large-scale media broadcasting production made up of smaller components is giving way to a new model in which individual bloggers and mediamakers are directly producing thousands of outlets for microcasting their messages and stories. Moreover, this new model is fast replacing traditional platforms- new online news digests such as Truthout.Com, Politico.com, and the Huffington Post are used at White House daily briefings, in preference to the old media models like CNN, MSNBC.

Perhaps even more significantly than the diversification of outlets is that methods of communication are shifting from broadcast, or one-way messaging, to interaction and participation, where dialog and conversation are preferred and a wider range of voices are heard. Think of MoveOn.org and its impact on political campaigns, the dialog that blog comments and pingbacks facilitate and the widespread utilization of social networks to engage audiences. This participatory mode of communicating online is challenging our understanding of who has authority over information and what the individual’s relationship is to this information.

I would urge you to not hold on to the old ways, regardless of what you grew up with or what is being taught in traditional schools of journalism (not in this program, I’m sure). I’d urge you to blog, to podcast, to videoblog. I’d also recommend you not wait for that job opening at that large media organization and plan to work your way up from there- while internships and entry-level positions at forward-thinking organizations can be excellent stepping stones to a career, the same positions at organizations that are not embracing the new methods and models will be no-starters.

Instead, I recommend that you cultivate you craft focusing on areas of interest and knowledge that you then share with larger audiences. Find a topic. Become an expert. Research it, both through traditional media and online. Understand what the experts are saying. Join in the conversation as others discuss the topic, its nuances and the latest news that’s affecting that industry or market. Build up a unique perspective through these dialogs- then blog about it. Contribute to your school, community and local media outlets whenever possible, but don’t just say what others are saying. Translate it for a specific audience, or synthesize it in a different way. Remember too that in this multimedia culture, words are not enough. Photograph it. Podcast it. Videocast it. As you do, continue to build a dialog with others in the blogosphere and social media world. Ultimately, if you aren’t interacting with others about the topic, you aren’t part of the discussion, you’re just another person with a soapbox, and with 8 zillion blogs out there, it’s a very small soapbox. Dialog is again key- if you can catch the eye of a prominent blogger, news outlet or community leader (or their respective audiences) with a particularly relevant comment or critique, you will begin to build an audience, an identity. A brand.

For better or for worse, we all must brand ourselves in the new economy. Building a brand does not mean having your own logo. Your brand, contrary to what many advertisers will tell you, is not something you control on your own; your brand is the impression your message makes in the minds of the consumers. While this concept applies most directly to advertising, it is increasingly significant in many aspects any profession, not least of all journalism. More and more we must promote ourselves and espouse our message every day. We present our brand in our job hunt through our resume and our interview, we present it in our job as media producers through the stories we tell, the stories we don’t, the angles we use, the images and media we show. We present our brand and our audience consumes it. The more you shape and identify your brand, the more likely an audience will identify with it and the more likely you will be to build affiliations and relationships with other media producers, from individual bloggers to the Huffington Post to the New York Times.

Some wonder if the concept of branding yourself as a journalist and media producer is heretical- old schoolers would say it flies in the face of their traditional view of providing objective, unbiased news to your audience. While I firmly believe there is a place for presenting stories and communicating information as objectively as humanly possible, there is also a place for presenting a viewpoint and owning it, and you’ll find that more and more the trend is toward journalists doing exactly that. Of course, we cannot expect that our audiences will always agree with our viewpoint, or that our perspective will necessarily agree with those of other media producers, but the point is to spark dialog, debate and critical communication in a broader sense than previous mediums allowed.

It is this dialog which is so crucial to engaging in the new media paradigm; through discussions and debates we are collaboratively crafting a shared sense of the truth, of the news. As media producers we don’t own the truth, but rather we influence a sense of the truth in our audiences, just as advertisers influence a consumer’s sense of a brand. Regardless of whether you lean toward objectivity as a goal or toward owning a perspective, it is always critically import to produce engaging, well-researched and thought-provoking stories. Rather than going into the ins and outs of storycraft, which you have undoubtedly addressed elsewhere, I’ll discuss with you the means and methods of communicating using new media.

The Tools:

Blogs. Read them. Comment on them. Bookmark them. Share them.
Where to start: Technorati

RSS. Pick a reader. Configure it to bring the top stories to your desktop.
Good ones: Google Reader. FeedDemon

Social Networking. Get on them. Connect with people. Update frequently with professional info, links, endorsements.
Good ones: Facebook, LinkedIn

Social Media. Produce media. Take photos. Produce videos. Create podcasts. (Connect as above)
Good ones: Flickr, Youtube
 

While this might all sound pretty obvious to many folks, one of the key points that I wanted them to come away with was something that surfaced in the Q&A. I was asked if I thought they needed to learn Adobe Flash and other advanced tools to be best positioned for success. While we have used Flash and similar platforms over the years to produce many of our unique solutions for our clients, the bottom line is: NO. In my opinion if you want to be a storyteller, be it a journalist, video documentarian or in any other of the myriad professions that require strong storytelling skills, I would recommend using the tools you have at the ready to tell your stories. I wish when I had graduated from school there were so many fantastic, easy-to-use tools out there to produce stories of all kinds. I taught myself multimedia programming because it was the only means available to me to do what I wanted to do - produce interactive stories and experiences. Today the emphasis has (rightly, I believe) returned to the craft of fine storytelling, rather than the means of production, so I say, get out there and tell ’em.

Filed under: trends