Matthew Ingram posted this great video today. It’s an interview with Alan Rusbridger, editor-in-chief of the Guardian. Not only does his paper have one of the best Web presences of all major newspapers, but the guy says some good things about the future of journalism, especially when it comes to relying on the wisdom of the crowds. They’re not new ideas, but they are well-stated ideas.
A while back, the Guardian decided to supplement its dozen or so regular, professional commentators with amateur commentators, about 1,000 of them. Of course, these people were only amateurs when it came to the field of writing columns for a newspaper; there were experts in their respective fields, judges, lawyers, doctors, etc.
Rusbridger refers to this as a kind of inversion of the traditional, top-down journalistic model. He explains:
“Ten years ago, we lived with this notion that we knew everything, that we were the figures of authority, and we handed out the pearls of our wisdom to the people who were lucky enough to receive them. If we can invert that, and say that the expertise lies outside the newspaper, on so many subjects, [non-journalist commentators] actually know more than we do. The moment you can get that thought into your head, you realize there is great treasure in these commentaries.”
He goes on from here to lay out the usual trappings of a future of journalism interview. There will be a lot of jobs and newspapers lost in the next 20 years. Things are changing, and we have to adapt. All that jazz. I tuned back in when he referred to the current (and failing) newspaper business model as a huge and outdated Victorian chain of industry. You can cling to that model, he said, “but in the end you’ll just fall off the edge of a cliff. I’d rather that not happen.”
Rusbridger also said this, which reminded me vaguely of my master’s thesis (which, until now, I hadn’t thought about applying to journalism):
“If you can allow yourself a blurring of a distinction between the journalist and the reader and involve the reader more because you have to acknowledge that they can contribute a lot...”
I didn’t write down the rest of the quote because it was immaterial to the thoughts his words spawned. The distinction between authors and readers, the subject of my thesis. I need to pull that thing and wipe the dust off of its PDF cover and take a look at how I can make all that research I did for two years apply to journalism somehow.
Michael Becker has been blogging about academia, digital culture and journalism since 2005. He is the Web editor of the Bozeman Daily Chronicle.
Blurring the lines between reporters and readers
Matthew Ingram posted this great video today. It’s an interview with Alan Rusbridger, editor-in-chief of the Guardian. Not only does his paper have one of the best Web presences of all major newspapers, but the guy says some good things about the future of journalism, especially when it comes to relying on the wisdom of the crowds. They’re not new ideas, but they are well-stated ideas.
A while back, the Guardian decided to supplement its dozen or so regular, professional commentators with amateur commentators, about 1,000 of them. Of course, these people were only amateurs when it came to the field of writing columns for a newspaper; there were experts in their respective fields, judges, lawyers, doctors, etc.
Rusbridger refers to this as a kind of inversion of the traditional, top-down journalistic model. He explains:
He goes on from here to lay out the usual trappings of a future of journalism interview. There will be a lot of jobs and newspapers lost in the next 20 years. Things are changing, and we have to adapt. All that jazz. I tuned back in when he referred to the current (and failing) newspaper business model as a huge and outdated Victorian chain of industry. You can cling to that model, he said, “but in the end you’ll just fall off the edge of a cliff. I’d rather that not happen.”
Rusbridger also said this, which reminded me vaguely of my master’s thesis (which, until now, I hadn’t thought about applying to journalism):
I didn’t write down the rest of the quote because it was immaterial to the thoughts his words spawned. The distinction between authors and readers, the subject of my thesis. I need to pull that thing and wipe the dust off of its PDF cover and take a look at how I can make all that research I did for two years apply to journalism somehow.
More to come.