The Future of Journalism
Driven by technological change, journalism is being transformed in the ways that is used and produced. We are witnessing the emergence of a flurry of new tools and practices, leading to a redefinition of journalism in a digital age.
Journalism as a Public Good
The new digital landscape presents serious challenges to the old institutions of journalism, but the "crisis" in journalism seems to be mainly a crisis of the traditional business models of print and broadcast journalism. So, there is indeed a crisis of the media industry, but not necessarily a crisis of journalism.
New Journalists
We use a broad definition of journalism, which includes various new practices related to the production of meaningful information in the twenty-first century. In our view, journalism is not just the news (of the day or the week, of a city or even a country), but telling meaningful stories about what is new or is happening in the world.
New opportunities for better journalism
For all those who want to experiment with new types of collaboration and technological tools, we have started to compile a field guide of best practices worldwide, keeping the key functions of journalism in mind.
Networks
Every journalist becomes a node in a network. Networked journalism refers to a diffused capacity to record information, share it, and distribute it. In a world in which information and communication are organized around the Internet, the notion of the isolated journalist working alone is obsolete. Every journalist becomes a node in a network to collect, process, and distribute information.
Crowds
Collective intelligence produces better journalism. Crowd sourcing extends beyond citizen journalism and covers a wide range of practices that make use of collective intelligence to gather and check information, tell stories, or make choices in news production. It includes user-generated content, which refers to photographs, video, textual comments, and other material provided by members of the public.
Data
Big data reveal hidden patterns of the world. Colossal digital data sets are available as a source of news and analysis. Journalist can better navigate in the data with the help of programmers, designers, and hackers who are more skilled at uncovering and penetrating digital information. Faced with large data sets, journalists can add analysis, context, explanation, and storytelling.
Visual
Visual storytelling is leading. Photos and video news are replacing text-based news as the main source of information for many people. Text, photos, video and audio sources are increasingly, integrated in various forms of interactive storytelling. Search engines based on visual matching are becoming more refined. Visual literacy is important for journalists and users.
Point of View
Since most people are using multiple sources of news on multiple platforms, the presumed neutrality and objectivity of the journalist is difficult to maintain. For viewers and readers, it is easy to compare different stories online and spot the differences. Some journalists become trusted authors for their readers and followers. Some names become brands.
Immersion
Innovation in 360-degree and 3D cameras is providing an increased sense of physical immersion and previously unavailable spatial points of view in visual storytelling. Immersive storytelling may also provide added engagement and the possibility of reflection through interaction and choices for the user, based on interactive models of game design.
Robots
Journalism will be increasingly produced by machines. Software robots of the crawlers type identify and retrieve press releases and news sources to package them, write articles and redistribute them to specific news outlets for information diffusion. The more automated journalism, the more journalists will have to specialize in interpretation, analysis, and storytelling.
Publishing
Publishing of news and information is prone to intense experimentation globally. Digital tools and networks have dramatically diminished the technical costs of production and distribution of news. However, these innovations are not so easily integrated in the old news cycle.
Specialize, Collaborate, or Perish!
Working at Internet speed is changing the practice of professional journalists and puts tremendous pressure on journalim schools. Journalists in the digital age must be at the same time great multimedia storytellers, applied social scientists, and technologically savvy operators of expert data systems.
The Future of Journalism is Yours
As rich as the information available through the Internet is, much is not there, and first-hand reporting remains an essential part of good journalism. As a network we can optimize resources and generate synergy. New creativity will emerge from our sharing.
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