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The hybrid newswork

Yesterday I talked through the different aspects of ‘citizen journalism’ and ‘networked journalism’ with my social media class (first PR students, then journalists). As I’ve already expressed, ‘networked journalism’ is I believe the more important for the future survival of the mainstream news industry. It also comes as a relief for the old institutions (as long as they change) becuse it communicates a model, fast being implemented (for example by OhMyNews in Korea) that retains the institution at the centre of the ‘newswork’ (the production of the objects of news, that makes up the news agenda).

‘Networked journalism’, well summarized by Jeff Jarvis at Buzzmachine.com, was discussed by Jo Bardoel and Mark Deuze in their article ‘Network Journalism’ published in the Australian Journalism Review (23.3) back in 2001. Mark Deuze’s more recent article ‘Preparing for an Age of Participatory News’ (Journalism Practice 2007 (1.3)) quotes Jarvis, who has the talent for the turn of phrase, describing networked journalism as the process that:

“takes into account the collaborative nature of journalism now: professionals and amateurs working together to get the real story, linking to each other across brands and old boundaries to share facts, questions, answers, ideas, perspectives.”
Jeff Jarvis, Buzzmachine.com (2006)

And the UK regional market is a seedbed of some of the best pioneering work in this area. For example, the Birmingham Post sourcing its lead story from its army of bloggers. Or the Glasgow Evening Times launching a third wave of community sites on the base of its successful forays into the ultra-local.

The model is a hybrid one, where journalists no longer need only to be connected to their traditional sources and influencers (politicians, organisations, media, police, PR, local government) and then, top-down, communicate the selected stories to the audience. Journalists now also need to be connected, from the bottom-up, to the audience, who are now part of the ‘newswork’, or who Deuze called the ‘produsers’ (the users turned producers).

Is this an attempt by the mainstream news industry to protect its gatekeeper role from the masses? Yes, and I’m not a big fan of rhetorical questions like that, so I’ll try to use them less. Yes, the best innovators in newsrooms and new journalism entrepreneurs (not citizen journalists, but business women and men) are building upon the ways that new media is allowing for a new form of journalism: one where the consumer group plays a more participatory role in the creation of the ‘newswork’ and news agenda. And that sense of a news business is important. Networked journalism is a way to, as Deuze indicates, re-connect with the news audience and as such re-commercialise the news product.

An important finding from Deuze’s paper should also provide relief for the editors and publishers at places such as The Sun and the Independent alike. That’s because networked citizens, produsers, do not want to replace Robert Fisk or Kate Adie as producers of serious news. They want more lifestyle enterainment. As Deuze shows, ‘produsers’:

“come to citizen journalism not to correct the ‘hard’ news of the mainstream itself, but to correct for mainstream journalism’s bias towards ‘hard’ news itself, by adding a greater amount of ‘soft’ news (celebrity, entertainment, local lifestyle.”
Mark Deuze (2007)

As my students said, we want the news provided to us by our trusted sources. They did sound a bit like John Reith, first director general of the BBC (”Few know what they want, and very few want what they need” quoted in Hermida, 2008), but, paternalism aside, we do, as consumers, like choices being made for us. Whether or not that is a good thing is the debate: according to Deuze, what we want when we participate is the ’soft’ news, not the politics or economics, or, arguably, the news about climate change, the environment, the food crisis… Hmmm…. Sounds like a less appealing development after all.

But back to citizen journalism. Hopefully networked or particpatory journalism will become the industry term and model that we talk about when thinking of successful growth and new jobs. I agree with Deuze when he says:

“Indeed, the common use of ‘citizen journalism’ as a blanket term for such news publishing models [citizen journalist contributors and editorial oversight on sites] to some extent obscures the significant differences in approach between the various participatory news websites currently in operation.”
Mark Deuze (2007)

And citizen journalism remains the term for the millions of blogs that remain out there and publishing, but ‘un-networked’ to mainstream media.

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