Brendan R. Watson

The fundamental role of journalists is to help make the public well-informed, active participants in a democracy.

The contemporary media landscape makes this goal difficult, if not impossible, particularly given our existing journalism models. Information overload drowns out much of the significant work journalists do, not to mention the infotainment, merely a marketing gimmick to compete for an increasingly fragmented audience, which makes up much of the day’s “news.” Overwhelmed by a deluge of information, much of the public simply tunes it out, or pays attention very selectively, picking from the media that adds clarity.

The great irony of the Internet is that despite being a repository for an amazing wealth of knowledge, it has largely acted to reinforce and amplify individuals’ existing beliefs, allowing the audience to seek out opinions that confirm theirs. That’s partly why the electorate is currently so polarized. The unprecedented around-the-clock political coverage hasn’t resulted in more informed voters, but has deepened existing biases, reinforcing voters’ ignorance.

What is needed is a fundamental shift in journalists’ biases, away from reporting on what is new, even when it is not significant. This existing bias only adds to the information overload. The more we bury the audience with information, the more they have to dedicate cognitive resources towards to the search process. These finite resources are draw away from processing information.

What journalists need to do is redefine the gatekeeper role — perhaps we see this role as a guide or a reference librarian on steroids. Instead of primarily creating new information, the journalists’ primary mission becomes helping the audience to aggregate and analyze information. What form this is communicated to the public is unknown, but the hyperlinked world of the Internet makes it infinitely easier to aggregate and illustrate connections between sources.

This new emphasis doesn’t eliminate reporting. Reporting remains an essential element of gathering sources and analyzing information, and remains critical particularly in areas of investigative journalism. Establishing expertise in a given area/beat is also critical to meaningful aggregation. But there is little information that the journalist has that is new, that isn’t accessible to the public elsewhere. Thus, the primary role of the journalist becomes acting as a filter/editor/analyst of existing data. Some editor-driven aggregation sites like The Daily Beast and to an extent the Huffington Post are already leaning in this direction.

However, I would argue about these sites, if their primary goal is to inform, they should eliminate all non-moderated content. Much of what passes as “citizen journalism,” and especially reader comments, doesn’t contribute anything beyond simply creating more information — frequently inaccurate — for the audience to sift through. Philosophically, I think it is important to incorporate feedback from the audience. But you don’t have to blow down the gate to let the audience in. Really, all forms of journalism need to be reassessed: Do they communicate meaningful information, or are they simply acting to add to the noise?

The goal of the researcher in helping to define this new model of journalism is not to start with biases of traditional journalistic forms, which result from imagining the research question from the perspective of the media. But rather is to approach media from the perspective of the audience, understanding their cognitive processes and information needs in order to suggest an effective and sustainable journalistic model.

In some ways Paul Farhi’s essay isn’t even worth responding to. He says, “Newspapers are in trouble for reasons that have almost nothing to do with newspaper journalism, and everything to do with the newspaper business.” I find that position completely incomprehensible and indefensible.

True, the newspaper business model is in a state of crisis, but study after study shows that journalism is, as well. Surely, your local newspaper — and even the Washington Post — is not filled with the high-minded analysis and investigative work with with Farhi likes to associate himself with.

Rather, journalists — not business executives — are pursuing an extremely self-destructive editorial strategy. Thomas E. Patterson explains in his 2000 research paper that the journalism decisions newspapers are making are “shrinking the news audience and weakening democracy.” This is not a business-side problem, but reflects poor editorial judgement, which is only being accelerated by a misguided short-term strategy to pursue online page views at any cost, driven as much by editorial as business executives.

There’s lots of research out there — Patterson’s is a good start — that can help one understand the role of (bad) editorial decision-making in this crisis. This is if you want to do something about the crisis rather than just wash your hands of it.

Jeff Jarvis also tackles this subject in his own overstated, pundit-like manner.

One of the conversations at ONA was how to fosterer greater collaboration between academics and “the industry.” Never mind that journalism schools can’t even settle the tensions between academic and professional faculty who like to use the lack of understanding between themselves as an example of how the other “doesn’t get it.”

Personally, I think we’re too far in the hole to even engage in such squabbles. Certainly, academics are doing research that can inform industry practice and vice versa. And there are interesting individuals on both sides eager to exchange ideas to foster better professional practice and more relevant research.

I am starting a new project JournalismAbstracts.com, to help those individuals connect with one another. The tagline for the website will be: connecting ideas and practice. The website will hopefully synthesize research that is relevant to challenges facing the news industry in a way that makes it accessible to professionals, as well as help professionals share questions and data that might be of interest to researchers. The site will also feature jobs in academia for working journalists, and jobs in journalism for those with a research background; a widget for comparing academic programs offering master’s and doctorate degrees, with a focus on serving professionals interested in advancing their education; and other features I am still developing.

I am looking for partners in this endeavor, who have both academic and professional interests. Hopefully over the next couple of weeks I will launch a website where interested parties can register. I hope to assemble a team in the next couple of months to start creating content and adding features, with the hopes of having a beta launch before the spring semester.