What Nicholas Kristof and the Denver Broncos Suggest about New News Sources

Traditional sources of news built their businesses on the collection, processing, and distribution of information. Aided by copyright law and limitations in technology, they monetized the information they produced. This business model is no longer generating the revenue it once did. As newspapers around the United States cease printing every day, there are questions as to where we get our information now, and the implications of this change. Even as traditional newspapers fold, I believe any given person’s sources of information are becoming fragmented, often through consumption of multiple blogs, or perhaps the use of technologies such as RSS. Some commentators decry the reliability of grass roots sources, while others fret over the construction of informational echo chambers that reinforce biases, and others wonder who will be able to afford to write. The fact stands that the new model for news overcomes these problems.

Credibility

A common charge leveled at bloggers is their unreliability as sources of information. A look at sports journalism is illuminating. Traditional sports journalism can be divided up into three parts: the broadcast of the event itself, reporting the “news” of the event, and commenting on the event and related matters. There will always be a market for the broadcast of sporting events, and access to a summary account of the event and its outcome. The third category is more interesting. This role is most prominently occupied by the breed of journalists known as “sports columnists.” These are the bloviating pundits with “inside sources” who attempt to offer their commentary in newspapers and online. They are joined by sports talk show hosts, both on TV and Radio in the same capacity. They report on rumors and lead crusades. Historically they’ve been held in high regard by those who place a value on sports as gatekeepers of inside information.

The rise of free self-publication on the internet has added a new voice to the conversation – the fans. The most successful sports blogs are not just collections of impassioned rants or mundane observations, but aggregators of news from across the internet, and investigative journalism in its own right. Mile High Report is a blog that follows the Denver Broncos of the National Football League, a team that is currently experiencing a personnel controversy involving a key player and a new coach. While traditional new outlets castigated either the coach or the player, often shifting the blame each day, Mile High Report performed its own investigation, did its own analysis and determined that a third party was the likely cause of the issue. After being ignored for days, the mainstream media picked up on the story and eventually shifted their narratives into alignment with MHR.

What’s the story here? Credibility and Reputation. As John Hiller observed in 2002, compared to traditional news sources, “weblogs are starting from zero, building their reputations from the ground up. Blog responsibly, and you’ll build a reputation for being a trusted news source. Don’t, and you won’t have a reputation to worry about.” Traditional media trades on its reputation based on past performance and a long track record, whereas bloggers’ reputations are made on their current reporting. Their track records are young and developing.

Insulation

Another worry is that the choices offered by new media will only insulate us intellectually. In a recent column in the NYTimes, Nicholas Kristof discussed the rise of “The Daily Me,” the fully customized and personally tailored compilations of news consumers are able to create for themselves, or that they can access. Kristof raises a valid concern about the ability of end users to act as their own editors. He points to data showing that people prefer sources that conform to and confirm their pre-existing beliefs. There is undoubtedly a danger of entering an informational echo chamber, with the unprecedented control over the information we consume having a centrifugal effect on the biases in that information. We only read more and more of what we already believe. And yet this is not new behavior. Choosing to read the New York Times instead of the Wall Street Journal could be looked at as a choice in political preference. Instead of acting as out own editor, we do the next best thing, we rely on editors who we are in agreement with. Kristof worries about our lack of exposure to opposing viewpoints, but what’s the solution? Surrendering editorial control of our information to some benevolently objective big brother editor? Short of centrally controlled programming, people will choose to read what they want, and ignore what they don’t.

Society of Writers or Publishers?

A final consideration is who will write if not professional journalists in the employ of large news companies. A presenter at the Kernochan Center’s Google Books Settlement Conference decried the growing inability to make a living as a writer and asked rhetorically “do we want to live in a society where only the Medici can write?” His query ignored the crucial change in the 500 years since the Medici ruled Florence- we now live in a society where everyone can publish. The underlying worry of the aforementioned writer is that this new society will lack the old financial incentives to write and, relevant to this inquiry, to report. But the lowering of the barrier to entry is not necessarily a bad thing. There is a human desire to inform and share information. We blog about ourselves. We update facebook statuses. We twitter our bowel movements. Much information that once required sending investigators to find now only requires a technorati search to turn up. Local papers have been functionally supplanted by blogs. The remaining task is to collect, assess, and reshape the information being published by others elsewhere. That this can be done without monetary incentives is supported by projects like Wikipedia, collaborative enterprises of collecting and assessing information by contributors in what time they have.

The question I’m left to consider is whether if “journalism” ceases to be a viable career for many, will there be enough “free” reporting to aggregate into reliable news?

-- By RazaPanjwani - 27 Mar 2009

Raza: You lay out the main arguments usually made by new media optimists, but I'm not sure you've advanced them, or responded to their critics.

There are many fan-blogs that are credible sources of information, but providing information is only one piece of what reporters do. Lots of journalism--think of CIA or State Department correspondents--involves ferreting information from officials who DON'T want to share it, when there hasn't been any specific EVENT, like a sports game, for you to interpret. It's the difference between a story that begins with "This happened" and a story that begins with "This will be happening," and it's the difference between news that is flashy and news that is a bit dry. That kind of reporting emerges from people who spend 60-80 hours a week talking to people on their beat and don't have time for another job to pay their bills. So the only ways to do that are A. to make money doing it or B. to be a Medici. I am one of those who thinks there may be ways to make money online (probably in combination with some nonprofit funding) but until that happens, new media won't supplant old.

The issue is not whether there will be enough content, but whether there will be all the right kinds of content: where is the citizen blogger reporting, on the day BEFORE the Fed makes it choice, what the new interest rate will be? This also goes to your point about people's insatiable demand for information online--the thing about old media models is that they were able to feed people news they needed but didn't necessarily want by putting it on a page with news they wanted but didn't need. I have no doubts about the survival of sports column/punditry on the web, but I have my doubts about reporting on school board meetings. Ezra Klein, who is a huge advocate for new media, admits as much in this video.

I, like you, am less worried about the ideological echo chamber, because I think it's easy enough to aggregate from diverse sources so long as journalists of the future are taught in J-school that this is what they're meant to do.