I have read the column by David Bornsteins in New York Times today and I have to highlight one sentence:
“Journalism is a feedback mechanism to help society self-correct.”
You can read a column at:
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/12/20/why-solutions-journalism-matters-too/?ref=opinion
I also read research by AP “A New Model for News”, actually I read in the last 8 years a plenty of a different researches about new model for news.
All of them are done very professionally, scanning the market and readers to the bone.
But I have to say that all of them a missing the point.
Yes, they help to adjust the media to the new world that we are living in, but all of them didn’t find the answer that we all are looking for: Holy Grail in our business – this New Model for News.
I think that more valuable information about news media we can find in a “Teacher’s Pet”, movie with Clark Gable and Doris Day from 1958 than in this researches. And I’m not kidding.
Let’s go back to David’s sentence: ”Journalism is a feedback mechanism to help society self-correct.”
And things are more or less simple as that.
If we ad few more keywords to his sentence, like Google, Facebook, Public Parts, Steve Jobs, Life, Time, Greater Perspective, we could find our Holy Grail. If we know where and how to look.
The funniest thing is that the Holy Grail of news media is not hidden at all, it is in front all of us, but we don’t know how to see it, or do we?
Some quotes from AP research that are professional but not on the right track to the final solution for a ” New Model for News”.
Quote No 1
“The Associated Press embarked on some business research that began quite routinely but would end up reshaping our thinking about journalism in the digital age..”
Me: Unfortunately, none of this researches will reshape our thinking about journalism in the right way.
Quote No 2
“An analyst on the planning staff suggested doing an “ethnography” of young adult consumers, and after a quick Google search to understand exactly what that meant, we decided to give it a try…”
Me: No comment.
Quote No 3
“Based on the observed behavior of the subjects in the study, four basic news entry points were identified as the main components of the subjects’ news diets: Facts, Updates, Back Story and Future Stories. The essential finding: The subjects were overloaded with facts and updates and were having trouble moving more deeply into the background and resolution of news stories.”
Me: “No comment.”
Quote No 4
“That model, illustrated in a couple of interesting ways in this report, helped validate the mission we had been charting for the digital marketplace: ” Create content that will satisfy a full range of consumers’ news needs and then build the links that will connect people to the relevant news they seek.”…
Me: “Charting the digital marketplace? The answer is somewhere else, not down there, it much, much higher…different perspective is the clue.”
Why Ethnography and Anthropology?
AP: To achieve its objectives, the AP understood the need to take a look at consumers from a holistic perspective, to delve into their lifestyles and how their current attitudes and beliefs tie into larger cultural news consumption constructs on a global scale. To accomplish this goal, the AP turned to the discipline of anthropology, enlisting Context to perform an ethnography of contemporary news consumption behaviors.
Me: ?!
Quotes are from A New Model for News research by AP Strategic Planning 2008
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