Journalist Citizens?

Let me preface this blog post with the following disclaimers:

• I’m not a journalist (at least by the traditional definition).
• Lots of really smart folks have thought about these issues for a long time and I’m not presuming that I know better.
• This is complicated (but I think it’s important to think about)

Is a “mainstream” journalist allowed to be a full-fledged citizen?

Do professionals of any kind have to be hamstrung by rules just in case someone makes a mistake?

Is avoiding the “appearance of impropriety” and “protecting your brand” more important than seeking the truth?

There’s currently a little dustup over a memo NPR put out to their employees telling them they could not attend the Jon Stewart or Stephen Colbert rallies in Washington, D.C.:

NPR journalists may not participate in marches and rallies involving causes or issues that NPR covers, nor should they sign petitions or otherwise lend their name to such causes, or contribute money to them. This restriction applies to the upcoming John (sic) Stewart and Stephen Colbert rallies.

This is nothing new in journalism circles, as they’ve typically had these kinds of policies. But what is new is that people like Jeff Jarvis are questioning the wisdom of such policies:

But my real problem here is, again, that NPR is forbidding its employees to be curious. There’s a big event going on in Washington. It could — just could — be the beginning of a movement mobilizing the middle. But NPR people are not allowed to even witness it, to go and try to figure it out, to understand what’s being said and why people are there. No, they can do that only if they are *assigned* to do that. Otherwise, it might seem as if by merely showing up they might have a forbidden opinion.

NPR has responded in several ways, including this post by their ombudsman:

But there’s another, more important issue than management botching a memo. The question arises in every election season, and boils down to this: If you become a card-carrying journalist, do you have no freedom outside of work?

. . . Media guru Jarvis agrees with these views. He even encourages NPR staffers to protest management’s decision. “Use social media, folks, and have an opinion about opinions,” he wrote.

I don’t agree.

Sure, journalists have opinions and causes they support.

But at the end of the day, they have to be professional – and that means avoiding actions that create the perception that they are taking sides in political controversies, including elections.

Specifically, mainstream journalists can’t put a political sign in their yard or carry one at demonstrations. They can’t donate money to candidates. They can’t sit on a school board. They can’t participate in political rallies. They can’t lobby, and they can’t become partisan activists.

To me, it’s a small price to pay for the privilege of being a journalist.

NPR is not restricting its staff’s freedom. It’s protecting its credibility as a news organization that tries to give its audience fair, non-partisan coverage.

Interestingly, folks at some NPR affiliate stations don’t necessarily agree:

The issue isn't whether reporters "take sides" in political controversies. They do. They're not mummies. The issue is whether those opinions make their ways into news stories or in the process of selecting what stories to cover in the first place. Not allowing you the opportunity to know what the biases are does nothing to guarantee the impartiality of NPR (or any other organization's) content. It's designed more to prevent the questioning of the impartiality of the content.

The two are not the same thing.

I came upon this story via some tweets by Andy Carvin, Senior strategist at NPR (but tweeting as himself). Andy was simply pointing folks to the controversy, not taking a position, but it stirred my thinking about this in relation to how we are preparing our students.

Citizen journalism has been a term we’ve talked about a lot the last few years, arising from lots of places but not least the work of Jeff Jarvis and Jay Rosen. But in this case I think we’re really talking about journalist citizens – what rights, responsibilities and restrictions does a “mainstream journalist” have in a participatory age?

According to Alicia Shepard, the NPR ombudsman, “mainstream journalists can’t put a political sign in their yard or carry one at demonstrations.” But I wonder if that wouldn’t tend to drive people who want to be active in their community to become “non-mainstream journalists,” and wouldn’t that be bad for both the community and for mainstream media?

And the letter from NPR’s President Vivian Schiller comes across as defensive and a little elitist:

This is the case in almost all legitimate news organizations, indeed in many professions. In our case, the rules are designed to protect the impartiality of our content.

“Legitimate" news organizations? As opposed to, say, illegitimate ones? I think I understand the intent of this, to underscore that “legitimate” news organizations attempt to maintain impartiality in their reporting, whereas other ones may not. But in the context of this story that comes across as, “We’re legitimate, and you’re not, simply because you have concerns with our policy. And if you don't have a similar policy, then you're neither professional or legitimate.”

She goes on to say:

We live in an age of "gotcha" journalism where people troll, looking for cracks in our credibility. We need to err on the side of protecting our journalism, our journalists, and our reputation. While the credibility and trust that attaches to the NPR brand depends principally on the quality of our news reporting, it can be easily undermined if our public conduct is at odds with the standards we seek to uphold as a news organization.

But can’t we trust good people to do that? Can’t we trust them to do their jobs well, yet still fully exercise their rights as citizens? It seems to me that this is very similar to the restrictions placed on teachers. We can’t campaign or advocate for issues at school, but once we leave we retain our full rights (and responsibilities for that matter) as citizens. Couldn’t journalism operate the same way? Couldn’t we expect journalists to have journalist integrity, but still participate in and contribute to their community? In fact, isn’t it actually poor “public conduct” for them not to participate? This comes across more as trying to protect the NPR “brand” instead of pursuing truth and good journalism.

Finally (and thankfully now I’m going to try to relate this back to education), it seems to me that journalists actually can’t do their jobs well unless they are participating to a certain extent. In this participatory age, how can a journalist possibly do their jobs to the best of their ability if they aren’t participating? Whether that’s by attending rallies (Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert, and/or Glenn Beck), participating in social media (not just broadcasting using social media, but engaging with it), or putting political signs in their yards, journalists have to participate if they are going to truly understand – and help us understand – what is going on. As long as they don’t represent their activities as NPR’s views, and as long as they do their best to maintain impartiality in their reporting, can we not expect that these professionals are capable of doing this? Sure, mistakes will be made, but instead of issuing blanket policies assuming that your employees will be unprofessional, why not trust your employees to do the right thing and then deal with the few that don’t? The idea that anyone is truly “unbiased” seems quaint, why not simply acknowledge your biases (publicly) and then do your best to overcome them? Wouldn’t that actually be more honest and show more “journalistic integrity?”

In the end, this feels like so much of our current public policy and leadership debates. People seem more concerned with avoiding the “appearance of impropriety” instead of doing the right thing. Organizations (and politicians) seem to be more concerned with protecting the “brand” instead of actually accomplishing good things. We’re more willing to run attack ads then simply lay out our own positions; more willing to hide behind blanket “ethics policies,” instead of struggling with complex issues in an honest and transparent manner.

So much of this is in direct contradiction to what so many of us are trying to accomplish in our classrooms. We encourage our students to be active, involved members of their communities, to be curious, passionate learners. We encourage them to think critically, and to wrestle with complex issues, instead of removing all possibility of independent thought and action. We encourage them to think out loud, to debate in public (including through social media), and to continue to evolve and adjust their thinking through their interactions with others. By prohibiting their employees from experiencing the full gamut of citizenship in a participatory age, NPR (and many other organizations) are crippling their employees’ abilities to learn and to do their best work. If we don’t allow our journalists to be citizens, and to be curious, passionate, participatory learners, then what kind of journalists can they possibly be?

Shift Happens Event of the Day

The Christian Science Monitor will be available online only beginning next April:

The Christian Science Monitor plans major changes in April 2009 that are expected to make it the first newspaper with a national audience to shift from a daily print format to an online publication that is updated continuously each day.

. . . While the Monitor's print circulation, which is primarily delivered by US mail, has trended downward for nearly 40 years, "looking forward, the Monitor's Web readership clearly shows promise," said Judy Wolff, chairman of the Board of Trustees of The Christian Science Publishing Society. "We plan to take advantage of the Internet in order to deliver the Monitor's journalism more quickly, to improve the Monitor's timeliness and relevance, and to increase revenue and reduce costs. We can do this by changing the way the Monitor reaches its readers."

The Monitor's editor, quoted in the New York Times, says:

. . . that moving to a Web focus will mean it can keep its eight foreign bureaus open.

“We have the luxury — the opportunity — of making a leap that most newspapers will have to make in the next five years,” Mr. Yemma said.

My, my, my - the shifts just keep on comin'. Meanwhile, back here in K-12 Land . . .

The Future of the Newspaper

I had the pleasure of listening to John Temple, editor, publisher and president of the Rocky Mountain News speak to some of our Journalism students last week. I’ve written about Mr. Temple and the Rocky a few times before (here and here). He’s an editor that seems to be doing some interesting things with a newspaper in this new media landscape, so I was very interested to hear what he had to say.

The topic he presented on to our students was basically the future of the newspaper (as he currently sees it). I took fairly decent notes, so this will sort of be a “delayed live blog” with a few occasional thoughts from me added in. His session was very interactive with the students, asking them questions and then replying to those, so this will jump around a little (just so everyone’s clear that he’s not disorganized – he was just reacting to their questions).

My notes:

Temple references NPR story he heard this morning on music magazines going out of business.

I actually heard the same story on the way in that morning.

Music is not dying, but business model is dying.

Ask students where they get their music – lots of sources, but few purchase CD’s.

80% of newspaper’s revenue from ads. Can a newspaper survive in this era? Will newspapers be around?

Student brings up reliability issue – that the newspaper is checked. Temple talks about Wikipedia – he uses it all the time.

References study about reliability as compared to Encyclopedia Britannica

He's a big fan of the Internet – self policing mechanism is fascinating. Refining what the truth is.

RMN won’t allow anyone to use Wikipedia as source for article because no authority, but they use it to find other sources that are more primary about a topic – start at Wikipedia, go further.

Boy, does that sound familiar. If the RMN starts at Wikipedia and then goes further, why do schools try to block or ban it?

Here’s the dilemma – most of the news on the Internet – where does the info come from? Taking content from newspapers, AP, Reuters – here comes the problem, you don’t want to read a newspaper, newspaper goes out of business, where does the news come from?

Hmm, I get what he's saying and agree to a certain extent, but I think at least some of the news these days comes from "the people" as opposed to the professionals. I think we're just starting to see that grow, so he might be overstating the case a little.

I (his newspaper) can’t survive without readers and advertisers. About 450 journalists at the 2 Denver newspapers. What if revenue is 1/10 of what it is today – then 45 journalists. Are 45 people enough to give you the info you want to know?

Maybe instead of large news organizations like RMN and Denver Post, lots of specialty organizations linked together in some way

Student asks if that’s inefficient – have to go too many places. Temple talks about aggregating content.

What if I get compensated on number of people that look at my story. Smart people all over the world trying to figure this out.

His big worry is reliability – we all want information we can trust, and if we don’t have a big organization – he’s worried about the future of journalism.

I wonder about this as well. But I wonder if it's a question of the future of journalism, or the future of the business of journalism? Are they one and the same?

Mentions voting in November – where are you going to get the info to help you vote. Journalism is independent (vs. candidates’ website)

Wanted to ask whether he thought the charge that journalists were going too easy on Obama was accurate, but didn't.

Student asks what if the newspapers change to online – totally.

Temple thinks that’s largely what’s going to happen, reduce their costs.

Talks about printing plant – we are a massive manufacturing company – 450,000 a day, stick in a plastic bag, massive distribution company – that’s super expensive. They send someone to every street in the metro area every day – think about that.

If they distribute it over the Internet it's essentially for free – a lot, lot cheaper. They'll lose all the subscription money – but that's only 20% of revenue, offset by cost savings. They use $70 million dollars worth of paper a year.

That's a lot of paper. Now why did I just think of Will?

Transition period – grandparents need a newspaper, but younger generation may not.

On Sundays – not as busy, you can read the paper.

What about if the future news organization that looks like:
On Sunday get a really nice paper.
Then during the week – it's all on the Internet, but then special, high quality print publications for certain audiences: preps publication one day a week, entertainment magazine once a week, sports a couple of times – small newspapers, really high quality.

References craigslist, ebay, monster vs. classifieds in newspaper – it’s a given that the classifieds have moved online – very specific needs/searches. Look at today (Tuesday) – look at size of classified section – maybe 10 pages – not big enough anymore to be really meaningful. Around 1999 about 5 million classified ads a year at RMN, intense marketplace, nothing to compete with them.

We don’t know what the model is going to look like, but we know we can’t afford to keep printing like we do now. He sees the Internet as the center. Paper is not going away – people like print publications, but may not come to you the same way (may be higher quality, but less of it - as in specialty publications mentioned previously)

Mentions YourHub – anybody can share information, starts on the web – post photos, stories, listings, etc. – then published to print – but they select what they publish to print – he likes that model for the future.

Interesting - using "citizens" as their story/data gathering mechanism, then they sort/select/make decisions on what rises to the top.

He’s talked about this before in his column – that they are really changing the way they do things at the Rocky – starts on the web, then to print – readers of the web become their editors. Used to be somebody would point out an error and they would print a small correction a day or two later, now the error is caught on the web, before it goes to print.

Everything will start on the web, then print will have many smaller specialty areas.

New printing technology allows them to print really quickly small batches of publications, new presses allow for micro-jobs.

This is long tail stuff, niche “programming” and marketing.

Tremendous amount of micro-publishing coming out of big web database. Can do a run of 1,000 and it would be economical, wasn't with the old presses.

Think about: Is the value in the newspaper the paper, or is the value the independent, authoritative, verifiable reporting.

Ahh, I think that's the heart of the matter. Where does the value reside? I think that question resonates for me in regards to schools. Where does our value reside?

If it’s the reliability, how can you translate that to this era – the digital world?

Talks about avatars – here’s my personality – I like basketball, wine, politics – will be out there working for me on the web gathering stuff for me.

He’s using the term “avatar” more as a personal digital assistant type concept. He’s also talking about deep personalization.

Student questions whether we are too dependent on technology, won’t be able to think for ourselves.

Temple mentions Redblueamerica. Always two views – get the other side. Mentions stumbleupon – it’s driving traffic to redblueamerica – he finds that fascinating.

I can tell he’s really thinking hard about how this all fits together, how to leverage sites like stumbleupon.

Embrace change find out where it takes you. It will make people smarter.

There’s a lull in the questions, so I ask my question, something along the lines of: You’re talking about deep personalization in your product, meeting the individual needs of your customers, utilizing technology to facilitate that. So what lesson does that hold for schools and educators? What should we be doing?

Big challenge for educators – he’s not obliged to provide building blocks to grow kids like we do – to prepare kids to be successful when you leave here, independent, critically think and learn as you go.

Big problem for educators – talking about moving from school to school, how do they connect – argues somewhat for standardization across schools. Schools need a spine that’s very structured, but individualize from there . . .

I can tell he’s not satisfied with his answer, but he moves on to another question. I hope I’ve spurred him to think a little bit more about this. I can tell he’s intrigued by this and hasn’t made the connection between the disruption in his business caused by technology and the network and a possible similar disruption in education.

This generation is bright, doesn’t agree with “those kids today” – you can do things today that would’ve been impossible when he was growing up.

He asks the students – what’s the media world going to look like? What do you use your portable device for?

Answer: everything

Redblueamerica.com is not located anywhere – distributed, folks are not located in the same place geographically – they do everything on Skype.

RMN is a broadcaster today – they produce video, stream video, audio. Traditional TV broadcasters are being eroded just like newspapers. Sees a big database of video and you choose which clips and segments you want to watch. Talks about all of us being news/video producers – but we’re going to need help because it’s splintered, he’ll bring it together somehow.

Larger trend – power being taken from the big companies and being put in your hands – as consumer and creator, playing field has been leveled and we’re all participating in it. But it’s really noisy, no one is organizing it, how do you find things of value, that’s why Google is so valuable right now – they’re doing it somewhat. Google is putting advertisers together with viewers, that’s the traditional role of newspaper.

So how does the Rocky compete with Google?

End of notes.

So, that’s pretty scattered and since it was over a week ago I’ve lost some of my usual brilliant thoughts I had at the time, but hopefully it’s of interest. I walked Mr. Temple out and asked if he would consider coming back and talking to our teachers about the same topic and he seemed interested, but also said his schedule was pretty full. I have an email in to his secretary about trying to get him back out here, we’ll see what happens.

All in all, I still think Mr. Temple and the Rocky have some pretty good insights into how to transform the newspaper business to the digital age – we’ll have to wait and see how successful they are making the transition. I know I’m asking for too much here, but I’m really hoping that my question will spur him to think some more about the impact this could – or should – have on education.