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9781405179249_4_002.qxd 1/11/08 5:47 PM Page 41 2 “Is It a Bird? Is It a Plane? No! It’s SuperMedia!” Networked Journalism To live up to its billing, Internet journalism has to meet high standards both conceptually and practically: the medium has to be revolutionary, and the journ- alism has to be good. The quality of Internet journalism is bound to improve over time, especially if more of the virtues of traditional journalism migrate to the Internet. But, although the medium has great capabilities, especially the way it opens out and speeds up the discourse, it is not quite as different from what has gone before as its advocates are saying. (Nicholas Lemann, 2007)1 There’s never been a better time, I tell students, to be a journalistic entre- preneur – to invent your own job, to become part of the generation that figures out how to produce and, yes, sell the journalism we desperately need as a society and as citizens of a shrinking planet. The young journalists who are striking out on their own today, experimenting with techniques and business models, will invent what’s coming. (Dan Gillmor, 2007)2 2.1 Introduction It seems to me that both the arch-skeptic and the Internet evangelist can be right. In fact, both Nicholas Lemann and Dan Gillmor have to be right. If it is to have any value then journalism must retain its core ethics and its vital skills. But if it is to survive then it must adapt. It must go further than that and offer something more. In the previous chapter I set out the structural problems for journalism now and going forward. I have suggested that it 9781405179249_4_002.qxd 1/11/08 5:47 PM Page 42 42 SuperMedia simply has no alternative but to embrace new business models if it is to thrive over the next period. Not many media people would disagree violently with that. But I have also made the case that the way journalism works will have to change profoundly. In this chapter, I will give the newsroom perspective on these changes. I will put journalism back at the heart of this debate. And I will explore some of the practical, moral, and political challenges it poses. I want to use the idea of Networked Journalism to describe a way that journalism can change to meet the challenges of the digital era. In later chapters we will look at how Networked Journalism will address the key issues such as politics, terror and development. We will then look at how Networked Journalism can offer creative opportunities for the news media. We will look at the idea of Editorial Diversity and finally the need for greater Media Literacy to sustain Networked Journalism. But first let me set out what I mean in the wider context of the con- ceptualization of journalism. This will not be a history of journalism or a survey of the theoretical or sociological literature that has sought to define the term. But to know where we are going it is important that we refer to the past, the present and the ideological debate around the nature of the beast. First, we need to realize that journalism is not a given. It has changed over time to adopt different forms and procedures. What we have at present in the West – and it is still the Western model that predominates – is a com- paratively recent cultural and economic form of the industry. While there are aspects that are grounded in nineteenth-century mass communications, most of the conventions and structures are drawn from the mid to late twentieth century. Journalism is like the motor car with its roots in the late nineteenth century. It was pioneered in the early twentieth, reached its heyday in the late twentieth but is now being questioned. And, like the auto- mobile in the age of global warming, it is being questioned not for its technical performance but because it simply doesn’t meet the needs and aspirations of the coming age. Then we will look at what it is like to be an online journalist or a journ- alist who has to deal with the new realities of multi-platform media. We will take some classic journalistic problems and see how they might change through networked journalism. What impact will Networked Journalism have upon the following: • the temporal nature of journalism; • the distance/representation tension; • the cycle of newsroom sensitivity; 9781405179249_4_002.qxd 1/11/08 5:47 PM Page 43 Networked Journalism 43 • the role of the audience; and • trust and authority. These issues sound almost philosophical but they are the bread and butter of journalism. If the idea of Networked Journalism can’t stand up to the daily battering of these practical tests then it is irrelevant. I am not suggesting that all journalism must be Networked. Much media production will continue to look pretty familiar to a mainstream journalist. Some will remain resolutely apart from connectivity. There will be great dif- ferences in the degree to which a particular journalist or news organization is networked depending on the actual story, the market, the national or local circumstances and the resources available. However, my definition does seek to go further than the narrow definition of networked as meaning someone who uses a particular network for a specific journalistic act. There is a larger purpose to the idea of Networked Journalism. It could just be the descrip- tion of what will happen. It could just be a novel approach to journalism. But I hope that it can be much more than that. Ultimately, I hope it offers a contribution to the reformation of the global public sphere. Networked Journalism is a return to some of the oldest virtues of journalism: con- necting with the world beyond the newsroom; listening to people; giving people a voice in the media; responding to what the public tells you in a dialogue. But it has the potential to go further than that in transforming the power relationship between media and the public and reformulating the means of journalistic production. 2.2 Where Does It Come From? The History of Networked Journalism In the past journalism has been a cult, a fraternity, a guild. Its members have evolved rituals, a language and customs that define their trade and mark out their territory. The literature of journalism is heavy with the claustrophobic culture of the newsroom. From the tribal behavior of the hacks in Evelyn Waugh’s Scoop chasing false leads across Africa3 to Michael Frayn’s bathetic soap opera Towards The End Of The Morning,4 the British media is rightly rep- resented as a cross between a Public School and a Public Bar. And in the US, Hollywood’s unerring sense of reality and illusion has captured US journ- alism’s earnest melodrama, eternally enacting a moral pageant through Citizen Kane,5 His Girl Friday6 to All The President’s Men7 and Broadcast News.8 9781405179249_4_002.qxd 1/11/08 5:47 PM Page 44 44 SuperMedia These are the myths that men cling to when drowning in seas of quotidian compromise. Journalism likes to think it is a superhero when it is really Clark Kent. Proprietors and editors like to hobnob with the great and the good but journalism as a trade is not comfortable with a permanent place at the top table. And yet the fact that journalism is not as institutionally powerful as it might like to think it is has allowed the news media a unique place in politics. This relative autonomy has given it a role and space in society some- what apart from both the people and other institutions. One of the defining characteristics of journalism is its unstable relationship with authority. On this I am with the British commentator, Simon Jenkins: The British media does not do responsibility. It does stories. And stories tell better when they are about individuals, not collectives. The media is uncon- cerned with what people like me find decorous or important. It kicks down doors and exposes the hidden corners of the human condition. It fights com- petition, plays dirty and disobeys the rules. There is nothing it finds too vulgar or too prurient for its wandering, penetrating lens. The press does not operate with any sense of proportion, judgment or self-restraint because it is selling stories, not running the country. The unshackled and irresponsible press sometimes gets it wrong. But I still prefer it, warts and all, to a shackled and responsible one. (Simon Jenkins, Journalist)9 This sense of a cultural practice with an internal logic apart from society is core to understanding what we mean by journalism, and how that might change as Networked Journalism. I take the basic activities of journalism to be to report, analyze, and com- ment on the world from one to many. Both the producer and consumer recognize the act and the nature of the process as journalism. “Selling stories,” in Jenkins’ phrase, has been going on for some time. And there is still much in common between early variants and even the most cutting-edge of current practitioners. It could be argued that seventeenth-century pamphleteers in England were an early form of blogger.10–12 There was a rapid expansion in the pro- duction of printed material of a topical and political nature during the English Civil War and the Interregnum. The public and political elite used it as a weapon in their ideological warfare. These pamphlets were a mix of propaganda and reportage and had an audience that was acutely conscious of the code and language used to make specific and general points.

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