The Future of Journalism: a joint Media Alliance & Walkley Foundation initiative

MORE than 18 months on from the Media Alliance’s Future of Journalism summit at the ABC’s Eugene Goossens Hall in Sydney, the tribes gathered once again yesterday for the Media140 conference to discuss journalism in the digital age.

Actually, there were probably more of the tribes there yesterday, this being aimed squarely at the Twitterati and bloggers and, at times, journalists seemed like something of a curiosity – put up on the stage for the amusement and at times ridicule of the people in the auditorium.

And from the reactions many of the people on the stage, about 50 per cent of them journalists, 50 per cent “new” media and, sadly, not enough straddling the two categories on our Venn diagram, the disconnect and lack of understanding between the two groups is as great as ever.

To be fair, many of the journalists are trying – for most, their core discipline isn’t technology. They’ve been schooled, and become experienced, in the key journalistic skills needed to find things out and express those things – in print or broadcast.

I’d be wrong to say the protocols of new media publishing were developed wholly outside journalism, because that’s simply not true, but to a large extent it is a new world being invented by people who have never been, or wanted to be, part of the tribe of journalists – with its mores, enthusiasms and taboos.

So to a lot of journalists the enormity of the changes happening are not really apparent and the profundity of what the other tribe is doing is only beginning to seep through slowly. Although it must be said, with the likes of Mark Scott, who is obviously open to experimenting with his tenure as ABC boss, to adapt to these new realities, the message is still getting through.

But there is, in “legacy” media, still this faintly patronising sense of curiosity about new media. Yesterday was all about Twitter, really, which is bringing with it a lot of changes but is still a platform – a tool – rather than a thing in itself.

On the part of the “new” media types there’s a fairly widespread misunderstanding of what journalism actually sets out to do and the skills and tasks involved in doing it properly.

I was most curious – and a little disappointed – after Chris Warren talked of the core journalistic ethics: respect for accuracy, respect for the Public’s Right to Know and respect for the rights of others, to hear the rest of the panel pooh-pooh this, talking of “contextualising” journalistic ethics and “the ethics of listening” which are empty words and really rather irrelevant.

Of course, Warren is my boss (disclosure) but his basic point, which is that certain base elements and requirements of the journalistic craft are “platform agnostic” is surely nothing more than good sense.

I was mesmerised by Laurel Papworth and her exhortation to journalists to “hand in your press cards” and join the rest of the world as it “co-authors the future of the human narrative” or some such – I don’t have a transcript handy. She made the point that, unlike in the past – history won’t be written by the winners, which is very true (I hope) but her words seemed to imply that she doesn’t really understand how much from the world and craft of journalism should be taken across into the new landscape of news to ensure that the “human narrative” is written well, accurately and elegantly.

On accuracy, there’s a smug assumption on the part of many new media people that journalists sit around in newsrooms making things up, writing obviously slanted stories, suppressing information and generally being corporate beasts dancing to the drum of the likes of Rupert Murdoch (and Caroline Overington didn’t do much to dispel this frankly).

Having spent more than 15 years in newsrooms here and in the UK I can honestly say that the people I saw busted a gut to get as many sources as they could to back their stories and were scrupulous about trying for balance (sometimes too scrupulous as certain stories don’t repay the “even-handed” approach – try balancing the climate change science argument, for example).    

The “legacy media” hasn’t always covered itself in glory (see weapons of mass destruction, Pauline Hanson pics, Godwin Grech email, etc), but on the whole journalists jealously guard their professionalism.

Let’s not pooh-pooh this and let’s not be too quick to try and jettison these vital aspects of the journalistic craft as we race towards a new news landscape.

So that’s the quick reaction. A more considered piece with links, etc, follows after today’s proceedings.

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Meg Simons correctly put her finger on the important bits of Mark Scott’s Fall of Rome speech. Sure, the stuff about the decline and fall of big media empires was a lot of fun and will inevitably be the talking point du jour for some time to come – but his point that the organisations that succeed will be the ones that learn to engage with their audiences, even cede a little power to them.

One of the first things Chris Warren told me when I started working at the Alliance was that people love you more when they are doing something for you than when you are doing something for them. It’s all about a sense of common purpose, rather than a sense of obligation.

I think this applies just as much in how newspapers should be viewing their audiences. Those news organisations who understand enough to invite comment and opinion in from outside – to become a hub around which informed and engaged debate can flourish, rather than maintaining the rigid top-down lecture model on which papers have traditionally based themselves, are the ones that will be able to turn themselves into clubs with members.

Dare I say it, paying members?

I’m preparing to fly out to Hobart tomorrow morning to get ready for the Future of Journalism roadshow at the Dechaineux Theatre there tomorrow night and then it's on to Alice Spings and Darwin. Details of which can be found here and here.

Part of getting ready for an events such as these is briefing the various speakers we have lined up, particularly those people who have the happy task of moderating panels. We keep a sort of daily “reading list” of the latest news and opinion on the way the industry is changing and I generally send out one or two top pieces of analysis to people as a guide to the latest thinking.

We pretty much have to prepare a new list for each event as the landscape shifts and changes almost daily. The latest brief I am giving people includes the speech Rupert Murdoch gave in China at the weekend during which he referred to the internet as the province of “plagiarists” and “content kleptomaniacs”.

As a result the paper, a mid-range, quality broadsheet with a daily circulation of about 350,000 in printed form has parlayed its reach to 30 million unique users a month around the world. The paper has successfully penetrated both global news markets (through its establishment, for example, of Guardian America) and global niche markets: media – for example – through MediaGuardian, which has a big following among anyone interested in our industry, and the purchase a year or so ago, of Rafat Ali’s Paid Content, which is a strong example of a quality specialist blog (“legacy journalism” snobs should take pause when they read the number of stories Ali breaks and the depth of coverage he provides in his given beat).

“For flagbearers of free speech, some newsroom execs have the weirdest double standards when it comes to censoring personal views.”

So wrote Washington Post managing editor, Raju Narisetti, via his Twitter feed recently. This was – he subsequently revealed – before he had a little chat with Post executive editor, Marcus Brauchli, who has apparently set him straight on some issues regarding social media, his views and free speech, in no particular order.

Narisetti has, it is reported, since closed down his Twitter feed.

Two stories stand out today: both of which I saw online. The first, from the Financial Times, was emailed to me by a colleague and made for a chortle over my Nutrigrain: “Murdoch hails electronic reading devices,” read the headline, and the piece went on to note that Rupert was looking forward to the day, in 20 years time, when more people will be buying their newspapers on portable reading panels than on crushed trees”.

“Then we’re going to have no paper, no printing plants, no unions. It’s going to be great,” said Murdoch.

My initial thought was: how will he know? But that’s uncharitable and, in any case, on reflection, I wouldn’t bet against his being there to see it.

My second was to reflect that, having been formed in 1910 as the Australian Journalists’ Association, the journalists’ union has been around longer than Mr Murdoch and will probably outlast him. In any case, we’ll be having a birthday bash next year to celebrate 100 years of quality Australian journalism made possible, largely, by members of the trade union whose obituary Mr Murdoch would clearly like to read.