How Open Journal
As we were researching our project we came to see open journalism as a way of conceptualising journalism. We saw open journalism as an ecosystem where many different forms of reporting come together. This ecosystem contains bloggers, tweeters, commentators and journalists involved in reporting, discussing and sharing news.
I do want to be clear that we are not talking about citizen journalists or bloggers replacing professional journalists. In our model the journalists is still important. Journalists still have the skills and training in readability, news gathering and legal sensitivity (such as defamation law), which many bloggers do not have. News outlets can broadcast press conferences, interviews and debates. Professional journalists still have access that most bloggers don’t. In fact the work of bloggers and citizen journalists is built upon the work of professional journalists and couldn’t exist without it. We still need journalists; but we need journalists that are different to how we currently understand journalist.
We think that the journalists can make themselves valuable by placing themselves at the centre of this ecosystem, feeding into it and taking out of it. Not only reporting, but also curating and editing.
This website has already presented the current journalistic ideology doesn’t work, and we feel that this ideology is preventing journalists from engaging with this ecosystem.
So if the old ideology doesn’t work, what will? What does open journalism value? I’m glad you asked.
- public engagement: the news doesn’t stop and the story isn’t complete once a report is filed. The report is the beginning of a discussion, not the end. In the past a journalist may consider their account to be final and authoritative because of their position as professionals. But rather than seeing the report as a final authoritative account, the journalist should be involved in a discussion. Journalists should be informing and informed by community discussion;
- accuracy: professional objectivity is used by journalists as a defense against charges of bias but it can often create a false sense of symmetry: two opposing sides are presented with the journalist finding truth somewhere in the middle. This is used by journalists to demonstrate their impartiality to prove they are not persuaded by either side. But often this can elevate false assertions rather than debunking them. Instead of “objectivity”, journalists should value truth. Rather than merely reporting competing assertions and perpetuating “the view from nowhere”, journalists should use their skills and training to check facts and present accurate information and use their access to challenge inaccuracies;
- transparency: building trust through honest dialogue with the community. By being more upfront about their judgments, their doubts and their opinions journalists are able to fully participate in discussions. Journalists should also, where appropriate, share documents and source material for stories so that the community can build on the work of the journalist and verify the accuracy of the original report. Data journalism, which Ruth will talk about in more detail, for example, gives the audience access to the same data that journalists have access to, allowing for bloggers to build on the work of journalists, challenging or supporting narratives and informing a wider discussion that can feed back into the journalists own work.
These new values are designed to place the journalist at the centre of a discussion. To take a dialectic approach to journalism where discussion occurs as a search for the truth (or many truths) of a situation. While this may sounds like a high minded thought, this is not far from what is already happening in blogs and on Twitter. And for journalists to thrive in this environment they need to engage with this discussion in a meaningful way or else risk being left behind. We don’t think this can happen if journalists do not abandon their outdated values, which do not equip them to adapt to this environment.