Dan Gillmor:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2009/oct/02/dan-gillmor-22-rules-news
*This sure doesn't look much like traditional "news" to me. It looks like something different and quite weird, more like social media as a Fourth Estate.
*A society that had "news organizations" that behaved in these ways would be profoundly transformed. I don't mean it would become utopian or anything... but these ideas look like the behavioral standards of a deadly-earnest "network society," a civilization we've never seen before anywhere.
(...)
3. Transparency would be a core element of our journalism. One example of many: every print article would have an accompanying box called "Things We Don't Know," a list of questions our journalists couldn't answer in their reporting. TV and radio stories would mention the key unknowns. Whatever the medium, the organisation's website would include an invitation to the audience to help fill in the holes, which exist in every story.
5. We'd make conversation an essential element of our mission. Among other things:
- If we were a local newspaper, the editorial pages would publish the best of, and be a guide to, conversation the community was having with itself online and in other public forums, whether hosted by the news organization or someone else.
- Editorials would appear in blog format, as would letters to the editor.
- We would encourage comments and forums, but in moderated spaces that encouraged the use of real names and insisted on (and enforced) civility.
- Comments from people using verified real names would be listed first.
6. We would refuse to do stenography and call it journalism. If one faction or party to a dispute is lying, we would say so, with the accompanying evidence. If we learned that a significant number of people in our community believed a lie about an important person or issue, we would make it part of an ongoing mission to help them understand the truth.
8. We would embrace the hyperlink in every possible way. Our website would include the most comprehensive possible listing of other media in our community, whether we were a community of geography or interest. We'd link to all relevant blogs, photo-streams, video channels, database services and other material we could find, and use our editorial judgement to highlight the ones we consider best for the members of the community. And we'd liberally link from our journalism to other work and source material relevant to what we're discussing, recognising that we are not oracles but guides.
9. Our archives would be freely available, with links on every single thing we've published as far back as possible, with application interfaces (APIs) to help other people use our journalism in ways we haven't considered ourselves.
10. We would help people in the community become informed users of media, not passive consumers – to understand why and how they can do this. We would work with schools and other institutions that recognise the necessity of critical thinking.
15. We'd routinely point to our competitors' work, including (and maybe especially) the best of the new entrants, such as bloggers who cover specific niche subjects. When we'd covered the same topic, we'd link to them so our audience can gain wider perspectives. We'd also talk about, and point to, competitors when they covered things we missed or ignored.
16. Beyond routinely pointing to competitors, we would make a special effort to cover and follow up on their most important work, instead of the common practice today of pretending it didn't exist. Basic rule: the more we wish we'd done the journalism ourselves, the more prominent the exposure we'd give the other folks' work. This would have at least two beneficial effects. First, we'd help persuade our community of an issue's importance. Second, we'd help people understand the value of solid journalism, no matter who did it.
18. For any person or topic we covered regularly, we would provide a "baseline": an article or video where people could start if they were new to the topic, and point prominently to that "start here" piece from any new coverage. We might use a modified Wikipedia approach to keep the article current with the most important updates. The point would be context, giving some people a way to get quickly up to speed and others a way to recall the context of the issue.
19. For any coverage where it made sense, we'd tell our audience members how they could act on the information we'd just given them. This would typically take the form of a "What You Can Do" box or pointer.
20. We'd work in every possible way to help our audience know who's behind the words and actions. People and institutions frequently try to influence the rest of us in ways that hide their participation in the debate, and we'd do our best to reveal who's spending money and pulling strings. When our competitors declined to reveal such things, or failed to ask obvious questions of their sources, we'd talk about their journalistic failures in our own coverage of the issues.
21. Assess risks honestly. Journalists constantly use anecdotal evidence in ways that frighten the public into believing this or that problem is larger than it actually is. As a result, people have almost no idea what are statistically more risky behaviours or situations. And lawmakers, responding to media-fed public fears, often pass laws that do much more aggregate harm than good. We would make it a habit not to extrapolate a wider threat from weird or tragic anecdotes; frequently discuss the major risks we face and compare them statistically to the minor ones; and debunk the most egregious examples of horror stories that spark unnecessary fear or even panic.
22. No opinion pieces or commentary from major politicians or company executives. OK, this is a minor item. But these folks almost never actually write what appears under their bylines. We're being just as dishonest as they are by using this stuff. If they want to pitch a policy, they should post it on their own web pages, and we'll be happy to point to it.
