Time to Step Away from the 'Bright, Shiny Things'? Towards a Sustainable Model of Journalism Innovation in an Era of Perpetual Change

"While 'random acts of innovation', organic experimentation, and willingness to embrace new technology remain valuable features of an innovation culture, there is evidence of an increasingly urgent requirement for the cultivation of sustainable innovation frameworks and clear, longer-term strategies within news organisations."

This paper is the first of three research reports produced by the Journalism Innovation Project, which is anchored within the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at the University of Oxford. The main finding of this report, which is based on discussions with a wide range of news publishers across 17 countries, is that journalists and news publishers need to avoid purposelessly pursuing "bright shiny things" and unsustainable approaches to innovation, which are often at the expense of audience engagement and development.

The Journalism Innovation Project ran from 2018 to 2019 and sought, through collaborative research methods, to help provide a foundational framework for journalism innovation that can be applied in a range of settings and adapted to suit a variety of news publishing models. The project also sought to develop a research-informed working definition of journalism innovation. As explained in the report, the project's goal of identifying key indicators for journalism innovation was pursued through the identification and study of international news organisations working in journalism innovation across a range of dimensions on the Journalism Innovation Wheel. The Journalism Innovation Wheel is a visualisation used as the foundation for the project's work, and illustrates that journalism innovation can happen among many different dimensions, often at the same time, combining, for example, new forms of storytelling with new business models, or new distribution strategies with new forms of audience engagement.

This report is based on an analysis of discussions with 39 journalism innovators from around the world, representing 27 different news publishers. News organisations ranged from start-ups (e.g., The Quint, Rappler, Civil, Kinzen) to established global news brands (e.g., the New York Times, Reuters News, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, Süddeutsche Zeitung, and the Washington Post). Discussions assessed research participants' conceptualisations of journalism innovation, identified what they see as the obstacles inhibiting journalism innovation, and explored potential solutions.

Through a process of thematic analysis, three key themes emerged from the discussions. These pertain to journalism innovation opportunities, challenges, obstacles, and needs, and they can be catalogued as follows:

1. The risks of "Shiny Things Syndrome" and the impacts of "innovation fatigue" in an era of perpetual change - One of the main findings of this research is that "relentless, high-speed pursuit of technology-driven innovation could be almost as dangerous as stagnation. While 'random acts of innovation', organic experimentation, and willingness to embrace new technology remain valuable features of an innovation culture, there is evidence of an increasingly urgent requirement for the cultivation of sustainable innovation frameworks and clear, longer-term strategies within news organisations. Such a 'pivot' could also address the growing problem of burnout associated with 'innovation fatigue'."
2. Audiences: starting (again) with the "end user" - This pertains to strategic innovation that needs to focus on engaging audiences or "end users", as "too much time chasing 'bright shiny things' inevitably leads to the eye being taken off the 'end user' ball. The bottom line: innovations in audience engagement and development are more important than technological innovations."
3. The need for a "user-led" approach to researching journalism innovation and developing foundational frameworks to support it - This theme emphasises the need for research-informed innovations models that involve news publishers themselves. Various options are explored in the report based on the discussions, which include: extracting "good practice" indicators from innovative news agencies; engaging in collaborate solutions, which include collective action, openness, and cross-boundary knowledge sharing of experiences; and assessing international case studies of journalism innovation success and failure.

Other issues related to new journalism innovation that emerged from the research highlighted the implications of digital technologies' "unintended consequences", and the need to respond innovatively to media freedom threats - such as gendered online harassment, privacy breaches, and orchestrated disinformation campaigns.

The report concludes that the results do not point to "a call to stop innovating, nor justification for doing so, but it is a plea to avoid unsustainable approaches to innovation - approaches that risk wasting time, effort, and money, without real returns. Such returns could include one or more of the following: deeper audience engagement and loyalty; professional prestige; social impact; digital capability building; and profit. The risks of continuing with a strategy that amounts to committing 'random acts of innovation' without a clear set of research-informed goals and objectives include the 'shiny things' obsession that unnecessarily distracts from core journalistic functions, can lead to burnout and fatigue, and risk stagnation or innovation paralysis." In short, journalism should change from being technology led to audience focused and technology empowered.