The Value of Networked Journalism

From the Polis/BBC College of Journalism conference, June 2010, United Kingdom (UK), this report intends to show the increasing effectiveness and diversity of new forms of news production when networked. According to the author: "By ‘Networked Journalism’ I mean a synthesis of traditional news journalism and the emerging forms of participatory media enabled by Web 2.0 technologies such as mobile phones, email, websites, blogs, micro-blogging, and social networks. Networked Journalism allows the public to be involved in every aspect of journalism production through crowd-sourcing, interactivity, hyper-linking, user-generated content and forums. It changes the creation of news from being linear and top-down to a collaborative process."

The author approaches the future of journalism by asking "what is the product and who wants it?" rather than examining sustainability through business models. "This paper will set out how journalism in the UK is already well on the way to adapting to the change. It will argue that Networked Journalism is already happening and that where it is done well, journalism thrives and adapts...."

First, the author looks at the "live blogging" phenomenon, which exemplifies many of the qualities of networked journalism. Using the idea of the ticker-tape feed of breaking news and the "hyper-textuality of Web 2.0 [a news website can] turn ...into a hub for breaking stories that combines a diverse range of sources to make a wider, deeper and more engaging narrative." The online format offers the ability to link to sources and to publish reader comment using "creative online engagement with its readers and innovative multi-platform journalism." Engagement with the audience can enhance breaking news gathering and, for example, add to the range of social media deployed by print, television, and radio journalists. "It connects the mainstream media organisations into a much wider network of independent, individual and social media communications."

The document shifts to the local spectrum, examining community-based activist hyper-local media and digital networks feeding community-based journalism. Independent internet journalism can provide platforms for self-governed network forums that exchange news and opinion. "Networked journalism is creating - or some would say reflecting - a new relationship between the journalist and the story and the public....It offers the potential for a transformation of the public value that journalism can offer in a networked society."

In summary, the author states that: "Networked Journalism adds editorial value for the consumer in (at least) three ways:

• Editorial diversity: It creates more substantial and varied news so that the consumer is more easily able to find content that suits their interests and needs. Instead of the public going to a limited range of news, an almost infinite network of news is created around the individual.
  
• Connectivity and Interactivity: Networked journalism distributes news in different ways that engage the attention of the public by offering them involvement at every stage. The promise of interaction can be enough in itself to create community. In practice, collectively the public appears to have an almost limitless appetite for involvement.
• Relevance: Networked journalism relates to audiences and subjects in ways that create new ethical and editorial relationships to news. It creates a more transparent production process that helps to build trust. It seeks to be where public discourse happens rather than creating a discrete space called news. It means turning news into social media.
  

Networked journalism also offers an enhanced business model in (at least) three ways:

• ‘Free’ Content: Public participation through networked journalism adds economic value directly to the news media in the sense that the contribution of the public literally creates content - usually for free - from the citizen. Journalism must be one of the few industries where the consumer volunteers material and services to the producer.
  
• The Curation Premium - Counter-intuitively, the abundance of disintermediated information may also give quality networked journalism a market advantage. The plethora of data sources and competing platforms and outlets means there will be a premium (or ‘freemium’) for authoritative and trustworthy curating and filtering of news. This function may happen within ‘pay-wall’ or subscription systems as well as through other more open channels. The demand for transparent and relevant mediation will increase. Networked Journalism as a kind of intelligent and pro-active search engine will create quality by adding value to search.
  
• Journalism as a public service - Networked journalism is a valuable way to create stakeholder-funded journalism. Educators, foundations, NGOs [non-governmental organisations] and community groups are among the civil society organisations that can use networked journalism to create media that furthers their aims, ideally in a transparent, interactive and accountable way. The BBC is just one example of a publicly-funded media organisation that has retained its independence. Other organisations such as local councils, universities and NGOs like Oxfam produce so much media that they are themselves becoming part of networked news provision. We argue that is just as important to debate and scrutinise how well they do that as it is to demand value of professional news media groups.”