Power Is Everywhere: How Stakeholder-Driven Media Build the Future of Watchdog News

"...it is quite clear that stakeholder watchdogs are creating a new social practice base, a set of shared skills and attitudes, for investigative reporting in future decades."

Power Is Everywhere draws on 10 years of peer-reviewed research, interviews, and case studies by The Stakeholder Media Project, based in the INSEAD Social Innovation Centre in Fontainebleau, France. In 5 chapters, the book provides a blueprint for the conception and operation of media that serve stakeholder groups: communities of interest who affect or are affected by organisations like governments and businesses. It shows how these media - from Breitbart and ProPublica in the United States (US) to Greenpeace, Kyiv Post in Ukraine, and Mediapart in France - differ from mainstream media (MSM) in their value propositions, content, and operations. Most fundamental: Unlike the typical mainstream media organisation, which positions itself as an impartial messenger of the news that it thinks matters to readers, stakeholder-based organisations are heavily invested in the goal of empowering readers to affect the topics they care about. Stakeholder-based groups see themselves as partisan members of or advocates for the groups they represent. The authors argue that stakeholder-driven media (SDM) will continue to proliferate, and that they will be an increasingly powerful vehicle for sustainable, fact-based watchdog journalism.

In the introductory section of the book, the authors explain that the downsizing of the reporter workforce in the 21st century entailed deep disinvestment in watchdog reporting by MSM. "For many MSM executives, investigative journalism is at best a loss leader, an expensive trinket that serves a mainly promotional function, but that invites lawsuits and political payback. At the BBC, notes producer Meirion Jones, 'There are individuals scattered in radio and TV programmes, in the regions, and all over the institution, who are trying to do investigations often in their spare time and with little support. Typically managers see them as a problem.'.... Since the industry largely undervalues investigative work, in many universities, a deep understanding of investigative journalism – its history, sociology, and economics – isn't considered essential enough to figure prominently in the journalism vurriculum....Thankfully, a growing number of universities, especially in the US and UK [United Kingdom], are now addressing the need for new approaches, notably by adding entrepreneurialism or 'campaign' journalism to their curricula. We hope this book will contribute to that movement. We also hope that it will help to build a foundation for partnerships between business schools and journalism schools, by proposing a common language and reference base for collaboration."

Chapters One and Two set out key components of business models. A key feature of SDM business models, say the authors, resides in changing the relationship of a media to its users by entering their community to serve them. The SDM business model, they argue, aims first and foremost to protect, promote, and prevail for its users. The book breaks down the business model of investigative journalism into core components such as "value proposition", "customer segments", and "cost structure". The idea is to help investigative news organisations think more creatively about their businesses and wean themselves off foundation money, which many assume is the only way to pay for watchdog reporting. Ultimately, the book was written with the expectation that stakeholder-based news organisations will be forced to take a larger role in the production of public-good-focused investigative journalism, as more cash-strapped mainstream news organisations scale back their investment in it.

The book also sets out a new strategy for achieving social impact through watchdog journalism, based on studies of organisational crises in which communities and coalitions serve as levers of influence. The authors show that SDM can generate impact even in the absence of attention from MSM. "SDM do not go on to the next story and forget the preceding one. They pursue a story so long as it matters to their stakeholders – their community. They are thus capable of achieving results over time that MSM rarely attain. For that reason, serious journalists are well advised to see how they may collaborate with SDM as well as MSM." The authors dissect strategies by which stakeholder groups have prevailed in conflicts with much larger adversaries. They show that the power of actionable, verified information enables coalitions even among communities who pursue different goals.

Chapters Four and Five focus on the strategic commercial resources and practices - the ones that directly impact the survival of an organisation - that the authors identified through their research. Besides issues such as channels, costs, and revenues, they consider partnerships among and across media. They contend that partnership is a key skill of the coming era, and they observe that for journalists its value is only beginning to be harvested. "In an era of fascination with hardware and software, the ultimate technology is still human relationships."

The book is aimed at professors and students at journalism schools, as well as investigative journalists. All these groups, the authors say, should understand both how stakeholder-based news organisations are driving the news agenda and how journalists can use the concept to build audiences around their own work. "If you want to commit watchdog reporting and survive the ongoing crisis of MSM, this book will help you. The resources referenced in its footnotes will take you further up the path, and provide support to scholars who want to explore this domain. If you are concerned by where media are going, as a wise manager or an organizational communication professional, this book will help you in another way. It will clarify what stakeholder-driven media are, and how you can work with them to make the world a better place."