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News from the Future of Public Media
Newsrooms of the Future
email discuss Posted by Jessica Clark on Aug 27, 2007 at 6:07 PM
“American Journalism Review Struggles to Keep Publishing.”
Nope, it’s not an Onion headline; it’s a pointer to a Washington Post story from Romanesko, the media industry blog hosted by the Poynter Institute. But the perilous fate of the AJR does mirror that of the many print journalism outlets it covers, small and large. For months, Romanesko has been buzzing with news of layoffs, restructurings and buyouts at newspapers around the country. The independent magazine world has also suffered a series of losses after the shutdown of the Independent Press Association, with more threatened as a result of postal rate hikes. Meanwhile, the circulation of celebrity magazines continues to rise. This bodes ill for the quality of public discussion, as it’s newspaper and magazine stories that often feed and inform the debates conducted across broadcast outlets.
But while gloom-and-doom predictions about the fate of the fourth estate abound, a number of projects are thinking proactively, working to craft models for the newsrooms of the future.
Earlier this month, reporters, editors and educators met in DC for the Journalism That Matters meeting. The latest in a series of convenings about the “future and finances of watchdog journalism,” this event focused in part on a proposal for “The Next Newsroom”.
Crafted by Chris Peck—the editor of The Memphis Commercial Appeal—the document is meant to serve as a prototype for an actual newsroom to be launched from scratch in a U.S. community in 2008. A bit of a laundry list, the plan tackles the thorniest issues facing newspapers: flagging revenue, booming digital distribution methods, and the rise of the citizen journalist. Some of its tenets are heartening: commitments to nurture journalists who aspire to improve civic life, to develop locally sustainable business models, and to engage local citizens in defining what constitutes “news.” Others are experimental: suggestions to distribute the publication via electronic reading tablets and address-specific printers, and to offer every household in the target area a “community stock option.” Still others are worrisome: proposals to offer tired and tailored content, and to report to a community board. But overall, it’s an interesting experiment to watch in the coming months.
At Duke University, two alums of campus paper The Chronicle are spearheading the redesign of the student newsroom. With support from the Knight Foundation’s News Challenge project, Chris O’Brien and Kath Sullivan are exploring the best way to build a newsroom that can serve “the next 50 years of journalism.” Although still early in their research, they’re inviting input online at nextnewsroom.com.
Knight is also behind the New Voices program, a small grants initiative that funds micro-local news projects. Recipients of their 2007 grants include a map-based climate reporting project in Vermont; an “embedded” community television project in Cambridge, Massachusetts; and a mobile-based news and information hotline in Gary, Indiana. As it turns out, the newsrooms of the future may not involve any rooms at all.
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