Should 'The Story' Remain Central To Journalism?
Or should the 'reporter' or 'community' be at the centre? #3 of the Indian Journalism Project.
When I first heard several years ago from journalism professor Jeff Jarvis that ‘the story’ or article was dead, I was predictably shocked. What is the profession without its most important unit? I wondered.
But then there were the tweets. Suddenly, news was being broken all the time in 140 characters and not by us journalists either. In response to this phenomenon, we said (mostly to ourselves), well, you can break the news on Twitter, but you won't get nuanced perspectives on it.
Then, we got 280 characters per tweet and tweet threads. Now, one could have breaking news and analysis on Twitter. Yet another tech platform, it seemed, was eating journalism's breakfast, lunch and dinner.
It’s 2022 now and ‘the story’ or article is still hanging around. It’s a little battered though.
Newspapers have them, but less and less people are reading newspapers.
Prime-time TV news bulletins contain almost no stories whatsoever.
On websites, most stories are being written for algorithms (to show up on google search) and not for actual people.
On social platforms, stories are being remixed.
Computer programs are now writing some types of stories.
We still have investigative journalism and reporters who uncover hidden information and there, the story reigns supreme. It is not however, central to the reader’s experience. Tweets are doing the job here too.
It's a good time to pose the question, if not stories, then what?
In 2014, Jarvis broke down a typical story or article into its constituents in order to make a few points. He did so in his book Geeks Bearing Gifts: Imagining New Futures For News.
A typical story or article, he said, contains:
A Lede (or lead): Gives the latest news.
A Nut graph: Gives us the context of the story and tells us why we should read it.
Background information.
"Timelines and catalogues of issues and players to set the stage."
An explainer section, for additional context.
Quotes from people providing varying perspectives.
And “as many anecdotes and examples as fit in print."
None of this is new for us journalists, but the point Jarvis was making was that articles didn't need all these elements anymore. A link to a Wikipedia page, for example, could give the reader as much background information as they might need. An explainer video could give the reader context. Quotes "could link to the source material they were drawn from". And so on.
Jarvis' argument was that in the internet era, an article or story doesn't have to be one-size-fits-all.
Those interested in explainers could look for them, and those who wanted further background reading could click on a link which might lead to a different news organisation's work.
Like I said, Jarvis wrote this in 2014. His thinking has continued to evolve since then, and in India since that argument, we've had the era of the 'three Ss' (search, social, subscription) come, go, and come back again.
News organisations have optimised their stories for Google search. They continue to alter their content to suit what social platforms reward. And for the past few years, they’ve realised that subscription or membership programs are not really coming to the rescue (except in niche publications).
Meanwhile the “story” has continued to survive.
There are two other elements today that can be considered equally important to the story: the reporter and the community. Each leads to a slightly different way of counting impact and indeed, a slightly different form of journalism. Let’s see.
The story as central to the news
In a digital news organisation driven primarily by stories, there is a tendency to focus on quantity. The primary metric of success for that organisation would be views per story (pageviews) and unique visitors to that story.
Organisations that are driven by this metric tend to be less reporter-centric than others. They are primarily driven by the desk, and the desk primarily churns out stories for Search Engine Optimisation reasons.
The journalistic reasoning behind such an organisation would be: more optimised stories lead to more views —> more views lead to more advertising, which leads to more revenue —> more revenue leads to bigger budgets for original reporting (once everything else is paid for).
Often though, news organisations succeed only partially at the first step (SEO being a black box or black magic, take your pick), or they exhaust themselves getting to the second step.
The journalist as central to the news
How would a news organisation that is journalist-first fare in the digital world?
The incentives in this case, wouldn’t necessarily need to be aligned towards quantity, i.e. how many stories the journalist churns out. In a typical news organisation, desk editors are told to churn out 8-10 wire copies enhanced by a few tweets. But in an organisation that is driven by the journalist as the central unit, the emphasis would be on quality. Breaking a big story or doing a well-researched piece about once a week would do the trick.
Such an organisation cannot be sustained by advertising, because advertising incentivises quantity over quality. Promoters and founders might well feel that a journalist-as-the-centre kind of organisation would be unsustainable.
But here’s the secret: even news organisations that start off as driven by advertising don’t make enough to sustain themselves until they’ve broken even, a process that usually takes years.
A news organisation driven by reporters as the central unit of journalism will need to depend on subscriptions and membership. Perhaps they might be a non-profit, in which case they would be sustained by donations.
In the creator-driven economy, this approach might even make sense.
The danger is that a journalist who has been nurtured by a news organisation might just decide to quit and join someone else. Stories, on the other hand, cannot hand in a resignation letter.
The other potential disadvantage of this model is that if the journalist ends up telling the wrong story. An example of this is the apocryphal tale of a reporter who did an extensive job covering a mould problem in a neighbourhood where the actual problem was contaminated water supply. All this journalist would have had to do is ask them, what is a bigger problem for you, mould or contaminated water?
The community as central to the news
What happens when we make the community the central unit of a news organisation? By ‘community’, I mean the opposite of ‘audience’. The audience is usually thought of as an impersonal mass of readers and viewers. This simply doesn’t work in the era of digital news and personalised feeds.
A community, on the other hand, is made up of real people. Every person is unique but news organisations don’t need to create personalised journalism for everyone, because they are bound by a set of values and experiences, i.e. a community.
Community-driven news organisations don’t need to take stories or journalist-driven efforts as central to their journalism. Rather, the focus can be on anything that is useful to the community. News publishers can organise mohalla sabhas (town square gatherings) on important issues and follow that up with an email or WhatsApp newsletter.
Where would the revenue come from? Depending on the type of community, events could be a primary driver of revenues. Subscription, membership or donations might work. These could be supplemented by advertising that is community-centric.
The point of this post isn’t that one model is better than the other. In fact, most news organisations use a blend all three models.
Scroll.in, for example, is driven by reporters but they also have a desk that churns out explainers1. Newslaundry works with its community effectively but they also publish desk-driven stuff.
The more mindful news organisations are about their strategies, the more prepared they will be for the future, and the more alive they will be to all the possibilities in journalism.
Otherwise, they’ll be stuck with the most common type of journalism online, which, to borrow a phrase from marketing, can be described as ‘spray and pray’!
What do you think of all this? Write in here with a comment, or reply to me on email or DM me on Twitter. Or, simply text me.
Here are some related questions I’m asking myself:
Which of the three types of news organisations detailed above is best for investigative journalism?
Does the community-driven news model work for large publishers?
Should legacy publishers change the way they are approaching News?
Are niches (sports, personal health, education, etc.) better served by a journalist-first approach or a community-first approach?
Can local news survive without a community-driven approach?
How does the easy availability of creator tools across social platforms impact the kind of journalism that is now possible?
The Indian Journalism Project is a 100-day effort by BOOM and Media Buddhi starting on World Press Freedom Day (3rd May) and ending on India’s Independence Day (15th August). During this period, expect a mix of essays, workshops and a mentorship program. Do subscribe and share with your journalistic friends!
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In the email version of this post, I had inadvertently left this line here: “They do this to varying effect.” It’s one of those scraps of text that floated in from somewhere else when I edited the piece. It has been removed now.
Lovely insightful piece. One thing i want to know in this cluttered space is to how make the story readable for an audience.