Problems with journalism: key points for editors
Posted by Evan Fell on November 21, 2007 at 3:39 PM
Mary Nesbit, director of The Readership Institute, examined the problems with journalism and came up with several points and pieces of advice that she thinks would be of help to editors try to “lead, not just keep things ticking over.” Here are some of her main points:
- Speed, distribution, multimedia, interactivity, networks, new business models – all are critical endeavors. But successful editors must also focus on creating news and information that grips, tickles, astonishes, befriends and rewards readers. It's a high hurdle
- People aren't losing interest in news. They're losing interest in how journalists have defined and presented it to them.
- As well as bold editorial leadership, this kind of change takes training and retraining; replacing people; hiring a different type of journalist; enlarging the definition of what a journalist does, what journalism is for and who can engage in journalism; and demanding a different kind of graduate from journalism schools (including the one where I work.)
- Successful editors will figure out how to add audience-centric criteria to professionally-derived news values. The result will be a new set of filters to help guide the news and information report. Many standards of professional journalism add value that is important to consumers – accuracy, verification, completeness, fairness and context, to name but a few. They are what's right with the journalistic approach. What's gone wrong is that key needs, concerns and preferences of consumers/citizens don't influence journalistic product nearly as much as they should. (That was a key learning from the Readership Institute's experience studies.)
For the full article, see here
Source: Readership Institute through Ifra Executive News Source
Posted in :
0 TrackBacks
Listed below are links to blogs that reference this entry: Problems with journalism: key points for editors.
TrackBack URL for this entry: http://www.editorsweblog.org/mt/mt-tb.cgi/5540
Mike Masnick over at Techdirt argues that full RSS feeds actually increase page views. And here's why:
"Full text feeds makes the reading process much easier. It means it's that much more likely that someone reads the full piece and actually understands what's being said -- which makes it much, much, much more likely that they'll then forward it on to someone else, or blog about it themselves, or post it to Digg or Reddit or Slashdot or Fark or any other such thing -- and that generates more traffic and interest and page views from new readers."