When you ask Google a question, it gives you the answers of potentially millions of people each of whom has some relevant information on the topic but not all of the relevant information. When you ask WolframAlpha a question, it gives you the potential answer of just one person who is immensely well informed and has the capacity to process all the relevant information. Google gives you the wisdom of the crowds and its answers represent the collective knowledge of a large group of people. WolframAlpha, which uses pre-categorised libraries of human knowledge, tells you how each individual person would be likely to answer your question, given the same information WolframAlpha has.

So now I’ve set up the stage for the main attraction. This is WolframAlpha’s definition of journalism:

I take this to be the likely answer to the question of what journalism is if you asked people who do not regularly think about it. In my experience, that is also often the answer from people who do regularly think about what journalism is. Even if they do not say it directly and even if they would not admit it when confronted, most people equate journalism with newspapers. Not TV, not radio, not news agencies.

So far, so not out of the ordinary. Using a narrow term for a much broader concept is something we do all the time. My problem in this case is that it spills over. For a year now I have been listening about a supposed crisis in journalism. There is no crisis in journalism. Journalism is doing very well from what I’m seeing. The business of making and selling newspapers is in crisis for reasons that have nothing to do with journalism. I’m not saying people should not be concerned about that crisis too, but the longer we continue to equate journalism with newspapers, the longer it will continue to be a hurdle for all other sorts of journalistic endeavour. Universities should focus on teaching journalism separately from teaching newspaper-making. Companies should focus on making journalism rather than making newspapers. It will be better for both journalists and newspapers.

thank you very much! What a great service from you.

I tend to rant a lot, so I thought I shouldn’t miss this opportunity to brag a little. But also, that whole episode made me once again think about how much closer journalism is to servicing customers (readers) than to creating a product (content). And although writing stories on demand, as it were, may not be the best/the only/the most viable possible future for journalism, I am growing ever more convinced that custom(isable) niche solutions will be an important part of it.

As we made our way through generous helpings of fish and chips served on the floor of Jo’s living room, Mark moaned about people’s tendency to answer the question by telling him what journalism is not, rather than what it is. However, our attempts to answer with a straight description of what journalism is produced definitions that were either too narrow or too broad.

We sort of agreed that journalism is what journalists do, which left us with the task to define who is a journalist. Vanya suggested that journalists are people who know things and share them with others. But that could also be a description of other occupations, such as teaching, or even architecture or medicine (basically anything that required special knowledge, provided the holder of that knowledge didn’t mind sharing it).

Then it dawned on us — and I am fairly certain we all agreed, despite the blurring effect alcohol has on memories — that journalists are people who know stuff they have no particular reason to know. Unlike other occupations, where knowledge is a prerequisite to doing the job, journalism seems to be unique for “professionalising” curiosity for curiosity’s sake.

What does everybody else think?

Mark Comerford

Mark Comerford established Europe’s first online newspaper in 1994 when he launched the website of Sweden’s biggest daily newspaper Aftonbladet.

He initially moved to Sweden in the early 1980s to work as a welder and a shipbuilder before moving to work in the digital world.

Since then he has spread his journalism knowledge across the globe teaching people from Africa to Britain how to get the best out of the Internet and digital technologies. He is a keen advocate of the notion that journalists should not be confined by what technology can currently offer, but rather make technology work for them. (Source: The Journalism Leaders Programme.)

In a Google Talk chat session Mark answered some questions about the future of newspapers and journalists.

D Damyanov: Do you believe newspapers will become obsolete and be entirely replaced by news websites?

M Comerford: No.

DD: Why not?

MC: Lol. OK. I think we will see a number of things happening to newspapers over the next few years, and maybe even quicker. A number of them will die as paper products. A number of them will migrate totally to the web. (And the fact that every household in the country [DD: the UK] will be guaranteed access to broadband Internet will accelerate and consolidate that change.) Some of them will become bi-weekly. Then there will be a two-tier series of papers. The free ones like Metro (which will probably be one of the few to continue making money) and top-level ones that come out on Saturday and will be analytical, deep, long and expensive. These will attract top-level advertisers and will be used as both an info service for the upper-class/educated etc and as a symbol in the same way watches are: “Look at me! I am discreetly telling you I belong to the wealthy and educated and influential, but not flashy.”

DD: So you mean paper will stay because it is tangible and can be easily used as a status symbol, unlike a digital publication?

MC: Yes. And that transition will be staggered, different speeds for the transition in different economic regions depending on a huge number of factors.

DD: Such as?

MC: Take China and South Africa. Both are new markets, both have seen an increase in newspaper launches, both have rising literacy levels. There will be an increase there but the cycle — new, grow, stagnate, die — will be much faster as there will be parallel growth in digital at the same time.

DD: Where do journalists fit into this picture? What is the future of the journalist ten or twenty years from now?

MC: There is a great future for journalists as story tellers/curators. There will be a load of new initiatives in regional and local digital-based products and they will need journalists.

DD: Yet right now it seems as though the industry does not need (or cannot afford) to have as many journalists?

MC: It is the monolith media that has structural and cyclical problems, not journalism per se. Though there is a problem in the perception traditional journalists have about what they do and what they are that needs to be addressed.

DD: If you were to explain it to them in one sentence what would it be?

MC: You’re fucked.

Can I use three sentences?

DD: Please do.

MC: Journalists are story builders. Those who build their stories best and understand that a story is a social object will survive.

DD: Will there be a third sentence?

MC: A social object implies that the story is a collaborative effort.

You can follow Mark’s updates on Twitter or find him in your favourite social network (he is markmedia in all of them). His blog is a great read.

A rather heated discussion on the role of journalism and journalists has graced Joanna Geary’s blog for a few days before surprisingly slowing down almost to a halt just when it seemed to have gained critical speed. In the hope that this may give it a fresh thrust and as a way to clarify the broader premise for the reviews we publish, I’d like to pick it up here.

Joanna, who is development editor at the Birmingham Post, rightly observed that the debate had been blurred by the fact that commenters do not subscribe to a common definition of journalism, nor do they agree on why journalism is important. She tried to introduce some structure to the discussion in her latest post by singling out those two issues and offering her take on them. At the time I posted a detailed but somewhat chaotic comment. But the topic is really crucial for the future of our industry and I would not feel very good about myself if I didn’t try something more elaborate.

So, what is journalism? Most definitions tend to circulate around issues of content, relevance and importance, and communication. But I think those definitions are a bit too narrow for the purpose of the discussion. I therefore propose (and do not claim to be exhaustive) the following four defining characteristics of journalism:

1. Journalism is a service.
2. Journalism is a conversation.
3. Journalism is power.
4. Journalism is what journalists do.

You are a servant

As any service journalism needs someone to provide it and someone to consume it. It needs a business model that can sustain it. That goes for both commercial media and for personal blogs where individuals compete with one another and with media businesses for attention. There is no reason why this service should not be governed by the rule that “the customer is always right”, yet, surprisingly, it too often is not. All too often it is the providers that insist on being right, on the ground of their perceived role as a crucial element in a democratic society.

This is not to say that media outlets should only publish what their audiences ask of them. Editorial judgement is an important piece of their value proposition, since not everybody can have the knowledge and skills to do the job of a journalist. (Again, this goes for both commercial media and “amateur” bloggers alike.)

Joanna suggested that rather than wasting journalistic resources on data processing such as, say, re-writing press releases, it would be better for the generators of original information “to communicate it better and to allow for redress to what they say”, so as to fit onto any specific platform.

I cannot agree with that. As Mik Barton, the head of PR company Actuality Media, pointed out: “Sadly most of the news releases I see when I’m sat at my local editor’s desk do need rewriting so they can be a) understood and b) interesting to local people.”

And Steve Dyson, editor of the Birmingham Mail and the Sunday Mercury, was right to worry about what will happen “if organisations, companies, local government, public authorities, etc, were simply allowed to post/publish their versions of facts with no interpretation and checking by a (…) journalist, or no challenge or probe from a (…) journalist.”

The problem with the originators of information is that they are providing a different service altogether, and thus cannot be trusted to cater to the needs of journalism’s customers. Sam Shepherd, who is in charge of online development at the Daily Echo in Bournemouth, summed it up rather nicely: “I can’t imagine a world where companies who knew their press releases would run unrefined wouldn’t take advantage of that fact.”

But the media should not generalise this to the point where their special expertise makes them the ultimate authority on the issue of what is quality content and what is not. It may take a journalist to create quality content, but anybody can judge what quality is.

Do not build brands, build trust

The best way for media outlets to understand what their audiences want is not just to talk to them but to actually involve them in the journalistic process. Letting people comment on the content is a great starting point. But if people are given the opportunity to participate, they could do so much more than just complain or praise.

Remember it is a service. Compare it with a restaurant: if a customer wishes their steak raw, wouldn’t they be served a raw steak? Surely, Chef knows better, but Chef’s taste buds are not important in this case.

Ideally, says the now seemingly prevalent school of thought, journalism should not be a broadcast but a conversation. Journalists should outreach to their community and try and engage it in creating the journalistic product.

However, fruitful conversations are based on trust and people seem to be growing mistrustful of the media. Steve Dyson may want to believe that “(l)ocal newspaper brands have great reputations for reporting trusted facts”, but they do not. Partly it is because of incidents like the one with Birmingham Mail’s own Adam Smith (thanks to Mark Comerford who found the video):

But such snafus alone cannot explain it. What amplifies their effect and is actually the reason for mistrust is the media’s arrogance. Yes, we are back to journalists thinking they are the only ones who can define quality journalism and going as far as to suggest, as Steve has, that social interaction “should be labelled clearly as just that” and that “fully factual reports must be protected as the domain of trained journalists”. Such stances are clear conversation-killers and anyone who thinks they care about journalism must eschew them. The Guardian’s Technology editor Charles Arthur has got it all wrong by claiming that “(j)ournalism always thrives in conflict.” Conflict is no way to build a community.

The fourth estate

Before the internet, journalism had a mission to give a voice to the voiceless. Now the voiceless can buy a voice from their cable-TV operator, but that does not mean that journalism has lost any of its potency. Rather, journalism has expanded to include not only professional journalists but also members of what had previously been thought of as the public.

The fifth estate is as powerful as the fourth and that is a good thing. Charles tried to make a point saying that independent media are better at exposing the facts that certain individuals or organisations are hiding. And I agree… up to a point. As web publicist Gary Andrews suggested, the media have greater clout and their reporting is usually harder to discredit than that of individual bloggers. But I feel that, as so much else in journalism, that is a legacy from times that are not going to be repeated. Bloggers tend, by and large, to be much less arrogant than commercial media; they stand to gain the publics’ trust, even as legacy businesses stand to lose it.

Video may yet change that (as the Adam Smith example indicates), but at the moment people can be largely anonymous in their web presence. This is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, it raises concerns about reliability; but on the other, it means in less free societies the fifth estate can wield greater power than what old media would have allowed it to.

With power comes responsibility (and accountability). Sam Shepherd argued that “(n)ews organisations should give journalists the chance to do the job they want to do because it’s the point of being a journalist. It IS what people pay for.” I am not sure that that is entirely correct. To me it seems to be the same case as in her earlier point about press releases: give journalists a blank cheque and they will take advantage, just like companies would.

Everyone is a journalist now

I come to the final point in my argument: journalism is what journalists do. For that to make sense, however, we need to clearly define who is a journalist and what is it that journalists do exactly.

In the discussion so far, two figures have taken a somewhat vague shape as being opposed to each other: the one is the “trained journalist” (aka investigative journalist) who has special skills and whose time is too precious to be wasted on menial jobs; the other is the “amateur blogger” (aka man on the street), who by trying their best can just about gain entry to the lower levels of journalistic excellence.

Now, if I have done a decent job by this point it should not be necessary for me to go over all the issues of arrogance, trust, conversation and community again to point out how counterproductive this opposition is. Social-media specialist Nick Booth has summarised it beautifully: “The business of recording and sharing facts is not one that journalists are uniquely qualified to do – neither is it one they do uniquely well.”

If that has not been made entirely clear by now, throughout this article I have used media to mean both commercial outfits and personal undertakings, and journalists to mean both professionals and laymen. In my comment to Joanna’s latest post I argued that the importance of training is overblown by people who want to use it as a shield. Journalism is what people who act as journalists do; training, background and what you call them makes no difference to the output of their work.

Nor is there any work that can be simply dismissed as data processing below a journalist. If it is the best way to serve your community of customers, then it is journalism at its best. Some people want unpleasant things about the powers that be dug out: and that is a journalistic job. Others want company press releases re-written and digested so that they make sense in time for the start of trade on the stock market: and that is a journalistic job. Others still need information aggregated, sifted through and channelled in a manner that meets their specific needs: and that is a journalistic job. To those who suggest “churnalism” and aggregation do not add journalistic value, I will just say: you go and try to re-write all press releases on any day during earnings season before the LSE opens, and see how easy shovelling information is.

Matt Buck, a cartoonist, illustrator and journalist, said he saw “no reason why trusted sources (brands) shouldn’t develop good, economic relationships with bloggers who have expertise in niche areas – and who are able to prove it. In fact, and speaking specifically about newspapers here, we might find this to be an effective way of reversing the lamentable decline in the numbers of specialist reporting positions.”

That has been backed up by several examples, which I’m copying here from Joanna’s post:

- Ahmed Bilal, founder of Soccerlens.com
- Andy Baio, founder of waxy.org (which helped dig out the Miss Alaska video of Sarah Palin)
- Pat Phelan of patphelan.net who looks at the telecommunications industry whilst operating a business in it.
And more locally in Birmingham:
- Pete Ashton, founder of the creative industry news blog createdinbirmingham.com.
- Steve Gerrard, founder of gig review blog brumlive.com.
- Nicky Getgood, who is keeping Digbeth residents in the know about local issues at “Digbeth is Good”.

As Matt concluded: “Independent bloggers and established media outlets do not have to be in competition – I think they are natural allies.”

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This debate is too important to just leave it die away. If you care about journalism, please leave a comment here, or underneath any of those other blog posts, which have also taken up the topic:

Joanna Geary on Why most news doesn’t need journos

Joanna Geary on What is journalism and why is it so essential

Andrew Grant-Adamson on Why news needs reporters

Gary Andrews on Does news need journalists

William Perrin on Traditional press, new business models and processes

Or blog it yourself.

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Images| by Joanna Geary, Resclassic2, | spoon |, cliff1066, Gauravonomics

Well, let’s get this started. We are not yet entirely clear about the design but we will just tweak the site on the go and hope you will not mind.

This blog will feature reviews of journalistic stories. No, it will not be like book reviews of extremely short books. We will try to explain.

People have told stories for as long as they have had language. Over the millennia, technology has changed and the ways to tell stories have multiplied. Storytelling started off as an oral tradition; it then expanded to paper, picture and video, and is nowadays going online. But, as well as changing the means to tell a story, each new medium has meant a shift in people’s perceptions of what a story is, how it is structured and how it works. Some writers of fiction, like Kurt Vonnegut in Breakfast of Champions, have experimented with doing away with storytelling.

Journalism has long been obsessed with telling stories. It still is. Many journalists are under the impression that they are in the business of producing and distributing news. And when they say news, they usually mean stories. Pictures, although an established part of the journalistic product, are largely seen as an aide to telling a story. Text is king.

But why should it be that way? Stories told in print, sound and video are ubiquitous. But can a Google map tell a story? Can a Java game tell a story? Can a discussion on a Facebook group’s wall tell a story? What will it mean for a story if a video shows one thing and the sound tells another?

An industry on the verge of a radical shift, as journalism is, needs bold and creative minds that are eager to explore and find the answers to such questions. This blog we will try to present some of the best efforts in the field in the hope to inspire creativity.

We will try to give an objective rating of each story reviewed, focusing on three main criteria: originality, presentation and journalistic value. The last one might need some explanation. Many journalists will probably think it means newsworthiness. But we are rather of the view that journalism is not about news: it is about content. Journalism is not about telling people something: it is about talking to them and listening to them, and letting their views become part of the story. Journalism is not about democracy: it is about community.

We are starting with just one reviewer – me – but hope people interested in the project will want to join. Also, we will be extremely grateful to anyone who suggests a story that we should review: the web is now too big to scale it alone. Do not be shy to promote your own stuff. If you have done a good job, there is no reason not to brag.

Image|quintessence by Demion