The 21st Century News Challenge: What would YOU do?

The introduction poses many many questions. One that seemed particularly relevant to me was: in what other ways will computers create a community. This question logically leads to another: is not defining a community and essential step in creating a community? Communities of course are defined in many different ways -- language, age, gender, etc. But for many years I have looked at communities in a different way: how they are defined by the the geographical boundaries decided upon by various government agencies. This interest goes back almost 40 years when I began covering the New York Police Department. The upper East Side of Manhattan, for example, was a community partly defined by class and race. But it also was the NYPD's 19th Precinct. So with this information I was able to document the number of officers assigned to that area, the number of officers in relation to the community's population, how the per capita staffing numbers on the upper East Side compared with the rates in Harlem, the South Bronx and Staten Island.

By defining a community and comparing how it was served by one of the most important agencies of the government, this analysis allowed a large number of neighborhoods to better understand of how the Lindsay Administration was serving them.

The general failure of news organizations to explore this community angle in the operations of a range of local, state and national organizations -- state police, federal dollars set aside for local highway construction, IRS enforcement efforts -- has always baffled me. It is my belief that this important component of the news is often ignored because editors and reporters have never been trained in the very simple techniques involved in this kind of analysis. The techniques I am talking about do not go to the intelligent use of spread sheets and advanced internet search skills. All that is required is a recognition that documenting the disparities in the delivery government services to different communities. and exploring these disparities over a period of time, very often is big front page news of enormous public interest.

It is my view that very modest training in this approach could reap significent rewards.

Excellent array of thoughts on this important initiative. It seems to me the most significant challenges are credibility and the business model for generating effective journalism, and that the Knight Foundation should focus on those areas. One of the key points listed is the importance of serving "actual communities"; in turn, this means distinguishing between geographical communities (by which most general-interest journalism has always defined itself) and virtual/interest communities, which are reachable online in a way they were never reachable before. One reason to look closely at craigslist is that it has used cyberspace to organize geographically-based communities, something local newspapers in particular ought to be well-situated to do.

Focusing on the business model and financial mechanisms to support real reporting almost certainly means opening up the proposal process to companies as well as non-profit entities (or maybe to joint for-profit/non-profit partnership ventures, in which each could provide its own brand of credibility).

Further, I would suggest that the foundation invite/encourage proposals that address which values are changing in journalism, as distinct from which values are bedrock and must be protected. For instance, is the competition to be first at the expense of context a bedrock value, or might it give way to something else? How about the value of keeping personal opinion out of all news reporting? Or the insistence that information be verified before it is published? The way these questions are answered could go a long way towards determining the quality and effectiveness of journalism over the next decade.

Jim Bettinger
Director, John S. Knight Fellowships at Stanford

I guess I would stress three things in trying to figure out what to support:

1. Opening this up to a wide variety of proposals of different types and scales. I don't think anyone has all the right answers on what the future of news is online or how to nurture communities (just take a look at the paucity of comments posted at most of the prominent citizen media sites), so the more experimentation the better. We need to be supporting people who are doing novel things, taking risks, tearing up the game plan and starting all over.

2. That said, I think it's critical that any initiative be required to measure and try to quantify the results - how many people read a story package, visited an online community, posted comments or stories, etc. Much of what we know right now about what works and what doesn't is anecdotal. We need some solid data on what online communities are truly engaging people and what people are drawn to at news sites. This shouldn't be punitive - as in requiring people to show positive results - but rather just tracking how effective different approaches are. Knowing that a pilot project came up with a brilliant idea about how to build a community, and then failed miserably, would be just as instructive as finding something that worked.

3. As several others have pointed out, the business and revenue side of things should be emphasized. I think any project should include some plan for tracking costs and estimating or actually generating revenue. This doesn't mean profitability, just an assessment of what the costs and potential revenue streams are, so we have a realistic idea of what's possible, what works and what that requires as we transition to digital media.

My 2 cents.

Paul Grabowicz
New Media Program Director
UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism

My two cents about this is that concerns about technology isolating us are inflated. Most of these new technologies are digital equivalents of what we had before, a new look on an old snook, as we used to say in New York.

Ride a New York subway and you'll still find people blocking out the rest of the world with a newspaper held up in front of their faces; people sit alone watching television most of the time and nobody sounds alarm bells. New platforms – ipods, online, etc. – are no different than a pencil. The value is in what we do with them. Otherwise they're valueless.

Charles Haddad
Director
CDC Knight Fellowship
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

First, I applaud the focus on communities, but would also urge Knight to think about framing any RFP so that it could also encompass new ideas for reporting on and engaging citizens in national and global issues.

One way to think about framing an RFP is to categorize some of the things you want. For instance, you might call for ideas for 1) new ways of reporting or storytelling, 2) new ideas for using technology to build in efficiencies for reporters 3) new newsroom constructs and deployments of staffers 4) new news delivery models, 5) new products 6) new partnerships 7) new business/revenue models. Etc.

Because I now view news as a news consumer but through the lens of a long-time assigning editor, I think we need to invite some new ideas about whether our definitions and thresholds for news and our parroting of newsmaker comments are really fulfulling our news obligations in society. So how could we frame and report news that adds value for readers?

As a long-time funder of pilot projects, first in the civic journalism arena and now in the citizen media arena, one lesson I have learned is always to build in some checkpoints for your projects: Don't hand them all the funding at once. Tier the funding, deliver it in stages upon delivery of periodic progress reports. It's important to give new projects and new project administrators some structure and some goal posts to shoot for; it helps them and it helps you in year 2 to see what you need to revise. Not everyone who has a good idea can manage and deliver on a project. Now, this also means some added administrative issues for Knight — but THIS is something that could be contracted out

Don't shut out any winner in one year from coming back with an entirely different idea another year. We need good ideas where ever we can get them. And if there are people who are both innovative and can DELIVER on a project, they should be seriously nurtured, not discouraged.

One thing I'd urge you to consider, and it fits with Knight's mission: Consider issuing an RFP that will give special consideration to innovative ideas coming from minorities or women media entrepreneurs. These folks are leaving the business in droves, often because they don't feel their ideas are being heard. Well, give them a megaphone and create some role models at the same time.

I'd say it's fine to have young people propose a good idea — even better if it came from, say, a local computer magnet school.

Fine, as well, to solicit international ideas. One thing we have learned, however, and that I'd urge you to investigate: Many international winners might need a Social Security Number or TaxID number for the foundation to issue them a check and this is sometimes difficult for them to get.

As for focusing on Knight communities, you might consider saying something like preference for a certain number of awards will go to Knight communities. But if the ideas are not there, don't force it.

Good luck.

Jan Schaffer
Executive Director
J-Lab: The Institute for Interactive Journalism

Knight's inclination to try and lead the media out of this time of uncertainty with an incubator-like experiment has great merit.

However, the dilemma we face is not so much one of a lack of information, a failure to use technology to its maximum or a lack of imagination. The real failure, in my view, is the lack of new dynamic and workable business models for a different kind of hybrid-media outlet that combines the best of the market-place with the best of the non profit side.

Frankly, I have become somewhat weary of complaining about the falling state of grace of good reportage, particularly on television. Because such whining usually goes no where, I have become increasingly interested in trying to do some institution building. However, before that process can commence, one has to know what kind of a new institutions are worthy of being built.

So, as a prelude to such institution building, it seems to me that we need an assay of media outlets around the world to find out which models are capable of both sustaining high-quality reporting and themselves, namely, which media outlets are supported by business models that answer both these imperatives: 1/ To yield an adequate return on capital. 2/ T produce news of the highest order.

So, let me conclude by saying that underneath every discussion about eroding media quality lays a business model that is dis functional. It is to this question that we must turn. When we get that right, it may be time to turn to foundations, VCs and other sorts of investors.

In response to: "What is the biggest challenge to news in the 21st century":

I'd say: Infusing American citizens with the motivation to inform themselves sufficiently to make good decisions in equal portions for themselves and for their communities.

Can a site or app or program be judged on this basis? I think they must be, particularly as the traditional components historically lashed together to serve that goal (however imperfectly) -- reporting, editing, editorial position, advertising, constitutional protections, readers -- are now being peeled away from one another.

Already the Web tools that are doing this peeling are matching the needs that Stephen Gray described above: "Most people, most of the time, will make choices that provide better outcomes for themselves and those they care about. This includes their loved ones, their neighborhoods, groups to which they belong, their communities, and so on."

We can count on lots of digital "news you can use;" but will there be any measurable self-informing that can be shown to strengthen our self-governing selves? I think this outcome will need tracking, to the extent that it is possible to do that.