Tag Archive for benedetta brevini

Benedetta Brevini: Inform, not notify – the birth of participatory, ‘slow journalism’

In this guest post, first published on the Conversation, Dr Benedetta Brevini explores new models for journalism in the 21st century

The digital era has led to increasing challenges for western and traditional news media business models. Media outlets are facing steady declines in revenue, while the migration of advertising online has brought limited success in “monetising” digital’s audiences. To make things worse, internet ads have progressively decreased in value in recent years.

The issue of how to fund quality journalism that would hold the government to account is a pressing one. As newsrooms continue to cut back, there is a real reduction in reporting capacity with profound effects on quality, investigative and exploratory journalism.

And yet, the last year has seen a quite hectic, energising movement of “digital journopreneurs”. Personal-brand journalists, digital entrepreneurs and investigative journalists have decided to embrace the capabilities of web technologies to launch a new wave of journalism platforms.

The rise of ‘journoprenuers’

In March, statistician and journalist Nate Silver launched his ESPN-backed FiveThirtyEight.com, a data blog that, by banking on Silver’s impressive record, will bet everything on a data-focused approach.

Silver is part of a wider movement of celebrity journalists who are migrating from mainstream press to digital start-ups. Ezra Klein left the Washington Post earlier this year for an initiative launched in April and backed by Vox Media, which promised to “explain the news” in a new revolutionary way by employing “next-generation technologies”.

The list could go on: there is also Jessica Lessin’s The Information and Pierre Omidyar‘s First Look featuring Glenn Greenwald. In February, First Look launched digital magazine/investigative site The Intercept.

These exciting ventures led New York Times media commentator David Carr to declare the birth of a new start-up digital journalism bubble.

These projects have three elements in common. They have been launched or backed by “new media” celebrities, are mostly US-based and are funded either by philanthropists or by established technology companies.

Their success will obviously be dependent not just on their economic sustainability, but also on their ability to offer what the so-called “legacy media” outlets – which are maintaining their dominance in the online world – are not able to provide.

Not just an American trend

On the other side of the Atlantic, a London-based journalism start-up known as The Charta has just launched a campaign for funding via crowdfunding website Kickstarter.

The Charta invites its future audience to believe in two things. Firstly, that real journalism, as opposed to fast–churned storytelling, needs time for reflection, investigation and understanding. Secondly, that if we want quality journalism we simply have fund it and participate in shaping it.

The Charta has a clear goal: “to inform, not notify”. The platform was certainly inspired by the success of De Correspondent, a Dutch-language online journalism venture offering background, analysis and investigative reporting, which raised over one million euros through crowdfunding.

For its focus on long-term investigations and slow-paced news reporting, The Charta has already been acclaimed by the founder of the “slow” movement in journalism, Carl Honoré:

The best way to make sense of our fast world is to slow down the news. The Charta will do just that by taking the time to think, understand and explain. In a world ravaged by fast news that’s just what the doctor ordered.

The idea of committing not only to economically support a new journalism venture, but to participate in its development is reminiscent of the great Danish philosopher and educator Grundtvig, who believed that becoming a citizen was a matter of choice. One could choose to join or to remain outside a state but choosing to join the state meant accepting certain obligations.

Supporting The Charta reflects a belief that quality journalism needs resources, time and reflection, things that are often missing in contemporary fast-paced reporting. It also means that people are prepared to contribute to the direction of a platform that we see as a service to the public.

This could be called participatory, slow journalism. The Charta concept is ambitious and because it’s not launched by star journalists and not backed by famous philanthropists, it needs the support of “active citizens”.

To borrow the words that journalist Paul Bradshaw used to describe his crowdsourcing reporting project, Help Me Investigate:

Journalism is about more than just ‘telling a story’; it is about enlightening, empowering and making a positive difference. And the web offers enormous potential here – but users must be involved in the process and have ownership of the agenda.

In a digital world dominated by a few media conglomerates, initiatives like The Charta and those in the US should be welcomed and encouraged. And this time it is the people – not just a few, illuminated philanthropists – who can make a difference.

The ConversationThis article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article. Dr Benedetta Brevini is Lecturer in Communication and Media at the University of Sydney and Visiting Fellow of the Centre for Law Justice and Journalism at City University, London.

This article gives the views of the author/s, and does not necessarily represent the position of the Media Power and Plurality Project. We welcome further views and contributions to the media plurality policy debate: please contact us if you would like to contribute.

Benedetta Brevini: Australia swims against the tide of democratic media reform

By Benedetta Brevini, University of Sydney

This article was first published on the Conversation.

That media ownership rules have been progressively relaxed in many democracies is certainly not news. But that Australia, with one of the most concentrated media markets in the world, is thinking of further deregulation is astonishing.

Communications minister Malcolm Turnbull has suggested that he would like to relax the Keating-era cross-media ownership rules. These prevent any one proprietor from owning print, radio and television outlets in a single market.

Turnbull is also inclined to eliminate the rule that prevents a person controlling commercial television licences that reach more than 75% of the population. In his own words:

…the arrival of the internet and the additional diversity and avenues for competition that it brings really says we should have less regulation and more freedom.

This is the usual neo-liberal argument that the internet will set us free: it is giving us more news to consume, more diversity, more happiness.

“I see a new Athenian Age of democracy forged in the fora the Global Information Infrastructure will create,” Al Gore proclaimed in 1994. Since then, the contention that the internet will disrupt power structures and neutralise traditional gatekeepers has become popular in the new left.

In the UK, for example, the Labour government relaxed media ownership rules in 2003. It explained that “technological development had opened the way for new market entrants”. Well, it did, but only partially.

Old players dominate online

Recent studies show the internet is used primarily for entertainment rather than for news and political information. The most-visited news websites in Europe, Britain, the US and Australia are the websites of the dominant national news organisations.

According to Nielsen Online Ratings, News Corp’s news.com.au topped the Australian rankings in January with an audience of 2.767 million, followed by Fairfax’s smh.com.au and the Microsoft-Nine Entertainment Company’s co-owned site NineMSN. These represent established media institutions rather than new market entrants.

What is even more interesting is that while newspapers are facing an unprecedented decline in revenues, they are also reaching record numbers of readers because of their online editions. This translates into more hegemonic power in the hands of the same few powerful media owners.

At the same time, leading social media and search engines are acting as megaphones of the prevailing elites’ media agenda. This further impairs a variety of viewpoints.

It is this lack of diversity of voices that should worry Turnbull. Excessively concentrated media power does not just entail unchecked ties between political and media elites, as the UK phone-hacking saga demonstrated. This was one of the most remarkable examples of how such dominant media power can undermine the proper conduct of democracy.

The exercise of such power also entails the establishment of a system of control that does not allow space for dissent, for resistance, for minority voices. In other words, media concentration undermines democracy.

To echo prominent US academics Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky in their analysis of the news media, Manufacturing Consent:

If … the powerful are able to fix the premises of discourse, to decide what the general populace is allowed to see, hear and think about, and to ‘manage’ public opinion by regular propaganda campaigns, the standard [liberal-pluralist] view of how the media system works is at serious odds with reality.

The push for pluralism

Turnbull’s statements are at odds with calls from European media and civil society organisations that are promoting the European Initiative for Media Pluralism. The aim is to secure a European Union directive on national media ownership to avoid concentration in the media and advertising sectors.

This campaign is in line with the promotion of media pluralism by UNESCO and the Council of Europe. In 2005, UNESCO adopted the Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions. In 2007, the Council of Europe affirmed that:

…media pluralism and diversity of media content are essential for the functioning of a democratic society and are the corollaries of the fundamental right to freedom of expression and information.

The council specifically demanded legislation to limit:

…the influence which a single person, company or group may have in one or more media sectors as well as ensuring a sufficient number of diverse media outlets.

These international organisations have indicated resolutely the direction that media reforms should take. The Australian government should follow this course without delay.

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.