Journalism 05: The Journalism Process

So how do stories get published? Where does it start? This is what is called the journalism process. In this post, we will examine the value chain from idea to story. This is what the conventional process:

Rahul Deodhar Journalism process

The process gives us necessary and sufficient conditions that allow for minimum standards journalism. To enumerate a few:

1. Source coverage
2. Access to news wire
3. Beat reporting coverage to trigger news stories
4. Proper investigative process including field work, fact checking, sourcing etc.
5. Supervisory resources that can guide the reporters through the investigative process
6. Editorial teams cleaning up the content and fact checking and verification.
7. Story selection from the point of view of the reader.
8. Publishing infrastructure.

There have been some changes that take place that modified the process. 

For example, since substantial data is now available online thanks to government databases and global institutions making the data available. The names and contact details of the potential sources are also available. Unfortunately, there is no substitute to fieldwork when it is required. On the other side, communication infrastructure, publishing has become almost costless. 

The New Process

The old process is not necessarily sacrosanct. In fact, the world of blogging has added something new to this - "process journalism". It refers to published stories which involve the readers INSIDE the journalism process. Jeff Jarvis describes it much better in his piece Product V Process Journalism.

Here is his map of journalism process in the tech age:

From Jeff Jarvis

Jarvis calls this "Journalism as beta" and refers to two explanations of the process  [formating modification are mine]

Darlin touches on one such new view when he writes:

[TechCrunch founder] Mr. Arrington and the other bloggers see this not as rumor-mongering, but as involving the readers in the reporting process. One mission of his site, he said, is to write about the things a few people are talking about, “the scuttlebutt around Silicon Valley.” His blog will often make clear that he’s passing along a thinly sourced story.

To quote Gawker founder Nick Denton, when we put up “half-baked posts” we are saying to our public: Here’s what we know, here’s what we don’t know, what do you know. I believe it is critical to clearly label that, giving caveats and context. The same is true of 24-hour cable news, where the viewer must become the editor, understanding the difference between what is known now and what what can be confirmed later (see: the West Virgina mining disaster). In short: We who publish must learn how to say what we don’t know at least as well as we say what we know. 

This is journalism as beta.

Without the relevant change in the reporting standards, such process reporting quickly devolves into post-truth reporting. But when properly communicated, the model presents an innovative approach.

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Journalism 04 - All journalists need to watch the movie Mad City

In 1997, a movie featuring John Travolta and Dustin Hoffman was released. I recommend this movie to all my journalist friends. It is a must watch.

In 1997, it showcases the effects of post-truth news. They hadn't coined that word yet then. But most of the things you will see in the movie are surreal.

However, it is not a futuristic film. Whatever is depicted is an extrapolation of sorts from the Lady Diana's death which happened in Aug 1997. In the years leading up to it, there were discussions of possibility of papparazi getting killed while chasing her. Sadly, she ended up in that accident.

But it tells you of power of media, the responsibility and the effects.

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Journalism 03 - Arianna Huffington on the media

Arianna Huffington spoke to Editor-in-Chief of The Economist Zanny Minton Beddoes on the role of the media.

Some interesting points here:

We can come out of this but it depends on how wise our leaders are going to be.

There is lot less time for reflection.

At the start of election process Trump was given lot of uncritical publicity that was not justified by anything except the ratings.

We have to get back to the world where there is such a thing as truth.

Sometimes there are no two sides to the story - like in climate change. "everything has two sides" gives an impression that there is no truth.

Some comments:

Huffington is right on many counts. I am not sure Huffington Post was above it all though. In any case there is nothing wrong with what she is saying.

Journalists did abdicate their responsibility to dig out the truth. 

Opinion war type journalism

Most of the journalist  deal with opinion war. In an opinion war journalists as one person about their views on some subject or better still some person. Then they go to a person who holds opposite views on the topic and ask them to comment about the adverse remarks of the former. 

This is fine if the debate was based on correct facts or it was about interpretation of facts. But sadly the debate is about "facts" themselves. Or it is pure opinion - with a topic like "What do you think Kim Kardashian do next?" or something.

This makes for a good road-side brawl and gets that type of rubber-necking attention but no further. It does however demean the institution of journalism. 

In case of climate change, this is absolutely true. The whole truth about human action causing warming was reduced to a bunch of opinions on global warming.

Cold-war effect

It is possible that decline of journalism started during cold-war times when the press gave up their values and got themselves a pop-corn and soda and eagerly bought into the cold-war propaganda.

Not all did it, I admit. And some did it because other side would not respond properly and facts were difficult to ascertain. But some did buy into the propaganda completely.

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Journalism 02 - Key Events in history of Journalism

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