The triad of digital journalism
(Translated from Portuguese with Google Translator and Grammarly)
The evolution of journalism in the digital age points towards a triad formed by public engagement, news curation and economic sustainability. These are three theoretically independent factors that, nevertheless, ended up setting up an integrated and highly interactive system in the practice of digital journalism.
Before dealing in detail with each of the components of the triad, it is necessary to show, even if briefly, how it emerged and why the integration and interaction of the three elements is a great challenge for the new generations of journalists.
Until the arrival of the internet, public engagement was considered a marketing operation aiming to create a sympathetic image of the press. Reporters, editors and commentators assumed the posture of those who knew everything that was considered relevant to the people. It was a vertical and unidirectional relationship in the flow of news. Engagement also served to test popularity and acceptance rates through opinion polls.
Traditional journalists generally downgraded news curation based on the professional common sense that news curation was a sort of academic luxury because they know what was suitable for the audiences. As the information flows were concentrated in a few vehicles due to technological limitations, the function of guiding the public was in the hands of the so-called “news gatekeepers”, the reporting chiefs and editors who chose what deserved to be investigated and published.
The economic sustainability of a newspaper, magazine, radio or TV station was an exclusive function of the administrative and managerial part of the respective company. In the analog era, the expressions journalism and the press ended up being used as synonyms, because executives appropriated the journalistic discourse to disguise the commercial use of the news production. It was important to impress the public with themes such as truthfulness, impartiality, objectivity and freedom of information so that people would not realize that they were participating in a business transaction, where news was exchanged for paid advertising.
The fact that journalistic activity was centred on a commodity, the news, had a crucial function in determining the information agenda of the press. The business was, and still is, the main factor influencing what people would read, listen and watch. This editorial strategy proved to be extremely profitable, but its success led news conglomerates and many independent professionals to overlook the fact that digitization and the internet had pushed journalism and the press towards a new reality, where routines, rules and values are radically different.
One of the new findings of the digital age in the media is that engagement, news selection or curation and financial sustainability need to be seen as a whole, where parts depend on each other. This is because the avalanche of information on the internet has allowed us to see details, coincidences and relationships that we could not perceive before due to the lack of more data and facts. There was a quantitative evolution that generated a qualitative leap, that is, with more data, we could see further and thus perceive new realities and their respective practices, norms and principles.
The integrated triad
An holístic approach to the transition of journalism from the analogue to the digital era forces us to be much more open and less orthodox in the analysis of numerical data, facts, events and opinions because the complexity of every issue is noted by news researchers. This is a huge challenge to our old habit of simplifying everything.
Observation of practice makes it possible to establish how the three ends of the triad are closely intertwined and integrated. Taking the need for financial sustainability as a starting point, practice shows that for people to pay for news they need to receive something in exchange that is effectively an individual or collective need. The overwhelming majority of people have no money left, so they will only subscribe, pay for access to the news, or donate time and energy if they have any benefit.
This benefit is the news or information, but it needs to be about something that people really need, like where gas is cheaper or how to avoid paying taxes. Talking about the crisis in Ukraine may be very important for the establishment in Washington, London or Moscow, but it is not for the residents of a poor neighbourhood.
The news is an irreplaceable instrument that journalists have to gain financial support from the public since the traditional model of financing a newspaper with paid advertising no longer works. But in addition to providing news attending to the daily needs of their target public, journalists also need to curate information, because people do not have the time or knowledge to assess whether data, fact or opinion deserves credit or not. Disinformation is a process that increasingly contaminates the circulation of news in the media.
The action that many inappropriately call “selling” news is no longer oriented towards commercial advertisers but must be done to the housewife, to the worker at the supermarket or with the public employee at the municipal hospital.
To find out what are the information needs and credibility problems of a community, a journalist must be in close and permanent contact with the public. That’s where the third tip comes in, engagement with the local community. A journalist needs to establish a strong bond of trust capable of convincing people that a financial contribution or a partnership with a local news outlet is something of his/her interest.
In future texts, we will detail the specifics of each component of the digital journalism triad. Your criticisms and observations will be fundamental for deepening, diversifying and expanding this collaborative exploration of the new horizons of journalism.
