Empowered and informed: What happens when the audience takes over the news?

What is the sound of one hand clapping?

One kind of answer is emerging from researchers in Dallas. Another is emerging on the World Wide Web in the ubiquitous communications form known as the blog.

First, the research. Shayne Bowman and Chris Willis, designers/developers/authors who formerly worked for online news and media companies, are studying how audiences in an age of access are shaping the future of news. The research aims to document how factors in contemporary society are creating "participatory journalism" — an emerging system of news gathering and reporting that puts ordinary citizens at the heart of the journalistic process.

One focus is how the Web fundamentally changes the relationships of news. Bowman and Willis are studying how "top-down" processes, rigors and standards for news developed for expensive, mechanical technologies owned by the few, have been disrupted by inexpensive "bottom-up" information technologies now widely available. The equation leads to analysis of how an "audience of one" impacts news models created for mass-media audiences.

Can a single voice, informed and independent, provide news with meaning, context and credibility beyond the capabilities of a professional press? Can a group of voices inform society in a way the professional press can't? Are news organizations willing to collaborate with their audiences?

These are just a few of the complex questions emerging from the research. They come at a crucial time for the news industry, a time when many news organizations are grappling with a turbulent economy as well as the changing habits of news consumers. The future looks more troubling, with recent findings from Scarborough, Nielsen and other market researchers showing a widening generation gap between news consumers. The double whammy: (1) an under-30 generation that increasingly, often exclusively, goes online for news at the expense of traditional media; and (2) U.S. newspaper and network-news audiences whose average ages are in the mid-50s.

Bowman and Willis are exploring a shift in thinking about the mainstream press that is not merely generational or technological, but societal. It considers how a civic-minded citizen-press, not unlike the one at the time of the American Revolution, may impact the set of journalistic values that have been in place in the United States for about 150 years. It examines the principle of the press as privileged, trusted, informed intermediary of the news, and whether it can endure in an interconnected world where individuals have inexpensive, frequently equal, sometimes advantageous access to news and its sources. It tests the notion of "journalist as expert" in an empowered society of specialists and a global, collective intelligence.

"The rules of participation on the Web are evolving to the point where audience members can easily assume various roles — publisher, editor, content creator, commentator and advertiser," says Bowman. "Our research centers on exploring these rules and roles, and how mainstream media can enable an effective collaborative news experience with their consumers."

Willis adds that the Internet reflects the more complex and fragmented communities within society. "Traditional media outlets, while adept at serving audiences, are not skilled at serving the intense and diverse needs of these micro communities," he says. "New forms of collaborative publishing, like blogs and Kuro5hin.org, have emerged to fill the void."

Bowman and Willis are design and media consultants with Hypergene.net, and authors of "Designing Web Sites That Sell" (Peachpit Press and Rockport Publishers).

Initial findings are due next month. The public can comment or contribute to the research at thefutureofnews.org, a discussion site established for research. [Disclosure: Peskin is the executive director of New Directions for News, a Minneapolis-based media think-tank, which commissioned the research as part of a program to develop new content and business models for news.]

The research comes as weblogs are emerging as a new source for news for many audiences. Weblogs, or blogs for short, are extending the boundaries, challenging traditional authorities, and stirring controversy over journalism and journalists.

By some estimates, more than 500,000 of these news-based, personal or organizational journals now exist on the Web. Initially designed as insider's guides to computer scripting and technology-based data, blogs developed around myriad subjects as the dot.com bubble began to burst. Free or inexpensive software and systems soon made them easier to produce than Web sites, fueling an emergence from the underground to the must-have. A decade ago, charter members of the "I-get-it" movement registered personal URLs to validate their membership in the online community. Today, the digerati require a personal blog.

Blogs, just one of many emerging formats of participatory journalism, require more content than your average vanity site. In addition to news and views, they typically provide links to additional information, destinations, and discussions. September 11 gave many bloggers something to say and a place to go. The outpouring of emotion, compassion, and global access brought untold numbers to unreported news, analysis and comment. News created a tipping point for blogs; a critical mass emerged from small changes in a social system.

Understanding the expansive reach and independent voice of blogs, several leading journalists and news organizations launched them as supplements to traditional reports. The ranks now include such reporting luminaries as Dan Gilmor, technology columnist for the San Jose Mercury News; Chris Mathews of MSNBC's "Hardball;" and Minneapolis Star Tribune columnist James Lileks.

Academia, where experts frequently take issue with shallow reporting, has also become fertile ground. Next fall, University of California at Berkeley's Graduate School of Journalism will offer a course on blogging taught by John Batelle, a co-founder of Wired magazine, and Paul Grabowicz, the school's new media program director.

But even as blogging goes mainstream, it remains a stealth news-bomber flying under the radar at most news organizations. Fashionably, or perhaps predictably late, trend stories have just now started to appear in print. The new trend that has been around for years just became too prevalent to ignore.

Spirited discussions sprout on Poynter Institute's discussion forum for online news managers. One discussion among news managers on the Poynter forum characterizes the debate.

"The value of allowing — even encouraging — readers to extend and enhance a story should be obvious," wrote Mindy McAdams, a journalism professor at the University of Florida. "(Participatory) models could work well for news organizations ... but the news organizations would have to allow them to work. To do that, the news organizations would first need to get over the elitism that makes journalists think they can tell the story better than other people in all cases."

John Granatino, vice president of news and operations at Belo Interactive, responded that readers have a proprietary interest in the outcome of stores.

"It is this self-interest that will guide how they tell the story. This distinguishes them from good journalists who do not care which side prevails, as long as all relevant truths are being reported." Granatino wrote. "It is not elitism that causes journalists to think they can tell stories better than other people. Telling stories, without fear or favor, is what good journalists are trained to do."

Many traditional journalists are dismissive, characterizing bloggers as self-interested or unskilled amateurs. Conversely, many bloggers look upon mainstream media as an arrogant, exclusive club that puts its own version of self-interest and economic survival above the societal responsibility of a free press.

The clash of cultures erupted recently when blogger pioneer Dave Winer accused Gilmor, a respected columnist and a blog proponent, of complicity for failing to criticize the design and management of Knight Ridder's web sites. Knight Ridder, based in San Jose, owns the Mercury News.

What Gilmor didn't or wouldn't do suddenly became a story — a story that didn't meet traditional standards for print or broadcasting. Journalism blogs such as Jim Romensesko's MediaNews and Steve Outing's E-Media Tidbits, filled the void, spreading the news and fueling the debate. So did Winer's popular Scripting News blog for software developers. Gilmor used his own blog to respond.

Larger issues loom.

To what extent will empowered audiences inform the news and its future? Will the media consolidation narrow news choices, limiting the access and quality of the news? Or will an informed and empowered consumer begin to frame the news agenda from the grassroots? Will journalism's values endure? If so, how and to whom will they be applied? Who will pay for news in a wired society? Can participatory journalism be believed? Can traditional news organizations survive? Who owns news?

For researchers, developers and news organizations, the issue may not be trying to discern the sound of one hand clapping so much as listening to how loud it is.

Links:
New Directions for News Forum Index
Hypergene MediaBlog

Blogging:
AJR: Blogging uprising
Wired: Blogging goes legit
Microcontent: The blogosphere
MSNBC lauches weblogs

Winer-Gilmor controversy:
Poynter Institute: E-Media Tidbits, MediaNews and discussion forum
Scripting News
Dan Gilmor's eJournal