TPFKATA
In 2006, NYU professor Jay Rosen penned an astute observation about the changing power relationships in the media industries - and more specifically, the world of journalism - regarding the impact of internet. His analysis had the catchy title "The People Formerly Known as the Audience", and pointed towards a shift in access to reporting tools (news gathering, editing, and publishing) to what used to be imagined by newsworkers as the audience. Importantly, it is not just the tools of reporting now being available to "We the Media" (such as blogging, podcasting, vodcasting, and other forms of social or "our" media), but also emerging forms of legal protection (Creative Commons licensing), and increasing uses of users by professional media organizations, thereby giving the former audience the semi-official status as competitor-colleagues.
Examples of deliberately turning the media consumer into (co-) producer across different creative industries are viral and word-of-mouth (or: "social") marketing, interactive advertising, computer and videogame modification SDKs (Software Development Kits such as the Source SDK of Valve), and citizen journalism, where news organizations indeed call upon their audiences to reconstitute themselves as journalists - such as Yo Periodista at Spanish newspaper El Pais, iReport at American broadcaster CNN, and so on.
Flat Hierarchies
At the heart of this argument is the recognition of a new or modified power relationship between news users and producers, between amateur and professional journalists. It can be heralded as a democratization of media access, as an opening up of the conversation society has with itself, as a way to get more voices heard in an otherwise rather hierarchical and exclusive public sphere. In this scenario, some of the traditional and generally uncontested social power of journalists now flows towards publics, and potentially makes for a flatter hierarchy in the publication and dissemination of news and information.
By all means, this is an important intervention on the audience side. But what industry observers like Rosen tend to omit, underreport, or dismiss is another equally if not more powerful redistribution of power taking place in the contemporary media ecosystem: a sapping of economic and cultural power away from professional journalists by what I like to call The People Formerly known as the Employers. Employers in the media industries increasingly tend to withdraw from labor, that is, from taking responsibility for their creative workforce - instead giving them the feeling that they are just assets that cost money.
Primarily I owe this insight to my friend and brilliant colleague Professor Leopoldina Fortunati of the University of Udine, Italy (who visited us at Indiana University this week).
[update 27.10.08] Some more or less recent concrete examples of TPFKATE and power sapping away from reporters and other professionals in the creative industries, such as a survey in Summer 2008 among media workers at Fairfax (link to PDF) in Australia. The Fairfax study, similar to a survey last year among members of the US Newsguild, shows how media workers among other things report feel unappreciated, see their colleagues (1 out of 3 in the US) lose their jobs for no apparent reason, and experience early retirements without jobs being replaced (other than by temporary staffers, stringers, and freelance correspondents). One of the most crucial and foreboding remarks in the Fairfax report reads: "[...] younger journalists, in particular, [have] become demoralised. There is no sense that the company values its staff."
Recent news signaling powerdrain also comes from plans for mass layoffs at especially newspapers but also in broadcasting, such as in the American news market, and the media industry generally (see IWantMedia's archive from 2000-2006), as overall one in six jobs in the media has dissappeared over the last couple of years.
TPFKATE
Employers in the news industry traditionally offered most of their workers permanent contracts, included healthcare and other benefits (at the end of the 20th century sometimes even including maternal leave), pension plans, and in most cases even provisions sponsoring reporters to retrain themselves, participate in workshops, and serve on boards that gave them a formal voice in future planning and strategies of the firm. Today, most if not all of that has disappeared - especially when we consider the youngest journalists at work.
Today, the international news industry is contractually governed by what the International Federation of Journalists euphemistically describes as "atypical work", which means all kinds of freelance, casualized, informal, and otherwise contingent labor arrangements that effectively individualize each and every workers' rights or claims regarding any of the services offered by employers in the traditional sense as mentioned. This, in effect, has workers compete for (projectized, one-off, per-story) jobs rather than employers compete for (the best, brightest, most talented) employees.
Furthermore, newswork in particularly English, Spanish, and German-speaking countries gets increasingly outsourced: to subcontracted temporary workers or even offshored to other countries, where the People Formerly Known as the Employers practice what has been called "Remote Control Journalism." Journalists today have to fight with their employers to keep the little protections they still have, and do so in a cultural context of declining trust and credibility in the eyes of audiences (the few "audiences" that still exist given the Rosen formula), a battle for hearts and minds that they have to wage without support from those who they traditionally relied on: their employers.
Powershift
So what we see happening in the context of todays new media ecology and the emerging global creative economy is power slowly but surely slipping away from those who we rely on for our entertainment (ex.: the recent writers' and actor's labor disputes in Canada and the US), our advertising (ex.: the widely reported power shift occuring in agencies from creative towards account managers, media planners, and digital consultants), and - perhaps most disturbingly, our news.
For all the brilliance of those advocating a more democrative media system, there is generally nothing in their analysis that acknowledges this erosion of power, this wholesale redistribution of agency away from those who tend to crave only one thing: creative and editorial autonomy. No matter how excited I can get about user-generated content and the collective intelligence of cyberspace, this power shift erodes the very foundation of the way we know (and thus interact with) the world, and our ability to truly function in it autonomously, and on our own terms.
Perhaps we should take this analysis even further: the only way we can live in the world as this power shift continues, is to rely exclusively on our own terms. This in turn inevitably leads to mass solipsism and paranoia - as the only truth we can still believe in has to be strictly our own, and nothing or nobody can (or should) still be trusted. It is the perfect storm.
Paraphrasing Zygmunt Bauman: I am writing this down in the hope of preventing an inevitable disaster.
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I fail to see how outsourcing or offshoring erodes the power of journalists. Journalistic work is still done by journalists, even if it's on a temporary-employment basis or in India.
@dilyan: thx for the comment and yes, perhaps - but consider the conditions under which this work takes place: generally on a temporary basis, without a regular salary and/or other types of support and investment (I'm also thinking of correspondents in high-risk areas that are now expected to work without an employer responsible for insurance, repatriation in case of calamities, and so on).
if we assume for a moment that this kind of situation can be seen as liberating for individual journalists - not tied to the same employer all the time, free to roam from project to project - then we have to consider their relative power to negotiate favorable terms with media firms regarding each and every story or project, they are solely responsible for updating and upgrading themselves constantly (I'm thinking: new hardware/software for example), but also a complete inability to act collectively vis-a-vis companies (for everyone is completely on their own).
at the same time, we cannot forget how journalists are increasingly subject of criticism by the public, while at the same time their access to resources necessary to do their jobs more thorougly (time and financial budget, institutional support structures) gets limited.
thirdly, with citizen journalism now being part of the outsourcing mantra in news companies - outsourcing the salaried work normally done by professional reporters to unpaid, unsupported, and unprotected "volunteers" - we now see how journalists are not just competing with each other (for temporary jobs or assignments), with media firms (for decent contracts, paychecks, protections), but also with audiences (for the chance to create content).
that is how i see the power of journalists eroding - and indeed similar processes are taking place in other fields of media work.
@mark: What you say is true. I do not question the fact that journalists are losing their clout. Rather, I'm asking if their power is eroding because of employers deserting them or because before citizen journalism and all that they have been in a position of undeserved power. That journalist jobs, unlike auto-workers', say, have so far been spared from being outsourced may have been an injustice that is now being rectified.
@dilyan: yes, I do agree one of the problems of journalists is (or at least has been) its lack of recognition of the audience as partners in monitoring and keeping checks on society, business, and the state.
I distinctly remember interviewing editors who took pride in the fact that before the mid-1990s they either did not have or did not listen to market research departments.
for sure, I am not advocating a shift from an editorial logic to a market logic governing news decisions, but I think excellent strategic management walks a precarious middle ground between respecting the market and providing what Lucy Kung calls "psychological security" for its creative personell.
overall, what I see is a growing "depopulation" of journalism, and although there is plenty to criticize about journalists' past (and present) professional behavior, I do feel their work is crucially important. however, one indeed must acknowledge that a new type of journalism (link to PDF) is needed for these times...
@mark: I can understand your concern for journalists but I do not share your worries for democracy. Journalism is crucial for society, but society is robust enough to find a replacement should the journalistic profession become underpopulated. One of journalists' main democracy-boosting roles, that of the whistle-blower, has already been taken on by the public. Another, that of the opinion-maker, is better performed by the millions of bloggers than by a (relative) handful of reporters. With regard to the quality of what is being published, health specialists' blogs, for example, seem much more authoritative than anything a health-layman journalist would write.
While journalists may indeed be under threat, I am very optimistic about journalism.
Thanks for an interesting read Mark!
Being a fellow journalism reseracher and tracking primarily Swedish online news for the last five or so years I'm also split on the co-creation blessing and the direction that journalism is taking.
Yes there are some insightful comments. Yes users are providing pictures that otherwise would been lost. Yes sometimes bloggers bring things to surface that wouldn't seen the light of day otherwise.
But these are rare exceptions and anecdotes at least in a Swedish media environment where accidents, scares, celebrities and freakshows dominates the biggest news site - fueled by a variety of interactive options.
On another note:
Following the logic of Rosens and yours reasoning and since everything is attached to everything else we can perhaps extend the ‘Formerly family’ to include: The Research Formerly Known as Journalism Studies and, as you indicate in your blogpost, The Profession Formerly Known as Journalism and The Constitution formerly known as Democracy.
Michael Karlsson
@Michael: thx for the comment. I also got an interesting email from Jan Bierhoff over at the Flemish FLEET project on e-publishing, echoing some of the concerns you and others mention.
Jan's challenge - similar to Axel Bruns' remarks earlier this year at the CCi conference in Brisbane - is: what kind of media management and/or organization of labor fits with the currently emerging paradigm of media work?
In other words: we need new organizations.
dilyan believes that we can have journalism without journalists. Does he also believe that we can have academic research without academics - people who are paid to concentrate on doing this particular work? Citizens have always had stories to tell, whistle blowers have always blown whistles but reporters are the people who (should) follow and report these and many other stories every day, collect and collate information, synthesize and then disseminate it in parcels small enough for busy people to take in (you know - the ones who don't spend every day following the blogs because they are out making automobiles or curing the sick). We need this job to be done properly and at the moment it is under threat: from those who don't understand its importance and from employers who don't think it makes enough money. Between those who only criticize and those who only want to exploit we may well fatally damage or even lose a profession which, although certainly flawed, is necessary to democracy.
As someone who works both as a print journalist and blogger, I relate to your fears. If newspapers can slim down (perhaps becoming electronic-only, like the Monitor) while maintaining their status as premium content providers--which can be accomplished by pulling out of clumsy investments and focusing instead on providing really top-notch information (indicating offshoring is temporary, which I hope is true)--we'll be ok.
As it stands, the idea that traditional news can be wholly replaced with social media content really is dangerous. Blogs don't offer the financial incentives that traditional media does; this reflects in quality and accuracy of content.
If social media sources can get the financial clout behind them to provide the kinds of editorial networks that make traditional media good, then they will actually be accurate (as accurate as media can be), and comments/updates/audiences will add value, rather than distorting it.
I'm anxious, but proper journalists do have a couple working in their favor. One, good writing and subject authority stands out, period. The bulk of users don't have time for crap. Two, social media is still the Wild West, as is most of electronic media. The dust still needs to settle. Once it does, we will have legitimate news. The question is whether it will come from a metasource, eg. info compilation software, humans, or a combination.
Media has been so essential to humans for so long that I doubt it will ultimately evolve into something weak and smattered. The underlying dogma to a lot of the more foreboding arguments seems to be that we humans are turning into a race of fact-deprived, Internet-dependent nitwits, and the destruction of media is taking us there.
I have a little more faith in the process. The scariest part is the adjustment.
@angela I do not believe that we can have journalism without journalists. But I do believe the definition of "journalist" needs to be rethought. Paid reporters will continue to exist, just not in such numbers as now. Is that a bad thing? It will probably mean less reporting for the people who make cars or save lives. But if we didn't have an oversupply of reporting at the moment, then there would be no need to cut back on that, greedy owners notwithstanding.
good points, all. I'm participating in a similar Dutch debate (over at De Nieuwe Reporter) where a colleague made an excellent suggestion regarding rethinking a definition of journalism in light of all of these developments.
building on his (Alexander Pleijter) suggestion, I'd like to think that a 21st century notion of journalism indeed should embrace a more networked, personal ("intimate"), and dialogical character, a type of journalism that is practiced independent of media format, channel, or genre.
this would be a liquid or beyond journalism, given the current paradigm. the question is, how to find such a good woman or man a decent job?
For a long time we only had scribes who could write. Then we became literate. Professional scribes no longer exist. When everyone can be a journalist, will we, as a society, need professional journalists? Perhaps this is just evolution.
An enjoyable and interesting article Mark. It is true that the there is shift in power, but this may not necessarily lead to paranoia. Only for a generation brought up on mass media, who are used to being told what to think, would be challenged by the change. I think that newer generations, not used to ideas of identity and individuality, would flourish.
Interesting post, thank you Mark. I've had similar thoughts regarding blogs, media, and the future of journalism, as I am a budding writer/journalist working for a web-based publication in Asia.
I have always been a bit skeptical in regards to the increasing popularity of blogs and social media sites. As Angela said, many persons working within a society do not have the time to scour the web for trusted, well-though-out articles on subjects/topics that impact and/or interest them.
It seems there are almost too many blogs out there at the moment, and it's mind-numbing when thinking about the number and variety of opinions and points of view out there. I personally do not appreciate this 'onslaught' of electronic information - it seems to me to be a type of 'unbridled greed' that goes hand-in-hand with concepts of free market capitalism. More is better!! Nevermind if it's completely useless fodder, at least more information is out there.
I personally do not appreciate this, and I think it is the role of trusted publications to recruit and maintain talent, to maintain the quality of information persons in our societies receive, if nothing else.
Interesting post, Mark. Much of the discussion following on from it has focussed back in specifically on journalism, but I'd like to get back to the broader creative industries approach that you started from, and ask:
Is what we're seeing here really a withdrawal of employment opportunities by TPFKAE - or is it a sideways shift, a (more or less) zero sum exchange where some professions decline and others establish themselves? We're talking a lot about what's being lost in the process - but important as that is, are there new employment opportunities that we're not yet fully aware of?
The historical analogy here may be with the first digital revolution, which spelt the end of many 'manual information labour' jobs from typists to typesetters as desktop computing and desktop publishing made their impact (and created a level of anxiety in the journalism industry, for example, that is comparable to the current debate). Overall, though, the shift created new jobs as well as destroying old ones (and we can argue about whether more jobs were lost or created in the process, in fact).
The question then becomes: today, are we really seeing the wholesale eradication of stable employment in the media industries, or also the emergence of new professions (and whole industries) that will provide comparable levels of employment in the future?
Personally, I'm still on the fence about the correct answer to that question...
Axel Bruns
@Axel: I appreciate the optimistic perspective, and it is certainly the case that the digital (r)evolution comes with a slew of new jobs, new employment and business opportunities.
however, new media-based work is in essence self-deleting: it is based on hardware and software related skills and competences that tend to become obsolete much faster than analog ones, and in the world of work the perception is (fueled by the technofetishist rhetoric of efficiency) that digital media enable fewer people to do more work. so the new jobs are fewer and intrinsically more temporary and contingent than the older ones.
that said, I do recognize the need - as several commenters have expressed - in the marketplace for journalistic/redactional talent and expertise. however, i am doubtful whether there be a place for those people at the table of many existing media firms.
this in turn raises the question of how "good" or "bad" it is for society when its primary check on power becomes a profession of isolated (yet networked) individual entrepreneurs, constantly updating and upgrading themselves to meet the wants and needs of new contracts, new audiences, and new technologies.
as you wrote before, we need to build new organizations, or - as Ned Rossiter argues, new organized networks and institutional forms for media work to truly live up to its potential.
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