how we choose the news

23
 Nick Smith k0943718  How has the role of traditional newspaper editors been challenged by the abundance of information and content selection tools in the new media landscape, how do these tools work together and to what extent are news consumers benefiting from this new environment?  p. 1 I] Introducti on - The Abundance Probl em p. 3 II] When are Editors useful? p. 6 III] Algorithmic Authority p. 9 IV] Social News p. 11 V] Mi xed Str at egies p. 13 VI ] Conclusion - The Ecosystem p. 15 References  

Upload: digitaldoesnthurt

Post on 14-Apr-2018

225 views

Category:

Documents


0 download

TRANSCRIPT

Page 1: How we Choose the News

7/27/2019 How we Choose the News

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/how-we-choose-the-news 1/23

 Nick Smith

k0943718

 

How has the role of traditional newspaper editors been challenged by the abundance of information

and content selection tools in the new media landscape, how do these tools work together and to

what extent are news consumers benefiting from this new environment? 

p. 1 I] Introduction - The Abundance Problem

p. 3 II] When are Editors useful?

p. 6 III] Algorithmic Authority

p. 9 IV] Social News

p. 11 V] Mixed Strategies

p. 13 VI] Conclusion - The Ecosystem

p. 15 References

 

Page 2: How we Choose the News

7/27/2019 How we Choose the News

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/how-we-choose-the-news 2/23

 Nick Smithk0943718

 

How has the role of traditional newspaper editors been challenged by the abundance of information

and content selection tools in the new media landscape, how do these tools work together and to

what extent are news consumers benefiting from this new environment?

 I] Introduction - The Abundance Problem

Periodically published current events in written form first appeared in China, during the Han Dynasty,

 possibly as early as 202 BC. The Romans had government-produced, handwritten news sheets

covering “political happenings, trials, scandals, military campaigns and executions.”1 (Stephens, M, 1996.

 History of News. 2nd ed. San Diego: Harcourt Brace.) By 1566, weekly Venician gazetas2 were finding

their way to Paris and London, with war and political news for tradesmen and travelling merchants. All

of these were produced irregularly and for what we now call specialist audiences.

Most sources cite the oldest surviving newspapers as weekly German publications from1609. “Printed weeklies appeared in Basel by 1610, in Frankfort and Vienna by 1615, in Hamburg by

1616, in Berlin by 1617 and in Amsterdam by 1618.” (Stephens, M, History of Newspapers. [ONLINE]

Available at: http://bit.ly/ j2H1v2. [Accessed 13 May 2011].)

The first English periodical news publication was a single sheet translation of European news

in the early 17th century3. In 1622, a group of English printers innovated the “newsbook” - eight to 24

 page “weekly compilations of foreign news” in book size. (Haig, E, [ONLINE] pp.20 Available at:

http://bit.ly/l97U1Y. [Accessed 13 May 2011].) Haig argues that newsbooks were closer to the modern

newspaper than their European counterparts in “the presence of an editorial hand,”4 (p.21). By this he

means both the beginning of editorial comment and the larger task of finding and selecting the most

relevant pieces of international news for an English readership.

 

After the Gutenberg-inspired media revolution in 1454, printers could produce text 300 times more

cheaply than scribes and much more quickly. (Shirky, C, 2010. Cognitive Surplus. p. 42. 1st ed. New

York: Penguin Group). Where previously, only a handful of century-old texts had been “in print,” ease of 

1Sound familiar?2From “ gazeta news-sheet costing one gazet , small copper coin.” Anon, 2007. Collins Dictionary. p. 673.

9th ed. Glasgow: Harper Collins.3The concisely named Corante: or, Newes from Italy, Germany, Hungarie, Spaine and France.4The other notable newsbook characteristic was the invention of the headline which “drew readers’

attention to the most important or exciting items of news to be found within.” (p. 22)

Page 3: How we Choose the News

7/27/2019 How we Choose the News

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/how-we-choose-the-news 3/23

 production, lower costs and an explosion in global literacy5 led to an unprecedented volume and variety

of written works and forms. Clay Shirky argues that the responsibility of selecting content for print

marked the vocational “transition from printers (who made copies of hallowed works) to publishers (who

took the risk of novelty).” (Shirky, C, 2010. Cognitive Surplus. p. 44. 1st ed. New York: Penguin Group).

Printing press owners were, for the first time, forced to take on the risk of choosing what material would

 be profitable to put out. And those men6 were the first people to grapple with the problem of freedom

versus quality.

Although the new-found freedom to publish was nowhere near as far reaching as in the Web-

inspired media revolution - that began two decades ago and that we’re living through today - any notable

increase in “freedom to publish” is accompanied by a problem of quality. Or, as Shirky puts it: “The

easier it is for the average person to publish, the more average what gets published becomes.” (p. 47).

 

Fast forward five and a half centuries to today’s media landscape - with more content of a larger range of 

quality, about a wider variety of topics, than ever before. Given the increase in consumer choice of media

and the growth in societal value placed on people’s time7, the decision about what to read, one could

argue, should be both more difficult and more important then ever before. Why then, are news rooms

around the world unloading editorial staff, whose traditional role was about knowing what was best to put

in front of readers?

An economist’s answer might be a market based argument about increased supply driving the

 price of content through the floor. Professional content creators8 cannot charge what they used to and

therefore cannot pay as many people as much as they used to.

This paper is about an alternative explanation. Namely, that technological changes to the media

landscape have borne automated processes, social infrastructure, and participatory, do-it-yourself (DIY)

cultures that are both complementary and supplementary to the traditional human news editor. Jeff Jarvis

5It should be noted that it was not until after the industrial revolution that literacy spread widely

to “lower” societal classes classes (Bowman, M. J. and Anderson, C. A. Concerning the Role of 

 Education in Development”, in C. Geertz, ed. Old Societies and New States, New York, 1963, pp. 247-

79) although it has been argued that in Britain, “literacy deteriorated in the Industrial Revolution.” (West,

E. G. Literacy and the Industrial Revolution, in Economic History Review, Vol XXXI via http://bit.ly/

iOmxBQ).6Unfortunately they were, for a very long time, exclusively men.7In 2009 dollars, US minimum wage was $0.75 in 1955 versus $7.25 in 2009. (Federal Minimum

Wage Rates, 1955–2009 — Infoplease.com. 2011. Federal Minimum Wage Rates, 1955–2009 — 

 Infoplease.com. [ONLINE] Available at: http://bit.ly/leZ9uz. [Accessed 14 May 2011]. From US

Department of Labor).8Meaning anyone in the business of charging for content.

Page 4: How we Choose the News

7/27/2019 How we Choose the News

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/how-we-choose-the-news 4/23

notes: “People are finding their own ways to news through no end of new routes.” (Jarvis, J, 2009. What 

Would Google Do?. p. 394. 2nd ed. New York: Collins Business.) By analysing the nature of and

differences between the most prominent of those routes, the following is a brief look at the question of 

how we decide to read what we do.

 

II] When are Editors Useful?

Perhaps the most fundamental technology for anyone trying to read large volumes of news, in short

 periods of time is the RSS feed - typically expanded to Really Simple Syndication. RSS feeds are

available through email notification or, more commonly, through readers - typically web apps that

organise and present feeds by various systems of hierarchical tagging9. Once a user subscribes to a page’s

feed, every new post and update to that page will show up, making RSS a useful tool for not missing any

new content from a given page of a given publication. However useful though, RSS is fundamentally

dependant on web pages being updated, and therefore on producers and editors of content.

At an event at the MIT communications forum, ethnographer and Northwestern University professor 

Pablo Boczkowski10, discussed research on “changes in the production of news and the behaviour of 

news workers and news organisations.” (Pablo Boczkowski and Joshua Benton at MIT Communications

Forum on Vimeo. 2011. Pablo Boczkowski and Joshua Benton at MIT Communications Forum on Vimeo.

[ONLINE] Available at: http://vimeo.com/20755359. [Accessed 15 May 2011]).

Part of Boczkowski’s research focuses on the “gap between the supply of information - consisting

of the stories that are the most important ones for journalists,” and “the demand for information -

consisting of the stories that most interest readers.” To address this, Boczkowski ran a study across seven

countries and 20 online news organisations in which three times a day, his team looked at the “10 most

 prominently displayed stories [...] as an indication of the stories journalists consider to be the most

important,” and at the most clicked stories at the same times on each of those sites, as an indication of 

what stories most interested consumers. In all cases, they found a double digit statistical gap between the

supply of public affairs news and the demand for that news.

But many stories appeared both among the 10 most prominently displayed on a site and the

10 most clicked. That could mean that “our behaviour as consumers is influenced by the journalists”11 

9See also services like Feedly and Flipboard, that organise feeds into magazine-like visualisations. These,

one could argue, are emerging editorial alternatives in their own right, but not ones we have time for here.10Author of  News at Work: Imitation in an Age of Abundance (Boczkowski, P, 2010. News at Work:

 Imitation in an Age of Abundance. 1st ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.)11If a story is “placed at the top of the screen of a website, it’s more likely that it will attract hits.”

Page 5: How we Choose the News

7/27/2019 How we Choose the News

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/how-we-choose-the-news 5/23

or that “journalists’ behaviour is influenced by consumers.”12 To try and solve this chicken and egg

conundrum, Boczkowski ran the study again, removing all stories that appeared in both categories -

and the gap increased “hugely.” CNN, for example, had a gap of 50 percentage points, meaning that in

determining what stories are of most interest to CNN readers, CNN editors have an accuracy rate of one

in two.

In a presentation on the “Open Curation of Data,” Alison Gow of  Headlines and Deadlines blog, suggests

that in the former media landscape, publishers were responsible for determining “When information was

released”, “How it was presented”, “Where it was displayed”, “How long a story lived” and “The (broad)

 public view.” (Journalism: Open Curation of Data. 2011. Journalism: Open Curation of Data. [ONLINE]

Available at: http://slidesha.re/j4Ef2E. [Accessed 15 May 2011].)

One addition to that list is the traditional editor’s task of keeping up to date with stories covered

 by competing publications, commissioning last-minute stories in response to that endeavour 13, and in

some cases buying those stories from other publications to print under their own masthead14.

Innovations in understanding15 the popularity of news stories have been difficult to ignore.

Technology16 allows easy tracking of instant data on things like how many sets of eyes look at a web

 page, how many clicks a given headline attracts, how interested readers are in commenting on an article

and how many times an article gets shared. On top of those, publicly available tools like Google trends

and Analytics provide data on the broader, real-time17 interests of Internet users in aggregate. But,

according to Boczkowski’s findings, editors are not using these tools effectively.

Arianna Huffington might suggest that ineffectiveness is structural, that is, editors at news organisations

are at a disadvantage simply because the organisations they work for create content on pre-determined

12Journalists at news organisations are now using tools to “get very detailed information about the

heartbeat of a site,” by which he means who is clicking what and when.13“A scoop is not a scoop after the first edition.” (Smy, L, Copyright Lecture, 21 March, 2011 ).

14Otherwise known as syndication. 15Or at least quantifying.16Tools like Chartbeat provide “real-time analytics service that enables people to understand emergent

 behaviour in real-time and exploit or mitigate it.” (chartbeat - about us. 2011. chartbeat - about us.

[ONLINE] Available at:http://char tbeat.com/about/. [Accessed 15 May 2011]).17Actually, not quite. Google Trends are updated hourly. (Google & The Death Of Osama Bin Laden.

2011. Google & The Death Of Osama Bin Laden. [ONLINE] Available at: http://sear chengineland.com/

google-the-death-of-osama-bin-laden-75346. [Accessed 15 May 2011].)

Page 6: How we Choose the News

7/27/2019 How we Choose the News

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/how-we-choose-the-news 6/23

Page 7: How we Choose the News

7/27/2019 How we Choose the News

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/how-we-choose-the-news 7/23

Page 8: How we Choose the News

7/27/2019 How we Choose the News

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/how-we-choose-the-news 8/23

Page 9: How we Choose the News

7/27/2019 How we Choose the News

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/how-we-choose-the-news 9/23

companies that create news3334. What Google News does though, is significantly different from what

human aggregators do. According to its founder Krishna Bharat in a 2011 blog post, Google News

determines a story’s importance by computing how many news sources are covering a given story at

a given time35. “Thus, Storyrank was invented,” which “led to a ranking that combined the editorial

wisdom of many editors on the web in real time.” Besides a “display of stories in the news ranked

automatically by an algorithm,” Google News also seeks to “group news articles by story, thus providing

visual structure and giving users access to diverse perspectives from around the world in one place.”

(Google News Blog: Google News and the Coverage of Bin Laden. 2011. Google News Blog: Google

 News and the Coverage of Bin Laden. [ONLINE] Available at: http://bit.ly/ldNMfB. [Accessed 15 May

2011].)

To recap: Google News claims to tell users what the most significant news events in the world are

at any given time, harness the experience and knowledge of news editors everywhere and provide insight

not only into the news itself, but into the global structure of the manufacturing of that news. And it does

all of this by looking at global news production in aggregate.

But Google is not where algorithmic authority in news selection ends. Forty-two per cent of 

Americans say that customisation is in important web feature of news products, even if only 28 per 

cent have customised a news page. (How Media Consumption Has Changed Since 2000. 2011. How

 Media Consumption Has Changed Since 2000. [ONLINE] Available at: http://slidesha.re/kUTR6M. 

[Accessed 14 May 2011].) This is indicative of new consumer expectations about what news and media

consumption generally have become - a space where editorial decisions are made on behalf of the new

news brands “Me”.

The Daily Perfect is a personalised news service that uses technology “to predict a user's interests

through an automated semantic analysis of publicly available information on the web and minimal

or no input from the user.” (TargetAPI Featured Applications: DailyPerfect, Facebook applications.

2011.TargetAPI Featured Applications: DailyPerfect, Facebook applications. [ONLINE] Available at:

http://www.targetapi.com/apps. [Accessed 15 May 2011].)

Where Google News looks at news production and consumption on a macro level, “DailyPerfect's

 predictive content engine generates news feeds and book recommendations that are customized for each

user.” So if you like stories about social media and pedophiles, Daily Perfect will be sure you don’t miss

33Jeff Jarvis likens this to newspapers criticising news stands for making “a penny” distributing their 

 product. (Jarvis, J, 2009. What Would Google Do?. p. 131. 2nd ed. New York: Collins Business.)34Google News now sends over 1 billion clicks per month to news publishers (Google News Blog:

Google News and the Coverage of Bin Laden. 2011. Google News Blog: Google News and the Coverage

of Bin Laden. [ONLINE] Available at:http://bit.ly/ldNMfB. [Accessed 15 May 2011].)35Though, like its search algorithm, Google News does not disclose exactly how Storyrank works.

Page 10: How we Choose the News

7/27/2019 How we Choose the News

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/how-we-choose-the-news 10/23

Page 11: How we Choose the News

7/27/2019 How we Choose the News

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/how-we-choose-the-news 11/23

First, you've chosen to talk with these people, and second, they've chosen to bring it up. Those two filters

- a social and an importance filter - are really good ways of identifying what really matters to people.”

(Chris Anderson: What I Read - Entertainment - The Atlantic Wire. 2011. Chris Anderson: What I Read 

- Entertainment - The Atlantic Wire. [ONLINE] Available at: http://bit.ly/jIxG09. [Accessed 14 May

2011].)

In his first book, Here Comes Everybody, Clay Shirky writes that “socially embedded messages

are more valuable than random public broadcasts.” (Shirky, C, 2008. Here Comes Everybody. p. 167. 2nd

ed. New York: The Penguin Press.) Hence the popularity of social news services like Digg and Reddit40,

the structure of which gives intrinsic value to how many people are willing to “recommend” a piece of 

content.

According to Andy Sorcini, more commonly referred to as MrBabyMan and called the “king of 

all social media” by Slate41, Digg is “a content aggregator that takes the best content that users submit

from the web and allows users to vote basically on its merit. Then the content is featured on the front page

of Digg depending on that user contributed voting.”

MrBabyMan is the most prolific Digger in history. In 2009, he had his 4,000th front page story

and he has now submitted more than 20,000 stories to Digg42. Sorcini is so good at recognising viral

content when he sees it that he now supplements his income as a Disney animator by consulting major 

media organisations on how to develop “stuff that goes viral.”

But as of last year, Sorcini says he no longer contributes to Digg and has instead moved over to

Reddit. Why? “The big change that occurred that made me lose the appeal for the site was when they

decided to allow publishers to auto-submit their RSS feeds, so that every time they published something

via their RSS feed it was automatically submitted to the site. I felt that that was not in keeping with the

spirit of the site which was all about user curation [...] Part of what made the site great was that you are

discovering content that had been curated by people who were actively going out there and finding the

40See also XYDO, Readness, StumbleUpon and Del.icio.us - the last two being social bookmarking

services. (Jarvis on social bookmarking: “Tags are a means not only to remember links, but also to

discover content tagged by others, to target searches and advertising, to connect people of common

interests, and even to collect the wisdom of the crowds.” Sound anything like an editorial tool?

(Tagging « BuzzMachine. 2011. Tagging « BuzzMachine. [ONLINE] Available at:http://bit.ly/lVXQuk .

[Accessed 16 May 2011].)41Why Digg's MrBabyMan is the king of all social media. - By Farhad Manjoo - Slate Magazine .

2011. Why Digg's MrBabyMan is the king of all social media. - By Farhad Manjoo - Slate Magazine .

[ONLINE] Available at:http://www.slate.com/id/2210365/. [Accessed 15 May 2011].42Buzzblog: Digg's MrBabyMan racks up 4,000th front-page submission. 2011. Buzzblog:

 Digg's MrBabyMan racks up 4,000th front-page submission. [ONLINE] Available at: http://

www.networkworld.com/community/node/47622. [Accessed 15 May 2011].

Page 12: How we Choose the News

7/27/2019 How we Choose the News

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/how-we-choose-the-news 12/23

 best stuff and you are trusting those users as the arbiters of taste for the site and when that concept went

away there was a noticeable change in the site as far as quality.”

Two lessons from this - one social, one economic. The social is simply that community is

important. Not only is news spreading through social media channels from one user to the next43, but sites

like Digg are really communities of people built around shared interests. When the authorities at Digg

changed their rules with regards to publishers, they changed the nature of the community and lost some of 

what Sorcini calls “viral sneezers.”44 That faction of the community is not only the most valuable faction

to content creators and to Digg itself, but, it turns out, the most active users are also those most committed

to the spirit of community that attracted them to the service in the first place.

The economic lesson to be learnt by journalists looking to increase their or their employer’s

editorial value online is about priorities in sharing economies. In his book on intellectual property reform,

 Remix, Lawrence Lessig defines sharing economies as places “where access to culture is regulated not

 by price, but by a complex set of social relations [...] These economies are insulted by the simplicity of 

 price.” (Lessig, L, 2008. Remix:Making art and culture thrive in the hybrid economy. p. 145. 1st ed. New

York: Penguin Group.) Although Digg was not attempting to charge for their service, they were putting

their commercial interests ahead of the interest of the community they had built and facilitated. And that

compromised the editorial credibility, built up over time by the system and fun that made Digg what it

was.

V] Mixed Strategies

Digg reaches nearly 40 million users every month. (Digg Helps Send Time's Traffic into Orbit | Adweek.

2011. Digg Helps Send Time's Traffic into Orbit | Adweek . [ONLINE] Available at: http://bit.ly/iRKAQn.

[Accessed 15 May 2011].) But what makes the Digg front page is not exclusively up to the votes of those

users. Digg uses an algorithm to make sense of all that voting and includes factors like how many votes

come in immediately after a story is first posted and how fast those votes are submitted. (It’s The (Other)

Algorithm, Stupid! Understanding DiggRank. 2011. It’s The (Other) Algorithm, Stupid! Understanding 

 DiggRank . [ONLINE] Available at:http://selnd.com/kyoXt2. [Accessed 15 May 2011].)

As of November, 2010, Digg also employs a small group of human editors, called

the “community team” to curate a “Breaking News” section, track breaking news, raise the profile of 

stories they deem important, and call attention to things “gaining in popularity in terms of news memes.”

43This is an editorial alternative in its own right, but one so obvious and far reaching it hardly merits a

section in this paper.44“You know, we don’t necessarily generate the viral content but we will take it and we will spread it

across the channels to as many different eyes as possible. So it definitely, it’s the kind of thing where it

hinges upon us to build a presence to that content.”

Page 13: How we Choose the News

7/27/2019 How we Choose the News

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/how-we-choose-the-news 13/23

(Digg’s ‘Breaking News’ Feature Is Another Win For Human Editors . 2011. Digg’s ‘Breaking News’ 

 Feature Is Another Win For Human Editors . [ONLINE] Available at: http://tcrn.ch/lse08t. [Accessed 15

May 2011].)

This combinatorial approach is no longer unique to Digg either. Techmeme, an online authority in

tech news aggregation, uses a combination of algorithms, social indicators, how well stories perform on

other tech news aggregation services, and the Techmeme team’s editorial judgement to select what makes

it onto their site. Techmeme also has a unique Twitter submission system, by which users tag tweets

with “#tip”, @ reply Techmeme and link the story they want to suggest. (New way to get on Techmeme:

send tips to Techmeme via Twitter - Techmeme News. 2011. New way to get on Techmeme: send tips

to Techmeme via Twitter - Techmeme News. [ONLINE] Available at:http://bit.ly/jZzOES. [Accessed 15

May 2011].)

Slashdot, self described as “news for geeks, stuff that matters,” is a user-moderated blog. The

editorial agenda is set by reader submission and story order is set by an algorithm that takes into account

a number of factors including frequency of story submission. More important to Slashdot than content

however is the discussion around that content. Slashdot only displays headlines, under which comments

accrue. Particularly unique is that those comments are moderated by users, guided by an elaborate scheme

in which users qualify to moderate for three day stints based on community involvement and other 

factors. The scheme is designed, among other things, to “promote quality, discourage crap.” (Slashdot

Moderation. 2011. Slashdot Moderation. [ONLINE] Available at:http://bit.ly/kSq0jq. [Accessed 15 May

2011].)

In 2010, even Google News introduced an experimental module of content, hand picked by

editors at news organisations Google views as “partners.”45 The move was to try and bring some of the

serendipity of newspaper reading to Google News and to quell tensions between Google and the

 producers of news content. (Google News experiments with human control, promotes a new serendipity

with Editors’ Picks » Nieman Journalism Lab » Pushing to the Future of Journalism. 2011. Google News

experiments with human control, promotes a new serendipity with Editors’ Picks » Nieman Journalism

 Lab » Pushing to the Future of Journalism. [ONLINE] Available at: http://bit.ly/kAr2wO. [Accessed 15

May 2011].) In April, 2011, as part of efforts to add a social layer to search functions, Google announced

they were instating measures to look at the news stories with the highest occurrence volume on social

media sites as well. (Google News uses social media in new algorithm - Editors Weblog . 2011. Google

 News uses social media in new algorithm - Editors Weblog . [ONLINE] Available at: http://bit.ly/iegMSj.

[Accessed 15 May 2011].)

All of these services are web based and present alternatives to looking to the editorial tastes of 

45Slate, Reuters, ad etc.

Page 14: How we Choose the News

7/27/2019 How we Choose the News

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/how-we-choose-the-news 14/23

news organisations for the selection and order of what to read. But where all of these services started with

simple ideas, based on a single editorial method46, each of them found value in mixing technology with

social structures to leverage usefulness for readers.

 

VI] Conclusion - The Ecosystem

Jeff Jarvis writes: “The web is about connections and the value that arises from them if you enable people

to collect and communicate. In the old, big, centralised, controlled world of media, a few people with a

few tools - pencils, presses and Dewey decimals - thought they could organise the world and its content.

But as it turns out, left to its own devices, the world is often better at organising itself.” (Tagging «

BuzzMachine. 2011. Tagging « BuzzMachine. [ONLINE] Available at:http://bit.ly/lVXQuk. [Accessed

16 May 2011].)

An integral part of that self organisation is the value individuals generate when they act with their 

own best interests in mind, and then share what they’ve come up with. News producers no longer control

the news market47 precisely because people now have the means to consume the media they want, when

they want, where they want, in the order they want. This paper deals with the idea that, like the Internet’s

supplanting of TV and the notion that viewers would schedule their lives around broadcast schedules, the

idea that the collection of news a reader reads on a given day is determined by what a publication deems

worthy of printing on that day seems increasingly ridiculous.

The above is not an exhaustive list of the tools and services that make use of the disparate

methods and metrics being developed to give media consumers more choice and freedom, but an

overview of the most successful tool thus far - and from them we can begin to see the larger point.

Jarvis again: “Facebook gets roughly 30 times the engagement of newspaper sites.” (Hard

economic lessons for news « BuzzMachine. 2011. Hard economic lessons for news « BuzzMachine.

[ONLINE] Available at:http://bit.ly/l6quzz. [Accessed 16 May 2011].) This is because Facebook allows

readers to do what readers have been doing since at least the 17th century: get news from people they

know, read it and more, and pass on what they think is best. But Facebook cannot be what it is without

content creators like news organisations. As in any competitive market, news organisations have been

 pushed to increase the quality and sophistication of what they do by competing organisations. This was

46Google News used to proudly mark every page of news results with the tag-line “The selection and

 placement of stories on this page were determined automatically by a computer program.” (Google

 News and Why Human Editors Still Matter. 2011. Google News and Why Human Editors Still Matter .

[ONLINE] Available at:http://on.mash.to/kxRvMK. [Accessed 15 May 2011].) Slashdot used not to rank 

headlines based on anything but the order in which they were submitted. Digg’s journey from a simple

news popularity contest hasn’t yet reached its end.47See any of hundreds of Jeff Jarvis quotes.

Page 15: How we Choose the News

7/27/2019 How we Choose the News

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/how-we-choose-the-news 15/23

true before the Internet. Now news organisations get better because they are held to account by the bloggs

and discussions that spring up around what they produce. This is an ecosystem in which all the

constituents parts are not only dependent on one another, but thrive due to the nature and existence of 

their counterparts.

According to a Pew study on the “New News Audience,” the percentage of adults who think that news

organisations “deal fairly with all sides” is currently around 18 per cent and has been on a downward

trend since at least 1985. (New News Audience. 2011. New News Audience. [ONLINE] Available at:http:/

/slidesha.re/j79WoK. [Accessed 14 May 2011].)

But if Krishna Bharat has any credibility in the matter, that might not be as bad as it

sounds: “You actually benefit from the fact that each publication has its own style, it has its own point of 

view, and it can articulate a point of view very strongly. If you trust the algorithm to do a fair job and

really share these viewpoints, then you can allow these viewpoints to be quite biased if they want to be.”

(Krishna Bharat on the evolution of Google News and the many virtues of “trusting in the algorithm” »

 Nieman Journalism Lab » Pushing to the Future of Journalism. 2011. Krishna Bharat on the evolution of 

Google News and the many virtues of “trusting in the algorithm” » Nieman Journalism Lab » Pushing to

the Future of Journalism. [ONLINE] Available at: http://bit.ly/k7dXR d. [Accessed 16 May 2011]).

But the algorithm need not be trusted as the sole arbiter of objectivity and balance. Just as the

abundance of choice in what to read has increased dramatically, so have the methods available for 

understanding and making sense of what we read.

Bharat again: ”It’s a highly connected world, and news fundamentally allows us to understandthis complex world — and navigate it. This is an ecosystem that has many players,” Bharat says.

And “they need each other.”

 

Page 16: How we Choose the News

7/27/2019 How we Choose the News

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/how-we-choose-the-news 16/23

Page 17: How we Choose the News

7/27/2019 How we Choose the News

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/how-we-choose-the-news 17/23

Page 18: How we Choose the News

7/27/2019 How we Choose the News

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/how-we-choose-the-news 18/23

Page 19: How we Choose the News

7/27/2019 How we Choose the News

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/how-we-choose-the-news 19/23

Page 20: How we Choose the News

7/27/2019 How we Choose the News

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/how-we-choose-the-news 20/23

Page 21: How we Choose the News

7/27/2019 How we Choose the News

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/how-we-choose-the-news 21/23

Page 22: How we Choose the News

7/27/2019 How we Choose the News

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/how-we-choose-the-news 22/23

Page 23: How we Choose the News

7/27/2019 How we Choose the News

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/how-we-choose-the-news 23/23