This is a second draft extract from a paper I am writing on the idea of ‘Quality’ in Networked Journalism. Read Part One here. Comments more than welcome

Beckett, Charlie

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A network of quality?2010-3-15Editorial Diversity: Quality Networked Journalismblogs.lse.ac.uk /polis/2010/03/15/editorial-diversity-quality-networked-journalism/This is a second draft extract from a paper I am writing on the idea of ‘Quality’ in Networked Journalism.Read Part One here. Comments more than welcome!Networked Journalism creates ‘quality’ by adding value to news in three ways.1. Editorial diversity: it creates more substantial and varied news2. Connectivity and Interactivity: it distributes news in different ways3. Relevance: it relates to audiences and subjects in ways that create new ethical and editorial relationships to newsPublic participation through networked journalism also adds economic value to the news media in the sense that thecontribution of the public literally creates content – usually for free – from the citizen. Journalism must be one of thefew industries where the consumer volunteers material and services to the producer.Counter-intuitively, the abundance of disintermediated information mayalso give quality networked journalism a market advantage. The plethoraof data sources and competing platforms and outlets means there will be apremium (or ‘freemium’) for authoritative and trustworthy curating andfiltering of news. The demand for transparent and relevant mediation willincrease. Networked Journalism as a kind of intelligent and pro-activeengine will create quality by adding value to search. BBC News Online, forexample, has already become a kind of global topical reference work.1.    Editorial DiversityThere are more diverse sources of news available online than was everthe case in the analogue and print world. Even allowing for the aggregationand duplication online there are more channels of information containingmore material. Floating on that rising tide are more specialist, expert andinformed sources of data and commentary.There are also more ways of witnessing our world more rapidly andcomprehensively than ever before. Again, among that almost infinite crowdof local and global citizens as reporters are more varied voices and moreknowledgeable minds. If we put all that under the heading of bloggers andcitizen journalists we have much of value amongst the mass of communication.As an incredibly rough rule of thumb I generally estimate that only 1% of the public will participate at any given time,although it may be a different 1% at any given time. And within that contribution perhaps only 10% is of much valuein terms of adding quality. However, that is still an enormous addition to our knowledge and understanding. It is whatruns Wikipedia.If you take the UK Daily Telegraph that equates to 700 people’s worth of contribution – the equivalent of an extranewsroom. Not surprisingly, even a historically conservative news organisation like The Daily Telegraph hasinvested in building those communities by hosting readers’ own blogs and cultivating photographers amongst itsreaders. When combined with new ways of working by the networked professional journalist this can haveexponential effects on value and the quality of what is produced.1/2Mainstreaming DiversityMore diverse participation in the creation of journalism means that the agenda of professional media is broadened.The Huffington Post group blog, for example, has a more varied editorial outlook than that traditional ‘liberal’newspaper The New York Times. This helps balance the growth in the Right-Wing blogosphere in America as wellas the rise of conservative radio and cable such as Fox News. However, perhaps its most significant contributionwas mainstreaming networked journalism. Its bloggers are part of a wider platform that combines agency and citizennews reporting, commentary and analysis in a very interactive way.The Huffington Post editorial strategy of much more open commissioning of material gives easier access to itsplatform to more diverse authors including politicians, civil society groups and campaigners, as well as individuals,alongside traditional media content. The audience then help decide, in part at least, how stories are prioritised.Guerilla JournalismI am not suggesting that The Huffington Post is some sort of ideal model but it also shows how new forms of news-gathering are adding diversity to journalism. Its ‘On The Bus’ coverage by citizen journalists of the Presidentialcampaign helped nudge the mainstream agenda. Mayhill Fowler’s scoops where she reported ‘accidental’statements by both Barrack Obama and Bill Clinton unsettled American journalism commentators and mainstreamjournalists. Regardless of the merits of the stories they were precursors of a kind of ‘guerrilla’ journalism wherepoliticians can no longer rely on the complicity of the political correspondents.So we see how the news industry is forced to open itself up to greater editorial diversity. It is also a way ofincreasing social and geographical diversity in an industry which in the UK was is in danger of becoming moreconcentrated in its makeup and less creative in its production.However, as BBC News executive Peter Horrocks has said, this influx of more disparate material raises seriousissues for ‘quality’ journalists about traditional editorial values such as objectivity and authority. If the public isparticipating then how do you prevent bias, subjectivity or unrepresentative content?I would argue that the benefits of improved diversity far outweigh the risks. Traditional journalism with its morenarrow production base was also given to a particular view of the world. It is one function of the networkedprofessional journalist to act as a filter and facilitator. For example, it is one thing to allow people to post or commenton a website, but there is no reason why there can’t still be a moderation policy. As we shall see, trust is secured byconnectivity and relevance, not by excluding the public from participation.http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/theeditors/2008/01/value_of_citizen_journalism.htmlThat is also Horrocks’ conclusion – hence the injunction to his journalists to embrace social mediahttp://www.guardian.co.uk/media/pda/2010/feb/10/bbc-news-social-mediaHere’s some evidence for that rule: http://www.churchofcustomer.com/2006/05/charting_wiki_p.htmlhttp://my.telegraph.co.uk/http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mayhill-fowlerCopyright © 2014 London School of Economics and Political Science2/2

Editorial diversity: quality networked journalism

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