The 2016 election exposed a significant crisis for U.S. democracy: the failure of our news media system. This was an election in which false news was consumed as if true; in which polls were significantly off-base; in which journalists missed the stories both of Trump supporters, who came out in unanticipated numbers, and former Obama …
How can we transform the news media system to rebuild public trust?
Pointing Toward Solutions
The breakdown of our news media system requires more than a simple repair job. We need to radically re-imagine what journalism and the news business will look like in the future.
There are a number of efforts already underway that can give direction, if we are willing to take the time to study them.
1. The reemergence of true community media. Public access channels and community radio, long ignored as irrelevant to journalism, are rapidly becoming physical centers of community journalism, especially in news deserts. Together with alternative news media, they can form the backbone of a new type of local reporting.
2. The growing power of podcasts and Black Twitter. Communities of color are finding alternative media in which to share stories and engage in news reporting. As American demographics change, engaging these communities is critical to developing a new news ecosystem.
3. The rise of an engagement model for journalism. Instead of a model in which media provide infotainment to passive audiences, new tools around engagement invite community members to identify news stories and to provide financial support for reporting. Used for decades in the traditional organizing community, the engagement model provides the promise for richer stories and also for sustainable funding.
4. Building stories through collaboration. The era of a federal news service with branches in every city is gone. To replace it, outlets and entrepreneurs are working on collaborative models that bring together journalists with a special expertise in local, demographic, or topical reporting to tell a larger story.
5. The death of the audience—and the rise of the news interlocutor. Instead of a model in which media provide infotainment to passive audiences, new tools around engagement invite community members to support editorial teams in identifying news stories. Such engagement builds trust—and helps news teams uncover bigger stories.
The efforts above are all happening within independent media at outlets that are especially resourceful because they are under-resourced. Through this election, the outlets that focused most heavily on issues rather than on the “horse race” were often unabashedly progressive news outlets.
As just one example, since August, the #StandingRock protest against the North Dakota pipeline has provided compelling story lines, a high level of visual interest, and most importantly, a condensed snapshot of a significant number of critical issues facing the United States: climate change; energy needs; environmental protection; local vs. federal vs. native rights; the role of corporate money in politics; police brutality; press freedom, and more. Yet, Standing Rock received very little mass media coverage before the election.
In contrast, Standing Rock was a top story for 30 progressive news outlets between August 22, when the protest got going, and October 1. You can see coverage from all of these angles and more here. Ironically, the only coverage it got on the networks came when Democracy Now! journalist Amy Goodman was arrested during a Standing Rock protest.
After an event like Election 2016, it is very easy for pundits and power brokers, foundation officers and academics, to ignore smaller independent and community news outlets and instead to look for a magic bullet. It is at times like this that we get calls to build a new network (remember Air America) or invest in one type of journalism (Big Data anyone) or one technology (virtual reality, on the horizon).
Those interventions make everyone feel good, but they won’t fix the deeply systemic problems facing journalism. What journalism requires at this moment is:
1) Immediate support for those outlets, individuals and entrepreneurs that are successfully engaging demographic, geographic and topic-centered communities around news reporting.
2) A direct response to the role Facebook plays in news distribution, both through anti-trust efforts aimed at opening up Facebook’s walled garden and proactive efforts to create alternative distribution tools.
3) An open, transparent, and in-depth conversation among the many different stakeholders in the news ecosystem, including especially those who rarely are invited to the table with the aim of building new connections and new tools that will encourage community-based reporting.
Jo Ellen Green Kaiser is the executive director of The Media Consortium. The Media Consortium is one of several organizations that represents independent news outlets. We invite all who are interested to come to our conference March 1-4, 2017 in Washington, DC, to begin this deeper conversation on transforming our media ecosystem.