Post-Capitalist Capitalism, Crowdsourcing, & the Democratization of Media

From Wired

Gannett to Crowdsource News
Jeff Howe 11.03.06
12:00 PM

The publisher of "America's newspaper" is turning to America to get its news.

According to internal documents provided to Wired News and interviews with key executives, Gannett, the publisher of USA Today as well as 90 other American daily newspapers, will begin crowdsourcing many of its newsgathering functions. Starting Friday, Gannett newsrooms were rechristened "information centers," and instead of being organized into separate metro, state or sports departments, staff will now work within one of seven desks with names like "data," "digital" and "community conversation."

The initiative emphasizes four goals: Prioritize local news over national news; publish more user-generated content; become 24-7 news operations, in which the newspapers do less and the websites do much more; and finally, use crowdsourcing methods to put readers to work as watchdogs, whistle-blowers and researchers in large, investigative features.

"This is a huge restructuring for us," said Michael Maness, the VP for strategic planning of news and one of the chief architects of the project. According to an e-mail sent Thursday to Gannett news staff by CEO Craig Dubow, the restructuring has been tested in 11 locations throughout the United States, but will be in place throughout all of Gannett's newspapers by May. "Implementing the (Information) Center quickly is essential. Our industry is changing in ways that create great opportunity for
Gannett."

The article makes crowdsourcing sound promising - a way to reverse the drop of 30% in readers since 1985. And it is not the only model folks are tinkering with. (An example of how the Napster model could be adapted to newspapers, for instance, is mentioned here at co-render.) To me, it sounds like one of two things: either exploitative or incomplete. It could, in fact, be both.

Resorting to crowdsourcing - turning to readers for content - is actually a great example of the need for a corporate revolution. If the readers are going to become the writers, it suggests that ownership of the newspaper ought to be democratized as well. It is one thing for publishers to make exorbitant profits when they invest millions in complex and expensive publishing machinery and professional staff. It is quite another when the expense is Internet cheap and the staff is comprised of an odd hybrid of professionals and amateurs.

We've yet to fully embrace the implications of post-capitalist ownership. Distributing the ownership of the newspaper along with the work of creating it is just one of those implications.

Will the Internet Kill the Newspaper?

Newspapers are losing sales because they have missed a very important shift. Once upon a time, communities shared a worldview and the newspaper reported on commuinty events. The events were the important thing – the story mattered most. Today, we have a fragmentation of worldviews within every geographical community. Within an area like San Diego we have Low Riders and Bio-tech executives, Beatniks and Rednecks, Lawyers and Retail Store Clerks. They may all live in the same "community" but they all have their own worldview. These shared worldviews shape interests more than shared events. The Internet has allowed the emergence of a geography of ideology, a clustering of worldviews. This is proving more attractive to readers than the old geographical clustering of stories and events.

Frontline is airing a report beginning tonight about the news wars – the threat to local newspapers. The problem, according to Lowell Bergman, is that most of the actual reporting is done by local newspapers and the business model that subsidized their investigations is eroding.

Newspapers have been predicated on the notion that there is a truth that can be reported. A problem like illegal immigration, the occupation of Iraq, or climate change is a story to the local newspaper.

For bloggers, by contrast, these kinds of topics are not stories but worldviews. For the blogosphere, a worldview is a shared set of values, a way of making sense of the world. The difference between a story and a worldview is, in my mind, the difference between the old media and the new. Climate change is not a story - it is a way of judging stories.

The technology of the web has allowed a bigger truth to emerge: without a context or worldview, stories are fairly inert, boring, and of little relevance. Shared context is what now forms audiences and market segments - not shared geography. The Internet is a better tool for this than the newspaper.

Newspapers assume that stories matter most. The blogosphere assumes that worldviews matter most.

If you are convinced that the Industrial Revolution is now threatening your habitat, you don't look at climate change as a story. For you it is an important part of your worldview - a paradigm through which you make sense of everything from corporate malfeasance to political corruption to worsening health, the increases in levels of asthma and cancer.

If you are convinced that Western Civilization is being attacked from without and within, you don't see stories of Hollywood's depiction of casual sex or the influx of illegal immigrants or the existence of terrorist training camps as mere stories. These events inform your worldview and determine what kinds of policies, politicians, and initiatives are needed. For those with strong ideologies, the reporting on a story – what is ignored or “blown out of proportion” – is the story.

Such worldviews immediately suggest a political activism in response to events - not nuanced and balanced news accounts. That a news outlet would remain neutral about an invasion of illegal immigrants into our neighborhoods or American troops into the Middle East is something that offends rather than comforts readers of different worldviews. They don’t want calm reporting – they want their outrage validated and echoed in their news sources. Broadcasters like Keith Olbermann and Jon Stewart get this – newspapers, for the most part, still don’t and because of this they are steadily losing readers.

The world of objective news is simply passe. it is being replaced by news with an objective. There is too much information for us to collect even more stories and statistics that are not going to be translated into action. Information that fails to stimulate a change in actions is entertainment and if we want entertainment we can turn to Steven Colbert or Rush Limbaugh.