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Engaging Stories that Build Communities:
The New Journalism Illumination Project

An Initiative of JOURNALISM THAT MATTERS and partners

SUMMARY

New technology and new business economics are changing the practice of journalism. An changed news and information ecosystem is emerging. No one is systematically identifying or amplifying innovative journalistic practices in this new ecosystem that are improving the durability and sustainability of communities or participatory democracy. Human systems thrive when we have an image of a desirable future. Such images inspire us to move towards what we wish to create (Cooperrider, 2000).
To help uncover and amplify solution-based stories for the future, Journalism That Matters proposes a three-year partnership with FreePress, the Donald W. Reynolds Journalism Institute at the Missouri School of Journalism, the Estlow Center at the University of Denver, the University of Washington [who do you have in mind?]. The partnership, entitled: “Engaging Stories that Build Communities: The New Journalism Illumination Project,” (thenewjournalism.org) will inspire experiments and foster collaboration that creates opportunities and solves problems for communities.

CONTEXT

For most of the last century, the foundation of American journalism was the printed story – often embellished for broadcast. The printed story served communities well at a time when access to information was limited. The economics of the news industry, supported by mass-market advertising, underwrote large newsrooms capable of observing, distilling, writing and telling the news from chicken dinners to meetings to major world events.
As advertising has decoupled from the news, story journalism is breaking down. Fewer people are writing the stories, fewer eyes and ears in the community are on news-organization payrolls. At the same time, network technology allows the public to create and comment on the news directly in forms radically different from the story – 140-word “tweets,” Facebook posts, YouTube videos or Pinterest “pins”. Institutions who were formerly sources are now direct newspapers – municipal and corporate websites, public-advocacy groups and individuals.
In places like Seattle, Denver, Ann Arbor, Mich., and (soon) New Orleans, large communities have lost a major daily news voice. But this is not just a big-city phenomenon. Waves of consolidations have left smaller communities without their own weekly news voice, or a daily replaced by a weekly. Community radio stations have gone dark or lost their local news staff. All of these changes are create “news deserts” in parts of the United States. A hallmark of professional journalism has been a commitment to independent, fact-based reporting. While technology change is enabling many new voices and channels, its not clear how many of these voices champion trustworthy, fact-based, independent reporting.

Yet there are these encouraging developments:

• Hundreds of local online news sites have sprung up, and some of them are show signs of business sustainability.
• Cable public-access centers are accepting a role more like news organizations
• U.S.community foundations are beginning to see -- and fund --news reporting as an important part of a healthy community.

Most of this change in what we began in 2006 to call the “news ecosystem” -- the information exchange among the public, government, and institutions that can inform, inspire, engage, and activate -- has occurred in the last decade, as Internet information technologies matured. The pace of change has been fast. Many cities, towns and interest groups affected have not had the time or inclination for collective reflection about the impact on our communities and our system of self-governance. The time is ripe for that reflection.
JTM is well known for its success at physical convenings that foster collaboration, innovation, and confidence to address complex challenges. We do this using breakthrough collaboration practices such as Open Space Technology and by consciously bringing together people from across silos of thought and practice -- such as journalists with teachers, journalists with librarians and journalists with technologists.

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These convenings have created a community of civic practitioners, many of whom are innovators in their fields. Their stories illuminate emerging principles and practices of journalism today. it is a goal of JTM to spread these stories and encourage others to adopt the best practices of these innovators.
To learn more about The New Journalism initiative, please email jtm@journalismthatmatters.org.