21st century media. Part 1. Diamond News

A month ago in the Online Journalism group of the Online Journalism group I asked readers about which aspects of the bottom-up editing experiment they would like to know more. Megan T called "Revising the process of creating a newspaper."
After a lot of searches, formulations and drafts, I got several models related to the production of news, their collection, interactivity and news as a business. Below I give the first one. This is a mixed model, it can be applied to the press and broadcast media, in addition to it includes an online component.


The dotted line on the diagram indicates the stages at which the participation of readers is required.

Cornerstones Media

Online media operates in its work with two complementary and mutually contradictory factors: speed and quality . (There is a view of the eternal dilemma of the news media: publish the news faster, without wasting time checking the facts, or publishing it checked, with many details, but late. - note of the translator. )
New technologies allow news to be distributed faster than the old means of communication - radio and television. Recall of mobile communications and email. Recall the blogs updated from mobile phones, remember about Twitter.
At the same time, the unlimited space and time of the World Wide Web, the nature of hypertext, the ability to link everything together, increase their potential for a better, wider and deeper description of reality than the former kings of context and analysis - newspapers and magazines. Recall how Wikipedia was used during Hurricane Katrina . Recall local (hyperlocal) sites (see, for example, Chicagocrime.org ).

The following production chain describes how the big news can be processed in the editorial mix of the mixed model, extracting the advantages and speed, and quality.
')

1. Lightning. As soon as a journalist or editor finds out about an event, the editors issue a short lightning message. For example, from a mobile phone, Blackberry or via a laptop with wireless Internet access. Those who subscribe to the newsletter by email or SMS , following your status on Twitter and Facebook, will know the news instantly. You have not yet published the full news, but you have already shown that you are in the know! This practice will show readers that you were the first, that this is your news, it will help improve your professional reputation. Well, if this is not a sensation, lightning about small events will add to your media a bit of lively charm (like status on Twitter). This is what readers like.
2. Sketch. This format is not suitable for printing or going on the air, but is perfect for a blog . In support of the lightning that has just appeared, indicate in the outline the first names, places, details, and designated sources. Update the sketch as new details become available. The task of the sketch is to keep on the site those who pecked at the zipper. But he also helps spread the news across the blogosphere, attracting the attention of new readers and helping you get to the search engines tops. Ideally, the sketch will also attract commentators and witnesses who will begin to add their own details, point out mistakes, or even suggest their own headlines. Frequently updating the outline will help you stay on top of the issue of Google News, which ranks the content in the story by update time, not by publication time.
3. Article / Issue. Unlike online media, tacking between speed and quality, traditional print and broadcast media have the advantage of their static nature and physical limitations of the channel itself. What people love them for is that in an article of 300 words or a three-minute report, they give out a full cast of the event. Compared to the unlimited resources of the Internet, an editor plays a very important role , defining what to broadcast or broadcast. At this stage, the sketch turns into a full-fledged material that can be published on the site , printed , put on the air , or all of this taken together. Schedule for publication in print or broadcast is determined according to the practice of a particular media.
4. Context / Selection. Returning online, here we are not limited to the size of a sheet of paper and the time of the ether. So quickly give maximum information on the topic. Now we need to answer the questions, how many times has this happened before? Where to see previous articles on this topic? Where can I find additional information about this person or organization? where to go for help? The most important role here belongs to hyperlinks . Put links to everything that will help readers - to the archive of your own publications and on other people's sites. In the print and broadcast versions, you also give context, but you need to be sure to indicate that your site has even more materials on this topic.
5. Analysis / Evaluation. After the report comes the time of analysis. The online publication can start collecting the very first comments of the blogosphere, including comments left on its own forum publication. But especially it is necessary to pay attention to the reaction of the participants in the events and those whom it touched . Many will leave a record of their impressions in a personal blog, but for organizing the discussion it is better to use a podcast. While such raw material is being collected and assessed, print and broadcast media can use it to update their releases.
6. Interactivity. Interactivity requires preparation and cost, but it allows you to engage and inform the user in a way that no one else can. In addition, it helps to create low-demand resources according to the theory of the long tail , which provide repeated visits to the site in the long term. Preparation of interactive flash-applications will take several days, but it will allow to combine hypertext, video, audio, animation and databases. At the forum, you can organize a platform for the exchange of experience or advice from people who have experienced some kind of event. Wikis can do the same, but more effectively. Chats in real time will help readers to directly contact journalists, newsmakers, witnesses, experts.
7. Convenience. The last stage should be automatic. The user should be able to customize the information for themselves. In the simplest case, you need to give him the opportunity to subscribe by email, RSS, SMS to receive notifications about the update of the topic, new comments, etc. More advanced services may offer recommendations from other users (such as “Those who have read this article also read: ...”) or products based on databases (for example, sampling information on various grounds and their combinations). This completes the production process, which at this stage combines user tags, allows you to download data for use outside the site, etc.

A practical example of the use of this model

Consider a typical case of news creation: a public person makes a controversial statement. What will it look like in practice?

1. Lightning. Publish: "MP Sidorov: Enough of fucking scientists." Make a link to the sketch.
2. Sketch. Give the first description of the situation, some details, let the readers discuss and reprint on blogs, making links. Following them, we find out that Sidorov graduated from the philological faculty. Journalists immediately rush to seek official confirmation, then to write an article based on it.
3. Article / Issue. We take a couple of comments from the blog, add them to our vision of what happened and print this article in the newspaper.
4. Context / Selection. We collect the best links from the comments, give a full decoding of the deputy’s speech, collect audio recordings, video from the phone. Make the label "Sidorov and the fucking scientists" and mark all these materials with it, click on this label leads the reader to the page where all the materials on this topic are collected.
5. Analysis / Evaluation. One particularly distinguished blogger is suggested to write an article for printing in a newspaper. We invite a philologist and deputy Sidorov to talk, they discuss the legitimacy of using the term “fucking”, the essence of the deputy’s claims to such scientists, the reasons that prompted him to say, etc. Conversation recording comes out as a podcast.
6. Interactivity. Visitors to our site are encouraged to write their own vision of the situation, especially those who, according to Sidorov, fall under the definition of a fucking scientist. Thus, we get an objective vision of the situation first-hand.
7. Convenience. We create on the site a special RSS feed or mailing list, which notifies about the update of materials marked with the label "Sidorov and fucking scientists."

Diamond news

This model can be schematically presented as an alternative to the well - known "inverted pyramid" model .

Just as the once-turned pyramid was partly due to the use of telegraph in the news industry and the dominance of the ideas of science and empirio-criticism, the news diamond tries to reflect the transition from nineteenth-century journalism (full-article journalism to article journalism) to twentieth-century journalism - the process journalism, which product is constantly updated and supplemented, always remaining unfinished. Moreover, the diamond must clearly demonstrate the flaws and the obsolescence of the pyramid. Well, since he himself represents an unfinished process, his model cannot be considered final.

(The depiction of the stages on the diagram does not reflect their significance in the model; they are thus arranged only to facilitate perception.)

Paul Bradshaw
September 17, 2007.

From the translator:
The article was translated with the personal permission of the author. At his request, I indicate the address of the article directly in the text: http://onlinejournalismblog.com/2007/09/17/a-model-for-the-21st-century-newsroom-pt1-the-news-diamond/
I hope the administration of Habr will take into account the request of the author and forgive me a forced violation of the format.

Other parts of this article:
Part 2. Distributed journalism.
Part 3. Six questions after.
Part 4. Distribution of content in the new media environment.
Part 5. How to make money on journalism? Business models for new media.
Part 6. New journalists for new information flows.