Young Journos and The Social Contract 2.0

By: Maegan Carberry The push and pull of balancing print and online content will require ingenuity over the next decade, but it?s baffling to see that some companies are still exhibiting change-a-phobic behavior this late in the game.

If they want to catch up, it?s time for top editors to look beyond band-aid solutions like job cuts and page count reductions that only account for the immediate situation. We need more leaders who can call print journalism what it is (dormant) and articulate visions around the future of web-based journalism and cultivate its growth.

For better or worse, journalism is inherently fused with technological evolution and this alignment will have redefining implications for young journalists. Thanks to the emergence of new publishing platforms and online communities, professionals are now aligned with amateurs as full-fledged participants in The Social Contract 2.0. In this new contract, the traditional role of journalists as arbiters of ideas and facts will blur with the often agenda-driven activism of bloggers and social networks.

I?d argue that this is a better, more robust realization of the ideas behind our First Amendment rights. Journalism has always been underscored by an inherent activist agenda. To what end does a citizenry require fair and balanced information if they don?t use it for something?

Trained reporters, amateurs and groups can all coexist as long as they understand their respective roles and operate under a principle of transparency. Consumers can evaluate and choose to trust information from any of these outlets if they know why, how, and in what context it was gathered. For a fantastic, detailed exploration of these roles, I recommend reading Clay Shirky?s ?Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations.?

As Shirky notes in the text, soon the public won?t need journalists in the same way it has historically. He writes, ?the cost of finding like-minded people has been lowered and, more important, deprofessionalized.?

In my work as a media consultant, the power of untrained individuals in self-defined communities is boundary breaking. One of the social media sites I work with, for example, is called TrueMilitaryWivesConfessions.com. As an informed citizen and trained journalist, I see value in reporting on the impact of the Iraq war on military families, but this is an entirely different way of treating the issues at stake.

Women who use the site are submitting their own material, speaking in an authentic and comfortable tone, building supportive relationships with one another and using a Digg-like model to prioritize their most compelling content. This all requires very little editorial supervision or discretion outside of moderating comments for hate speech, but results in a relatively organic objectivity.

Such a community doesn?t necessarily replace the need for news, but it is now a part of the story and collective action that didn?t exist before technology enabled it.

Under such circumstances, will it still be necessary for journalists to fulfill their self-deputized role as watchdogs in the unofficial fourth branch of government? Of course it will. But journalists who have enjoyed relative autonomy over public discourse for decades must now learn to share their piece of media pie with untrained others and respect the new element they bring to our collective goal of maintaining an informed, active populace.

What do YOU think bloggers and online communities have to offer the journalism industry? What will be the unique value proposition of a journalist in 10 years and how will it be monetized? Send me a note at the address below and I may quote from it next week.

I had some interesting email discussions with readers after last week's "Do Young Journos Have a Future? And Will It Be Dumb?" Here's a peek at what two of you had to say:

-- From Jake in Washington:

"Learning all of these skills still results in the same thing: a weaker employee who lacks a solid place in the mass media ? Though it might sound a bit too White Tower for the rough-and-tumble world of journalism today, it's not a journalism graduate's job to figure out how to make money. Their job is to inform the public. That's where their energy belongs. That's where there their ethics belong.

"Look at what they get paid. Money is clearly not on their minds, or they'd be in PR. ? I realize I am making nothing but moot points. Journalism is a business and it needs money; newspapers in particular can't hire good people and create good working environments if they cannot afford them. That means newspapers will continue to hire cheap bodies who, while possibly talented, are forced to work in poor environments, and the cycle of crap begetting crap will continue.

"Perhaps the task of figuring out how to make money in this business must fall on journalism graduates. 'If it is to be, it's up to me,' so to speak. If we must sacrifice quality, team-perfected storytelling for money, will our readers care?"

-- From Nate Miller in Sacramento, author of http://journalistnate.blogspot.com

"Young journalists need to look within and assess what they are doing to improve at their university. Don't wait until it's too late. ? Ask questions. Ask your faculty if you can build a specialized major, such as photojournalism, mobile journalism or digital journalism production. And, I always stress that journalism majors spend some time writing for the school newspaper: there's no quicker way to be published and experiment with new media."