On Media – Page 2 – Christopher Wink

Divided We Fall

Americans choose party affiliation over national identity at our own peril.

That negative polarization keeps us from uniting and using one of our country’s best designs: federalism, which could allow for disparate state-by-state experiments. So argued David French, the conservative political commentator in his fall 2020 book Divided We Fall: America’s Secession Threat and How to Restore Our Nation.

French, a pro life conservative Christian lawyer and Iraq War veteran, has wedged himself in a debate about the future of the Republican Party, and so American life. “We are in a cold civil war,” he writes.

One cause? Tolerance: conservatives hate it and liberals misunderstand it, he writes. Or as he says Scott Alexander argues: Tolerance is misused by liberals to mean liking marginalized groups, but tolerance means tolerating something so tolerance is about tolerating out groups, not opinions you already agree with. French, who formerly lived in Center City Philadelphia while leading a free speech nonprofit, has annoyed many corners of American public life, but I appreciated his book and perspective. It’s worth reading. Below I share my notes from the book for future reference.

Three types of “Journalism Thinking” coming from outside news organizations

This was originally published as a tweet thread.

I’ve spent 15 years obsessed with the bleeding edge of journalism, marketing and online community building, and I finally have a grand unifying theory for what is happening — and where this is going.

If you’re interested in how we learn and connect together, hear me out ?

The Journalist the Murderer

Journalism can only be done adversarially — or immorally.

So argues the 1990 book The Journalist the Murderer by Janet Malcolm, which was first a serialization the year before in New Yorker. The nonfiction book is today considered a seminal work in journalism ethics, and related fields. Though frequently referenced in other works I’ve read, I only now finished the short book.

Malcolm focuses on the relationship between a journalist named Joe McGinniss and a man named Jeffrey MacDonald, who was accused of murdering his wife and children. McGinniss wrote a 1983 bestselling book about the case, which then became a popular movie, but was later criticized for his handling of the relationship with MacDonald, resulting in a high-profile libel case. In short, McGinniss was accused of portraying himself as sympathetic to MacDonald but always planning a damning book. Malcolm takes this narrow example to draw wider conclusions, including the nature of truth and how it is represented in journalism.

Below find my notes for future reference.

Imagine a kind of Community Criticism Readiness Index

Imagine a Community Criticism Readiness Index, a tool to assess whether residents have someone to turn to in times of uncertainty. When faced with questions of identity, impropriety, or anonymity, who would they contact, and how would they share information?

In the 20th century, news organizations were often that go-to ally. What I call “journalism thinking,” shaped by those institutions, proved particularly effective in bridging the gaps where laws, frameworks, or formal institutions fell short. Law enforcement, advocacy groups, government agencies, and attorneys all play critical roles in society—but humans didn’t evolve within legal systems. We evolved within stories.

Journalists, then, have long been storytellers in the service of justice. While their work famously uncovers high crimes, far more often they help communities make sense of their everyday lives. Journalists operate not as enforcers of the law but as mirrors and mediators. Their power comes from an audience relationship built on trust, consistency, and curation.

To construct a Community Criticism Readiness Index, we might survey hundreds of individuals across diverse circumstances:

What would you do if you observed something you perceived as immoral but not illegal?
Who would you tell if a neighbor uncovered a brilliant solution to a persistent problem?
How would you respond to evidence of regulatory capture?

The index would consider input from at-risk populations and privileged groups, spanning communities both traditional and web-based. These subcommunities—rapidly forming thanks to digital organizing tools—need critical eyes as much as any long-standing institution.

What I’ve observed from informal studies is that many communities no longer have the trusted outlet that once played this role: the local newsroom. While national journalism and advocacy at the highest levels have rallied to respond to crises in recent years, the decline of local journalism remains an unresolved and growing threat to civic society. It’s a problem akin to climate change: pervasive, systemic and requiring broad collaboration to address.

Over the past decade, more people have joined the effort to rebuild local journalism, but there is still so much work to be done. And like climate change, market factors will play an essential role in the solutions we find.

This is an essay about the future of local journalism and the approaches we’ll need to sustain it in the decade ahead. If we’re to protect our communities’ ability to criticize, reflect, and rebuild, we need tools like this index—and the local newsrooms that make those tools meaningful.

Spaces between words weren’t common until the 7th century

From the Economist:

A book seems such a simple structure that it feels less invented than self-evident, the innovations behind it hard to see. Yet every chapter in its progress was slow, bound on either side by centuries of sluggishness. Turnable pages didn’t really arrive until the first century bc; the book form didn’t take off properly until the fourth century ad. The separating of words with spaces didn’t get going until the seventh—verylateforsomethingsouseful. Finally things accelerated: first came the index, in the 13th century, then Gutenberg, then, in 1470, the first printed page number. You can still see it in a book in the Bodleian Library.

Nonprofit news models are important. We need others too

With new grantees announced earlier this year, I’m thrilled by the success of nonprofit local newsrooms, well represented by the American Journalism Project, rolling across the country. It seems clear that each U.S. state, and many regions around the country, will, and should, have some version of this model, sustained by local philanthropy and individual donors. This is a necessary, and exciting, layer to the future of local news ecosyinstems — it is also incomplete. As the founder of decade-plus-old, bootstrapped, niche multi-local newsroom, let me share why.

Back in 2009, I used two plastic containers as a couch and supplemented my meager freelance income by doing odd jobs in landscaping and plumbing. It was clear a true global economic crisis was hastening the decline of my trade. I was living in a crumbling, mouse-infested apartment in the Frankford section of Philadelphia. I scared, lonely and very sad.

Two friends I knew from my college newspaper days were also feeling quite stuck, falling through the cracks of a yawning fissure in how our economy worked and information gathering needs were met

From the start, we agreed that every local news organization still structured as an advertising model was on an irreversible path of decline. The web’s power was scale, anything that unnecessarily drew geographic boundaries was unnatural. None of us came from families with any business background but we were curious and frustrated. We felt very abandoned by those who should have been our mentors and advisors. If I’m being honest I still harbor a chip on my shoulder from those days, and likely will for the rest of my career.

Since then, I’ve become fixated on understanding how journalism creates value for communities. I’ve learned that journalism’s value—curating and verifying information to help people understand their world—remains immense. But too often, the ways we attempt to sustain journalism misalign with this value.

Nonprofit models are one such approach. They freeze the core principles of 20th-century accountability journalism and fund it with philanthropy and reader donations. This is a promising trend, and I believe these newsrooms will endure as a key part of the ecosystem. But they aren’t enough.

For one, nonprofit newsrooms must compete with other critical community needs—food banks, job training, and the arts. During times of crisis, it’s unclear whether journalism can consistently win that competition. More importantly, there are simply too many communities for nonprofit models to serve alone.

Instead, we need a broader range of experiments. Journalism shouldn’t limit itself to replicating legacy models under new funding structures. We should explore new business models that align journalism’s value with sustainable revenue. That means embracing entrepreneurship, commercializing ideas, and rethinking how we engage with audiences.

For-profit newsrooms have the potential to play a critical role here. Charging a lot of people a little—or a few people a lot—remains the foundation of any sustainable business. Yet, too often, journalists are uncomfortable or even dismissive of revenue generation. That mindset is dangerous if we want journalism to endure.

I don’t mean to suggest that my own company, Technical.ly, has cracked the code. If anything, my experience has taught me there is no “code.” There are only the slow, messy steps of experimentation. But I remain convinced that local news needs more than one model to survive.

Notes on Malcolm Gladwell’s 2000 classic ‘Tipping Point’

Nothing more needs to be said on influential journalist Malcolm Gladwell’s first breakout book Tipping Point, which published 15 years ago. Like a lot of popular books, it has been aggressively criticized and dismissed.

Even if his theme is challenged, there are small points that are interesting. Though I read this several years ago, I just reread it and took down a few notes for my own future perusal. I’m sharing them here

Notes on “Revolutionary Networks: the Business and Politics of Printing the News, 1763–1789”

Colonial-era publishers in the United States were small, family-run businesses that spanned social classes, divided politics and drove forward discourse. Though tiny operations independently, they collectively shaped widespread opinion and developed into the fractured news environment we have today.

That’s one main theme from Revolutionary Networks: The Business and Politics of Printing the News, 1763–1789, an academic book published by Joseph M. Adelman earlier this year by Johns Hopkins University Press.

Adelman adds a lot to the literature on the details of how publishing houses worked in this era. In truth, I sought even greater detail on the real operations but I so appreciated his inclusion of basic finances and revenues, and much detail on the people behind it. I found myself scribbling many notes down on what I’d like to further research for my own understanding of the history of my trade. Much thanks to Adelman.

My friend Everett kindly bought me this as a gift, and I quickly read through it back in February. This is one of many publishing and journalism history books I’ve enjoyed the last several years. Below find notes for myself. I encourage you to buy the book and explore the topic yourself.

The “Elements of Journalism”

(Image source)

Journalism is a practice largely influenced by those who learn the craft on the job. Despite its well-established impact on communities, there’s a very old debate about whether or how much formal training should be required.

In 1988, ABC anchor Ted Koppel said that “”journalism schools are an absolute and total waste of time.”

Into that fray, the Elements of Journalism has served a breezy foundation for modern journalism. The book, written by Bill Kovach and Tom Rosenstiel, was first published in 2000, then revisited in 2007 and most recently in a third edition from 2014. I read it once many years ago. I returned to it again, after a conversation I had with Rosenstiel, and found it a helpful resource.

Below I share my own notes, though I strongly recommend it for anyone interested in journalism best practices. I bought copies for the editors at my own organization. It’s an easy and effective read.

What is newsroom objectivity?

(This is an expansion of this thread)

When is a news organization being fair to a range of good-faith perspectives, and when is that newsroom retreating from a moral responsibility? When is a reporter taking a partisan stance and when is it a stance for justice?

With the rise of the social web in the last 20 years, this reevaluation of journalistic principle has been frequently described through the lens of newsroom objectivity. It reached a fever pitch in 2020, resulting in an important dialogue on objectivity and “moral clarity” in newsrooms.

This concept was the topic of a session in November 2020 during the virtual 12th annual Klein News Innovation Camp unconference I help organize. I’ve revisited the conversation, and I want to share what I took away.