Only the future of journalism as we know it.

Gulp.

We should embrace the concept of reverse publishing – where we tell our communities what we intend to publish before we publish it, in order that they can contribute and improve the final product.This is how we can build platforms that would allow communities to form around certain topics, without forgetting that the final product will still need to arrive with lots of surprises. We have to free ourselves of daily deadlines as much as humanly possible.  That might mean less volume, but the less will be done better.

We have to identify the issues that people really care about. And concentrate on those. Every media outlet should immediately court and seek to protect whistleblowers big and small, because good sources are the lifeblood of agenda-setting journalism. Every outlet should construct databases of information that should rival national security agencies’. And we should apply that accumulated knowledge in every single piece of journalism that is produced.  We should ensure that a sizable number of reporters in every newsroom be managed separately but intensely away from daily beats – employed to get stories that nobody else has.

The approach adopted should be about making judgements on what might be important several days or even months in advance. Where all the work you present is adding real value to the lives of the community you serve or is setting an agenda for that community.

The idea embraced by many not so long ago that an unfiltered Internet would create an information utopia has largely been proved wrong. The vastness of information is overwhelming and, more importantly, it is hard to know what to trust. The public actually needs gatekeepers. Being optimistic – in it self – will not suffice. And it is clear now that cutting costs and hoping that the hurricane will pass will not work either.

Let us be optimistic that we are indeed in a golden age of journalism… but let us agree now that journalists hold in our hands a legacy too important to be killed off by our own inaction.

Gerard Ryle, director of the  International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) whose collaboration with the Guardian and other news outlets recently helped break a massive off-shore tax scam.

More here: Eden not Apocalypse: a golden future for investigative journalism (Village)

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