Sounds like you’re painfully aware of the difficulties most established news operators are going through right now. Publishing is essentially dead, or dying (witness the Encyclopedia Britannica’s decision to stop publishing yesterday – a case in point if ever there was one). By some accounts, television is holding steady, and radio too – but that’s only because most stations have trimmed staff to the barest possible minimum. While I was at the BBC, I worked through three separate rounds of staff cuts. Each one was meant to be the last one, impossible to go further, pushed through against tremendous opposition from the unions, and yet – they pared down even further. Those legacy publications that have done well, like the Economist and perhaps the Guardian, have done so because they’ve embraced the digital sphere and let it change the very nature of their business.

Make no mistake: traditional, platform-based journalism is being crushed, and its dust will blow away on the winds of the internet. I know this is a melodramatic way to put it, but it’s an important point to make. Newspaper, television and radio journalists now are all in the position of itinerant bards at the advent of the printing press.

The good news is that there’s never been a better time to be a journalist. The bards have disappeared, but we still sing, and we still spread news. Just so, the digital sphere is growing fast as the blast front of an explosion. Good skills in writing, producing video and audio are more important than ever. They just need to be couched in an understanding of sharing and search – the air and water of the internet. There’s no use writing if your content can’t be shared or found. A mediocre piece optimized for social sharing will beat a piece of beautiful content without links every time. So you need to intuitively understand the answers to two questions:

1. What makes people share stuff? Will they want to share this? How will they share it, when they find it?
2. How do people find stuff? How will people find this? What will they be looking for?

So don’t try to be a television journalist, or a radio journalist, or a newspaper journalist. There’s no future there. But be a 21^st century journalist instead, and every day new opportunities appear, new platforms are launched, and the ecosystem you work in will grow more subtle and more complex.

If you understand the way social media works, you’re in a strong position. And by “understand” I don’t mean “have a Twitter profile.” That’s good – essential, even – but a real understanding of social media means always thinking against the background of those questions up there. Taking this further, it means knowing how a company or news operator can apply its brand values to effectively reach people of a particular demographic.

Editors and publishers can sometimes be an egotistical lot, so they’d never admit this: most of them are desperately trying to find ways to make their particular news brand relevant in the social media environment. As for those who aren’t, they either:

1. think they’ve got it sussed, (in which case they’re guilty of a dangerous case of hubris), or
2. think they don’t need to do anything (in which case they’ll be unemployed in a year or so)

No one has figured this out yet – not completely. That’s why if you can come to such an editor with implementable, practical ideas on how they can thrive in the interactive media sphere, you’ll have good chances. Be ready to sell your ideas with enthusiasm and persuasion. As the saying goes, never be afraid of people stealing your ideas. If they’re any good, you’ll have to ram your ideas down people’s throats.

You’ve already gone some of the way; you’re on Twitter, you’re on YouTube. Work on that. Make sure that when I Google you, your channels dominate the top 5 search results. If you’ve got a unique name, that’s an advantage. Use it.

If you want a job in PR, we’re looking for people in London right now. It’s the same stuff as journalism – communicating ideas with effectiveness and power. Better pay, too, and hot damn is there a lot of work to do. The team I joined in January was 40 people last year – now we’re 80, and hiring as fast as we can.

How about it? You can apply right here.

There I’ll be designing interactive communications strategy and working up crisis response scenarios, as well as a whole bunch of other fascinating stuff.

I’m really looking forward to getting stuck in. It seems like interesting times at Edelman. The company has grown from about 3000 to nearly 4000 employees in little over a year, and the 80-person London Digital team, which I am joining, was just 35 strong only a year ago. I’ll be working with, among others, Tim Callington and Robin Hamman – who I first met when he was Head of Blogging at the BBC. (Yes, the BBC once had a Head of Blogging).

It’s been a heck of a ride at Citizenside. Since I joined in February, Citizenside’s member base has grown from 50,000 to nearly 70,000 members around the world. The Arab Spring and the Occupy protests have really started to grow Citizenside’s membership internationally and flood the feed with truly excellent photos. In January 2012, Citizenside will unveil Citizenside 3.0, a completely redesigned website that focuses much more on community interactivity.

This is the historic moment for citizen journalism, and I think the next couple of years will be really interesting for Citizenside. I wish the Citizenside team in Paris all the best in their continued quest to fully realize the potential of citizen media.

As for me, I’m really looking forward to new challenges, and working with the award-winnning team at Edelman.

Onwards!

Coping with this upsurge in distributed newsgathering capability is one of the most important challenges for any news organisation active in 2011.

The users are already sharing vast volumes of valuable material. However, their output is unstructured, often highly subjective, and devoid of context or analysis.

Professional news organisations can add value here, if they develop ways to work with users to create high-quality journalism together. For all their experience in research, production skills, and their contact networks, this is a difficult task for the pros. The intelligent application of game dynamics is a key part of the solution.

Citizenside exists specifically to take advantage of this new opportunity for networked newsgathering. Game design principles are at the heart of our work. Here are some of the ways in which we apply them to improve our journalism.

Intrinsically rewarding experiences

This is not about ‘gamification’ – a word whose trendiness has leached it of all meaning. There are compelling editorial reasons that applied game dynamics are fundamentally important for any interactive journalism operation.

At the most basic level, any news operation that wants to survive must attract, motivate and retain a network of active users – whatever its business model. This is precisely what game design is about: creating intrinsically rewarding experiences.

As proven by its soaring player numbers and revenue, the gaming industry has already mastered the art of attracting, motivating and retaining a large user network. Any interactive journalism operation benefits from the application of proven game design principles from the very beginning.

On a more specific level, there are four main ways in which game design principles can help attract, motivate and retain a network of active users.

1. Motivation

Blank pages are terrifying, and total creative freedom can be daunting. On the other hand, a specific, achievable challenge can be extremely motivating.

It is a fundamental game design concept that players need always to have a clearly defined, intriguing problem to solve. It is even better if the problem is pitched at just the right level of complexity for their level of experience. In this way they are neither bored with a simple, repetitive task, or frustrated by something too difficult for them to solve.

This very simple but powerful idea should inform all editors’ interactions with their users.

In the networked news ecosystem, it is not enough to simply ask users to send in newsworthy material. Most people have neither the news awareness, nor the contact network, nor the editorial nous to simply find newsworthy images. These remain the pro’s advantage.

However, using a game design approach, an editor can motivate a distributed network of users to attack a range of newsgathering tasks. Specific creative challenges are attractive to users. Viewed through the lens of game design, newsgathering tasks become challenging but achievable missions that users can complete.

At Citizenside, missions take the form of ‘Calls for Witnesses’. These are targeted calls for UGC, usually delivered to people within a defined radius of a news event. With members all over the world, we usually have several within a reasonable distance of any given news event. When we contact them, we give them specific information about the event and the sort of images we would like, and the deadline. This avoids the bewildering challenge of the blank page, instead offering users a specific, achievable challenge.

2. Feedback

Constant information on progress and performance is a vital part of any rewarding interactive experience. Users who aren’t constantly aware of how they are doing will find the experience frustrating and will stop coming back.

Many news websites ask users to ‘Send us your images!’. This makes sending information easy, but is not a rewarding user proposition. When a user enters text or submits images that way, there is usually no return information about what happened with it. Was their note read? Were their pictures looked at? . . . Is anyone even there?

Clear feedback to users is absolutely essential, but communicating directly with every user is extremely labour-intensive (and thus effectively impossible).

Viewed through the lens of game design, the solution is simple. Well-designed games use points and often use leveling-up structures to mark player progress.

In Citizenside’s networked news operation, users get points for submitting material, for making comments, for having their images viewed, and for many other actions. In short, users are recognized and rewarded every time they do something that helps inform the user community, or increases the quality of content, no matter how small.

Citizenside users level up as a function of these accumulated points. As they prove themselves, we grant them more user privileges. Effectively, a user’s level is a quantified measure of their commitment to the site. The feedback is clear. It allows them to see at a glance how far they’ve come, and – crucially – where they stand compared to other users.

Another game mechanic that is useful to Citizenside’s newsgathering is specialized rewards. We are implementing a badge-based system of identity rewards that will reward users for specific types of actions. For instance, submitting many photos will unlock a ‘shutterbug’ badge, while leaving many comments can lead to a ‘life of the party’ badge. (This is similar to the Xbox Live series of achievements, and the FourSquare badges).

A particular application of this principle will be specialist badges awarded for local coverage. Many of our users take photos near where they live, becoming specialists in local news over time. After all, no one knows an area like the people who live there full-time. By rewarding users for consistently contributing material from a particular location, we can identify them as reliable local experts. This recognition will be publicly displayed on their user profile, thus granting them feedback on our recognition – as well as serving as a valuable signal to the editorial team.

3. Trust

A level-based system with clear feedback, such as the one sketched above, has advantages for the editorial team as well as the user. A clear trust signal is, perhaps, the most important advantage.

Any media operation with more than a few hundred users will find it impossible to manage relationships with each one individually. How then can an editor quickly determine the quality of incoming information, without a time-consuming background check on each member?

Because it is based on the sum of past contributions, a user’s level effectively shows the degree of commitment that a user has demonstrated to his or her particular user community. This level is an unambiguous, quantified trust rating. It enables editors to make rapid and accurate judgements on a source’s trustworthiness in a networked newsgathering context.

In addition, badges serve to further refine a user’s profile. Are they specialists in photography, videography, or very active in the community? Have they unlocked privileges as power-users in a particular town or neighborhood? This is all vital information when assessing the context and validity of information.

4. Loyalty

Finally, game dynamics can aid in user retention. There is a well-established ‘lock-in effect’ among players of massively multiplayer network games such as World of Warcraft. Once players of such a game have accumulated rank and status in one game world, they are disincentivized from leaving it, because that level is effectively non-transferable social capital. They would have to start building their rank again from zero in a new game.

In the news context, this means that once users have begun submitting material to one media operator, they are much less likely to submit future material to competitors, as they will not get the same rewards (levels/badges/status) there.

It should be noted that long-established media companies have a latent advantage in brand loyalty, which can be exploited when it comes to setting up a networked newsgathering operation. Users who have grown up reading or watching a particular news brand often display high loyalty, and can be reluctant to switch.

Naturally this puts established companies in a good position when it comes to soliciting material from their users. This is why Citizenside provides a plug-and-play version of its technology to other media companies, which we call the Reporter Kit. It is the same software as Citizenside uses to interact with our own user base, with one difference. The Reporter Kit allows news companies to collect news images and video directly from their own users, without passing through the Citizenside website. This allows established media companies to build on their brand loyalty and take advantage of the newsgathering ability distributed throughout their existing loyal user base.

Conclusion – game or die

None of these principles amount to transforming journalism into a game. Rather, as journalism is necessarily becoming an interactive, networked pursuit, media operators must adapt the lessons learned in the best interactive experiences.

Video games, one of the most popular and fastest-growing media in our civilization, offer a wealth of basic principles that can be applied to attract, motivate and retain a network of active users. Citizenside is applying these principles in many ways, which give us and our partners an edge in a difficult and fast-changing marketplace.

The task of foreign reporting is changing profoundly. Thanks to social media channels, readers from Ohio to Osaka can get information straight from the source in other countries. So do we still need foreign correspondents?

This dinosaur just evolved.

Richard Sambrook, formerly head of Global News at the BBC, knows his foreign reporters. He was on a panel at the International Journalism Festival in Perugia, Italy, along with Mimosa Martini and Mort Rosenblum. He described a vivid image of foreign correspondents as they were in the past:

You could call the old model the hunter-gatherer correspondent. Twenty years ago the average foreign correspondent was white, male, middle-class, didn’t speak the local language, relied on perhaps a dozen sources in the country he was posted, and only had to make one or maybe two deadlines a day. This model doesn’t exist any more.

When a reader in New York can simply follow the twitter feed of a protestor in Tahrir  square, it’s clear that that style of working and living is no longer possible. Those old correspondents often benefited from the limited information available to readers and viewers back home. “One of the dirty secrets of foreign reporting,” said  Sambrook, “Is that you could in the past say what you wanted and the people back home would just have to trust you. They’d never know. Now they will know.” So is foreign reporting dead? It’s more important than ever to know what’s happening around the world and how it could affect all of us. But do we need foreign reporters for this? After all, foreign reporting has several big drawbacks, as enumerated by panel moderator Charlie Beckett:

1. It costs a lot of money. Sending highly-paid reporters (especially TV reporters, with their expensive kit and teams of assisitants) abroad is expensive.
2. Often foreign trips are just ego trips. Many foreign correspondents have become celebrities. They’re part of the story, and often the correspondents want to be seen ducking the bullets. They’re easily accused of being vultures. “Photojournalists are even worse,” said Beckett. “They pretend their work is some sort of art form. Do we really need them?”
3. Colonialism of the mind. If you have to send someone out, then the news has to be reported from a home perspective. We hear correspondents talking about ‘Our troops’ etc. What about seeing things from the perspective of the locals? Isn’t that interesting?
4. New technology means you don’t need to send anyone. In early days of the revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt, we learned more through social media than anything else. Why not just hire local professionals? Why not train up locals instead of sending your people? Why not partner up with local news agencies? “Don’t get on a plane, get networked,” said Beckett.

Goodbye information scarcity, hello managing abundance

In many cases, technology has made eyewitness reports of events in far-away countries widely available. Our members’ reports from the Ivory Coast to Algeriashow how much is possible. So is there still a role for professionals to play? Sambrook says yes, but it’s vastly changed from the old hunter-gatherer model. Sambrook described the new way of working as the “Farmer correspondent”:

Now a foreign reporter has to be multilingual. People drawn from diverse backgrounds, often with a strong history of connection to the country they’re placed in. They’re working with hundreds of sources, thanks to social media.

I found this description interesting because it describes precisely the sort of work our editorial team at Citizenside does every day. We interact with our community of thousands of contributors worldwide, asking for more information, verifying packages, and making sure that the best information makes its way to our homepage. This sort of work doesn’t even have to be on location – Andy Carvin’s work on the revolutions in the middle eastis an excellent example of this. Really the task of a foreign reporter is becoming more editorial. Instead of seeking out and transmitting scarce bits of information, the task is managing an abundance of eyewitness information shared through social media. It’s collating, curating, and explaining context and implications in a way that readers back home can understand easily. There is still a role for pros sent out into the field, especially in conflict situations. Conflict reporting is dangerous. Mimosa Martini described a situation that occurred to her in Iran:

When I was in Iran, covering the election and subsequent riots, my Iranian cameraman turned his camera off. He was afraid he’d get trouble from the security services. I argued with him, but eventually realised he was right. What’s the worst they could do to me? Send me out of the country. To him? Far, far worse.

But parachuted correspondents like this aren’t specialists in the local situation: they’re crisis reporting specialists. There’s simply no way they can ever know a situation and gain access as well as the people who live there. That’s exactly why the members of the Citizenside community are so important. You know your own backyard like no one else. You are all foreign correspondents, to our readers in other countries. Your intimate access to the news happening right around you is your huge advantage.

This bill may soon be passed into law here in the UK. Both as a professional and a citizen, I find its implications disturbing. It would allow people to be cut off from the internet merely on suspicion of copyright violation. I also doubt its chances of significantly reducing piracy, as it would most likely force people to take their now quite open file-sharing activities underground.

I sent Mr. Hands my email last Wednesday, the 17th. On Friday the 19th, I received his reply by post. I am pleased with what it contains. Mr. Hands writes:

We want to make sure that Britain has the most favourable intellectual framework in the world for innovators, digital content creators and high tech businesses. We recognise the need to tackle digital piracy and make it possible for people to buy and sell digital intellectual property online. However, it is vital that any anti-piracy measures promote new business models rather than holding innovation back. This must not be about propping up existing business models but creating and environment that allows new ones to develop.

The emphasis is mine – and I entirely, emphatically agree. I am not in favour of copyright violation. But the 20th century media publishing business model simply doesn’t apply any more. Widespread piracy is, in part, a response to that from demanding consumers. The onus is on the industry to respond to that demand with innovation and bold business thinking. Instead of doing this, since the 1990s they have stagnated, while leaning on government to preserve their golden goose. This Bill is part of the government’s response – but far from effectively reducing piracy, it will do damage to this country’s digital economy and undermine the principles of openness and fairness that have made the Internet such a resource for citizens and businesses alike.

This is no way to run a progressive digital economy.

I am very happy to read that Mr. Hands shares this view.

In addition, he has said that the “controversial measures” the Bill contains

should be debated in the House of Commons, and only if we are confident that they have been given the scrutiny that they deserve will we support them.

I wish you luck, Mr. Hands. I’ll be looking forward to seeing how this turns out.

I’ve posted the full text of Mr. Hands’ response, and a scan of the letter, after the jump.

Here’s what he said:

Dear Mr. Trippenbach,

Thank  you for contacting me about the Digital Economy Bill.

For nearly twelve years, the Government has neglected this crucial area of our economy. We believe a huge amount needs to be done to give the UK a modern regulatory environment for the digital and creative industries. Whilst we welcome aspects of the Bill, there are other areas of great concern to us.

We want to make sure that Britain has the most favourable intellectual framework in the world for innovators, digital content creators and high tech businesses. We recognise the need to tackle digital piracy and make it possible for people to buy and sell digital intellectual property online. However, it is vital that any anti-piracy measures promote new business models rather than holding innovation back. This must not be about propping up existing business models but creating and environment that allows new ones to develop. That is why we were opposed to the original Clause 17 and are still opposed to Clause 29, which props up ITV regional news with Licence-Fee-payer’s money.

The Government’s failure to introduce the Bill until the eleventh hour of this Parliament has given rise to considerable concern that we no longer have the time to scrutinise many of the controversial measures it contains. We believe they should be debated in the House of Commons, and only if we are confident that they have been given the scrutiny that they deserve will we support them.

My colleagues in the Shadow Culture, Media and Sport and Shadow Business, Innovation and Skills teams will do everything in their power to work towards legislation that strengthens our digital sector and provides the security that our businesses and consumers need.

Once again, thank you for taking the time to write to me.

Yours sincerely,

Greg Hands MP

(I’ve included a scan of the whole letter here.)

I’ve written to my MP about this. Here’s the text of my letter:

Dear Mr.Hands,

I’m writing to you today because I’m very worried that the Government is planning to rush the Digital Economy Bill into law without a full Parliamentary debate. The proposed Bill is controversial, and contains many measures that concern me. As a freelance interactive producer and game designer, it is of material concern to my business that this country has widespread open access to the Internet with as few restrictions as possible.

We have already corresponded on this matter, by post, in the fall. At this point, I would like to again highlight my concern, which is all the more relevant now that the bill is close to passing into law.

This controversial bill deserves proper scrutiny. Its implications for privacy and democratic participation are significant. The effectiveness of enacting technical measures on persistent downloaders (even if they could be conclusively identified) is strongly questioned by leading computer security experts. I am particulary worried by the prospect of people being punished for alleged downloading – at the behest of publishing companies – without a due process of law.

In my opinion this sets a worrying precedent, as it would seem to violate the principle of presumed innocence upon which this country’s legal system rests. (An appeals process is also proposed within the bill, but this would enter into force only after an accused person has been disconnected, thus requiring them to prove their innocence rather than requiring the accuser to prove their guilt.)

Music and film publishing companies claim that internet does damage to their sales. But there is a growing body of strong evidence indicating that downloaders actually spend more money on listening to music (often live) and going to the cinema than non-downloaders do. This bill would therefore seem to be an attempt at protecting an obsolescent publishing and business model, rather than protecting musicians or filmmakers as a group.

The current decline in the music and DVD industry is a function of technological change, which has precipitated changes in consumer behaviour. People download music and video illegaly because they want to consume their content in a manner of their choosing – and because there are few legal alternatives available online. Nevertheless, companies like Spotify have proven that it is possible to make money legally while satisfying these consumer demands. If a viable alternative exists, people will use it.

Finally, I have doubts that the measures proposed by the bill will be effective. Pirates worldwide have proven their ingenuity time and again. Methods to circumvent the technical restrictions and surveillance procedures proposed in the bill will doubtless soon be developed. Some are already available, but seldom used. If this bill is enacted, that would soon change.

It is therefore doubtful that the bill will cut piracy by the target 70%. It is far more likely that the bill will significantly damage open access to the internet in the UK, anger and frustrate many innocent UK internet users who will be falsely accused, and be expensive to implement.

I suggest that spending tax-payers’ money implementing this bill will be inefficient and ineffective. Far more likely to succeed would be an innovation fund supporting research and development of new delivery and business models for content online.

For all these reasons, please don’t let the government rush this bill through. Many people besides myself think it will damage schools and businesses, as well as unjustly harming innocent people who rely on the internet for their business, education, and daily life. Industry experts, internet service providers and leading internet companies like Google and Yahoo are all opposing the bill – yet the Government seems intent on passing it without enough debate.

As a constituent, I am writing to you today to ask you to do all you can to ensure the Government doesn’t just rush this bill through and deny us our democratic right to scrutiny and debate.

Sincerely yours,

- Philip Trippenbach

I’ll post the reply here when I get it.

Talk about the future of journalism usually seems to revolve around a few big questions:

1.    How do we deal with the shocking pace of change in the industry?
2.    What skills will journalists need in the future?
3.    And (the elephant in the room) how do we fund all this?

We talked around all three in the morning.

For me, question 1 has a really simple answer: Trust in your core values, and improvise the rest by any means necessary.

By Any Means Necessary

Trust in your core values, and improvise the rest by any means necessary.

This is really about staying agile. Agility is essential for any journalist or news organization nowadays. The pace of change in media is famously fast.

A project might get millions of hits if it went live today, but if it takes a few months to come to market, it could be passé or even simply obsolete. But this sort of time scale is normal in TV and magazine production, as well as some interactive projects. Investigative journalism in any medium also operates on this time scale.

So we have a problem. It’s a challenge for an organisation with a big command structure to be fast enough. This goes double when institutional factors become involved, as they often do: company-wide strategies and operating procedures exist for a reason, but they can sometimes delay an otherwise promising project beyond relevance. What’s the answer?

Reinforce your core values, and improvise. Extrapolate from a diamond core of what the organisation is really about.

What is the purpose of the organisation? To be the first to get out the news? To cover one area especially well? To report on a particular issue or subject? Or to reach an entire nation comprehensively? Whatever the core mission is, ignore the SOPs and just do it, by any means necessary.

I know companies don’t work this way – and that’s exactly why they’re having trouble adapting to the pace of change. This is why startups are inherently more flexible than established organisations. It’s not just their size; it’s because they’re new enough that they aren’t beholden to established ways of doing things and corporate procedures – they just get out there and do it, using whatever tools are at their disposal. Their reduced institutional baggage means they can be more agile, amorphous and flexible, and this is a huge advantage. New tools, production techniques and public behaviours are evolving all the time. The advantage goes to whoever can engage and implement them the fastest.

What do you think?