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revisto

2018 is the year we, as an industry, need to bring ideology to action.

Highlights nossos para previsões do próximo ano e revisões do que finda pelo Nieman Journalism Lab.


I


Começando pela academia, a literacia digital começa em casa:

At a time when understanding the role of media in society has become essential, we must continue to invest in and innovate media education to prepare professionals and educate the public.
in "Your journalism curriculum is obsolete" 13 dez 2017

À razão de como "innovations in technology, digital media, and the internet affect communication", o jornalismo faz o seu próprio processo de actualização. E nada como começar pelos doutos.

"I just graduated with my bachelor of arts in mass communication. You’d think I’d be primed and ready for a career as a modern journalist. I’m not."

Programs that focus solely on print and broadcast news are not preparing their students for jobs now, and definitely not in the near future. The world of journalism had expanded beyond reporting, writing, and editing.

Basic digital concepts, visual, social, mobile, data and innovation and included Internet history, digital business models, analytics, web and mobile development, coding, data journalism, 360 video, drones and design thinking - how are these topics covered in your program? If the answer is "they aren’t," then your curriculum is obsolete.
in "Your journalism curriculum is obsolete" 13 dez 2017


How many members of your faculty are comfortable with the majority of these concepts? If the answer is "not many," then your curriculum is obsolete.

Digital represents a vast shift in the way we communicate, requiring professionals and educators to understand new products and platforms. It’s more than learning to edit video or to write code. It’s a vast change that requires an innovation and creativity mindset.
in "Your journalism curriculum is obsolete" 13 dez 2017

Espaços fechados e seguros: em parte um repeat do ano passado.

It means abandoning the quest to respond to every confused man on Twitter

Broadcast-focused, open social networks revolutionized the way we connect with people online. First-wave social platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, and Instagram ushered in a golden era of social media and allowed people to build audiences and have their voice heard by millions. But in 2017, the novelty of racking up a million followers has washed away. Tweeting out your opinions only to be shouted down by Nazis has caused many users to abandon posting on open social networks and instead spend more time in closed networks and group chats.

As users migrate to these closed systems, they’re also shifting away from the type of broad-based algorithmic feeds packed with news and media content that were the hallmark of first-generation social media. This isn’t to say that people are consuming less media; they aren’t. However media consumption will become a more separate, intentional behavior. Publishers will have to find their footing and adopt new distribution strategies to take advantage of this shift in user behavior - roducing the type of premium content users will subscribe to and seek out. It means spending less time trying to reach the widest audience on the web and more time building intentional, dedicated audiences.
in "Social and media will split" 13 dez 2017

Mas, a recordar...:

Even if we’re all still at the mercy of Facebook.
in "Social and media will split" 13 dez 2017

Estes retiros para melhor, não mais informação parecem acontecer cada vez que se pede aos jornalistas alguma introspeção. Aqui, como consequência da tech:

He pulled out a Nokia phone that looked like it belonged in the late 1990s. His reasoning: He now had fewer distractions and more time to think.

Challenges to the global status quo have prompted news media to get on top of its game — producing some of the strongest reporting we’ve seen from some quarters. But it has also lowered the threshold for what’s considered news. We’ve arrived at a pivot point in our history, and with that come the dueling cravings to be current on events while truly understanding their significance. The first is easier to achieve: One can passively sit back and absorb news by reflexively checking one’s phone screen, for example. The second — obtaining true understanding — is trickier: Where can one turn not for the latest, but for the most meaningful answers?

Following one of the most intense years of news coverage in recent memory, mixed with the ongoing tectonic shocks of technology, more news consumers will likely tire of the machine-gun salvo of incremental factoids wrapped in large-font breathlessness. Readers are more likely to crave calm distillation of meaningful themes and trends.
in "Conquering calm" 15 dez 2017

E de escapar aos faceblarghs deste mundo: outras comunidades - de "comum".

Looking at journalistic resources through the lens of the commons reveals a new (i.e., newly recognized) cultural form that is unfolding in front of us. A commons requires clarity, skilled decision-making abilities, and cooperative management strategies to create robust systems.
in "The new journalism commons" 13 dez 2017

The discussion about the role of the commons in journalism seems to have vanished, along with many other themes that once captured the public discourse on the future of news. The commons might even sound like an archaism of the early days of digital journalism -like cyberspace or message boards. But resources shared by a group of people can be a powerful social structure, and it’s one worth revisiting in the context of journalism and its current challenges.

The journalism commons as a resource system, independent of particular property rights, include - but are not limited to - code repositories freely available in sites like GitHub; the myriad of online tutorials, reports, and education resources created by journalism schools and independent organizations to teach new skills; the communities formed around conferences, meetups, and collaborations between news organizations, journalism schools, and others; open databases on critical issues such as police misconduct; and open source software providing a new technological infrastructure for journalism.
in "The new journalism commons" 13 dez 2017

Metas:

  • Design open-ended systems for news production built around common pooled resources to collectively address critical issues, such as verification or the digital divide
  • Harness collective action and social capital to protect and grow shared resources for journalism
in "The new journalism commons" 13 dez 2017

Agora dead center às testes.

Collective euphoria turned to harsh reality for social media in 2017. Manipulating attention has never been easier. The key weakness of social media - an inability to ensure the authenticity of communication and interaction - will continue to be exploited in 2018.
in "Fortifying social media from automated inauthenticity" 13 dez 2017

O espelho de preocupações tratadas ontem, portanto.

Artificial neural networks are advancing rapidly in their ability to synthesize content - including images, videos, and texts - that are increasingly indistinguishable from authentic content. In the arms race to secure the authenticity of online media, platforms will need to step up their internal protocols.
in "Fortifying social media from automated inauthenticity" 13 dez 2017

Mas, jornalista oblige, claro:

They should be as transparent as possible about this, they should also recognize that this is too important an issue to take up solely on their own. Journalists and other actors in civil society can play a role in helping to hold accountable the authenticity of the communications processes through which the public is informed. But they need far more access to data from platforms if they are to be effective.

Appropriate data and tooling in the hands of computational journalists would enable the creation of a new beat covering social influence campaigns. By grappling with vast amounts of data using computational tools journalists could produce these reports (or even forecasts) that illuminate the flows of information online, fortifying the public against disingenuous and subversive media.
in "Fortifying social media from automated inauthenticity" 13 dez 2017

Nessa nota, saltámos o registo mas encontrarão pelo sítio mais algumas notas sobre a importância da espécie em perpetuar-se como guardiões do portão... E falando desse, como se faz pagar.

The next big issue is who controls the customer: publishers or platforms. Specifically, who determines the pricing, bundling, and fulfillment of subscription payments in an aggregated news environment.
in "Facebook and Google: Help out or pay up" 14 dez 2017

Independent, fact-based news gathering is the foundation of an informed society. In disrupting the business model for news, Facebook and Google have done so without replacing the essential news gathering on which democracy depends.
in "Facebook and Google: Help out or pay up" 14 dez 2017

$$$:

In a news-feed environment where readers encounter a mix of free and paywalled content, there is a real question whether they’ll be willing subscribe to a multitude of different publications. If they don’t, it’s almost inevitable that the platforms will urge publishers to blend and bundle multiple titles into a single coherent subscription package. And publishers will find themselves with a Hobson’s choice: Try to drive standalone subscriptions in a crowded marketplace, where only a few thrive. Or give in to bundling and turn over to the platforms their relationship with the reader in return for fractional shares of the bundled price.
in "Facebook and Google: Help out or pay up" 14 dez 2017

Duopólio

Either Facebook and Google are platforms, in which case they need to manage their infrastructure in a way that allows independent journalism to thrive. Or they are publishers, in which case they need to provide direct financial support for the journalism their platforms deliver.
Simply put, that either means providing tools for publishers to manage their business on the platforms (via APIs and direct ownership of the customer). Or it means paying publishers for their content.
in "Facebook and Google: Help out or pay up" 14 dez 2017

E uma para o local.

An important prospect about the role of personalized content in media today: the same technology, executed strategically and tactically, could allow media companies to address gaps in public knowledge, or solve specific informational needs. I believe this shift to psychographic, micro-targeted media will be the biggest evolution for publishers in the next 3 to 5 years. Every content generated will be targeted to specific needs and profiles, instead of a mass audience.

There are several important benefits for the industry in the shift to micro-targeting. We’d actually seek out problems to solve; we’ll be rewarded by engagement and, therefore, revenue. We’ll also reduce wastage in output - costly operations of content teams that churn out content that never gets seen or read.

The defining questions for every journalist in the age of micro-targeting will be: Who is this piece of content for? How do I make sure it reaches them?
in "The rise of start of psychographic, micro-targeted media" 14 dez 2017

Hell, duas para os locais:

Sites are being launched by instant local news entrepreneurs who’ve never even heard of Nieman Lab or the Knight Foundation.

It will be left to individual communities to take responsibility for their own local news and information needs, and support grassroots replacements of what is lost. In almost every case, that will take a patchwork quilt of solutions — a general-interest local online news site, a niche nonprofit going in-depth on one particular topic, public radio, a local access cable television station, the library, activists, Facebook groups, and the closest surviving metro, all playing off each other, and maybe even collaborating. In some cases, that’s giving voice to people and communities who were never well-served by newspapers and producing journalism on niche topics that was never pursued adequately under the legacy structure, even in the glory days.

In some ways, it’s a great equalizer. You don’t have to own a printing press or a radio tower to play a crucial role in local journalism. And you don’t have to return a 25 percent profit margin to some out-of-town investor. This new crop of local independent online news publishers usually just want to make an adequate living doing journalism in their communities.
in "A recession, then a collapse" 15 dez 2017

Voltando ao menos é mais, menos peças:

Does the age-old practice of informing readers through a flood of successive news reports still make sense? The answer, of course, is: No, not really. Journalists will be doing more updating, personalizing, and improving of access to content — and we’ll be publishing less.

Basically, we peddle today’s news while failing to put at readers’ disposal everything else that’s ever happened and been reported on. That means we aren’t informing the public as effectively as we could. So readers lose the thread of what’s happening, or grow cynical about a world that’s presented as a succession of unrelated incidents. Either way, people stop paying, since we’re not delivering the promised service:

  • We publish stories one after the other, rarely connecting the dots.
  • We don’t tailor content to individual readers’ needs.
  • We do almost nothing to help people sift relevant information from archives. (Here, have an auto-generated tag page!)
in "Publishing less to give readers more" 15 dez 2017

E de regresso ao início, das universidades para o mundo real.

2018 could be the year that we refactor media literacy: an awful lot of highly educated folks, skilled in all sorts of traditional media literacy, are hopelessly lost on the web. (Many of these people are faculty).

Piada fácil, mas agora a sério, "on the rise of the right to be informed":

Modern totalitarian regimes do not exercise monopoly control over narrative. Rather, they use a variety of technological and organic means to make competing narratives inaccessible to or untrusted by the public. Hordes of bots and people who talk like bots invade competing hashtags and disrupt political communication. Weaponized transparency, defended by free speech advocates, is used to overwhelm the public’s capacity to separate fact from fiction. Speech - whether automated or organized - is being used strategically to prevent access to information the public needs to govern itself.

In such a world, we will start to see people, out of necessity, peel apart the right to free speech from the right to be informed. The right to be informed will need to take into account the limits of attention and the way bad information can be used to crowd out good. It will take into account the deleterious effects of information overload, and wrestle with the impact of systemic harassment in wiping out minority voices. This evolved conception of free speech as a right to expression that sometimes conflicts with a parallel right to be informed will begin to form a legal, technical, and educational framework.
in "Refactoring media literacy for the networked age" 14 dez 2017

Repararam? Falamos de política agora. E para muitas outras considerações leiam no sítio. De "digital natives backed largely by venture capitalists" vs "digital ads" que vão morrer ou não, mais "trusted curators", mais diversidade de formatos, mais wishfull thinking como "2018 will see a severe regulatory pushback against platforms", distopias onde "machines, not humans, will become the biggest consumers of news in 2018" e sobretudo -dizemos nós- "demand for “smart content” - news tailored to a specific individual or use case, and personalized with a specific editorial style"...

A nossa previsão para 2018: mais paywalls. Porque continuam convencidos que os seus conteúdos têm valor. Senhores... à vossa consideração: pagar para ler um Público ou um Observador online...? Shiiiit, até a Wired quer cobrar pela verborreia. I think not. Tudo o resto igual (*): 2018: paywalls go up. 2019: paywalls go down.

  • Notícias de última hora serão sempre grátis ou ficam fora do loop.
  • Para agendas mal disfarçadas e colunas de opinião não vamos pagar: paguem-nos.
  • Para conteúdos de relevância que superem o teste do tempo: é para isso que temos os livros.
  • Last not least: alguns sítios (wink wink) vão sempre trazer aos seus peeps o que de melhor se pode recomendar das rondas mediáticas.

* O que todo este exercício do NL não contemplou: "tudo o resto igual" ? Entre o fim da neutralidade web nas Américas às intenções do FB e Google, blockchain tech e outros, 2018 será outro animal. We-be-here!


II


Já que bebemos de um lab académico que se debruça sobre jornalismo, um registo para a crónica de António Guerreiro de hoje - quis o entrosamento de temas que justamente sobre jornalismo e academia. Notemos como roça a dúvida existencial que atravessa a maior parte das contribuições que o NL reúne nesta edição – ou, qualquer edição…?

O discurso do jornalista situa-se na lógica da opinião; o poder dos professores, pelo contrário, legitima-se em termos de saber, isto é, o contrário da opinião.

O jornalismo e a universidade, tiveram a seu cargo uma missão crítica e de socialização do pensamento. Eles criavam uma cultura para a sociedade e uma sociedade para a cultura. Segundo a concepção iluminista dos jornais, eles deviam ser órgãos de formação colectiva de uma opinião pública racional - não tanto o instrumento de expressão de uma esfera pública pré-existente (como são hoje entendidos), mas mais o lugar de constituição dessa esfera pública. Ora, se os jornais tivessem hoje de assumir uma tal tarefa, já teriam desaparecido.
in "Jornalistas e professores" 15 dez 2017

E se o fim-de-ano é dado aosoul searching, extaímos ainda das suas palavras uma sentida conclusão aos 360º que agora se fecham.

De certo modo, a evolução da universidade e da escola foi paralela à do jornalismo e hoje todos têm de enfrentar um mundo que ameaça destituir a antiga função que detinham, sem que essa extinta função tenha sido substituída por outra. E a profissão de professor encontra-se hoje tão deslegitimada e degradada como a profissão de jornalista.
in "Jornalistas e professores" 15 dez 2017


III


A concluir de académicos e jornalistas... Falta-nos qualquer coisa. Voltaremos nesse tópico.

Mas de $$$ temos que deixar à posteridade o nosso resumo de uma peça com o estranho título publicidade honesta, de onde retirámos também a citação inicial.

Media and journalism aren’t in trouble. It’s the business of media and journalism that is, and that’s what we need to fix.
in "Honesty in advertising" 15 dez 2017

OS POSITIVOS: we-got-ya.

leituras adicionais

Arriscamos a dar um segundo sentido -este, não intencional- ao nosso título: no NL continuam a publicar peças além da data limite. Mais sobre o digital, mais sobre $$$, mais sobre transparência e AI, e transversal a todas as peças a aparente inabalável fé que a imprensa está cá para sempre, a realidade de alguma forma tem que se ajustar à sua importância. Voltaremos aqui, antes, os nossos acrescentos.

  • 2017-2018
  • jornalismo com propósito

Whether it is to inform citizens, or to affect perceptions about their reality, the media needs a transformational purpose.

The debate is still open about where journalism ends and advocacy begins, and it is important for journalists to keep an attentive eye on those lines. However, very few will now debate that journalism has a mission — it always has. Media is, at its best, at the forefront of halting the biggest abuses. At a minimum, it is capable of defining conversations and setting the agenda.

I would say all media organizations believe that they tell stories and provide information because they want to help their audience to make better choices, be aware of something, or change their social and political environments for the better. To achieve systematic change, media needs deep structural relationships with the community they serve, and take the media-driven effects to meaningful collective impact.

in "The arrival of the impact producer" dez 2017
  • 2017-2018
  • reação

In 2018, the Empire will strike back.

Net neutrality is on the brink of extinction. Facebook, Amazon, and Google continue to build up massive data network effects that are harder and harder for new entrants and old media institutions to overcome. And the core values of a democratic society will continue to be chipped away until what was once considered abhorrent behavior will now be considered “just the way it is,” because we become more tired and less shocked every single day. In tech, the last year has starkly shown us that while technology can be leveraged for massive good, it can also be leveraged for massive evil. 2018 will be the year in which everyone in technology is obliged to look in the mirror and ask themselves not just whether their intentions are good enough, but whether their actions are strong enough.

in "The empire strikes back" dez 2017
  • 2017-2018
  • folha da bolha

Usage of Facebook has begun to decline as the conversations there become more and more toxic. Soon the only discourse available will be about the most outrageous, instinct-punching statements, free of fact or reasoned debate, and the only people who will remain are those who seek nothing but self-validation and protection from criticism.

Information was increasingly being shared in places that were not publicly accessible, searchable, or discoverable - imposed on users invisibly, by design and by algorithm, spaces that could be used to share intelligent thought are becoming isolated and increasingly toxic. The outcome is the intellectual equivalent of the Dead Sea: an environment cut off from inflows or outflows, slowly becoming less and less habitable to life, until all that are left are the hardiest extremophiles.

What we can do as journalists is to demand systems that provide readers with the unexpected, that which surprises and challenges them. The maddening thing about this situation is that news organizations have historically been very good at showing people novel information, and at challenging their assumptions. The very layout of the newspaper encouraged discovery and serendipity, qualities that most online news experiences lack. By adding information diversity as a consideration, readers will be better informed and publishers’ relationships with them will deepen. As things stand now, these filters fail at the most basic value a news organization can provide — “Tell me something I don’t know” — in favor of a far more dangerous value: “Tell me what I want to hear.”

in "The intellectual equivalent of the Dead Sea" dez 2017

os zines estavam certos