The NewsCubed project has moved into a new phase: journalism. While the blokes at Lab82 are busy constructing a functional NewsCube, I am now creating content to put in it. So there is going to be some stories here about dirt.

This is my RHD project. It aims to explore ways to package long-running or complex journalism topics. For that reason I’ve decided to dig around the issue of soil security: a potentially serious, but so far fairly under-reported topic.

The Research Through Design approach being adopted in this project is not one that has been applied to news design. However, a research paper by Sarah Niblock in the field of journalism studies makes a case for practice-as-research methodologies, which, like RtD, have roots in the work of Christopher Frayling and Donald Schön.

Niblock identifies theory-first and practice-first journalism research, arguing that “practice-first research, like theory-first research, seeks to advance knowledge about practice or within practice which might impact upon industry processes”. Within practice-first research, journalism represents a movement towards finding a solution to a problem. The process is transparent and may be regarded as action research. Such ideas resonate with those of RtD.

The NewsCubed project therefore aims to use journalism and design practice to develop an artefact that explores the possibilities for a technological-driven approach to news design and, in doing so, open up new areas of inquiry.

As such, the project needs to produce some journalism, and hence, a chance to investigate soil security. Read the stories at NewsCubed.

Creative Commons image: 2kBreki via DeviantArt.com

Abstract
Journalists need to learn the language of technology or they risk further eroding their own economic value. While the economic crisis during the second half of the 2000s shocked many news media companies into taking digital products seriously, they are doing so in an increasingly networked and mobile media landscape in which it is device makers and software developers—not media companies—that control audiences and revenues. This paper posits that developing procedural literacies might help journalists close the gap between information technology and traditional journalism and in doing so, allow them to regain some control over their craft. It examines the literature surrounding these fields and seeks to identify challenges to introducing computer science skills to traditional journalism education.

Citation
Doherty, Skye. 2012. “Will the Geeks Inherit the Newsroom? Reflections on why Journalist should Learn Computer Science”, International Journal of Technology, Knowledge and Society 8(2): 111–122

Download it here

Brisbane is a becoming an unlikely engine for big data and journalism. The city is the focus of a state government open data initiative and, is separately, the home of a university that has sparked a handful of valuable data analysis tools.

First to open data. This month the Queensland Government’s open data project gained momentum with the launch of its data portal. The initiative aims to release to the public as far as possible the raw data generated and collected by the state. So far 74 data sets have been made available with a view to uploading more progressively.

The data sets are being released under Creative Commons licences, are free to use, and are available in machine-readable formats (.txt; .csv). There is also the ability to request data sets.

Read more about the project here.

This move by the state to push data out is in line with global trends: governments, NGOs and organisations all over the world are jumping on the open data bandwagon and are making information freely available. The view is that open access to information helps make governments more accountable, drives innovation and economic development, and helps bureaucracies become more effective.

For journalists, access to raw data is great news. But it creates a challenge: it means we need to make sense of increasing volumes of sometimes unstructured information. And, as I’ve blogged previously, data needs a narrative — without a story data is just unfiltered information.

There are two ways of thinking about data journalism: either as a reporting tool or as a way of publishing. The former has roots in computer assisted reporting, a term that references Philip Meyer’s Precision Journalism and its focus on statistics and social science research techniques in journalism.

However the internet has since emerged and brought with it the possibility of finding and publishing digital data. This has led to the development of online visualisation and analysis tools: I’m thinking DocumentCloud, the ManyEyes project, Google Fusion Tables.

But finding the story is still vital, and when if a journalist is confronted with a large volume of information (FOI request or budget papers, for example) that needs to be made sense of quickly, then open data can be a big challenge.

Enter data analysis software.

Most newsrooms will not have heard of Leximancer, Discursis or HaystackHQ. Two are analysis tools developed by academics at the University of Queensland and used for research. The third is another Brisbane-based initiative. All three would be a powerful addition to any reporter’s arsenal, for both researching and presenting stories.

Here’s a wrap:

Leximancer
Leximancer is a text analysis tool. It mines text for meaning and produces visual maps of the key concepts and meaning within the documents. The software uses statistics-based algorithms to analyse documents and extract semantic and relational information. In practice, this means a report, speech etc … is uploaded and Leximancer extracts the key concepts and themes within the document.

The Leximancer White Paper explains this in greater detail, but by way of example, in a recent investigative journalism course a colleague and I ran the Finkelstein Report on the Independent Inquiry into the Media and Media Regulation through Leximancer and within minutes generated concept maps identifying favourable and unfavourable concepts in the report.

While a lot of the media coverage of Finkelstein’s report focussed on how to regulate the press, the ability of software to quickly deliver a breakdown of the key concepts in the document has clear benefits to reporters working to tight deadlines.

Discursis
Where Leximancer extracts key concepts and their relationships to each other, Discursis analyses the development of concepts over time, such as in a conversation. It can take transcripts from Twitter feeds, interviews, speeches or web forums (among others) and analyse them to identify themes, levels of engagement and who dominates the conversation. Dan Angus, one of development team, is currently using it to analyse the speeches by Australian Governors-General at the opening of Parliament. The analysis isn’t complete but he says the speech at the beginning of the Howard Government was pivotal. He has identified a very clear shift in discourse in that speech that has continued until the present day.

The volume of data tools such as Discursis can handle is worth noting. Discursis has generated metrics for 35,000 Tweets in a matter of minutes.

HaystackHQ
This is currently in development and is gaining some traction in the intelligence industry, but the creators see applications in investigative journalism. HaystackHQ takes data — text or numerical — and analyses it, producing a three-dimensional landscape where ‘mountains’ indicate related information. Unlike traditional charts or graphs, which generally require the user to guess which dimensions of the data might be correlated (like university enrollments verses crimes per 100,000 people) so that they can be plotted, HaystackHQ plots all the dimensions in a dataset at once, and then shows the user which dimensions of the data are correlated as they mouse over the map.

In one example HaystackHQ’s CTO, Ricky Robinson, analysed the passenger list of the RMS Titanic. HaystackHQ quickly processed the data into a mountain range. Each peak represented a group of passengers who were related in some way, for example, by their ticket class, their port of embarkation, or some combination of attributes. The landscape was dotted with red (survived) and black (perished) spots, indicating a particular passenger, who you could investigate further to find out their gender, place of boarding etc…

Digging into one peak showed that a high proportion of survivors were females with holding first-class tickets and who embarked at Cherbourg. So, with little or no work on our part we had a good starting point for further investigation (perhaps these women had a higher berth in the ship). Interrogating another peak with a high percentage of survivors revealed a different combination of factors leading to a high survival rate. HaystackHQ can quickly reveal the different groupings in a dataset (the peaks), and importantly, the reasons why the data grouped the way it did (the related dimensions within each peak).

Again, this is a tool that can handle large volumes on unstructured data quickly.

Unlike some more common tools, software packages like these are not free. But that does not mean cash-strapped newsrooms can’t try them out. Last year Brisbane’s Courier-Mail used intelligence software to research bike clubs on the Gold Coast. The software — Analysts Notebook — is used by police to investigate criminal networks, and it is pricey.

However, Mark Solomons and his team worked with QUT organised crime academic Mark Lauchs, who has the software. The journalists collected the data; Lauchs processed it; the Courier-Mail got publishable maps of active criminal networks; and QUT gets a research outcome.

It’s worth a try.

The dedication and enthusiasm of this group of journalists in the Maldives was impressive

Having spent two weeks training journalists in the Maldives, it was interesting to observe that the complaints of young journalists there touch on the similar issues facing the press in the UK and Australia — issues that are being dug up through debate into media regulation.

In November, Rhonda Breit and I delivered a series of workshops and consultancies to journalists and media stakeholders (read, politicians, universities and industry representatives). The project was part of Unesco’s International Programme for the Development of Communication and involved Unesco’s New Delhi Office, the Maldives Media Council and the University of Queensland’s School of Journalism and Communication.

Sessions focused on investigative journalism techniques, digital journalism, ethics and media law. The goal was to develop skills and capacity among journalists to aid the development of press freedom.

The enthusiasm of the 18 young journalists I worked with daily was impressive. They were engaged and eager to improve their journalism and chose investigative stories with all the right ingredients: controversy, corruption, victims, villains, systemic failure. They worked on these throughout and were constantly challenged to show the relationship between the evidence they had gathered, their methods of investigation, and possible narratives.

These are the same concepts I impress upon post-graduate journalism students. The difference in the Maldives is a lack of a strong investigative journalism tradition and the politicisation of the media — particularly television.

In the Maldives the notion of press freedom is relatively new. The country — a collection of 1200 islands — became a republic in 1968 and has since had one democratic presidential election. According to the BBC Maldives country profile, Mohamed Nasheed, elected president in 2008, “resigned in 2012 in the wake of opposition protests, and after a mutiny by police and the military. He said his resignation had been forced on him at gunpoint”. His former deputy, Mohamed Waheed Hassan Maniku, is now president.

Under Nasheed there was a program of media liberalisation. In 2005 the procedures for registering newspapers were relaxed and the first commercial broadcasting stations were licensed in 2007. The following year the Maldives Media Council was established.

However, Toby Mendel’s 2009 Assessment of Media Development in the Maldives notes that despite progress, the country still has some way to go to achieve press freedom. More recently there have been concerns that press freedom is slipping.

Earlier this year the Committee to Protect Journalists noted increased ”partisan political strife and religious conservatism”. The CPJ says “reports of police brutality against journalists amid political chaos, and a vicious attack for writing about religious tolerance, are disturbing signs that the Maldives is backsliding on press freedom”.

There does appear to be an assumption that media outlets support either the government or the opposition and that journalists report accordingly, particularly among broadcasters. Privately owned VTV and DhiTV are pro-government; Raajje TV is pro-opposition; although MNBC, the national broadcaster, is somewhat more balanced.

There is also a lack of information from official sources and a view that favourable coverage should be rewarded with access to people and documents. Add to this a media council that is completely overhauled every two years, a complex complaints process, and no freedom of information legislation, and you have a challenging media environment.

This is probably not surprising given the country’s political history. What is interesting, is that the challenges these young reporters faced in their daily work were not unlike those faced by journalists at media groups in any Western country. They complained of interference by editors, stories changed to suit a political angle, junkets in exchange for favourable coverage, a lack of support to do investigative work, and compromising relationships between proprietors and politicians, among other issues.

Sound familiar? I know journalists at large daily newspapers in Australia and the UK that complain of similar things … regularly. And the recent Leveson Inquiry into the Culture, Practices and Ethics of the Press revealed the extent of relationships between politicians and the press and the influence of big business.

That’s not to say that the media environment is the same. In Australia and the UK, for instance, there are laws that support a free and fair press. There are strong traditions of investigative journalism and the notion of the fourth estate is fairly established. And there is a professionalism around journalism practice.

While these things do not guarantee a quality press, they do mean the media has the ability to pursue stories that serve the public interest and there is an expectation among audiences that good journalism will do just that. This helps give journalists legitimacy, and this is what is yet to emerge in the Maldives.

This list of resources was compiled for journalists in the Maldives. I spent two weeks in Male’ delivering workshops as part of Unesco’s International Programme for the Development of Communication. Read this post for a summary.

The links here are to a range of materials including multimedia and data stories, free tools, games and resources. They relate directly to the Maldives workshops, but anyone interested in producing news for new platforms will find them useful. I plan to update the list as I find more handy sites.

There is a related post on investigative journalism resources.

Multimedia narratives

Audio slideshow by the Bombay Flying Club. An excellent example of sound and still images: ?http://bombayfc.com/42/

Prison Valley, and interactive, non-linear web documentary about a US town that has a lot of prisons: ?http://prisonvalley.arte.tv/?lang=en

Data stories

Journalism in the Age of Data, In-depth video about how news organisations are using data in journalism — worth watching: http://datajournalism.stanford.edu/

Data Journalism Handbook (free as an ebook): http://datajournalismhandbook.org/1.0/en/

Afghanistan war logs: ?http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/datablog/interactive/2010/jul/26/ied-afghanistan-war-logs

Murders in New York: http://projects.nytimes.com/crime/homicides/map

NewsGames and platforms

Jane McGonigal TED talk — Gaming can make the world better?: http://www.ted.com/talks/jane_mcgonigal_gaming_can_make_a_better_world.html

Darfur is Dying: http://www.darfurisdying.com/

September 12: http://www.newsgaming.com/games/index12.htm

World Without Oil: http://www.worldwithoutoil.org/metavideo.htm

Wired: How the tablet will change the world: http://www.wired.com/magazine/2010/03/ff_tablet_levy

Free interactive tools

PollDaddy for polls: http://polldaddy.com/

Umapper for maps: http://www.umapper.com/

Google Maps: https://maps.google.com/

Timeline tool using Google Docs: http://timeline.verite.co/#

Many Eyes for data visualisation: http://www-958.ibm.com/software/data/cognos/manyeyes/

Vuvox for multimedia, interactive slideshows: http://www.vuvox.com/

Social media, blogging, citizen journalism, entrepreneurship

Adam Westbrook’s ebook: Next Generation Journalist ?http://adamwestbrook.wordpress.com/2010/05/20/next-generation-journalist-on-sale-now/

List of citizen journalism sites by country: ?http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=List_of_citizen_journalism_websites

Tweeting tips for journalists: ?http://blog.twitter.com/2012/09/best-practices-for-journalists.html?m=1\

Blogging basics: ?http://mindymcadams.com/tojou/2012/blogging-basics-for-journalism-students/

Nieman Reports: Truth in the age of social media: ?http://www.nieman.harvard.edu/reports/issue/100072/Summer-2012.aspx

The Guardian open journalism project: ?http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/open-journalism

Guardian Three Little Pigs video: ?http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/video/2012/feb/29/open-journalism-three-little-pigs-advert

This list of resources was compiled for journalists in the Maldives. I spent two weeks in Male’ delivering workshops as part of Unesco’s International Programme for the Development of Communication. Read this post for a summary.

The links here are to a range of materials including investigative stories, search tools, interviews and organisations and relate directly to the Maldives workshops. However, anyone interested in investigative journalism will find them useful and I plan to update the list as I find more handy sites.

There is a related post on digital journalism resources.

Tools

The Investigative Dashboard is a great resource. The site: http://www.investigativedashboard.org/ is a “is a space for investigators to find resources, share information, and learn new tricks of the trade”.  There’s also a Research Desk where journalists can ask for help in find information on companies or people.

Another handy section is Tools. Here you’ll find a list of links to software — some free, some paid — that can be used for data extraction, visualisation and analysis. Very cool!

Search

Google Guide to advanced search techniques: www.googleguide.com/pdf/googleguide.pdf

Academic research, scientific papers: http://scholar.google.com.au/

Creative Commons: http://search.creativecommons.org/

Organisations and reports

Bureau for Investigative Journalism: http://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/

Centre for Investigative Journalism training material for journalists: http://www.tcij.org/resources

Reporters Sans Frontiers: http://en.rsf.org/

International Federation of Journalists: http://www.ifj.org/en/splash

Video and reports from the UK House of Lords select committee on the future of investigative journalism: http://www.parliament.uk/business/committees/committees-a-z/lords-select/communications-committee/news/a-secure-future-for-investigative-journalism—lords-report/

Deadly Choices at Memorial

Pultizer-prize winning investigative story by Sherry Fink. This is the story of deaths at the Memorial Hospital in New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina. It was researched over two years for the US investigative journalism outfit ProPublica. It’s a great read.

Full story: http://www.propublica.org/article/the-deadly-choices-at-memorial-826
Interview with Fink: http://mpegmedia.abc.net.au/rn/podcast/2010/04/lnl_20100426_2205.mp3
OR: http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/latenightlive/pulitzer-prize-winner-sheri-fink/3041536

Paxman vs Howard

The landmark interview between the BBC’s Jeremy Paxman and conservative politician Michael Howard. It is considered one of the toughest political interviews and contributed to Howard losing his bid to lead the Tory party in Britain and the success of the Labour party under Tony Blair.

Full interview: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/newsnight/7740130.stm
Short version: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uwlsd8RAoqI
Behind the scenes: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/newsnight/8473536.stm

Post updated December 13, 2012

Amalia Buckerfield, Sean Rintel and myself were on the negative team for UQ’s inagural Great Debate. The topic was “We are better off with citizen journalists”. We put in a solid effort, complete with props and a dance by Sean, but lost out to Carl Smith, John Cook and Liam Pomfret on the affirmative team.

Here is my transcript – I was second speaker on the negative:

Do you know why citizens would like to be journalists? It’s cool. I’m cool.

Going out every day, talking to people, sometimes powerful people. You find out things before everyone else, you hear great stories and you see your name in lights every day, well in print at least.

It’s creative too, you taking pictures, write stories, shoot video. On top of that, there’s no customer service or sales targets. In the newsroom it is basically a requirement to be sceptical, irreverent, disrespectful and persistent. Oh, and it’s ok to swear.

Man, journalism is cool, no wonder all the citizens what to be one too.

But this grossly misrepresents what it means to be a journalist and to produce journalism.

Journalism, as a profession, is not that glamorous, it doesn’t pay all that well, the hours are long and unsociable and you spend a lot of time talking to nutters and filtering truth from fantasy. Fantasy that is created when information is shared in such large volumes that the truth is difficult to find. Nova Spivack calls it the ‘sharepocalypse’.

Journalism isn’t into random sharing. It’s into verification, and built into journalism practice is a process by which information is checked, questioned and verified. At the Financial Times, for instance, it was not uncommon for a reporter’s story to be discussed, read or edited, by at least seven sets of eyes before it came anywhere near the printed page.

You see, when a journalist produces a story, often under tight deadlines, there is no guarantee it will get a run, or, if it does, it might not be in the form they created.

A newsroom is basically a production line in which reporters file to editors who revise, probe question, challenge the copy. When they’re done, they file it to other editors, who do the same. Sometimes there’s lawyers involved. Then it goes back to desk editors who pass it on to the subs.

This grumble of people are the last line in the quality control process, and once your story has got through various editors, it needs to get past various levels of sub-editing.

Compare that with the CNN’s iReport, one of the more prominent citizen journalism sites, whose unedited, unfiltered stories generated by citizens brought us the untrue report of Steve Jobs’ rush to hospital. Or Twitter, which has told us of the untimely deaths of Geoff Golblum, Barack Obama and Tiger Woods. And, in the quest to be first with the news, there were all those fake images of devastation in Haiti following the earthquake.

This is not journalism. This is rumour. Rumours that require the journalistic process to validate them as news.

It is worth noting that citizen journalism sites such as Demotix or OhMyNews, have incorporated journalistic processes and have created layers of editing and verification.

Now, the other side has argued that citizens democratise news, and has pointed out various life-saving tweets on Twitter. And yes, some big news stories have first come to light on social media. But that is not journalism. Journalist have always sourced stories from citizens. The go out and talk to people, build relationships with sources and eventually, the sources bring stories to them. It is an inherent part of journalistic practice.

All social media is doing is speeding up that process and making it increasingly muddy. All this information still needs to be confirmed, stood up and validated. And that is what the journalistic process does.

We don’t oppose citizen journalists. We just don’t think we are better off with them.

Ccitizen media produced without processes, without verification, just creates noise, that creates distraction and distrust. And it puts a increased responsibility on journalist to do due dilligence on all information they come across.

However, there is another, more fundamental, aspect to this debate. And it goes to the essence of what journalism is.

As Carl has pointed out, journalism is often regarded as the Fourth Estate. A profession that performs a function in society that is as important as government, the courts and the church. Journalists sit between the citizens and those exercise power over them. It moderates between the two and acts as a check and balance on power.

But journalism is not part of the citizenry. Its professional and ethical framework separates it from the general public. Without this it cannot be independent.

Now, I am a professional journalist. I am a member of three journalistic associations: the Media Entertainment and Arts Alliance in Australia, the National Union of Journalists in the UK and the International Federation of Journalists. Here are my press credentials.

Being affiliated with these organisations means adhering to their codes of conduct and ethics.

They all vary in expression, but essentially, all the codes emphasise defending the public interest, the importance of truth and valid sourcing, journalistic independence and the protection of sources.

It is this last one that most vividly demonstrates the difference between journalists and citizens.

Principle six in my IFJ code states: ‘The journalist shall observe professional secrecy regarding the source of information obtained in confidence’.

This means, that if someone tells you something that is in the public interest but at considerable risk to themselves, and the journalist agrees not to reveal their source, then the journalist must never tell anyone where the information came form.

Easy yes?

So, the story you write leads to court proceedings. You are called as a witness and asked to reveal the source of your information. You refuse. You are threatened with contempt of court. You still refuse. You are found in contempt. You go to jail.

It happens: In Australia in the past 20 years nine journalists have been convicted or jailed for not revealing their sources: Tony Barrass of the Sunday Times in Western Australia; Gerard Budd of the Courier-Mail; Deborah Cornwall of the Sydney Morning Herald; Chris Nicholls of the ABC; Belinda Tasker, Anne Lampe and Kate Askey from the AAP and SMH; and Michael Harvey and Gerard McManus of the Herald Sun.

Now, do the citizens still want to be journalists?

 

Is it possible to take elements of empirical research, combine it with journalistic practice, and create more robust journalism? Here are some thoughts.

A little training in research methodologies might have gone a long way at the News of the World offices. Had the journalists and their editors had a methodological foundation on which to hack phones they might have been able to stand up and say, “yes, we hacked phones and this is why”. Instead, some of those involved are in prison, others have been charged and Rebekah Brooks, former chief executive of News International and the former editor of the News of the World, denies knowledge of extensive phone hacking under her command and will defend charges in court.

The saga highlights two points about how journalists do their jobs: how much editors should know about the methods being used to gather evidence, and whether those methods are justified. If these questions can’t be answered, then how can journalists defend their work?

The UK House of Lords has made this point. In its report on The future of investigative journalism, the Lords Select Committee on Communications emphasises the  importance of documenting the decision-making process and the value of an audit trail as part of good governance. The report recognises that there are times when journalists do break the law but it says that journalists and editors need to take responsibility for those decisions: As a matter of practice, “it is, therefore, incumbent upon them to rationalise and justify each decision to investigate, and to publish or not, on a case by case basis and to leave an appropriate audit trail”.

Which raises the issue of methodology. Research methodologies — broadly grouped under qualitative and quantitative — are processes for gathering and verifying data. Methodology is at the heart of academic research and explaining how research is carried out, how discoveries are made and providing enough detail for replication, particularly in hard scientific disciplines, is vital if knowledge is to be disseminated. In the humanities, methodology provides a means of gaining deep understandings about people and society.

Although journalists, like academics, research issues with the aim of informing and, we hope, bettering society, we rarely reveal the process. There are reasons for this — it’s boring to read, often doesn’t add to the narrative, we deal with messy evidence such as unnamed sources, off the record and sometimes focus on people who would prefer not to be part of any journalist’s research. And there is the issue of available time. Academic research often takes years to complete and sometimes just as long to work through the peer review process to publication. There simply isn’t that much time in journalism.

However, an understanding of research methodologies can benefit journalism*. Sharon Hartin Iorio has suggested that to survive in the current media environment ”journalists will need to link individuals’ personal interests and common concerns and the larger issues that touch people’s daily lives. For this work, journalists are going to need specific training beyond traditional reporting skills”.

She argues that qualitative research methods can be used to improve journalistic coverage by enabling journalists to:

• find newsworthy but overlooked or underreported concerns;
• Organising that information within broader contexts; and
• providing a conduit for people’s interaction along the way.

Methods, money and guns

Qualitative research methodologies exist on a continiuum ranging from observation to participation via a range of participant observation approaches. With observational methods the researcher does not make contact with the subjects and instead uses observation to collect data from artefacts and documents. Participant observation happens in the social world, and data is collected by observing, interviewing and interacting with people. And at the other end is participation, where the researcher is immersed in the environment and becomes one of the ‘tribe’.

In journalism practice this continiuum can be broken down into methods of interview, observation and artefact (eg document analysis). Computer-assisted reporting techniques would fall into the last category and Philip Meyer (considered the the grandfather of modern CAR) also believed journalists would benefit from training in methodologies. He championed understanding social science techniques with the view that it would help journnalists find, analyse and communicate information with precision.

Approaching journalistic work within a methodological framework is not always practical and for much daily reporting interview, observation and working with documents is sufficient. There is also the need for journalists to adapt their methods on the fly as stories evolve, so the academic approach to planning and executing research won’t necessarily work. But with more involved journalistic projects — investigative or long-running coverage — there could be benefits to adopting a methodological framework.

Take Gillian Tett’s work on the global financial crisis. Tett, unlike many practicing journalists, has a PhD in social anthropology so knows a thing or two about research methods. I don’t know whether she set out with a methodology in mind when she began looking at credit in 2003 (five years before the global financial crisis), but she has explained that by applying an understanding about how societies work to the world of banking, she was able to see the big picture.

Another example might be Sebastian Junger’s work for his book War. Junger, along with photographer Tim Hetherington, spent 15 months embedded with a US army platoon in the Korengal Valley, Afghanistan. On the methods continuum this is at the participation end and could probably considered ethnographic, except that he is careful not to become one of the ‘tribe’. He maintains his role as journalist, documenting the lives of the people he is with.

The result is a narrative that is rich with thick description about life in combat. But it is not a story that examines the views of the Afghans or whether the soldiers should be there in the first place. It’s a method suited to the narrative.

Phones

So what about phone hacking? Whether is was right or wrong is up to Leveson and the courts, but it could be argued that journalism that is in the public interest and is practiced with a sound methodological basis is easier to defend. No method is madness.

* The argument that journalism can learn from established research methodologies is one paradigm in the discussion around journalism practice and research. The other, detailed in Sarah Niblok’s paper from earlier this year, is largely topic of debate within university journalism schools although is closely aligned.

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Here is the full text of my letter to The Australian in response to Cameron Stewart’s piece, Media’s Great Divide.

To the Editor,

Cameron Stewart makes some valid points about journalism education and practice in “Media’s Great Divide”, but the article, and its criticism of academics, highlight a failing of journalistic practice: that it does not reflect on itself.

Media companies might now be under less commercial and political pressure if journalists were more like other professionals and engaged with research into their craft. Unlike lawyers, doctors or designers, the working hack keeps his head down and does what he thinks the editor wants. This has helped disconnect academic and journalistic practice to the point where many editors hold journalism academics in contempt.

I agree with Stewart that not all is well in the journalism academy.

As a former journalist who now teaches journalism, I find myself in the very situation he describes: teaching practical skills but having to simultaneously pursue the higher degree that will qualify me for the job I already do.

But Stewart’s focus on the field of journalism studies – as opposed to journalism practice – and the failure of universities to teach traditional journalism skills is short-sighted.

Research – by academics – shows that newsrooms have failed to exploit the potential of new technologies because “legacy” media thinking dominates. Meanwhile, those preparing tomorrow’s journalists for the workplace are having to imagine jobs that don’t yet exist.

For journalism to emerge from this period of scrutiny in a stronger position will require some genuine reflection on what it does. Engaging with the work already being done by academics might be a good place to start.

But of course that would ruin the story. As any first-year journalism student will tell you, the most important news value is “conflict”.

Skye Doherty

The House of Lords report on The Future of Investigative Journalism is probably one of the few real insights into the business of reporting and publishing journalism that is in the public interest.

Via submissions and evidence from editors, producers, company directors and reporters, the report builds a strong picture of what investigative journalists do, the risks they run, how decisions are made about how whether to break the law, much it costs to produce in depth journalism and the challenges of new media.

Here’s a few insights:

Alan Rusbridger, editor of the Guardian, explains how he decides whether breaking the law is in the public interest:

The first bar is to consider the harm of what is going to be done. So if you are going to do things—all journalism has an impact—what is the harm going to be that results from what you do? The second is: what is the good that is going to result from what you do; what is the public good that you are trying to achieve? The third is proportionality. Are the methods that you are thinking of using proportional to the aims that you are trying to achieve, and could they be achieved in another way? The fourth is a kind of audit trail. It says, ‘We need proper authority’ and that was obviously apparently missing within the News of the World, that nobody knew anything about it. You have to show some evidence that people have thought about it and discussed it and that people have approved it. The fifth is to do with fishing expeditions. You cannot justify a mass trawl of the information in the hope that something will turn up

Roger Bolton, former editor of the BBC’s Panorama, said it cost “somewhere in the region of £80,00-£120,000″ to produce an hour-long investigative program and that while this was cheap compared with other forms of TV programmes, it was expensive compared to other types of news.

Jeremy Hunt MP, secretary of state for culture, Olympics, media and sport, noted the opportunities for investigative journalism as a result of greater access to government data:

If we unleash citizen journalists on vast swathes of government data we are opening up big, big opportunities both to hold Government to account and also to learn things about our society that we never knew before. It is a very, very big opportunity

Richard Caseby, managing editor of The Sun said that the use of apps to access content was increasing rapidly and that there was potential to charge more for advertising:

What is fantastic about the business models of newspapers or magazines on the iPad is that you can probably charge about eight or nine times as much for an advertisement on the iPad as you can on a website

The report is the result of the inquiry by the Lords’ Select Committee on Communications between 2010 and 2012. It covers the economic environment in which investigative journalism operates; legal and regulatory issues; the significance of media ownership; funding models; convergence; and training opportunities. In it, investigative journalism is defined as:

reporting which requires a significant investment, in terms of resource and/or funding; which runs a high risk of potential litigation; and which— most importantly—uncovers issues which are in the public interest but which were not hitherto on the public agenda.

The Lords recognise the importance of investigative journalism, saying “it is a vital constituent of the UK’s system of democratic governance and accountability”, but note it is under threat from economic and technological change. They also says the practice has suffered from inconsistencies in the law and a lack of investment and organisational support. Their recommendations and conclusions run to more than five pages.

One of the report’s themes is the importance of documenting the decision-making process and the value of an audit trail as part of good governance. The report recognises that there are times when journalists do break the law but it says that journalists and editors need to take responsibility for those decisions. As a matter of practice, then, ” it is, therefore, incumbent upon them to rationalise and justify each decision to investigate, and to publish or not, on a case by case basis and to leave an appropriate audit trail”.

The report’s recommendations are:

• We recommend that media organisations implement a two-stage internal management process whereby they track and formally record their decisions first to investigate and secondly to publish a story if such decisions rely on the public interest.
• We believe regulators should, in turn, take such an audit trail into account when evaluating the responsibility or otherwise with which investigative journalism has been undertaken.
• The regulators should also take into account the actions taken ex post facto in considering what penalty is appropriate for any particular breach.

This has implications for journalism practice. There are no formal processes for practicing journalism, nor any overriding methodologies. Instead there is a range of journalistic principles, practices and ethical guidelines, which individual journalists are usually free to interpret and implement these as they see fit. This is part of journalism’s charm and can be a strength of the practice. However, it also means, as the Lords imply, that when things go awry, there is no justification for action.

I think there are also implications of this beyond the day-to-day practice of journalism. Journalism is generally not very good at looking at itself. It doesn’t, as a profession (if that is what it is) reflect on what it does, or how to do it better. As a result, there is no process for the practice of journalism to develop itself and contribute to the broader benefit of society, beyond the immediate impact of individual stories.

This is a shortcoming of the practice and the results can be seen in the current inquiries into the press in the UK but also in the broader challenge to the business model. Journalism is struggling right now and perhaps a bit of reflection might give is a stronger foundation from which to meet the challenges.

This argument needs work, but I think there is a strong argument for greater reflection on practice.