Melbourne Writers Festival: Journalism Conference

MELBOURNE WRITERS FESTIVAL: ABC Managing Director, Mark Scott  

New News 2010 and YouCommNews
New Media in the Digital Age
Recruiters Speak
Key Note Address: ABC Managing Director Mark Scott

Thursday morning kicked off with a tune. At the Wheeler Centre, Hark, a cheerful foursome a Capella group were singing the news to a clearly more campus crowd of journalism students, academics and interested professional parties.

New News was a two-day conference on the ‘Future of Journalism’ being held as part of the Melbourne Writers Festival. It’s the brainchild of the Public Interest Journalism Foundation (PIJF) part of the Institute for Social Research at Swinburne University.

The aim of the conference was to provide an optimistic view of journalism – going forward. ‘It’s going to be a conference with a difference,’ the website proclaimed ‘ – not another gloom and doom fest in which aging journalists bemoan change.’ No, it was a ‘what the -’ fest where the old and new worlds of journalism met up to talk about what on earth will happen next.

Margaret Simons, Convenor of PIJF in the opening remarks talked about the Foundation’s YouCommNews project. This is an audience-driven journalism commissioning project.

What does that mean? It’s free-for-all freelancing really. Ideas for stories are pitched on their website, they’re costed and the auctioned. If you want to see a story written you make a donation. If the money is raised a registered journalism is commissioned to write it.

It’s an interesting idea navigating a middle ground to projects that have been tried or are happening overseas. Using a pool of journalists for instance rather than crowd-sourced contributors, as Wired trialled in Assignment Zero (see Powazek.com) a few years back, gives some assurance of quality and experience. It closes opportunities however, for ‘ordinary’ writers to get involved, unlike say Jay Rosen’s newassignment.net or AOL Seed (see link about writing for Seed here ). Money will be the issue I suspect. Unlike Propublica.org in the US we don’t have the same philanthropic culture and audience for funding independent investigative journalism.

It was odd that at no time during the day did I hear much discussion of these overseas experiences, either as successes or failures, lessons learnt or trends. In fact, cutting-edge geek factor did seem to be missing.

***

Margaret Simon’s then introduced Dr Julianne Schultz, respected author and editor, ABC board member and part of PIJF to talk about New News. Who would have thought, Schultz said, that the headlines would be about new paradigms, or that talk on the subject would be coming from Bob Catter.

In the wake of the ambiguous result last Saturday, discussions of electoral reform have been raised but what the media should be doing differently hasn’t had much traction. This despite fingers being pointed at the media for the paucity of the election campaign, Schultz said.

It was clear listening to her that this election has shocked the media. The people formerly known as the audience have hit traditional media like a tsunami with their blogging, twittering, comments and cut through just as much as senior journalists. It’s tough when your audience becomes your competition.

The campaign highlighted how journalists on ‘the bus’ were turned into ‘quote harvesters’, and how the best questions came from members of the public in open forums, not the fourth estate.

The role of journalists Schultz suggested, may become curatorial, adding value to an information-rich world. It will be about public ‘sense-making’ across multiple platforms. The same skills journalists have always had, great writing and story-telling insight and analysis will still be important. Hopefully?

It’s not enough to just report what the political machine says. Journalists must use all the new tools available to engage with audiences and learn what they want asked. It’s up to us, Schultz said, to reinvent the way we convey the political debate.

I could almost feel the Journalism 101 curriculum being re-written around me, essay topics being composed.

I have to say of the Q&A after Schultz spoke, that I’ve not heard at any other session at the MWF such long-winded, sanctimonious questions. It was dispiriting to be coming from a room of potential ‘sense-makers’.

Sigh, a minor gripe, onwards and upwards.

***

News Media in the Digital Age

Now, for a few more ideas. On this panel were an economist, a marketing strategist and a researcher: Nicholas Gruen (Government 2.0 Taskforce), Annie Baxter (Corporate Communication and Public Affairs Manger for Google Australia) and Julian Thomas (World Internet Project, Swinburne University of Technology) with Margaret Simons as chair.

The context for all this talk of the challenges of digital news comes back to Australia’s phenomenal uptake of news via the internet. We far outstrip the rest of the world, although access issues put rural areas at a considerable disadvantage. Julian Thomas thinks this shows there’s been something lacking in our media.

People don’t wait till the 6.00 or 7.00 news, they pick at it 24/7, and they don’t just read ‘a’ paper. What they’ve seen at Google, Annie Baxter said, is news consumption driven down to a story level. Rather than reading a whole paper or magazine, people discuss and share specific stories across a range of sites. Sharing over social networks is as important to distribution as search engines. And we’ve seen that the individual story at a complete experience level is very sharable, she said.

That’s an incredible challenge for commercial news organisations. How do they cut through? How do they make money? Are trusted mastheads running their brands down online to make the ‘click-through’ business model pay?

Content is a mix of the quick and the long, and organisations are trying to work out how to allocate resources to cover these modes. The important trend now Annie Baxter said is increasing audience engagement and the time people spend on a site. The internet has all the fun jobs covered, the blogosphere for op-eds for instance Nicholas Gruen suggested. Investigative journalism is different and it needs special direct funding arrangements.

We’re not so far down the line that trusted brands don’t have impact. Annie Baxter said traffic spikes dramatically to trusted sources when big news happens, such as when Rudd was deposed in favour of Gillard.

So where are we heading? Baxter gave a scenario, five years into the future, where she’s on the train home reading the news on her portable communication device.

Her news is personalised, things she’s following, a few new suggestions. It’s fast and colourful and she’s reading a mixture of free, subscription and content she’s paid just a few cents for. Advertising that appears is tailored to her interests. She gets off the train and sees a commotion down the street. She can point her phone-device in that direction and news being gathered from that location, tweets, citizen journalists whatever, will be gathered and sent to her to explain what’s going on.

It seems great for us. Virtual and ‘real’ world are seamless. We can connect with what interests us as we go about our day but not miss important things as they happen. It’s like a party world – everyone chatting in small groups amongst themselves, until someone drops a glass or a respected speaker stands up at a microphone to make an important announcements.

Who gets to hold the mic is the big question.

***

Our Future? Recruiters Speak started half way through the previous session, so I missed quite a chunk, which was a shame.

Unsurprising a lot of journalism students had packed the meeting room upstairs at the Wheeler Centre to hear Colin McKinnon (The Age), Nick Richardson (Leader Community Newspapers and Tom Cowie (Graduate, Crickey and ‘Tom Wants A Job’ blogger). Bronwyn Clune (PIJ) acted as the chair.

As I came in, talk was on what happens when you get googled by a potential employer. It’s not a new issue but it’s still perceived as a problem. I have my doubts about this though, people are getting used to knowing people in many different ways these days.

You can’t censor yourself too much, it’s all about being part of the conversation. Keeping a blog shows discipline and commitment, verbal fitness and can be an indicator of the quality of your writing. It would be foolish to think, however, that newspaper recruiters are trawling the net looking for ‘You’. They have enough applicants already.

Colin McKinnon (who I quickly came to think of as Jean-Luc Picard) made an interest point on the traps young journalism have to negotiate in the digital world. While it is important to have a profile when you’re trying to get a job, to be noticed, once you’re in an organization it becomes distracting. In an organization, you’re learning the ropes, and you need to have some circumspection, you’re playing on a team.

Personal branding comes back to the fore as journalists become more senior, and once again ‘branding’ is important, but as an asset to the organization based on career experience.

This is not the case at places like Crickey, Tom said, where you’re following or brand is relied on to bring people to the website. You are adding value to yourself and your potential online employers by having a following. Which also makes sense in a story-driven environment.

It was interesting to here the recruiters say they don’t care where you’ve studied journalism and in many cases, even whether you have a journalism degree. It’s the quality of the applicant, what experience and dedication they’ve shown and how they ‘fit’ to the current needs of the employer that matter. The big companies have their own training programmes anyway, which provide specialisation and feedback.

When they do take on interns and commit to training them, they want to know they’re going to stick around, not head off overseas. But more importantly they want to know they can do the job, have the stamina and can contribute to the news room in a useful way from day one.

All the panellists seemed to agree that News Rooms are changing and that the ‘oldies’ rely on young interns who have grown up with new technology and communication forms. But that doesn’t mean interns can dictate terms, just because it’s less hierarchical doesn’t mean its equal.

Getting into a job as a journalist with one of the big papers, isn’t for the easily discouraged. The Age took on three interns last year from 550 applications. News took on six. Two of the three applicants to the Age came from regional newspapers while the third was freelancing while doing a Masters. It was much the same story from Nick Richardson. He said one interns they took on, had been working in Echuca, commuting back to Mulgrave at weekends. One trainee applied four times before he was taken on, McKinnon said. ‘In the end we just had to give him a job.’

So it turns out that getting a job in journalism is the same as everywhere else –the onus is on you to train yourself, do the job voluntarily, get noticed and perhaps you’ll attain the privilege of being employed. It’s the same for all writers and artists, and for goodness sake even ushers. As one of the festival volunteers told me she was at the festival to gain experience in the hope of getting a paid usher job.

Having been listening to the session below however, I wondered about ‘sense makers’ again and how that will change what recruiters look for. Finding journalists with perspective, intellect and a capacity to communicate systemic complexity, sure, they’re everywhere.

***

On Thursday evening, ABC Managing Director, Mark Scott gave the Conference’s Keynote Address: the Quest for Truth: Quality Journalism and a 21st Century ABC.

This was a chance for Mark Scott to talk up the goals kicked by the ABC over the election campaign, to counter the criticisms and make some tentative suggestions about what might come of it all.

It was a unique mood, new leaders, mixed emotions and loyalties, polls in flux. But the campaign gave us new insights.

‘Outsiders became insiders,’ Scott said. Modern campaigns have always been managed, as he said, like The Truman Show. ‘He’s on a bike. She’s on a train. He’s running with kids. She’s eating a cake..” But this time we all saw what the journalists have always seen.

While the journalists on the bus were frustrated however, senior journalists were breaking stories. He noted Chris Uhlmann, Lenore Taylor, Laurie Oakes and Phillip Adams. Flagship programs at the ABC like RN’s Background Briefing ran stories on rural Australia and the broadband network. Four Corners, and Kerry O’Brien were places to find ‘the detailed stuff’. Huge audiences flocked to Gruen Nation, and the Chaser’s Yes We Canberra to watch the deconstruction of the political process.

Into this the ABC launched their 24-hour news channel to audiences far larger than expected, providing a public alternative to the pay TV news services.

It was also the first election to face the full force of the twitterverse, the power of blogs, online commentary and instant web-updates. These were watched and considered by every mainstream media editor, he said.

The ABC’s online coverage was more comprehensive than every before. The format provided space to run long and comprehensive stories, to provide thorough local and national analysis, such as Anthony Green’s electorate profiling.

The ABC identified he said, that much of the dynamic, day to day political news was crowding out reporting of policy initiatives in some news bulletins. ‘We adjusted our strategy as we listened to critics, our audiences.’ Sometimes, it was hard to ‘find the signal through the noise,’ however.

Some criticisms he said he understood. ‘We would all have liked more detailed policy engagement,’ he said. ‘You can only deal with what you have.’

What has he learned from this campaign? From the way the media handled it?
- ‘Live matters.’ It’s simple but it’s true. The ABC’s Q&A had over 35,000 tweets in an hour. People were glued to the live forums.
- Stunts work: Mark Latham bursting on to the scene Scott described as a pseudo-event worthy millions in publicity for Channel Nine. But the air it was given Scott said was a low point.
- Experience and expertise are valued: Scott said audiences can tell the difference between news and showbiz and overwhelming they watched the ABC on election night.

In the second part of Mark Scott’s speech he addressed his concern that experiments in the media of paywalls cuts important voices from the debate. It slashes your potential audience and it diminishes the potential following of journalists. If your model means that ‘your best content is hidden away, rather than spread widely around, you have removed yourself from the conversation- at a time when the media is all about the conversation.’

The power of the Murdoch papers was frighteningly shown, as Scott spoke of how the ABC had started organising another town hall meeting in Brisbane. Although the campaign directors were happy, in the end what ‘The Courier Mail’ would do if candidates didn’t show to their sponsored event was to ‘chilling to contemplate’. Scott said a totally independent panel should be introduced to decide on events, venues, panels and hosts long before the next election is called.

In finishing, Scott spoke of the recommendations made to the ABC recently by Jay Rosen of NYU. The first was to provide more background, detail and context for audiences on complex issues. Which was what Dr Julianne Schultz had spoken over at the Conference that morning. The second was to consult widely with audience to formulate what national issues are at play in an election campaign long before it is called. ‘It would not be the ABC’s agenda, it would be an agenda framed by the audiences we engage with – and the voters who fund us.’

As the session went into questions, we were got an up-close and personal showing of how hard listening to your audience can be. Many of the questions were pointed, about balance, quality, the axing of programmes and a long tirade from a documentary maker whose film the ABC decided they could not broadcast. Whatever the merits of her argument were it was an inappropriately forum.

He did say at the beginning that when question time came, we could ‘tear’ into him. And they did. At least, he was respectful and polite.

New News ran from Thursday 2 September – Friday 3 September
As part of the Melbourne Writers Festival
For further information about the Public Interest Journalism Foundation go to www.pijf.com.au

The Full Transcript of Mark Scott’s speech is available at-The Drum