Destination Digital

"[The article] is not dead.   I did not kill it."   The words of new media prophesier Jeff Jarvis in a Media Guardian article investigating the future, ironically enough, of the printed article.   This defensive stance has become a trademark of Jarvis' musings about mainstream media.

Following a now familiar tack, journalism lecturer Jarvis pokes a digital stick at traditional media outlets.   He suggests that their structures are inherently outmoded and on the brink of collapse and foretells of a brave new world diametrically opposed to the linear one which they have inhabited for far too long.   When he gets the occasional brickbat in response, his usual schtick is to feign shock (hurt, even), before conceding how unsettling it must be for those being forced out of their old media comfort blankets - but reasserting that it is a fate which inevitably befall them whether they embrace it or not.   Is that salt I sense being gleefully rubbed into an open wound?   Probably.

In his analysis of the article as the base unit of print journalism, Jarvis questions whether this is sustainable or even desirable in the near future.   In adopting a "digital first" way of thinking, he argues, articles should be viewed as luxuries or mere by-products of a new media process.   The partially constructed immediacy of the internet should take precedence.   The article - and, by extension, its broadcast equivalent, the package - would no longer be the gold standard.

For a man so keen to promote the bottom-up wonders of the web, Jarvis is curiously quick to dictate how journalism should look in the future.   In his view of a world with fewer articles, he returns to a theme which runs through much of his new-media analysis - abundance.   More is, well, more, apparently.

"Digital is freeing...infinite," opines Jarvis.   For those with infinite time to explore these infinite possibilities, that may be true.   For the rest of the real world, the wholesale dismantling of traditional journalistic structures would leave chaos in its wake.   The benefits that might flow from a greater stream of information would surely be wiped out by the difficulty in navigating a meaningful path through the unmoderated verbiage.

Then comes the vague notion of the role journalists themselves will play in this new world order.   And here, Jarvis wheels out his disturbingly amorphous vision of news organisations as "less of a producer, more an open platform for the public to share what it knows."   In other words, professional journalists - with the contacts, access and training that affords them - are to be relegated almost to bystander status and are supposed to revel in the sight of others doing the job for them.   Of course, some might do it better - but many will not.

Whatever Jarvis might want to see jettisoned and whatever I would like see to preserved do not really count for much in the end.   "Digital first" might already be coming down the track, though there is no guarantee that it will reach its final destination.

It's "digital only" which is a more worrying prospect.

Trusting Twitter

Amongst the many things spoken and written in the on-going furore about privacy injunctions, there have been some unlikely glimmers of hope for the future of the 'traditional' media outlets which are bound by them.   

The fact that Twitter makes a mockery of such reporting restrictions should be an open goal for the new media evangelists who take any opportunity to imply that the microblogging site is rendering print and broadcast media equally obsolete.   Yet there has been a twist to that particular narrative.

The oft overlooked issue of credibility in relation to 'news' emerging from social networking sites is finally being acknowledged, bringing some much needed balance to this related debate.   Max Mosley, Max Clifford and Director of the Press Complaints Commission, Stephen Able, might seem strange bedfellows in any context - but they have all noted the greater weight attached to publication in traditional media.   And little wonder.    

The perceived freedom to publish and (maybe not) be damned raises questions about the provenance of any information revealed.   After all, some tweets incorrectly identified certain individuals as having taken out injunctions.   So what's the marker of credibility in the Twittersphere?   Traction?   It surely follows that the most trusted sources on Twitter are those individuals who are already affiliated to established newsgathering outlets - and are willing to put their name to a story and stand by it.

Mosley and Clifford (speaking to BBC Newsnight and BBC Radio Merseyside, respectively) both admitted as much, dismissing Twitter almost as an irrelevance when it comes to allegations from anonymous individuals.    The PCC's Stephen Abel goes even further, stating "You may ignore a story on Twitter.   It only really matters when it is published on a trusted site."

Interestingly, it seems many people not only ignored, but were completely bypassed, by much of the Twitter-gossip of recent months.   In a recent edition of BBC2's Frank Skinner's Opinionated, recorded in mid-April, several weeks after the injunction speculation had begun to swirl, Chris Addison asked the audience if they were aware of the actor and footballer at the centre of the storm.   Not a single person in the audience knew the (possible) identities of those involved.   Admittedly, Skinner's target audience isn't as young as it was during his 1990s pomp, but it's fair to say they come from a media-savvy generation.   Yet they had neither sought nor happened across the information that was available to them via Twitter.

Of course, issues of credibility matter slightly less when it comes to the superficial froth of celebrity gossip (not wishing to diminish the impact it could have on the wrongly accused).   However, when it comes to hard news, credibility counts.   And that's where the role of the journalist as assessor and arbiter comes into its own - no matter how deeply unfashionable that may be in the digital age.

Just before any like-minded flag-wavers for the "hierarchy of news" get too carried away, though, the Liverpool Wavertree MP, Luciana Berger, tried to rain our parade.   Speaking to ITV Granada's regional political programme, Party People, she commented that she's aware of many people "who now get their news solely from Twitter."   Now that's a thought that should really send a chill down the spine of journalists - more so than any superinjunction.