Global PR Blog Week 1.0

Jay Rosen: PR Needs to Stand for Real Transparency

Jay Rosen is chair of the New York University Department of Journalism and author of the Pressthink weblog. A press critic and writer whose primary focus is the media's role in a democracy, Rosen teaches courses in media criticism, cultural journalism, press ethics and the journalistic tradition, among other subjects. He was recently credentialed to cover the Democratic National Convention.

Since 1990, Professor Rosen has been a leading figure in the reform movement known as "public journalism," which calls on the press to take a more active role in strengthening citizenship, improving political debate and reviving public life.

I was thrilled when Professor Rosen graciously agreed to participate in an email interview for Global PR Blog Week on PR in the Age of Participatory Journalism since it is one of the major topics I blog about.

In the interview, Rosen shares several valuable insights for public relations professionals.

STEVE RUBEL: How would you define participatory journalism?

JAY ROSEN: Right now, by what people like Debbie Galant are doing-- hyperlocal journalism, weblog-style. ("NOW SERVING MONTCLAIR, GLEN RIDGE AND BLOOMFIELD.") But really there are hundreds more developments to illustrate. Ask someone like Len Witt of the Public Journalism Network (meeting in Toronto soon about participatory journalism): he's one guy tracking the story as citizens begin to participate in journalism. Or follow JD Lasica, who's not only on the story, but a driver of it with conference talks, articles, books, and a daily weblog-- ideas for use, as this approach is sometimes called. And what Jeff Jarvis is up to in advising a team of students at Northwestern, who created this, and at his Buzzmachine.

Is it more than just blogging? Yes... it's the spirit of participation, which moves people into doing things for themselves, into taking action of some kind, where before they were attentive but inert, or out of it completely, uninvolved. We have seen this force erupt many times in the modern world, this passion to participate.

There is every reason to suppose that it would come 'round in journalism. I mean, why not? Every journalist who's any good will tell you that being a reporter is fun. Plus, a lot of people are fascinated by the news, and what's wrong with it. There are smart people in every corner of this country, many without any professional standing or stake whatsoever--just citizens, right?--who are seriously frustrated by the failures and flaws they see in the American press.

When those people find that the tools for doing journalism, or some activity interpretative of it, are within reach, it's an ignition-- there's a spark. Is it all weblogs? No, participatory zeal is common everywhere, especially in domains of information.

Take participatory medicine. You don't have to work very hard to see that it's upon us now. People don't just depend on their doctor's prescription and "take" the drugs advised. They find out themselves, and the Internet lets them share and pool knowledge.

And so doctors, we know, are in a different position. A knowledge monopoly has collapsed, which is all part of the life cycle of media forms and their spin-off formations. You're a profession, a guild. You once had social possession of some knowledge zone. It was your zone. This became your source of authority. Then it became distributed. Can you adapt? Can your authority?

How many times has that happened in human history? Thousands. It would be shocking if it didn't happen in journalism. One can argue that it's starting again now. People are flipping things around, because they now have the tools to "do" more and more with media. Some are tools only the pros had before.

RUBEL: What excites you about participatory journalism?

ROSEN:It's democratic. I mean extremely so. There's always been a lot of talent in this country. Now it can be told.

RUBEL: What concerns you?

ROSEN: Everything that could go wrong. Everything that's wrong with the Internet. The problems and potential disasters in participatory media are the problems of having freedom.

RUBEL: Why is blogging not really journalism in your view?

ROSEN: Actually, that is not my view. It was something I wrote down, a phrase I employed in passing, or winding around to my view, which is that blogging doesn't have to be journalism to be good. Sometimes it is journalism, of a kind, which often depends on the daily output of the professional and commercial press, in the way that a second wave depends on the first. Sometimes it's just good information about a place-- and that's journalism.

Let's say, and we know it's possible, that a story can be "kept alive" because bloggers keep it from disappearing in the news tide. The Trent Lott Lesson. That's like a second action, a "holding" of the story up for inspection. It happens just after the first news wave and follow up stories are done. Many of the political blogs have this character: a second army pours over the dispatches and conclusions of the first, interpreting it.

But this is not the really new thing. The new thing is how, in the online space, bloggers knit the news together with their views and views arriving from elsewhere, and then manage to embed into the Web this second imprint, upon the items that originally struck us as news.

And so you have the first wave (also called a news cycle) and a second that embeds it further into the Web, with interpretations adding to a web of other notes and reactions. How is this possible? Because the bloggers know how to link, and quote, and entice you to look elsewhere, zap around. They're way ahead of the journalists on that. If people in the press would just understand that one fact they would grasp what weblogs are about, and why they're being talked about at all today as "journalism."

RUBEL: What about those who are empowered to blog by established media outlets, are they more like journalists than the rest of us?

ROSEN: Good question. I think these people--any journalist empowered to blog, as you well put it, by a mainstream news outlet--will be the ones in the best position to change journalism from inside the traditional firms. Will they? I have no idea. But if you are interested in the press, it pays to watch this one unfold.

I try never to make predictions. But I do place bets. If there's gonna be a carrier class for changed notions of what it means to be a professional journalist, within the body of the mainstream press, it will probably be local writers and reporters on metropolitan newspapers (or public radio stations or maybe weeklies) who learn to blog really well for their communities, which means digging into their communities, embedding themselves in the information flow-- and in public conversation.

Here I would compare a weblog to a community switching station. When professional journalists get the hang of that, they will become quite good at it. This form of publishing was made for people with journalistic skills. A growing number of people are realizing that.

When I say it "probably will" be them I only mean: I'd bet on them. "Those who are empowered to blog by established media outlets," in your phrase. (And if I were a young journalist on the way up, I would hunt down this assignment: to blog in a newsy way, day-to-day.) These people--young, old or in the prime of their careers--are inevitably going to bring radical ideas and questions to the table within newsrooms.

We'll have to watch what happens when bosses and peers meet up with this. How will they react? Of course it's already happened. Witness the live issue: Can reporters have their own blogs? Freedom of speech for journalists is a freedom of press issue for publishers and journalists.

If you separate for a moment the weblog authors, as they have emerged so far, from the weblog form and its online sphere, then it's clear that the blog software and the liveness of the Web connection it promotes are possible boons to any solid news franchise, and in particular to individual journalists-- reporters with a beat, columnists with an urge to prove themselves.

They can use the tool now called weblog to fine tune their informational "fit" with a live public of users that talks back--indeed, that writes back--and is thus able to locate stories, or find their significance. To have to deal with a writing readership is of inestimable value to a young journalist. And as Dan Gillmor always says: My audience knows more than me. A weblog teaches you that.

So much depends on the terms of empowerment for journalists who blog, and of course on the wit and talent of the professionals involved, plus the crash and thud of events. But I like what Dan Froomkin of the Washington Post said in OJR recently: the Internet demands voice. Liked it so much I've quoted it three times. And I admire what the Spokesman Review is up to. They're trying stuff, which they feel free to abandon. Often the best approach.

RUBEL: Do the majority of established journalists fear participatory media/blogging or do they embrace it?

ROSEN: The majority do not understand this new formation out there, so no, I would not say your typical journalist fears anything special, except more information pollution from unreliable, attention-seeking amateurs who blog. Nor has there been a general "embrace."

Rather, something else is going on, far more significant. Some journalists (numbers are not known) are reading blogs. Not all have the time, but many realize they can be worth the time once you develop a feel for what I call the "second wave" effect.

A little orchestra of interpreters instantly comes along and does something to journalism, plays back its significance, but first editing out all the noise. It's like a reply. Smart journalists are tuning into that because its an intelligent use of their work-- and a departure point, a place where criticism flashes. Sometimes what they are reading surpasses their work.

Ask these journalists about blogs and you get a totally different answer . It embraces a user's more intimate knowledge, and that's what counts.

This will all be talked through in Dan Gilmor's book, We, the Media. He is the one mainstream newspaper columnist who is totally in tune with both worlds. (Hype alert: I have blurbed his book and I am quoted in it.) Part of the reason Gillmor wrote We, the Media is to teach his profession to be more open. We'll see if it works. (See his note: Dear PR People.)

RUBEL: How are j-schools changing to equip students who are entering the journalism to handle these changes?

ROSEN: J-schools change even more slowly than the profession. However, students will change what J-schools are doing if the programs can attract the right bunch, and set them to work doing interesting journalistic things.

Cablenewser is a weblog written by Brian Stelter, an 18-year-old sophomore at Towson State University in Maryland. Right now, he might be the most effective journalist of his generation. Keith Olbermann might e-mail Cablenewser with views on things so he can talk to his own industry, a mini-public that "meets" at the weblog. (See "Olbermann Calls FOX The "Worst Winners TV's Ever Seen" Only on CableNewser...)

I'd hope J-schools would find that interesting. I do. But I'm confident that students will push this form forward, not only in weblogs but in web zines and specialized reports, or college newspapers on the Web. The question for my fellow deans, chairs and directors (worldwide) is: will the forward ones be journalism students?

We may be on the verge of an entrepreneurial "moment" in journalism, in which case the challenge to J-schools would be: can we nourish experimentation, entrepreneurship, team work in building something from scratch, or one-person operations in, say, the I.F. Stone (but also the Brian Stelter) tradition. That's not an approach journalism schools are accustomed to taking.

RUBEL: Does disintermediation threaten PR? How should the profession react to the changes in how consumers get news?

ROSEN: I think public relations should first understand that to the extent that its art is a form of "spin"--whether it's reasonable spin, accepted spin, good spin, bad spin, terrible spin--it is selling a service for which there is less and less value, and less mind is paid to it. Spin was possible in the era of few-to-many media, and a small number of gatekeepers who could be spun.

There are fewer who listen (or have to listen) and more who hear only dull propaganda, witless repetition, one of the many forms of mindlessness to which citizens are subjected. Spin is also comedy to Americans, and John Stewart speaks with authority on it. PR does not because it believes, on the whole, in some right to spin-- all exceptions cheerfully granted. Plus, there's what Doc Searls says to all the "pound the message home" pros, in any field: there is no demand for messages. Factor that in if you want a bright future in any media field.

Today many knowledge monopolies are breaking up, and this corresponds with what the British media scholar Anthony Smith once identified as a shift "in the locus of sovereignty over text," a shift toward the public. We could say "toward consumers," but what Smith meant is that more power has fallen into the hands of the people who were mere receivers before. They are more sovereign-- as consumers, yes. But also as producers of their own media. Pickers and choosers.

My advice to PR people is to help citizens become more so-- more sovereign over information goods. Spin is not a good. Neither is a brick wall, or a blatantly one-sided story that cleverly coheres because it leaves out every single inconvenient fact. Public relations, if it wants to do good, should stand for real transparency in organizations, and genuine interactivity with publics. Want an issue in corporate PR? Freedom of speech, freedom of opinion, freedom of interaction for company bloggers: how do we make it a practical reality?

RUBEL: Recently you told Bill Gates: "cure your blog of public relations, every hint and drop, or don't do it at all." What advice can you offer to PR pros who might be involved in helping their companies blog?

ROSEN: Well, blogs for an internal audience are one thing. I have no advice there. For the larger universe, I guess my advice would be: think of your bloggers as your organization's ombudsmen, except in multitude and over micro matters as well as macro. With what guarantee of independence? is an issue with newspaper ombudsmen. It would rise up here. PR might have ways of making freedom of speech possible, and its pros may learn how to highlight the benefits in this form of openness.

RUBEL: What other words of advice (if any) can you offer public relations pros who are coping with the changing media landscape?

Hmmm. One thing comes to mind, a kind of warning. PR could be to weblogs what spam is to email: death of a social advance, the ruination of a perfectly good public instrument. It's worthwhile for professionals to imagine how it might happen. And I know there are some who sense what a disaster that would be. I hope we hear from them during Global PR Blog Week.

RUBEL: Recently you wrote about Karen Ryan, a PR person who got into hot water for "posing" as a news reporter in a VNR. This incident indicates that PR people are under increasing ethical scrutiny. What do PR pros need to keep in mind as far as ethics is concerned as they navigate the new personal journalism waters?

ROSEN: Well, I always found the boy who cried wolf is a good place to begin. Karen Ryan called "reporter here!" when there was no reporter. The ethical problem with that is obvious. Keeping the logic (and moral) of that fable in mind is wise.

Author: Steve Rubel | Jul 12, 04 | Permalink | 8 comments
Category: @ Steve Rubel | Topic 1 PR and Participatory Journalism

 

 

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The Global PR Blog Week 1.0 is an online event that will engage PR, marketing and business bloggers from around the globe in a discussion about blogging and communications. The event is scheduled for July 12 - 16, 2004.

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