News in the age of digital

This nice piece by Kellie Riordan on Radio National's Future Tense News in the age of digital disruption - December 2014 had some great points here are my favourite:

The flattening of information hierarchy – i.e. every page is the front page

For The New York Times, the most significant editorial challenge has been the so-called flattening out of web content. A traditional newspaper provides the reader a roadmap of sorts. According to standards editor Philip Corbett, ‘The paper has almost a geography to it that makes it clear what sort of story you are reading. But if you’re coming in from a link … we have to be conscious of that’.

I hope that more executives and content authors develop an understanding of the web context. Unlike a newspaper or book which is linear the web with its links has many inward paths. That is why it is important to ensure you content can stand on its own.

On fact checking

At Quartz, the role of fact-checking is shifting from journalists to the audience. ‘We don’t have full-time fact checkers which is something that The Economist does have and other places still have,’ says global news editor Gideon Lichfield. ‘Our attitude to that is we try to encourage accuracy by having a very clear policy on corrections that is visible. So if something has to be corrected we make it prominent. We make our facts reliable by showing where they are coming from. We try to encourage on social media and through the annotations on our site ... to get people to correct us if we get things wrong and try to be transparent about those corrections if they’ve happened,’ he says.

The change to fact checking is caused by the 'end of done'. As described artfully by David Weinberger in his great book 'Too Big to Know: Rethinking Knowledge Now That the Facts Aren't the Facts, Experts Are Everywhere, and the Smartest Person in the Room Is the Room' (2014). Print publications offered a hard edge for knowledge, but now you can co-write, edit, and allow commentary on your digital writing. This is a natural feature in the digital environment and will become an increasing challenge. Look at how code is being written on GIT. The code is open, other can fork a section and add features, comment etc.

Increased blurring of news and opinion

...Martin Belam agrees that blurring news with opinion is what digital audiences look for. ‘I think you grow audience[s] by being approachable and friendly and interesting. And by making content that people want to share, not by hiving out news and opinion,’ says Belam.

I have to agree with this, but then I think opinion has always been part of news delivery. Increasingly I am finding satrical news more informative and entertaining.

But we want expert opinions

... The point of these specialists is they know more than us. If they know more than us, I want to hear that stuff,’ she says.