'Don't just create content -- drive social change'
Journalist says news media need a new value proposition to stay relevant
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This is the story of Jazmín Acuña, an innovative journalist from Paraguay. She has proposed that journalism take a new direction to stay relevant and revitalize “our public life, the foundation of democracies.”
Her call to action or manifesto grows out of her six-month research fellowship at the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism and her own experience. (Her full report is here. Also in Spanish. )
A veteran journalist and innovator
Acuña co-founded Paraguay’s award-winning digital news platform, El Surtidor, after years of experience in news media and civil society groups.
The publication reaches young audiences with visual journalism about climate change, gender issues, and abuses of power. (Disclosure: She is also a board member of SembraMedia.org, where I serve as treasurer.)
I first saw her work about seven years ago when I was judging a journalism competition. I was impressed with El Surtidor’s data journalism, especially the data visualizations.
Less focus on content
In an article on the Reuters website (also in Spanish), Acuña laid out the ways journalism has to change. She begins:
‘The existential crisis journalism faces today demands an answer far more substantial than the one most commonly given: that we deserve to exist because what we do is inherently valuable.’
Newsrooms spend too much time focusing on producing “content” and figuring out ways to distribute it on various platforms.
Meanwhile, multiple studies show audiences find the news they receive to be irrelevant to the problems they face in their daily lives. News avoidance is a growing trend. (See also Reuters’ own study of changing audience preferences.)
More focus on creating change
Acuña proposes that newsrooms focus on Change-Centric Journalism. It pursues “impact that improves the lives of people through care-based reporting and purposeful engagement with them.”
And Acuña’s talent for creating eloquent visuals is evident in this graphic, which also can be viewed at this link:
A comparative analysis of two models of journalism
The long game: change
Acuña’s model advocates playing the long game. It involves a news organization getting engaged with the community, not just reporting on it. (Jesse Hardman’s the Listening Post Collective in the U.S., which I profiled here, follows a similar model.)
If a news organization finds injustice, corruption, or cruelty in community’s institutions, it must not let up. Editors and reporters sometimes get bored with covering a topic, but the mission of public service does not allow us to get bored with injustice or corruption.
Digital audiences, someone said, are “Lazy, Selfish, and Ruthless.” The tech platforms’ algorithms demand something new to create anxiety, fear, hatred, and titilation, page views, and advertising revenue.
I would agree with Acuña’s observation that the best newsrooms have “a deep commitment to and active involvement in seeing individuals, communities, and societies thrive.”
Previously:
Thank you, Jim, for the latest article about Jazmin, a young writer from Paraguay.
Her writing seems to come from a source of inter-relational communication focused on the concerns of the masses of people rather that its leaders and focused on exposing the problems they face with a practical aim of correcting those problems.
The digital world of today, like the Big Mac of yesterday, has made us to fat, lazy, and complacent to see the written word not only an effective means of tackling this problem, but even an obstacle to understanding the problem. Who is going to look at a starving child or homeless workers, or psychotic war veterans when a super model or the offer of an exotic island vacation is beckoning the digital reader from the border of its screens?
A selfish island unto themselves are they and a sinking morass of "others", of "suckers" are they.
Ms Jazmin's writings remind me, in style at least, of Latin American writer that I read in my youth, Ivan Illich (Tools of Conviviality).
Take care and keep up the good work.
Sincerely, Tim Corrigan