Undercurrent

When I studied political science, the four quadrant chart was used so much that it became always laughable, you made jokes with them. But it’s a simple, powerful, ockhamesque tool, something Josh Young demonstrates in a blog post about different kinds of structuring information in journalism (via Jay Rosen’s flying seminar). Taking Josh Marshall and Talking Points Memo as a case study in how a subject can be treated broadly in shallow “containers”, Young to me comes up with an excellent description on how the blog can be used to produce high quality journalism — efficiently:

Each dispatch isn’t comprehensive. They catch the reader up on past reporting with a few links to previous posts. Or they start off with a link or two to others’ posts or articles, promising to pick up the issue where they left off. Then they take a deep look at a small set of questions, teasing out contradictions, and end up with a set of conclusions or a new, more pointed set of questions for the next post. The point is that the containers are small-shallow in the sense that they’re often only exposing a few dots at a time and not necessarily always trying to connect them all up as they go along. These posts don’t feign omniscience the way some, though certainly not all, traditional journalistic pieces do; they admit doubt and highlight confusion. The goal is to isolate facts, issues, and relationships, not always synthesize them. But a critical characteristic of the form is that Josh Marshall’s dispatches on fired USAs compose a series. Each post extends previous ones or adds more to the same canvas. They’re all part of some bigger picture; they’re cumulative. And that is why, taken together, they amount to journalism that’s broad in subject.

Bonus link: A profile of Josh Marshall contains this gem on blog-based journalism’s business model:

Begin as a tiny operation. Manage to gain a following. As the audience grows, ask readers for donations and accept advertising. As the advertising and donations grow, add reporters and features. Repeat as often as needed.

This is something I would like to copy. Maybe here.

Some links and things noted during sessions at a media conference in Bergen today:

The Guardian’s editor Alan Rusbridger aimed to dissolve the dichotomy between old and new school journalism. The investigative reporter, the roving reporter are still needed, but get crucial assistance from the knowledgeable & networked public. Examples: The coverage of complex tax evasion strategies by big corporations, where experts helped interpret and leak essential information. And the Ian Tomlinson story during the G20 summit protests was a good example of crowdsourcing. The tech department got help creating a list of IT mergers & acquisitions. Rusbridger also outed himself as a Twitter fan, showing one of The Guardian’s own reporters as an ultra-twitterer with over 11.000 followers. Each reporter should build their own community, he said. Finally he mentioned impressive traffic growth for the Comment is free subsite.

Espen Andersen from the NRK talked about computer-assisted journalism. He has created a tutorial (in Norwegian) on how to use screenscraping software (here RoboMaker). There is some movement and growing interest around this type of innovative journalism in Norway now.

Several people are microblogging from Bergen. Watch for #nmd.