The challenge of thinking ecologically

New planet of journalisms, new ecology

Saying that journalism is caught in a whirlwind of changes is not just a worn metaphor. It is both the experience of most of the professionals and one of the major sources of paper submissions to academic journals. Browsing the tables of contents of Journalism would confirm it. The nature of these changes is well known. They combine five dimensions. The first one is economic: with audiences more and more reluctant to pay for the news and advertising budgets syphoned by the giants of Internet, funding news production becomes a nightmare. A famous quote of Gramsci states that ‘The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born’. Many among the ‘old’ media are losing money, while few of the news websites have become profitable. The second change is the direct result of the previous one: with less money and often a growing pressure for profitability, newsrooms have been downsized, budgets for reporting have been curtailed and precarity is growing among journalists. The third change comes from the blurring of the distinction between ‘journalists’ as professionals producing trustworthy news and the kaleidoscope of new producers. Without using the notion of ‘border’, even a ‘frontier’ between Public Relations Officers, journalists and activists, hidden business interests is uneasy to map. The fourth logic can be linked to changes in the power balance between sources and newsrooms. The Public Relation Officer/journalist ratio is increasing. Even in democratic countries, the anti-terrorist laws and the weight of protected secrets – especially business ones – are threatening investigative journalism. One should finally consider the changes in audiences’ behaviours. Journalists’ trustworthiness is considered with a growing scepticism. A new and hybrid news literacy is emerging. It combines the monitoring of hyper condensed news headlines on smartphones or screens in publics spaces and the frequentation of long-form or specialised news media. It reveals strange menus mixing traditional press and fake-news sites.

The comparison may sound strange, but when teaching to future journalists, I often evoke scenes of ‘Star Wars’, those staging one of the main characters entering in a city or a bar on a remote planet, suddenly meeting an unbelievable mix of creatures of all sizes, features and morphologies. Such is the magnitude of changes in the actors and environment of journalism: we are yet on another planet! Which are the mysterious creatures restructuring the ecology of news production? Some are ‘old’ (read: more than 20 something): the thousands of bloggers, of small websites dedicated to a hobby or passion, supplying more than once serious news and data. Some may have an old existence but have taken an unprecedented importance: magazines such as ‘The New-Yorker’ have had fact checkers since long ago, but the rise of fact checking as a speciality present in more and more newsrooms expresses a deep change (Graves, 2018). New profiles of journalists are also those of specialists of computing (Hammond, 2017), bringing their contribution to the use of ‘big data’ or those of journalists reinventing the position of the free-lance, publishing in books more than on-line or in the press, like Malet (2015) reporting undercover the working conditions in the warehouses of Amazon France. Who had heard, 10 years ago of ‘web-cleaners’ (Smyrnaios, 2017), erasing embarrassing data or policing chat-rooms? If lies and biases are old companions of news production, the mushrooming of sites dedicated to fake news – but also the reconversion of lobbyists’ strategies into the production of fake ‘civil society’ movements campaigning to reframe major issues of environment or health (Walker, 2014) – are more deep changes that continues. The growing importance of foundations of groups organising fundraising to support projects of news production are more than the revival of ‘alternative’ media. This new ecology is also made of websites monitoring the quality of news production like Brill’s content yesterday or the French ACRIMED (Action Critique Médias).

When media, news producers, regulation tools and financial logics are moving in the same time, a structural change is developing, modifying the architecture of all interdependencies. Used by Anderson (2016) in his monography of the ‘metropolitan journalism’ in Philadelphia, the notion of ‘ecology of news production’ combines the emphasis on structural dimensions, the vision of changing dynamics of interdependencies between institutions, professions and mobilised groups and the attention to the emergence of new ‘breeds’ of actors and unforeseen interactions.

Transforming threats into opportunities

The best way of managing this new ecology can be summarised in two keywords: networks and regulations.

Bruno Latour’s theory of ‘actor-network’ has its origins in his concept of traduction/translation. Studying the biologist Pasteur, Latour (1984) asks: why, among many talented scientists of the 19th century, did Pasteur become so famous? Because he was a genius of ‘translation’ and was able to gain funding from Napoleon III, explaining him how research on animal diseases will improve French agricultural exportations. He enlisted the brewers, promising safer and healthier yeast for producing beer. While a multifaceted ‘hygienist’ movement was burgeoning in France, Pasteur organised connections with most of its actors, ‘translating’ their issues into diagnoses (dangerous germs) and solutions (vaccine and prophylaxis). What could mean ‘translating’ in the new ecology of news production? Newsrooms and journalists should cooperate to transform potential foes into friends to build innovative networks of partnerships. It means hosting or connecting on a blogroll specialised websites or witty bloggers. A blog created by an expatriate and dealing with Iranian politics and society, Tehran Bureau appeared trustworthy enough to allow partnerships with the U.S. Public Broadcasting Service, later to to be hosted on the Guardian website. Translating means experimenting the perilous art of mobilising good academics who would neither lecture the audiences, neither transform themselves into prophets or journalists. Journalism also has a logical connection with whistle-blowers and insiders able to unveil the dark practices of companies or public institutions. The experience of the ‘Guardian’ mobilising thousands of web-users to put together, from their mobile phone snapshots, the causes of the death of Ian Tomlinson (police beating and accident?) during the 2009 G20 summit in London is worth mentioning (Rusbriger, 2009). The flow of messages available on social networks supplies both a channel and a data mine for such co-operations. Translating mutually the journalist’s ambitions and the audiences’ expectations will also mean multiplying niche productions from ‘Slow journalisms’ to specialised websites and compact news summaries. Translation has also expressions to invent on the economic side of journalism. It could mean transforming part of the press and media into non-profit activities, combining the support of foundations, public funding and crowdfunding (Cagé, 2015; Downie and Schudson, 2009). Translation could also enlist audiences, collecting contributions to fund a long-haul reporting on tax shelters or health hazards. The challenge and the thrill of practising journalism today are precisely that in a fluid and complex ecology, the opportunities of ‘translation’, the networks of partnerships are open to endless variations and innovations.

This new ecology may suggest the metaphors of the jungle or the anarchy. But has not the sociology or organisations developed the concept of ‘organised anarchies’? The new ecology of news production will never be organised with the cold symmetries of a garden ‘à la française’ or according to an organisational chart. But the concept of safety could suggest three directions for regulation. Organising safety means first that the freedom of investigation and reporting must be protected by laws. It means free access to the largest possible amount of public data and documents. Its means limiting the growing list of ‘secrets’ of private and public interests receiving more legal protection that the basic democratic rule of accountability. It must include symmetry: those who are harassing journalists and whistle-blowers, abusing of laws to hide dark behaviours should face harsh sentences, proportioned to their wealth. The American ‘anti-SLAPP’ (Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation) regulations are suggesting an interesting direction to struggle against law suits whose main aim is to chill public debate. In the second dimension, organising safety means regulating the economic system of news production. Two basic landmarks could inspire reflection and action. Billionaires should not be the only actors to own press and media, neither own a too big market share. As the Swedish case shows, injecting public money to support trustworthy news production could be a democratic policy that will not reinvent the clones of the soviet ‘Pravda’. The third dimension of safety regulation should target news-quality. Selling poisoned food or lead paint is now prohibited. How regulating tainted news? Focusing only on repression may open a slippery process. Teaching news literacy and critical reading is a first track (Kovak and Rosenstiel, 2010). Multiplying the institutions of fact checking and information labelling is another track, as the use of shaming. Communities of journalism are awarding Pulitzer or Albert Londres prizes. Why not ‘Pinocchio awards’ for the biggest liars, ‘His master’s Voice’ trophy for websites which are the masks of lobbies?

These policies and actions will not magically change power relations which have economic and social roots. They can restore two much needed illusios: for journalists the belief that they can make sense of the world and serve democracy and for audiences the assurance that there are trustworthy news.