Journalism is about so much more than “the news”

One of the biggest issues that people call out with “capital J” Journalism (the industry of reporting) is a spot on assessment of today’s media climate — in it’s harder than ever to know who to trust, and what reporting is based on verifiable fact, vs. a twisted narrative someone wants to forward because of a corporate/political/narcissistic agenda.

Fundamentally, the Fourth Estate (“Journalism”) has only one, extremely important purpose: Bringing to light the truth, based on verifiable evidence. One very specific way that journalists do that, and the one most people think of when they think of journalism, is just telling you what’s going on. What did Trump do today? What’s happening with that civil war in the Sudan? What’s the deal with this performance “downgrade” on that Xbox game we love? We call it “the News”

There’s plenty of great (and not great) examples of “The News” journalism. I’m a huge fan (and paying subscriber) of the New York Times, and consider them the most hard-hitting journalistic force in America, so I’m convinced that all you need to do is scroll through the homepage of the NYT to see great reporting on “what’s happening today.” (some stuff from a couple weeks ago when I pulled these links):

• The New York Times, Kavanaugh Vote on Friday Will Be a Showdown in the Senate
• The New York Times, Cuomo’s $13 Billion Solution to the Mess That Is J.F.K. Airport
• The New York Times, Private Businesses Built Modern China. Now the Government Is Pushing Back

But, because The News is the most superficial function of journalism, it’s also the easiest to subvert. The entire “fake news” debacle is the people arguing about whether something did or didn’t happen. Arguing about whether facts are indeed facts or not. Pretty asinine.

But ultimately what journalists “do” is, and what makes people like me think the industry is so important, goes far beyond “The News”. Here’s a list of the other important things that Journalism does that, if you let it, will make you a better citizen, neighbor, and human, with some of my favorite example:

#1 — Help you understand the world around you (the “why,” not just the “what”)

• This interactive analysis from NYT of how popular music today paints the picture of where music is going
• This NYT piece using a modern school of psychology (behavioral economics) to talk about an everyday issue like bad habits
• This long-form study reported on in The Atlantic that mixes quantitative and qualitative data on how smartphones are changing an entire generation
• This example from Entertainment Weekly of how entertainment analysis lets us see shows we love (Mad Men) in new way
• Another great example from io9 for The Dark Knight
• This piece (and really the entire Stratechery blog) where someone is connected the dots between seemingly disparate tech companies like Google, Netflix, and Airbnb to help you understand how digital affects the economy

#2 — Make data more accessible, by turning numbers into stories

• One of the many examples from NYT’s The Upshot where they take an extremely simple data point (how many of your Facebook friends live in the same county) and turn it into an interactive feature about how we live as a society (degree of “connectedness”)
• A very simple example from Axios of the hard work that “data journalists” are doing, using simple visualizations to explain macro stories
• A shit ton of other examples of really immersive data visualizations for journalism from Matthew Daniels, the master
• The Guardian giving macro data on homelessness a “face” by combining it with deep human feature work, make the stats real (also extremely dope visualizations)
• The NYT taking a big data set (jobs increases/decreases in different sectors) and showing how every different cut of the data tells a different story (more dope viz)
• FiveThirtyEight using sports data to change our understanding of how that sport is played
• Google using what food we search for to visualize how our culinary interests change as a culture over time”

#3 — Make it easier to empathize with people who aren’t like you

• An incredibly rich mix of video, data, and interviews from the NYT that help you literally see a region affected by climate change from their perspective
• A dual portrait of two shift workers from the NYT that shows how the experience of being a shift-worker has changed in a more unequal economy
• The NYT deliberately collecting six extremely divided takes on America to give you feel for why people take the red/blue stance that they do
• An incredible long-form piece from The Atlantic voice on the effects mass incarceration has on black families, from actual black families affected by the crisis
• A really simple video ethnography from Aeon Magazine of a day in the life of Mexican-American workers in Chicago, that helps you feel what they live through by having those kinds of jobs
• All of “Humans of New York” is some of the most emotional, empathy driving shit on the Internet, but this post in particular hit me hard and made me think about “criminals” in a different way

#4 — Exposing you to new parts of the world

• This extremely epic YouTube video series from Vox about borders:
• This Vice feature on this super low-key amateur programmer who’s trying to recode on his own this amazing niche MMO
• The NYT’s entry-level foray into the incredibly rich world of photo-journalism (pictures that tell you about the world)
• A specific favorite photo-essay from the NYT’s Lens:
• Very cool multi-media scrolling piece from the NYT’s Interactive team on the melting ice in Antarctica
• Another good example from the desert in China

#5 — Create a space for important POVs that contribute to a broader conversation (even when they’re partisan)

• Very heavy memorial piece about MLK by Jesse Jackson Jr., written in the NYT
• Vox does some really cool extended interviews with cool people (admittedly more “Liberal”) — this one with Obama makes him seems so multi-dimensional to me, and I was a critic of many parts of his presidency