Turning broadcasting into an open source system
Happs Co-Founder David Neuman on how mainstream media lost its way, reinventing broadcasting, and why Justin Bieber (!) is a role model
A Q&A with David A. Neuman, the Co-Founder and Chief Content Officer of Happs, a place for independent broadcast journalism.
The mainstream media’s been taking a lot of heat lately. Is it deserved?
The four biggest stories of the 21st century (in the US) were the Iraq war, the election of Donald Trump, Covid-19, and Black Lives Matter and racial injustice. The mainstream media either was caught by surprise, missed, or failed to insightfully report all four of those.
The media acted as naive cheerleaders during the Iraq war, and it turned out to be an epic foreign policy fiasco, possibly the worst in US history.
No one in the media, generally speaking, foresaw Donald Trump getting elected, and in fact, many assured us it couldn’t happen. And if the polls were not technically incorrect, the news media certainly missed late moves in critical swing states.
Covid-19 was missed until it was a massive crisis — everyone was busy covering impeachment.
And Black Lives Matter was a reaction to conditions that had been incubating for decades, with barely any news media recognition. Even BLM, per se, had been around since 2011, but what they had to say was ignored.
Basically, what the media didn’t miss, it got totally wrong. All those smart people in the Establishment and the big media companies completely misjudged the Iraq war and the election of Donald Trump. It just shows that an elitism crept in, and the media became “The Establishment” somewhere along the way.
So I look at Happs as one antidote to that. How does Happs fix this? Well, for one thing, we stop it from being a closed circle of people who all think the same way and are all feeding each other the same “conventional wisdom.” We open it up and say everybody can participate.
Happs is empowering everybody in the world to help get those stories told, so they don’t take us all by surprise, so we’re better informed, we’re communicating with each other, and we’re more aware of what’s happening.
“An elitism crept in and the media became the establishment somewhere along the way.”
But doesn’t Happs “label” journalists in a way that endorses people from the media establishment?
Well that would be the trap, wouldn’t it? If we were to create a new platform and it just reinforces the old hierarchy.
We will take pains not to do that. We will provide access on our platform to anyone who wants to create truthful journalism, and abide by a system of rules that will be carefully enforced and reinforced, to ensure our platform is a grace, and not a disgrace, to journalism.
Great journalism on the platform will be given special recognition, and so will noteworthy journalists of all kind — establishment, non establishment, student, citizen.
We will certainly not hold it against someone if they have credentials and experience in the journalism establishment. We are making the tent bigger, not smaller. And I think it’s telling that someone with a sterling bio like David Schuster(who’s worked for outlets like MSNBC and CNN) is doing what he’s doing on Happs. It’s an indication that a well-known national broadcasting figure sees the potential of the platform.
We will also give special status to journalists on our platform generally, relative to activists, citizen journalists, everyday citizens, and others who may want to contribute. But the needle we’re trying to thread when we give special status to journalists is to not fall into the trap that all we’re doing is reinforcing the hierarchy of The Establishment.
We don’t want to reinforce the same old voices and the same old places, all trained at the same old schools and all working for the same old publications. Then we’re just reinforcing the model that got it wrong. The media has become The Establishment rather than pointing fingers at it. Somewhere along the way the media and The Establishment became the same people. That’s really a problem.
That’s part of the reason, in my opinion, that the system fell down with Donald Trump. It was a variation of that famous story about Pauline Kael, the legendary New York Times film critic, who said in 1972 that she didn’t know anyone who voted for Nixon. He of course won 49 states!
What Happs does is make broadcast journalism an open source system. We’re democratizing the whole broadcast news space by allowing anybody to participate if they play by a set of accepted rules; namely, that they’ll tell the truth, won’t mislead, and will be transparent about biases. We’re empowering everyone and everyone includes people outside of The Establishment. If you think there’s a story that’s not getting told, show us: you plug yourself into the system.
We are also radically inclusive. If you share our values for good journalism, a reverence for the truth, and a respect for others who may see things differently than you, come and play with us. You don’t have to have been to the Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism, prestigious as that is. You don’t have to be somebody who is a member of any elite. You can just be a concerned citizen and create broadcast news.
How will this open source system tell stories differently?
Imagine a world where Happs was around for 9/11, the Iraq war, or the 2016 election of Donald Trump. If we would have been giving these cameras to people in Iowa, Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and telling them, “You tell us, you cover this election. You tell us what people are talking about. You give us the pulse of the street.” I think we would’ve had a very different perspective on the results. It’s like the old joke in the Marx Brothers movie, “Who are you going to believe me, or your own eyes?”
Black Lives Matter is a fabulous example. This shit’s been going on for decades. Who’s been covering it though? Instead, cable news has been covering political debates and whatever the story of the minute is that The Establishment says we shall pay attention to and missing this huge ongoing story that’s right in front of all of us.
Why do you think now is the right time for this broadcast journalism evolution?
We have this old model that was based on the scarcity of technology. Video cameras were extremely expensive and rare and you needed a news crew that came from an office somewhere in a van. People still cling to the old system out of habit. We have a news gathering system that’s based on an entirely old-fashioned model.
If you were designing the model today, why wouldn’t you just say let’s network three and a half billion smartphones and let them be the eyes and ears of what’s happening in the world. We can have real time coverage of major incidents that are happening in the world. Because of technology, the time is ripe for that now.
How will Happs benefit the journalists who use it?
The economic model of journalism is collapsing and we’ve got to do something to support it. Happs offers a solution. Our belief is if you move people emotionally or you get people involved and they connect with your journalism, they’ll be willing to get out their checkbooks for that, the same way they’re willing to fund a cause they like on Kickstarter or GoFundMe. Happs connects journalists (and other experts) with financial support from viewers.
Also, we can take your livestream and give you tools and features that allow you to craft a highly professional looking newscast with graphics, maps, lower thirds, and cool stuff that makes it look good, and professional. It’s similar to the way that TikTok and Snapchat enabled users to do advanced editing and delightful graphics, in a simple way. And we can help you get that seen by a wider audience with our multi-casting feature, that allows you to stream simultaneously to most or all of your social media platforms.
Fake news is on everyone’s minds these days. What is Happs going to do to prevent fake news?
We have strong community guidelines. If you don’t want to adhere by the rules of the club, we don’t want you in the club, and, in fact, we’ll kick you out of the club. We want reverence for facts, the truth, different points of view, and the thoughtful exchange of information, including asking questions and listening to people who have different points of view than your own. Empathy goes in both directions and we want to promulgate and reinforce an ethos of empathy.
I’m also a big fan of Wikipedia, where all the editors are operating from a playbook. They all buy into this ethos. “This is how we write these stories. This is how we avoid bias. These are our rules about sourcing things.” Then they let everybody in the community flag anything that’s a violation of that. We’re implementing a system that borrows from that.
Also, keep in mind it’s much harder to fake something live. Try to fake a protest with a hundred thousand people in the center of the square of Minsk. Good luck with that. If you think of all the great fakes in media, they’re not live. I’d argue a lot of the fake news stories we hear about never would have spread if they were broadcast live.
“It’s much harder to fake something live. Try to fake a protest with a hundred thousand people in the center of the square of Minsk. Good luck with that.”
There’s been a lot of debate in newsrooms about whether or not journalists should appear unbiased. Where does Happs stand on that?
There was something very noble about what old paradigm journalists were trying to do. They were trying to say, “I’m a neutral journalist. I don’t take a point of view. “Just the facts ma’am.” But if you understand communications, you understand the intrinsic bullshit of that, which is the first thing that a journalist does is decide what story they are going to cover.
So what story are you going to cover? Are you going to cover the story of drug lords committing violent crime and terrorizing people in cities and countries? Or are you going to do a story about the black underclass getting abused by police? Which story are you choosing to do? What percentage of time are you going to give each story? Those are the biases that people weren’t self-aware of in the old paradigm. We all have bias. It was a self-serving myth to journalism and journalists that it was ever otherwise.
Everybody has biases. Let’s just start being transparent about what they are and let’s start letting you be upfront about it so that your work can be evaluated in that context.
Happs won’t have gatekeepers like there are in the mainstream media. What impact will that have?
Happs is a platform that’s creating a giant long tail of live news. It’s giving the world a much richer opportunity to be well informed and to bypass the filters of big media companies that are spinning news in certain ways. While Happs is a platform for experienced journalists who seek to connect directly with followers, it also opens up the arena to anyone who wants to participate. Those participants in turn generate more material for journalists to work with. More reports coming from more people and more places. More grist for the mill of journalism.
And Happs also opens up who has access to that process. Instead of the news being like the entertainment business, where you have to know somebody and it’s so hard to break in and get a job. We’re totally democratic. If you’ve got energy, time, and passion, we’re going to facilitate your advancement.
Justin Bieber was not created by anyone. He was created by Justin Bieber. He uploaded his music on YouTube and it found an audience. We’re doing the same thing for journalism. You just start reporting and we’ve set up a platform where you can grow to the extent of your ability and talent.
We’re democratizing the whole process. If there’s a story that’s not being covered and should be covered, we’re empowering you to do exactly that. Fix it.
“Happs is a platform that’s creating a giant long tail of live news.”
Anybody can document. Your ability to document is not a skill that needs 20 years of development. The primary value you bring to a breaking news event is your proximity to it. And you can turn on your camera and point.
It’s just ludicrous that we are still dependent on news crews to cover things when it’s often much more dynamic, relevant, and compelling to just be in the moment with someone who’s there.
David A. Neuman is the Co-Founder and Chief Content Officer of Happs. His career spans television, film, and digital media, where among other roles, he was Chief Programming Officer for a major news network (CNN), President of a major TV studio (Walt Disney and Touchstone Television), a TV and film producer (20th Century Fox), and founding exec/head of content at three landmark startups: Channel One, Digital Entertainment Network, and Current TV.
This interview was condensed and edited.
