In the Age of Noise, Content is King
Social media has grown into an uncontrollable giant. Its subtle yet penetrating impact is changing the way we think. From influencing elections to triggering political discourse; propaganda tool to common man’s land; Global phenomenon to hyper-local normality, it keeps transforming itself and its users. But it has created space for everyone to do what they know best. For journalists, that means creating credible platforms through newsworthy coverages.
The Digital age has given space to independent journalists who never fit too well with the ideologies, corporate-interests and generalised content of mainstream journalism (Print or broadcast). With minimum investment and platforms with built-in proactive users, the only thing needed was Quality Content.
The Straight Line: Journalism with no strings attached
Without any corporate backing, when my team and I started The Straight Line, we focused on hyper-local issues of the various ethnic communities living in Jammu and Kashmir, India. Our focus was on not only promoting the heritage, culture and linguistic richness of these communities but also addressing developmental issues faced by people in the peripheries.
With great support from the people, we grew into a big family of 580k people on Facebook and 172k people on YouTube within a span of two years. Sustaining a pandemic, long high-speed internet-ban was hard but doing so without having a financial backer was even harder. From paying out of our pockets to sustaining through donations, contributions from well-wishers and active supporters, though a short-term solution, wasn’t sustainable in the long-term. The content was valuable; our community, supportive. But would that be enough?
Go Global or HyperLocal?
Boundaries have been rendered irrelevant. But a digital journalistic venture still needs to consider whether to focus on a niche and serve the hyper-local interests of a community or do what mainstream media is doing by generalising and covering only “major events” and “trends” since it attracts the eye of advertisers who target audience with higher spending-capacity.
When I started my journey towards building a better revenue-model for my venture The Straight Line, I thought I about expanding from a niche venture to a broader platform that encompasses all. But working on it as a fellow in entrepreneurial journalism at the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at CUNY, I became increasingly aware of how niche ventures have a better chance at sustainability from community-support, memberships and grants.
I pondered upon the question of whether journalism needs to be what your community expects from you or what is financially viable. Through this program, I met (virtually) many interesting, passionate journalists who were also figuring things out while contributing immensely valuable information. They helped me think of various out-of-the-box ideas for exploring things I would not have otherwise considered.
Grassroot journalism will always survive
Sensationalism, algorithm-driven content and viewership madness is a reality in the Digital world. Content creators (including those not in the journalism field) tap into generic ideas with a broad-base audience to win over social media algorithms. But for journalists, doing the same would mean shaping itself in the same mould as mainstream media.
With The Straight Line, the idea that manifested into a reality was to travel to far-off villages, talk to people in their regional languages, highlight less-talked-about issues and do the Bijli, Paani, Sadak journalism (focusing on basic necessities of the rural population). India has over 269 million users on Facebook. And we saw a real-life example of the connect people had with social media platforms even in rural areas when we were recognised by people even in villages that we had never visited.
Coronavirus Pandemic put a stop to travels and it greatly impacted our reach, showing a clear correlation between the grassroot-level work we did as compared to the city-centric approach of media organisations.
Internet restrictions = New media censorship
Internet shutdown in Conflict Zones is the new normal. But what does it mean for digital media organisations? Winding up all operations till the internet is restored or continuing to do journalism at the same pace with minimum result. I found the answer while going through the most troublesome period after starting my venture.
Within 9 months of starting The Straight Line, the internet was shut down in the entire state of Jammu and Kashmir. 17 months later, as I write this now, high-speed mobile internet remains restricted. It is a big hurdle for digital ventures to survive through such long internet shutdowns. Government-imposed restrictions have always been a challenge for journalists but because digital media is a recent phenomenon, it remained unregulated and thus free from such curtailments. However, internet shutdowns (hindering internet access for all) is turning out to be a new form of media censorship.
Unless there is self-regulation by Digital media organisations through local, national and international level self-regulatory bodies, such restrictions will continue to be an impediment in the growth of new media.
Judgement Metrics
What I learnt from this program was that viewership, follower-metrics are not always the most accurate to judge the quality of work you are doing. With sponsored posts, boosting options and other means of getting a target audience to engage with a social media page, it is difficult to tell the difference between a popular media organisation and a good media organisation.
Credibility, authenticity, quality and community-connect are the factors that showcase whether your project is worth investing the money, energy and time that you’re putting into it. With us at The Straight Line, these metrics could be judged by the number of people who were willing to financially help the venture sustain during tough times for no reason other than the quality content we produced.
Our credibility became evident when we were the only Digital Media Portal who interviewed the head of the Union Territory (the Lt Governor of J&K). Authenticity, we measured by the fact that various national-level fact-checking organisations contacted us when they wanted to verify a news report or wanted to find out the truth behind a viral video concerned with J&K.
Be Memorable
If you’re memorable in the times when there is umbrage of social media sites and pages, content creators and journalists, then you’re doing something right. It helps if you’re remembered positively instead of controversies.
