Creating the future of journalism
I keep a tradition on my own: Toward the end of each December, I write a lengthy piece reflecting on the year that will soon end. Usually, this reflection is not so much about counting what happened in my life or what I have done in the past year but rather it’s a deep conversation with myself.
In late December 2016, just a few weeks after I submitted my application to the John S. Knight Journalism Fellowships, I wrote down:
“This year was the first time I realized that it’s time for me to create something new. It’s time. Although in the past decade or so I was often seen as a role model of “creativity” in various systems or organizations … only I know that my “creations” were merely an extension of my predecessors. They are not true creations.
This year I have finally decided to pursue a thought I have had from seven years ago. I hope to realize it technologically and institutionally one day…My pessimism and judgement of the reality tells me that I will almost certainly fail or even become a tragic hero, but it is the uncertainty that excites and thrills me. Even if I fail, I will be the one who moves from zero to one. There will be many successors who will move from one to two, and two to ten. In this sense, I feel indefinite but optimistic.”
At the time, I had been reading “Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future,” by Peter Thiel, a Stanford alum and Silicon Valley venture capitalist, who is well known for co-founding PayPal and the CIA-backed big data startup Palantir, investing in Facebook and supporting then-presidential candidate Donald Trump.
Although I didn’t appreciate Thiel’s political leanings nor his hostility against the journalism community, I did like his articulation of the “future” in his book.
My long-held perceptions of the future of journalism
Thiel said that the future of progress can take one of two forms: Horizontal or Vertical. Horizontal progress means “copying things that work — going from 1 to n.” Vertical progress means “doing new things — going from 0 to 1…it requires doing something nobody else has ever done.” Thiel uses a spectrum to categorize countries’ perceptions of the future: An indefinite pessimist such as Europe “looks out onto a bleak future but has no idea what to do about it;” a definite pessimist such as China “believes the future can be known, and since it will be bleak, he must prepare for it;” a definite optimist such as the U.S. in the 1950s and 1960s “believes the future will be better than today and has a plan to make it happen;” and an indefinite optimist such as the present U.S. “believes the future will be better but doesn’t know how exactly, so he won’t make any specific plans.”
I find this framework of looking at the future very creative and useful to describe my long-held perceptions of the future of journalism: The future of journalism is indefinite; whether I can come up with a plan depends on forces larger than me.
The future of journalism in China
I do have every reason to feel indefinite and pessimistic about journalism, especially that in China. My country is lacking in the most basic of reporting privileges, with all sorts of constraints on the watchdog function. Journalists who do manage to scrutinize wrongdoings often have to face difficulties and risks that are many times higher than our colleagues in the West. The cost of doing investigative journalism in China is simply too high.
My feelings are reflected in a 2017 study on China’s investigative journalists conducted by Sun Yet-San University in southern China. The study is a follow-up of its initial research in 2011 that identified 334 investigative journalists across 74 regional and national news organizations in China. The list of investigative journalists was compiled through interviews with chief editors, established investigative journalists and their online chat groups. In 2017, the researchers found that the number of investigative journalists had plunged to only 175, a 48 percent decrease from 2011. Thirty news organizations of the 74 originally surveyed no longer had any investigative journalists at all. Moreover, more than a third of the respondents said they were not sure how much longer they would keep doing investigative journalism. The respondents also reported a significantly higher degree of press control from the government and less independence in their reporting from six years ago.
Their indefinite attitude reminds me of the morning of Feb. 25, 2018, six months after I had been in the JSK Fellowships. I was woken up by a news alert from home that China was going to eliminate its decade-long, two-term limit on the presidency from the Constitution. This means that the 1.3-billion-people nation will soon be led by one man, for an indefinite amount of time, and perhaps many indefinite presidential terms after him.
The news came to me as a complete shock. I was immediately depressed and extremely confused. I was instantly baffled by my own identity, as a citizen of China, a member of the young generation and a journalist.
I grew up during the years when China enjoyed its fastest economic growth. Different from my parents’ generation who lived through Chairman Mao’s era, I was able to receive first-class education from around the world, travel freely and choose what I want to do. I have always considered myself as a beneficiary of China’s opening up and globalization. As a Chinese journalist, there isn’t a single day where I am not paying close attention to my country’s political, legal and economic reform and excited by every small progress it has made.
Now, it seemed that everything has changed. The Economist wrote “How the West Got China Wrong,” but to me, the question is: “How I got China wrong?” Or, have I?
I have no answer to these questions. But my more immediate concern was: Will what I do have any future at all in China?
My theory of change and its evolution
I started my JSK Fellowship with a very broad question: “How might we help journalists in China search and use public records more effectively?”
My question is deeply rooted in my religious belief in watchdog journalism, a term my graduate school and lifelong mentor, Professor Stephen Berry, implanted in my head.
Professor Berry, a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist and co-founder of the non-profit Iowa Center for Public Affairs Journalism (IowaWatch.org), asserts that “all journalism should be investigative journalism,” meaning that all journalists should have an investigative mentality in every story we do, whether we cover city council, sports or art and culture. The most basic practice of this investigative mentality is cross-verification by constant checking and weighing evidence from multiple sources, such as interviews, documents, records and data, etc.
Combining Professor Berry’s ideas with my own experiences of working as an investigative journalist in China, I developed a simple hypothesis: If I can make the process of cross-verification easier, especially that of government records, which usually takes a lot of laborious digging and makes up an indispensable part of public affairs reporting in China, I can help my fellow journalists accelerate their process of investigation and therefore partially make investigative journalism easier and routine.
Using design thinking methods, I began my research by doing a dozen in-depth interviews with 10 veteran investigative journalists, a lawyer and a non-profit professional in China, hoping to gain empathy and deeper understanding of what their problems really are when it comes to searching public records.
After transcribing all my interviews and closely analyzing my notes, I have identified five unfulfilled needs Chinese journalists have in searching information: Aggregate multiple government sources, trace provenance, cross-verify information with multiple sources, acquire more updated and large-scaled data, and retain deleted information and past reporting.
But these are not the only problems Chinese journalists face; they encounter constant challenges in finding people and contact information for stories; their salary system emphasizes and rewards the quantity rather than the quality of their journalism; few have holidays and opportunities for self-care; the lack of supportive editor-reporter relationship sometimes makes reporting even more difficult and frustrating; and last, but not least, reporters do demand more freedom and independence for reporting.
These were important realizations for me, because they show that journalism is a system. Technology can only solve a very small part of the problem, and I have only been touching the tip of an iceberg (which is the pink block in the chart below). If I want to hold the powerful accountable, I have to make sure there is no weak link in this whole process of change.
Where am I now?
Realizing how big the problem is and how small I am tackling it doesn’t necessarily discourage me, but rather it gives me a much clearer vision and roadmap of what to do, step by step.
After studying existing platforms and tools that try to address different aspects of journalists’ reporting challenges, I have not only gained inspirations but also identified collaborators. For example, DocumentCloud can help journalists retain past documents and share them with other journalists. The Internet Archive can help reporters check the history of a broken link and archive any web page they want in case it is deleted or altered.
I am particularly inspired by Enigma Public and Data OCCRP ’s powerful aggregation functions and their user interfaces that display the sources of and meta data of public documents. I have sketched several versions of my envisioned platform and am now in the middle of developing a proof-of- concept product with real documents and databases from the Chinese government (I will explain in more detail in later Medium posts, so please stay tuned!).
While these might look promising, you are probably still wondering about an earlier question I asked myself: Is this possible in China?
I would probably say “Yes” when I reflect on some of the positives that have happened. China enacted its own Freedom of Information Act in 2008, requiring all government agencies and public institutions to disclose information that is of public interest. This includes policy papers, meeting memos, official resumes, and budget, procurement, land use and law enforcement records, etc. In 2016, China’s Supreme Court launched its online database to disclose more than 30 million court rulings. More than 20 major Chinese cities, such as Shanghai and Wuhan, have now established government open data portals, providing thousands of downloadable databases and APIs. There’s definitely room for improvement, but these efforts show that there is hope for more open data and their wider use in journalism in China.
It is still too soon to see the full implications of China’s constitutional change, so I will just keep doing what I do. If I am to place myself again in the spectrum of future — perhaps this is the biggest transformation I have gained from my fellowship year — I would say I have created a vision and plan for myself. I have created a future that is optimistic and definite.
