The US Digital News Ecosystem: Concepts Learned During My Summer Residence at CUNY (I)
This post is the first in a series of four summarizing my research findings during my summer residence at the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism’s Tow-Knight Center for Entrepreneurial Journalism. I’ve been in New York for seven weeks to learn the best practices from the US Digital News Ecosystem. As a European scholar, I learned new concepts, best practices and trends for understanding the current media landscape.
Let’s start with the vocabulary!
Optimism is the concept that summarizes the dynamics of New York. You talk to people, and you get inspired. I also learned from NYC CTO, Minerva Tantoco, that New York City has a leading position among the most innovative cities in the world. I confirm this impression. You see the future and opportunities coming along. Everyone in the industry is experimenting, no matter if it is a hyperlocal media like Technical.ly or a big digital company, such as Buzzfeed News. None has yet figured out the best formula for monetization. The work-in-progress approach is the way to learn: industry players often mention failures as part of the path toward success.
My conversations with scholars provided me with the fundamental concepts. The notion of the Media Ecosystem was one of the foundational ideas I came across. The interrelations among media, institutions, users and technology are central to understanding any media landscape. As an academic, I wanted to get deep into the meaning. Chris W. Anderson has been doing some research on the subject. Other definitions of the term offer a comprehensive approach to this issue. Complexity is the essence of this reality. Wicked Problems by Jay Rosen introduced me to a new perspective.
Democracy and its values are essential and very present in the American academic works about media. This interest has a new way of being represented, through mapping. Democracy Fund has developed a tool to describe the dynamics facing local news institutions and levels of participations of the public in civic affairs.
In the same field, News Desert is a new concept for me. The Project ‘Media Deserts’, lead by Michelle Ferrier, is an excellent example to illustrate how the media landscape is changing and how democracy can be affected. Besides, there is a current public debate about the role of media and its impact on democracy, as it is a year of elections. Even the media are asking themselves about it.
I’ve also seen some shifts in the concepts. No more talk about Civic and Citizen but Social Journalism. Jeff Jarvis and Carrie Brown provided me with this approach. Two central ideas: the importance of listening to the community and how to build a relationship with the audience.
Though I came to the US to learn best practices for monetization, it seems that monetization is diving in new directions. It is no longer just about the business model, but two buzzwords show up in every conversation: Audience Engagement and Sharing, mainly because Facebook changed its algorithm and now prioritizes content from users rather than news outlets.
I also realize that there is another swing going on in the US media landscape: from the Distributed Media, where platforms have the main role and the big connector is Facebook, towards the Conversation Era, where bots or voice services would help to understand the world. It seems that reaching the users/readers has always been the core issue, but now the question is to add as many platforms as possible.
Altogether new concepts that have updated my vocabulary! My CUNY residence has provided essential materials for my elective course in Internet trends in Journalism, which just started on September 6th.
In the next post, I will focus on the players and trends in the US News Ecosystem. Read that here.
