Presentation to NetLife conference, Oslo, December 2015

1. JOURNALISM:
WHAT CHANGES,
WHAT DOESN’T
GEORGE BROCK
PROFESSOR OF JOURNALISM
CITY UNIVERSITY LONDON
NETLIFE, OSLO, DECEMBER 2015

2. DISRUPTIVE
REVOLUTIONS
• They don’t happen once, but repeat
• Assets become liabilities
• Longevity gets confused with relevance
• New competitors (Uber, LinkedIn, Atom Bank, Red Bull)
• Revolutions should not, need not, sweep away everything
• The trick lies in knowing what to throw away and what to
retain
• Disruption is not new; it is most of journalism’s history
• Late 20th century: historically very unusual
• Writing, printing, broadcasting…all disruptive (and
unpopular) in their day

3. THE REAL CHANGES
• Routes on which information travels change: “across” as
well as “down”
• Interactivity easier
• Frictionless speed and low cost
• Above all, volume
• The sheer quantity of information available and in
circulation is the largest single change
• This is not adaptive or operational change (as many
thought at first)
• It is transformative

4. JOURNALISM
• “MSM” (mainstream media) vs Digerati
• This polarisation forgot the cycle of reaction to innovation
• First overdone optimism, then overdone pessimism, then
balanced synthesis
• Decline for print is slow; for terrestrial TV, even slower
• Journalism brands and institutions die rarely, and if they
do, slowly
• What is in trouble is business model of daily print
• Huge consumption shift via new distribution channels
(Facebook etc)
• BUT…journalism does something important

5. THE PLUS SIDE
• Engine of opportunity
• For bad and good
• Experiment Central!
• Slow-burn cultural change in controlled
societies
• Consumer opportunity to compare and choose
amid abundance
• Price of information falls

6. THE DOWNSIDE
• A global village will have idiots and they will
have global range
• Value of information falls as supply expands
• Managing abundance
• No immediate “replacement” business model for
news
• Newsrooms have old-business-model staff costs
• Engagement is harder: attention can be
switched every few seconds

7. SEQUENCE OF
CHANGE
1. The web
2. Smartphones
3. Tablets
4. Apps to apps + connected devices
5. Next…robot/AI journalism, ad-
blockers, virtual reality

8. WHY ARE WE STILL
CALLING THEM
“PHONES”?

9. THIS TRUTH DOES
NOT CHANGE
“It is the imagination, ultimately,
and not mathematical calculation
that creates media; it is the fresh
perception of how to fit a potential
machine into an actual way of life
that really constitutes the act of
‘invention’.” Anthony Smith,
Goodbye Gutenberg, 1980

10. WHAT IS JOURNALISM
FOR?
• The systematic search to establish the
truth of what matters to society in real
time
• 4 core tasks which newsrooms practice:
• Verification (Storyful, First Draft)
• Sense-making (Vox, Quartz)
• Investigation (TBIJ, ProPublica)
• Eye-witness (Groundtruth, GlobalVoices)

11. THE TEST
•Value
• Are you adding value for which people
(users or advertisers) will pay –
preferably again and again?
• …in a world in which anyone with a
smartphone can summon a lot of
information with one finger?

12. EXAMPLES OF VALUE
(1)
• Data
“There are still reporters out there who don’t know
what all the fuss is about, who really don’t want to
know about maths or spreadsheets. But for others,
this new wave represents a way to save
journalism. A new role for journalists as a bridge
and guide between those in power who have the
data (and are rubbish at explaining it) and the
public who desperately want to understand the
data and access it but need help. We can be that
bridge.”
Simon Rogers, Facts are Sacred (2011)

13. VALUE (2)
• Search
• Google-funded project is researching, piloting and evaluating
new software called JUICE, to implement creative search
strategies that journalists can use to strengthen investigative
storytelling more efficiently than with current news content
management and search tools. It builds on…advanced
creative search algorithms and interactive creativity support."
• Others at work in Bergen, Trondheim, Brussels
• Explanation (reaction to abundance) – e.g. Vox
• New story-telling syntax: written words + audio-visual
• Aggregation/curation
• Editorial responsibility and care

14. MASTERING CHANGE
• Unleash your inner anthropologist
• Data is your friend – if you have qualified people
to tame it
• Experiment better than innovation
• Think hard about the quality and discipline of
experiment:
• How are we measuring success?
• If it fails, can we kill it?
• What does it take to do a proper test?
• How many tests do we need?

15. TARGET +
STYLE/VOICE
“Online it’s easier to go narrow to go big. At
ED, we target sub-sets and groups: night
owls, people who wear glasses and/or
beards. We don’t talk to them, we talk with
them. What are the most interesting sub-
sets? Takes a ton of experimentation to find
‘em.”
Greg Dybec, Managing Editor, Elite Daily (top site
for US millenials, sold to Daily Mail 2015)

16. LIKELY BARRIERS
• Failure isn’t seen as useful
• In experiment, failure is often educational and
illuminating
• Today’s deadline and emergencies take
precedence over exploration of the future
• Journalism is seen as a mission and a vocation:
heresy is punished (by other journalists)
• Ordered to “innovate” or “think outside the
box”, people (usually) freeze.
• The “box” isn’t there any more

17. CHANGE-MAKING
INVOLVES EVERYBODY
EDITORIAL
PRODUCT ORGANISATIONAL

18. ANOTHER WAY OF
PUTTING IT
“To stop your technologists disappearing
up their own agenda…draw on the wall
three circles which all intersect: journalism,
CRM data and technology. The draw a large
arrow in the small area where all three
overlap. Then make the techies look at this
diagram all day. It’s surprising how easy
this focus is to lose.”
Matt Shearer, Head, BBC News Labs

19. STARING AT THE
FUTURE
• Mobile digital daily consumption has reached 51% in the
US and is at over 40% worldwide (KPCB & JP Morgan).
The Guardian: we expect two-thirds by end 2016
• The “trifecta of terror”: ad-blocking, ad fraud (aka non-
human traffic) and viewability (aka responsive design).
(Dan Williamson, TheMediaBriefing)
• There are 16 sensors in the average smartphone: content
could be adjusted for every piece of data about what the
user is doing. (Frederic Filloux, Monday Note)
• “We’re probably not that far from software which will
predict how well or badly an item of journalism will do with
a particular segment of the audience.” (Seth Rogin)
• Oh, and video consumption is exploding

20. BACK TO DISRUPTION
• Hold on to what is important whatever the
era
• You need intelligence about what is
happening
• You need agility to adapt to rapid change
• Never lose focus on what makes your
journalism work of distinctive value

21. JOURNALISM:
WHAT’S ALTERED?
CHANGING
• Information
routes, velocity,
quantity
• Interactivity
• Biz model
• Purposes refined
UNCHANGED
• Moral/democratic
purpose
• Truth-telling
• Attracting
attention
• Threats

22. WWW.GEORGEBROCK.NET/
@GEORGEPROF