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WHAT kind of journalism would you like to read? How is journalism evolving? What sort of writing will we see in the field in future?
At Highway Africa, the annual journalism shindig held in Grahamstown recently, you could hear little groups of journalists discussing these issues. How journalism evolves is not just a matter for the practitioners themselves, but for the societies they live in, because journalism is critical to shaping our societies.
Most people tend to think of journalism in terms of “The News”, the political, news and business reporting which makes the headlines in print, on radio and TV.
And it is this role which is shifting somewhat, thanks to the advent of social media. Twitter is able to report, minute by minute, on every word said and facial expression in the Modimolle Monster trial, for instance, and a lay person who has the time to attend could do as good a job as a journalist.
Of course, the social media are capable of pretty epic fails – just after the Boston Bombing, you may remember, a missing student was wrongly fingered as the culprit:
“Soon, the masses on Twitter, 4Chan, and Reddit had their pitchforks raised, and were involved in plenty of self-congratulatory backslapping, for identifying the apparently depressed student as the culprit.” Tribune blogs, 21 April 2013
But good journalism is about far more than breaking news. It is also about filtering, contextualising, analysing, making sense of the glut of information flooding all of us.
This is what political journalists who go beyond straight reporting do: they have a huge body of current and historical knowledge, masses of data, and the ability to use all of that to drill down into confusing stories and reveal the corrupt or nefarious activities we would otherwise never hear about.
The same tools are applied by good journalists in other fields; they, too, are investigative journalists, even if their area of expertise is science and not organised crime.
The really good journos influence how people choose to live their lives – do you invest in property or bonds? Should you take vitamin supplements or not? What field of tertiary education holds the best future for my child?
I spend much of my time keeping up with the science of health and the environment, reading research and relating it to previous research or other research in different fields. Instead of giving you sound bites, I want to give you a long read which enables you to judge research and make up your own mind.
An example of why this matters: in early August this year, a study was published that suggested that anaemia was a factor in dementia. “Eat more steak!” the headlines blared (on articles written by newshounds, rather than journos who know the field of health).
Later in August, another study suggested that too much iron in the hippocampus (the brain) could be behind Alzheimer’s, the most feared form of dementia. “Eat less steak!” said the headlines. Both headlines, I am sure, caused heart-flutterings among meat producers – because coverage like this has economic implications, doesn’t it?
Over-eager sound bite reporting has caused movements aplenty on stock exchanges.
Now, aside from the fact that I want to alert you all to the fact that there’s much less iron in steak than in many other foods (red meat: 1.5mg per 100g, cocoa powder apparently nearly 10 times that – why did the headlines not say “Abandon choccies”?), I want to write an article that will contextualise this within a huge matrix of current research into Alzheimer’s.
We really don’t know enough yet to make any decisions about what we should or should not eat to prevent Alzheimer’s!
An article like this cannot be posted on a blog, let alone Twitter; it’s likely to be 3 000+ words long.
And yet, interestingly, even longer articles are being read eagerly online: one general publication told me that an 8 000 word article on a health subject was one of their top three reads of the month earlier this year.
And that’s not just people clicking onto a page and bouncing straight off, they assured me; they can see how much of an article people read, if they leave after the first screen page or stay to the end.
There seems to be a trend towards what is called longform journalism online:
Ignore what you’ve heard: “longform journalism” as we know it isn’t going away.
Rather, we might be right in the middle of the most thrilling time that extended nonfiction narrative has ever seen.
(Mediabistro.com July 23 2013)
We experienced similar results for lengthier content first published on Forbes.com. A five-screen story on Best Buy went viral and racked up three million page views […] The fact is, long-form and short-form can work hand in hand.
(Forbes.com, February 23 2012)
Aside from world-beating scoops, nothing builds a media brand’s reputation like quality longform reporting, especially if it happens to win awards. Not only does longform add to a publication’s credibility, but it also helps those organizations establish a voice and develop a deeper relationship with readers. […]
By having a strong longform department, media companies are also better-equipped to attract top journalists, many of whom hold longform reporting in the highest regard.
(Pandodaily August 12 2013)
*Do you read longform journalism, online and offline, and if so, what kind of topics are you willing to devote time to? Tell us about it and you could get published.
- Fin24
*Mandi Smallhorne is a versatile journalist and editor. Views expressed are her own.
At Highway Africa, the annual journalism shindig held in Grahamstown recently, you could hear little groups of journalists discussing these issues. How journalism evolves is not just a matter for the practitioners themselves, but for the societies they live in, because journalism is critical to shaping our societies.
Most people tend to think of journalism in terms of “The News”, the political, news and business reporting which makes the headlines in print, on radio and TV.
And it is this role which is shifting somewhat, thanks to the advent of social media. Twitter is able to report, minute by minute, on every word said and facial expression in the Modimolle Monster trial, for instance, and a lay person who has the time to attend could do as good a job as a journalist.
Of course, the social media are capable of pretty epic fails – just after the Boston Bombing, you may remember, a missing student was wrongly fingered as the culprit:
“Soon, the masses on Twitter, 4Chan, and Reddit had their pitchforks raised, and were involved in plenty of self-congratulatory backslapping, for identifying the apparently depressed student as the culprit.” Tribune blogs, 21 April 2013
But good journalism is about far more than breaking news. It is also about filtering, contextualising, analysing, making sense of the glut of information flooding all of us.
This is what political journalists who go beyond straight reporting do: they have a huge body of current and historical knowledge, masses of data, and the ability to use all of that to drill down into confusing stories and reveal the corrupt or nefarious activities we would otherwise never hear about.
The same tools are applied by good journalists in other fields; they, too, are investigative journalists, even if their area of expertise is science and not organised crime.
The really good journos influence how people choose to live their lives – do you invest in property or bonds? Should you take vitamin supplements or not? What field of tertiary education holds the best future for my child?
I spend much of my time keeping up with the science of health and the environment, reading research and relating it to previous research or other research in different fields. Instead of giving you sound bites, I want to give you a long read which enables you to judge research and make up your own mind.
An example of why this matters: in early August this year, a study was published that suggested that anaemia was a factor in dementia. “Eat more steak!” the headlines blared (on articles written by newshounds, rather than journos who know the field of health).
Later in August, another study suggested that too much iron in the hippocampus (the brain) could be behind Alzheimer’s, the most feared form of dementia. “Eat less steak!” said the headlines. Both headlines, I am sure, caused heart-flutterings among meat producers – because coverage like this has economic implications, doesn’t it?
Over-eager sound bite reporting has caused movements aplenty on stock exchanges.
Now, aside from the fact that I want to alert you all to the fact that there’s much less iron in steak than in many other foods (red meat: 1.5mg per 100g, cocoa powder apparently nearly 10 times that – why did the headlines not say “Abandon choccies”?), I want to write an article that will contextualise this within a huge matrix of current research into Alzheimer’s.
We really don’t know enough yet to make any decisions about what we should or should not eat to prevent Alzheimer’s!
An article like this cannot be posted on a blog, let alone Twitter; it’s likely to be 3 000+ words long.
And yet, interestingly, even longer articles are being read eagerly online: one general publication told me that an 8 000 word article on a health subject was one of their top three reads of the month earlier this year.
And that’s not just people clicking onto a page and bouncing straight off, they assured me; they can see how much of an article people read, if they leave after the first screen page or stay to the end.
There seems to be a trend towards what is called longform journalism online:
Ignore what you’ve heard: “longform journalism” as we know it isn’t going away.
Rather, we might be right in the middle of the most thrilling time that extended nonfiction narrative has ever seen.
(Mediabistro.com July 23 2013)
We experienced similar results for lengthier content first published on Forbes.com. A five-screen story on Best Buy went viral and racked up three million page views […] The fact is, long-form and short-form can work hand in hand.
(Forbes.com, February 23 2012)
Aside from world-beating scoops, nothing builds a media brand’s reputation like quality longform reporting, especially if it happens to win awards. Not only does longform add to a publication’s credibility, but it also helps those organizations establish a voice and develop a deeper relationship with readers. […]
By having a strong longform department, media companies are also better-equipped to attract top journalists, many of whom hold longform reporting in the highest regard.
(Pandodaily August 12 2013)
*Do you read longform journalism, online and offline, and if so, what kind of topics are you willing to devote time to? Tell us about it and you could get published.
- Fin24
*Mandi Smallhorne is a versatile journalist and editor. Views expressed are her own.
