Building the ideal newsroom for the next 50 years
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Beverly Brown
- Female
- Cary, NC
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Beverly Brown's Page
Profile Information
- Organization
- SAS
- Title
- Public Relations
- Location
- Cary, NC
- About Me
- I do public relations for software company SAS, whose analytics are under the hood of most of the world's major organizations. I also have a tremendous interest in the future of journalism, having started my career there. I am very sad about the hemorrhage going on at so many newspapers.
- Your Website
- http://www.sas.com/presscenter
- Share your thoughts about how the newsroom of the future should be different . (And if you do, please post a copy of your answer in the forums).
- Not that I'm objective, or anything, but I think journalists ought to go after computer-assisted reporting skills. The industry's in crisis and desperately needs a way to differentiate and show value. Concede the weather, traffic and crime news to TV. The most important, interesting stories are hidden in vast quantities of publicly available data. Reporters who provide meaningful insight may save the industry. How? By letting 99% of the data fly by and homing in on the 1 percent that matters. For a great example, check out a June 5, 1999 article in Editor & Publisher titled "Data-mining tool uncovers converts - and Pulitzers." (Full disclosure: the article's about SAS' role in a '99 Pulitzer that the Miami Herald won for uncovering election fraud.)
Making that shift wouldn't be trivial, of course. When assigned a story involving numbers, I would groan and think about calling in sick. Math phobia's just one of many obstacles to this approach.
Here's an even crazier idea: What if news organizations partnered with local governments to do the kind of exploratory analysis that the governments don't have the time or resources to conduct themselves? In exchange for giving journalists full access to data and quotable sources, the gov't agency gets meaningful information on potential blind spots and a fact-based case to improve services to constituents. Instead of being adversaries, journalists and sources collaborate for the good of all. Conflicting agendas might doom such arrangements, but desperate times call for radical rethinking and attempting to make the impossible possible.
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