(Photo credit @nickmorrison)
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With the rise of online advertising, social media, amateur news bloggers, and online news sites, the state of quality journalism has declined. First problem: how do we define news these days?
The Pew Research Center includes a huge variety of things under “news media” (including audio, podcasts, network news, cable news, digital news, newspapers and public broadcasting) - all with the goal of providing news and information to inform the public about the important events of the day. Digital news is probably the murkiest area of news as it’s so hard to know who wrote the articles you’re readying and where they sourced their articles.
Second problem: how do we know if we can trust the news we read online?
One step is to identify who owns the outlets from which you’re reading. You can also check out my recent blog on combatting fake news. For the recent US presidential election, the AP News used blockchain to help certify results and distribute them widely through their API.
Third challenge: what tech is being used by tech companies, journalists & news media to do the work of news-making more effective & efficient? My college friend Jeremy just wrote up an article describing Google’s new Journalist Studio, a suite of tools to help journalists with data visualization. Another former Google colleague’s startup Brief is a news app that combines content from journalists and organized by algorithms (and recently launched a Supreme Court tracker). This is similar to SmartNews and Flipboard who are sites which aggregate the news -- but I found SmartNews to be actively combatting the ‘echo chamber’ problem by using algorithms to encourage discovery, especially with local news. There are definite pitfalls to be aware of (see the huge bust of JImmy Wales’ WikiTribune) but more needs to be done to bolster local and national news media to ensure important news of the day is being reported on properly.
