Fri, March 27, 10:45 - 12:15
2009 | Influences
We are witnessing the destruction of the old media order—and the noisy, thrilling invention of something new. Tectonic shifts in technology and human behavior have changed forever the way we create, deliver, and consume information. The result: a host of emerging models from around the globe that thrive on connection and community, promising previously unimagined opportunities to engage people as active, change-making citizens. This session will examine levers of power in a world where everyone can be an editor — and demonstrate why, far from mourning the demise of journalism, there’s reason to celebrate a new generation.
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Tomorrow’s News: Models For An Everyone Is Media World
We are witnessing the destruction of the old media order—and the noisy, thrilling invention of something new. Tectonic shifts in technology and human behavior have changed forever the way we create, deliver, and consume information. The result: a host of emerging models from around the globe that thrive on connection and community, promising previously unimagined opportunities to engage people as active, change-making citizens. This session will examine levers of power in a world where everyone can be an editor — and demonstrate why, far from mourning the demise of journalism, there’s reason to celebrate a new generation.
I am Paula Ellis of the Knight foundation, and before we begin our conversation, I would like to talk a little bit about how Bill and I and Ashoka and Knight Foundation got here today. As many of you know, Knight Foundation works to advance communities and journalism. In fact Knight has invested than four hundred million since 1950 in quality journalism and freedom of expression projects.
A more telling number, however, is that in the last two years. Let's withstand even best is the 100 million in media information. With the digital revolution turning journalism on next year we are going to make sure the future of news and information is instilled with the traditional value, journalism values so important in a democracy.
Ashoka, like Knight explores new solutions to problems both old and emerging. There focus of course is on finding and supporting, and advancing. social entrepreneurs like you all around the world. So the show launched its use and knowledge entrepreneurs which over three years, will cultivate thirty social entrepreneurs in journalism.
We seek people who strive to invent new strategies and models that more effectively inform, engage and connect people as active change making citizens. We are wedded to any one media model. We want fellows to explore our traditional thinking. Later you will hear from two of these fellows Gregor Hackmack and Shishir Bushnik about their successes.
While launching Fellow's program, Ashoka and Knight Foundation also decided to examine kinds of innovation going on in the media industry using the showcase on developing mosaic way of thinking. we thought we could begin to map innovation. We wanted to find the patterns so we could better talk about what is happening around the world, so we've created a framework of media trends which I will share with you in a moment.
I'd like to emphasize though, that this framework is very much a work in progress. We've hashed out some concepts and discovered some emerging patterns, but we need to advance to the next stage, to find the best ideas for the future of news and information that we, and you as social entrepreneurs, can use to advance society.
We hope that you will lend your insight during the question and answer portion of this forum. There is much urgent work to be done and we're really looking forward to you joining us in the work. Before we begin that, I would like to run through the frameworks basic concepts which you have just before you on the handout.
First off, there are two driving forces that are shaping the medialandscape . One is technology which has changed forever the way we create, deliver and consume information. It also has appended the old media models making them increasing outdated. With new media, publishing is virtually cost less, meaning any one can get into the game of providing or distributing information.
Also contenders now more, easily accessible to many previously information isolated peoples. Whether it via the web, mobile phone, or radio. This is particularly true in the developing world. We all know the internet is an increasingly popular source for news. But the few senors for research recently reported that for the first time the internet has surpassed newspapers in the United States as a source for national and international news.
The internet has also changed the way we receive news. Forcing articles to be delivered individually, separate from the traditional media packages and brands. Another driving force. relationship people have to information. We are no longer passive information consumers. Rather, we are active information users.
We know how to create information, how to edit it, distribute it, comment on it, molding and shaping In each time we come across it. Meanwhile the one time mass media market is growing increasingly fragmanent and often driven by Individual. Traditional news organizations are losing ground. And, we have seen blogs and ethnic media gaining steam, as people gravitate to the work of individual writer feeds and powerful voices.
They are moving away from institutional brands. In this slide you'll see that circulation of members of the Association of Alternative of news weekly's has tripled since 1999. Meanwhile, Spanish language media has grown exponentially. This dos not mean we are less interested in getting information about our world?
Quite the opposite, but we are less interested in the traditional sources and pathways to that information. So what are the results. The media are becoming decentralized. Large media organisations no longer are the gate keepers of information. The explosion of new media and the low cost of using net, have made the reigns of information available to all.
That's good news for people who care about open societies and governments. The [xx] availability of information promises greater transparency.... greater transparency in government, business, and other institutions that have been impenetrable to most citizens. We'll hear more about that later from one of our fellow panelist from Parliament Watch.
There also has been an explosion story telling. Throughout human history, story telling it has been the way the glue that unites communities and is the way people pass news and information. It is the way we share our values. The fundamental dynamics of it, though are changing. The traditional line between storytellers and audience has diminished, and digital media has allowed new groups of people to tell their own stories, free from traditional outlets.
The traditional line between story tellers and audience has diminished and digital media has allowed new groups of people to tell their stories this reminds me of a night news channel when We were in Philadelphia who is inspiring immigrants to create online digital newscast, and he uses the city's new broad brand system to distribute and tell the stories.
We are also seen aggressive experimentation and story telling with innovators using new technology that allow users to mold it. Think of footnote dot com. The website posts historical documents, say those from the Vietnam War, and lets people comment on them and post their own family histories and memories.
This slide shows the Vietnam War Memorial with people's comments on the names they find there. It's a powerful experience to browse through. Another element that has evolved is the rise of social networks, networks that encourage engagement and new forms of social expression. In this new world, we are the center of community life.
It's a citizen-centered world where people have more power to get involved and shape the public debate, whether on Facebook, or Myface, email listserv's, or Twitter. I don't know, if you've all been following the twittering of the conference. It's very vigorous out there. every one is an editor, parsing and recommending information that is consumed by everyone else.
The trustworthiness of that information depends on few paster. And how you feel about him or her. The conversation is at least as important as the information itself. And get in these social networks can be both powerful, a powerful act of citizenship and a pathway to activism. I think about a site that the crowd sources information in a crisis, allowing anyone to submit information through text message of the web.
It has been used to map Instances of violence in Gaza and exorbitant taxes in South Africa. In united states another example is in Park City very independent community that is trying to do its own part in the fight against global warming. They are the community foundation with funds from Knight is creating Social network to let people measure their carbon footprint compare it to their peers and exchange conversation ideas.
Certainly this new landscape has also brought its new sort of challenges too. At this point I would like to bring Bill in to the conversation as we began to explore the challenges and the opportunities which you'll see captured on your handout, as the discussion of values and the sustainability of these new media systems.
So Bill and I thought we would do is begin a conversation about how we frame and approach these issues, and Invite you in to the conversation. Later we meet the panelists and we will just see where we will go from there. Thank you. Is exposs sir we really hope this would be working session and sir I wonder that you limbered up for this.
In addition to asking for questions, we hope you will have suggestions or solutions. And so we reverse this about and ask more questions its this point and between my friend working so require this would be great success if we push this learning process ahead. Yesterday, we had a meeting with several people who are from the Professional journalism field.
And by chance with VVS, made an observation, that moved the ball ahead. I just wanted sure that was used as an example, so you can challenge his contribution leads so far. He said the web you know, we've got this problem of how you finance everything. And the free web seems to be may be insignificant part because people are happy to give free services in return for getting a lot of information from us.
That sounds interesting and that runs us into privacy issue. How comfortable are we with that. If Google is the most important new publisher, how much, to what degree did they think about privacy. To what degree did we think about it. Well, if the machine is supposed to be learning from us every time someone goes on the web, well maybe we want that learning.
But where is the difference which mean the warning from as all doing all things on the world and the point we can offer the boundary into well maybe there isn't a particular boundary. Maybe there are boundaries that fit particular situations and particular people, and how do we set that up? so that there's choice.
Our choice probably is what we'd like. So, now that's an example where just yesterday, less than Twenty four hours ago, I think Kim was moved ahead very east and anywhere here who can please switch on today will be wonderful. So I in thinking about this, we have this wonderful advantage that we have our colleagues, the fellows, the social entrepreneurs around the world.
Each of them, has not only seen the issue, but they're doing something really important it works at scale. And when you see a hundred, two hundred of those mosaic pieces you begin to see the pattern. And we're I think at stage where we're beginning to see the pattern or at least the frameworks of the pattern.
But we don't know. And I don't know what emphasis, we do not know three most historic opportunities to intervene and change the system are. That's what we're looking for. What are the one or two things that we could do together it would really change the field. Though we don't know, hopefully you get closer to that.
One thing I think distorts the conversation at the moment is that every time you pick up the newspaper, or I guess you do not do that anymore, you go on the web, you hear about five more newspapers that died yesterday and so we're really.... this conversation is very focused on the institutions of journalism.
And there is obviously difference between journalism and newspapers. But I just think that it's very helpful to recognize that the search for truth and making it available to people Since hence this particular function, the law is about finding the truth. In whatever while 1640, something rather, Harvard was set up with the motto "Veritas".
This is a " The values of journalism are much more universal and I think that gives us, it gives me a sense of great deal of confidence that, now that we're focusing on the institutions we will find solutions to the values issues. So, what are the, what's the larger environment, that we're dealing with here.
That's the other thing that helps, I think, frame this. It's obviously, the rate of change is accelerating and it's coming at us from more and more angles. So, the environment is one, and will be increasingly one where the types of information we need and the types of role we play will be different, because it's defined by that very different world.
That world is also one which is moving to organization structures are very different. it is, we do not have local communities that are isolated anymore. In 1900, 97 percent of the world's children were growing up in isolated. Small local agricultural village is gone. No one, almost no one, is in that situation.
We're moving to a world of teams of teams, all linked together and working together in different combinations depending on the need and the moment.
That is a completely different architecture than we've had historically. Well the web of course is brilliant at this. Linkages is one of its greatest strengths. Well, this is not surprising as I think The world is emerging as a cycle you develop a circulatory system when you need it, they were building, and overall it's a team of teams, where every individual, as a team member, has the skills and the enjoyment of being able to take the initiative and when they have proper overall working under team together.
This is a very very different world and what are the some of the implications for, the types of news and the types of journalism: Writing, information gathering, processing. First of all the users are very interested in the future. In a static world, the future was not that relevant. In the world we are in, let alone where we would be in ten or fifteen years, the users wants to know traditional scholarship has been very good at, because the market hasn't needed it, hasn't demanded it, but it now does.
The other obvious change in the environment is that we all have to be actors, we all have to be change makers. You cannot be a contributing person in this world of rapidly escalating, more and more complex change, unless you are in the game of change. So, we are not passive readers everyone's understood that we're transitioning to a world where we all have to be players.
That means that we all have to have skills. Gutenberg led to the spread of literacy and here's another example, in 1900 we didn't need psychology, we didn't have it, I would add. We invented psychology as a field and then popularized it through the media because as we became more and more independent actors, we need that skill.
So what sorts of skills do people have to have, and parenthetically what does that mean in terms with the knowledge that we have to be providing them through whatever sets of institutions. To be a change maker, you have to have social skills empathy team work leadership change making you also have to have not just media literacy in a defensive sense but now how do you contribute can I trust for the professional way in teams of, teams dealing with knowledge and information.
This is an information world and so the subject and the viewer. It all becomes very interconnected. So, let me just pause for a moment on the value I think this is the are that we in the social entrepreneurial field probably need to pay a special attention to. This is not driven by the economics.
It's driven by something else and we better be driving it. First of all, as I was saying, I think pressing for meaning, trustworthiness. Those are universals that cut across fields. That's why we think about this as the knowledge news field. How does one do trustworthiness? You have brand New York Times, Huffington Post.
You have personal networks. We all choose who we're going to have in our networks. We choose people who are probably we think are at least interesting and trustworthy. We have the Google algorithm and others and obviously we need to do more than thinking about trustworthiness, it's an area I think of tremendous scientific need, further advancement in psychology, but also, how do we build and enter the system in much more sophisticated ways, and then finally, there's thewar.
XX representative body we need to make some collective decisions. What are they? And what comes first, this is - where do we as a social entrepreneurial field push in terms of trustworthiness, accuracy, professionalism, freedom. I want to pause on privacy for a moment. And this is where John's suggestion yesterday I thought was so important there's a market for spy ware.
I think we need to think about how we develop a market that comes from the most largest number of places where we're competing with the people who want the information from us to build defenses. For those of you, who have a human rights background, trying to defend against preventative surveillance in the age of dirty bombs is probably not the highest leverage place to put one's efforts.
We're going to have preventative surveillance. How can we expand the universe of human privacy, human rights and freedom? Well, I think we need to go on the offensive say "We are going to give people a choice of privacy of their information and their lives." Well that's a major issue in the knowledge and news this field.
How do we enforce all of this? This is a second set of categories and there are two dimensions to it. How do you enforce at any one moment in time? Well, the skills of the users is obviously key. The users, the producers, the combinations, the tools we develop to make that easy. Having more players is really helpful.
One of problems of the big printing press natural monopoly monopoly is that it's very easy to control. And has been in much of the world. And so, Zasa's work in terms of encouraging media is part of the effort to open up that space. How can we make sure that we end up in a world where network effect, that leads in the direction of an even bigger monopoly.
You know, Google, eBay, they understand in network effect. Well, do we want that? How do we have competition and sources and users and this new architecture? Where are we going to end up? Well, we should think about about that. There's also competition and enforcement in the environmental and securities field through the key town laws.
If you see someone is polluting the river and you bring the case, you'll get rewarded in the courts for doing that. So you have private competitive enforcement which is not corruptible. It's an example of the sorts of mechanisms when we look beyond the narrow barriers of the press. And then finally systems creation.
We're aren't going to create a new answer that's going to stay there very long. In a world of geometrically escalating change, we have to be constantly, every day, changing the frameworks, staying ahead of the changes. How is our 19th, 18th, 17th century stovepipe traditional way of, you know, pre-modern government, gonna do that?
How are we're gonna help that change? So, I hope that helps a little bit in framing the challenge. And I think we now have our colleagues here who will.
No, I'm going to ask you some questions.
Okay, okay.
And then you're going to hear my little spiel.
Oh yes, I'm sorry.
Okay Which he demanded that I do last night. And so I missed going out, so you must hear it. But first, Bill I wanted to see if I could draw you out on a topic that is, I know, important to you, important to all of us. The matter of empathy. And how that will be enhanced or eroded. Or, how you see in the new evolving internet world.
A contribution for us to be able to be more empathetic or not. That's a sneak attack. That's a really good question. I, one of the difficulties the web has is that, although we're beginning to get the visual element, we do lose a lot of the interpersonal connection. We've evolved that over millions of years.
When you walk down the street you know whether you can trust this person. You make judgments every day: Will this woman or man be a good babysitter? Will I make a deal with this person? Will I get in the elevator? Those skills we have. And so, any part of the challenge is, how do we get the media, how do we evolve this, so that it plays to our strength?
So the better we're able to use the new media to in fact be able to judge as well as we can when we're face to face. That is going to help tremendously. And that's a big challenge. Quite aside from the media I am hugely distressed that society is moving away from talking openly about ethics. We're afraid we're going to confuse discomfort.
But with otherness, with trustworthiness. And so that's, that's something that, I hope we can avoid in the area.The emergence of psychology and its popularization is an example of how this can be done. I'm actually very optimistic because, in a world of very rapid change where everyone has to be a change maker.
Anyone who is in that ballet, being powerful, for good, but just being powerful, if they do that in a way that hurts other people or other institutions, they're out. And so we've an adverting device they removes people who are not skill for and thus we'd help people get there. How do we make sure that every young child masters empathy.
That is not a journalism issue, but journalism can certainly help by framing the issue. How many parents, how many school administrators know that they're failing if there's one second grader that hasn't mastered empathy? So I You know, we have, there's a reason that we have evolved this skill to be able to know whether or not we can trust people.
As one of the most fundamentals skills we've and a global team of teams for your transmaping quit to gather with people. Knowing that we have a trustworthy system and trustworthy people. And we can sense that. Because people really are trustworthy. That's I think it's completely central for the design of the system.
I'm sure we'll get back to this notion of trust; it certainly is the currency of news and knowledge I believe in relationships. I did do my homework assignment and it feels compelled to share it with you. I did a just a couple of notions. So, I'm a journalist of more than 30 years and eagerly hoping to nudge the evolution of this in some some way for the betterment of all of us.
Some thoughts as I look at it and work in it that I just wanted to share some thoughts with you. First of all this is very, I know, primitive to everyone here, but information is the fundamental driver of systems. Whether it's a political system, a financial system. We've referenced Darwin before, so we all really understand the role All of information as the agent of learning and either adaptation and that.
So, I like to take a really foundational approach to information and I'll invite you all to think about the systems in which you're operating and the information flows. I know folks think about them. But you might think, sort of, more systemically about what it means. And so, because of that, people want to have access to the inputs of the flows, they want to control the flows in the form of not allowing for a free press or a rigorous exhange of ideas, they want to manipulate them in the form of propaganda, and other forms that we know, all of which is much alive in our currently new chaotic world.
So, I think a foundational thought about systems and the role information plays in all systems and we of course want it to be free flowing but not everyone does. And so, a discussion about power arises out of all of that. And I'm not going to begin, here to have a discussion about power, but as this new world emerges, it's something I think we'll want to work on.
You know that some of the cliches about journalism are, they speak truth to power, or they hold power accountable, or they have too much power but sometimes people forget to put that on the table. It's a very primary part of news and information. What are the power relationships. And so, how are those going to change.
All sorts of institutional power has been amalgamated over more than a hundred years in certain types of news institutions that we now see fading. So what will the new world look like in terms of that? Often when we think about news and information the first instinct is toward civic processes, and it's an important instinct because it does underpin our freedoms our ability to participate in our shared governance, but I think there are some other important things to think about in the bundle of things that went on with news feel touched on most of them.
I wanted just to highlight some. This whole matter of community. How do we form a community. Who's in the community, who's outside the community. How do we reflect the community back? All of that has been a function of news and in an online world we say we can create bigger different communities and this gets to the issue of trust.
We spend a lot of time thinking about this matter of community, and I would want to think a lot about then, what is the role of the individual in this community? community. So riding right along with that idea is that news actually was quite an anthropological enterprise.So if you think of it as a google search, of course you know you'll be missing a lot.
Because the reason probably that you want your enterprise in a new story, or the individuals you're working within a story,have nothing to do with information search.What it's above is, partly, a norming process. The way a society says "What are our norms here, what are our shared norms?" Who's outside our norms?
When will our norms, when will things that were once taboo become norms. I was deeply involved in the women's movement and the redefinition of news. You would not have seen an education story in a U.S. newspaper on the front page prior to the involvement of women. who were able to have content areas that became normative that were not normative at the time.
So there's just a lot about norms, and you know that. And that's actually where most of the conflict I would say happens. When people are at odds with the media organization, it tends not to be around the facts. It tends to be these other grayer matters of norming. There are similar issues about culture...
how do we transmit cultures and that... you could read and learn about food, just as a way of cooking but it's mostly there to transmit cultural norms and identities, to try to create shared understanding, maybe even empathy every now and then and there are all hosts of content areas that you can look at.
So the idea here that I would like to think about is that there's a function well beyond information, knowledge and civic processes. But people tend to sort of first go to civic processes. And then there's all matter of how will we come to public judgement? How do we have our public discourses? Do we have a shared set of information from which to discourse, or you know what will that look like?
And I would say that most of that discourse is always around values collisions. So the sort of enervating thing about news is always about values and a set of values, collisions or trade-offs that people have to sort of dialog through hopefully. Some will command control, but it would be better to a come to a collaborative spirit about them.
So just thinking about the [xx] anthropological aspects. Another thing I wanted to share is that new news assumes action, it assumes action. It doesn't really... it's not meant to just sitthere and it stimulates all type of actions and what's one of the more fascinating things to me right now is the way the relationships between information, delivery of information, and action are changing.
What are the activation points? Am I, it's becoming more a continuum, and its happening more and more in cycle time, in a shorter cycle time, so increasingly from the footing of a journalist, I would say, hmm - are you and advocate or are you a journalist? What's the different there. And I think Peter Omidyar likes to say all the lines are going away.
I think this is a really interesting line that's changing. The relationship between information and action. And then, I am winding down. Just to understand Or that news is a process, really, about discovery, understanding, sorting out our belief systems and our values. The reason the story about distributing abortion information is news is because that's a values issue.
So really underline most of these things are civilization trying to talk to each other about values in the form, sometimes, of parables that appear as news. So, Bill, did you want to ask me anything?
I think I've indicated from twisting your arm last night. Paula has not only been a journalist, she's one of the most conceptual and thoughtful people I've met in the field and in this learning process. Every time we have a conversation, I learn something. I actually wanted to draw you out a little on something on the last towards the end you said that information and action are merging and maybe you could expand on that a bit.
Keith Hammond, our colleague, said that journalists and editors increasingly having to become, what was your phrase, a "social organizer."
Right. And I know the documentary film industry is dealing with this as well. It used to be that a journalist might have a value of saying, "I just focus attention, I uncover the facts and I put them out there for others to do with as they wish". There's also, sometimes it sprang from a point of view and so it's trying be directional in some forms of journalism.
But then they used to sort of say and that's the end of my obligation, then I'm out, I'm not further down the transaction channel. But increasingly, the action and the creating of the information are going on, in much closer in time. And more more journalists being drawn into what I call the transaction channel.
So that's to watch, interesting. We want to invite our colleagues who are actually doing real work Bill.
Out there in the world making a change in the world. We wanted to invite them up and hear a little bit, hear their stories and interrogative them.
You have their bios and so we'll dispense with the official introduction. Our other panelist was not able to be with us today, his visa was denied. Greg did you want to get us started?
Thank you Paula, thank you Bill for this really inspiring introduction My name is Greg Ohakmuk [sp?] and I'm the co-founder of the website that's called Parliament Watch that has been founded in, that we founded in 2004 already, and it gives the people in Germany, the citizens, the possibility to put forward public questions for their members of Parliament and to get public responses.
And the good part about it is actually that all the responses, all the answers from Parliamentarians, are saved on the platform and it builds up to a virtual voter's memory, which is a great source of resource, not only for journalists, but actually for citizens to follow up questions. We've been doing this principle and applying that since the last federal elections in Germany in 2005.
Also to the candidates, so we gave citizens the possibility to enter their postal code, find their constituency, find a short bio of all the candidates, and if they wrote questions they could put forward the questions and get public answers, and the good part about it is that even after the elections you can follow up on promises that candidates made in their election campaign.
And now in 2009 we have the second federal election that we will be covering, and in the mean time we have been following All representives or members of Parliament and through the Parliamentarian work doing the work in Parliament and recorded not only what I said but also what they did in Parliament, so you find a voting record on each member of Parliament, you find their committee membership, their extra earnings, and obviously also like in how they far they answered and responded to citizens, so how does that actually effect the new media.
First of all we gave people a chance to directly participate. They don't have to wait for the journalist to come up with the different with the certain topic or to ask a certain question but actually everyone can get on the web, in a sort of twenty-four seven press conference, and ask their members of Parliament.
And because it's public and because we are cooperating with the traditional media, we are like cooperation partners of like online media where you don't even have to leave your like. Shmigel [sp?] online for instance, or other media websites. You don't have to leave them to ask you members of Parliament, you can just enter the postal code in the political section.
You got a question about a certain topic, a certain media article and you are instantly on the profile of that person responsible for that political decision.Pose your question and get your answer and are xx in this field actually to be the moderators we want to ensure the values that their xx serious no private questions .No insults to ensure there is a safe space, both for citizens and for members of parliament, so we're not actually considered ourselves being the journalists but to ensure the certain conduct, a cord of conduct certain values on their platform so that's what we are doing actually in Germany, and it's been running quite successfully now.
We've just expanded to Austria and from next month on to Luxenberg, and you can find Parliament watch on the state level in Hamburg, on the federal level in Germany. And on the EU level, we've got about 300,000 visitors each month, up to three million page impressions, and the interest is just growing, especially since we are approaching the next election and it's already been changing Government departments as well because members of Parliament...
ninety five percent actively participating by now because it looks really bad if you don't give responses to citizens. Actually one member of Parliament had to resign about a year and half ago because it turned out that he never responded and he missed half of his votes in parliament. So the biggest tabloid in Germany titled, is he Germany's most laziest member of parliament, and the public decided yes he is and he lasted another six months and then he had to resign and even donated like his resignation money, about forty thousand euros, to a charitable organization, unfortunately not to us.
But I mean it just shows the effect that you can have as a citizen by actually getting actively involved in the democratic processes that are already there, by just using new forms of technology, and it's really inspiring what people ask on all sorts of topics, all sorts of questions, and its really fantastic to work on.
So as we puzzle through this matter of values in the emerging world, I think you said that the code of conduct is an evolution for you all, that you're kind of continuously learning your way to it. So you have a curated conversation between citizens and the elected officials who are answering. You screen it, you do some kind of gate keeping, but something you didn't start [xx] the code of conduct and there you're evolving one.
What was that about? of conduct from the very beginning. But the code of conduct has been evolving with the experience that we had in this process. And we have a steering committee of curators. We even have like a constitutional judge on that committee. So if you are not... if you don't agree on the moderator's decision, you can still turn to the steering committee who oversees the process and you can complain.
And this committee is also sort of adapting the code of conduct to like the necessities of the time. So, that principle actually works quite well, but in a way, we're investing a lot of time and resources in this moderation process. So if you have a question and your question's turned down because out of our view, it's in breach of the code of conduct and then we inform you why we think it's in breach of this code of conduct.
At the same time we make this process transparent to the member of Parliament that this question has been posted but not published by us because we think it's in breach of the code of conduct. Then they canthen complain to another outside moderator, and if they don't get an agreement, they can still turn to our steering committee that would then xx and make the final decision so that's really important to us and we are sort of educating people also you know we have some people like xx want to pass on their opinion.
And we say "Well, we actually want questions, we don't just want opinions." And so we feel being pressed into this situation of actually teaching people basic media skills. First of all you address people, you be polite, you're not insulting people if you want to...and you're actually asking a question and If your are making claims than you better provide the sources as well like by for instance posting a web link x you do some interesting work around the world, I wonder if you could share it with us?
OK, I'm not sure I'm going to impress anybody in this environment with my story, but here is the story Previous life I used to be a journalist and I was running the biggest and the most important independent media company xx in early 90's before the world starts where there you can imagine in that the environment xx restrict impressive government how difficult that was .So that experience actually gave me the idea that there must true have been an organisation, international organisation that type or world bank.
Type of financial institution that would be providing financial support to independent media companies all over the world because I figured Yugoslavia. Its only the country in trouble near the viewer the only media in the Perth media company in trouble. So, first step was to figure out if there is something like that,there was nothing like that.
Then the second step was to invent something like that which was easy, I did that. And then the third step was actually somewhat more difficult which was to find financing for that. To make a long story short, it goes for three years, I finally managed to convince George Soros to put first half a million dollars as an investment to that fund.
He took... he was actually resisting for two meetings, on the third one, he has said it will not work, but I will give you a rope to hang yourself which was in May of '95 and I'm not that type of a person who would do such a thing. So, since '95 we gave about ninety million dollars in funding to different media companies all over the world.
All over the world meaning 23 countries, those countries are widely known as developing countries. We call them majority world. We think there is a very important distinction there although we don't have time for that explanation it's about 186 projects, it can. We are providing primarily loans and equity investments.
It can be anything, investment or loan can be anything between five thousand dollars and five million dollars. And lastly, our last rate since 95, he is really embarrassing, its somewhere in between 2 ; 3 percent and no lot of fun there is actual last 10 years, like telling us that you must be doing something wrong if a last rate is so low and I know the reason how we came to resolve that problem, but i don't think it would be proper.
Just two last things about them is left. We are self sustainable. So, we had, from the very beginning we thought it was very important to be a self sustainable organization. have independence from funders, investors, and all the other potential influences. We had, we started with our first strategy June 85 that one crushed nearly in 98 .Then we built xx that knowledge and experience we there it is second srategy in 98 that one crush in really in two thousand one for we launch the third one which is actually the most simple and the most visible which was they exceed for 6 years.
That is that we also take equity positions in some of the companies which we give loans to. And over time, after we exited the first two investments that we made in late 90's we actually now have relevant in terms of numbers these days. But we have 3 years of operating expenses sitting in a bank account.
So we are covered for the next 3 years of operations. And the last thing... if we still have time, do we have time? The last thing that I think is important about the organisation is that we managed to tap into private markets. We issued... and I think that our underwriter should be somewhere here in this conference, Shari[sp?] Barinbaw[sp?], he's from Calvert Foundation...
they helped us issue investment notes in the U.S., so that is how U.S. citizens can practically buy our bonds. For Europeans, we did some thing similar if not more interesting with Swiss private bank [xx] and those specific bonds are listed on the Zurich Stock Exchange.
And basically, just the last point if I may.... what we were doing in mid '90s and to just make a link with our previous We are previous conversation what we are doing in midnight is was actually there is something very simple the world was the media world was very simple by were, good guys and bad guys, guys for press freedom, guys against press freedom.
There were not too many things to think about, you would find a person or we find change makers , as we calls them change agents. In those countries people who bet their life on press freedom and projects which they are running and we just provide financing for them and sit around sit back and see how they developing their projects so that was in mid nineties and it was I say very simple idea behind financing them was their companies, their work will over time will become a institution which practically would be an institution of the of democracy in those transitional societies.
Because sometimes independent media institutions are actually equally important as the whole branch of judiciary. Now 15 years later, that is much more complicated. We are doing things in a very different way, and we are doing very different things. But I don't think I have time to talk about that.
So we can just leave it for questions and answers or after that.
Right, and so I've lapsed as a moderator. You all should have index cards, or pieces of paper, or scrap or something around. Okay, good. It would be wonderful if we have inspired ideas and questions. If you jotted them down and sent them to the end of your aisle so that we could start to work them with you.
Our colleague Keith Hammonds, who actually is the leader of this effort at Ashoka, was going tohelp us, oh we got rid of it, capture them on a flip chart.
Capture some of the good thinking on a flip chart. But while you all are pondering and writing and sending their inpirations to the end of the aisle, I'm going to ask Sasha to continue on one thing. Much of your early work has was in print form and now I think you're thinking about a digital world .And about the contribution you could make to a digital world.
I think you're funding global voices. That's correct. Which Knight [sp?] Foundation also funds. Why don't you just share with us. How you're beginning to think about supporting digital news and knowledge.
Well, very simple, we were launched in '95, already 97 we started our some thing we called camps center for advanced media prog which was supposed to be a center to to take technologies invented in the West and adopt them for the majority world and actually deploy them quickly there. Because we understood that cutting trees and printing newspapers is not going to be business forever, so therefore we wanted to actually also steer some of our clients out of that business and get them into a digital world as fast as soon as they could get there.
Now you can only do that as fast as the market for that develops, and something that is pretty well known in the West is this theory of digital immigrants and digital natives. In the majority world has much more dramatic consequences just for the. If there are some who do not know the concept, the concept goes to divide the population into two groups.
One is digital natives, that is a younger generation, people who are born into digital technology. Feel very comfortable trouble using it. When they were five, they had their first DVD. They flip all of those buttons. And digital immigrants our generation, like mine. We kind of try to catch up but we still need two fingers to send an SMS and we have to think about it and we need 15 minutes for one sentence.
Now that is how it works in the west, where technology from PC down was accessible at the same time. Now, in the majority world, that is much more dramatic and you practically have two totally distinct audiences. You have the audience that is actually still reading and buying newspapers, that will be reading and buying newspapers forever, you have those that has already switched; there is practically no one in between.
Thank you. So, now I get to work and we really would invite your help and helping us think about future world building out this framework and Keith is going to help us keep track of things. So, let's see what we have here. Oh, okay. Three microphones.
Keith, i think that we should read the question from up here. Oh. Do we have a microphone? Help is on the way. Okay, my name is Jasera Corngood and i work with from Brazil, Rio De Janeiro. and I was thinking we are so much exposed to the bad news at eleven, and so how could we break that, and i think that is very much related to education.
People are used to believe that crime in Central Park is more important. That 2009 score award forum so we here heard lot about that on the news but don't hear about what is happening here so I think a news of ideas in terms of educating people, educating journalists, to expose us more to thesector news, and in terms of the web, what I was thinking, I would love, for myself, to be able to have my favorites in the at the news where I would have it pop up the news about the third sector.
So I would be constantly seeking in with information And I think by having statistics about that may be later on we will be contributing to the change and in the media by seeing how many people are actually accessing this kind of information and interested in hearing, you know, the good things that are happening throughout the world.
So, Sir one responded one thing if brings to mind for me also this idea that Bill racing I must say when he x was head spinning for my and set me my thinking on a different trajectory of this idea of tools to help us envision and build the future. So, you're asking to, to, sort of, change the norms of what people are interested in and what their condition and xx would be there overtime but unfortunately not there many people were interested.
So, what are the new tools? What are the new story-telling devices? What are the new platforms that might help to enable a real interest in this type of information. One of the places that I see it occurring is in the world of serious games. There is a company in New York called Area Code that really does gaming and engagement.
There's, there are games about thinking about conflict in the Middle East. There are games that enable you to think about oil and all the policy trade-offs regarding oil. I think they do cause you to sit in someone else's circumstances and start to learn perspectives. So, there's an interesting emergence of serious games as a form of journalism that I think has a way of, sort of, looking at a future world and changing some of the norms.
Yes, please.
Jan Erickson wrote a very interesting book and said that one of the main purposes for the press covering crime so much is that those are the stories that help people figure out the rules. They don't read law books but they read the Daily News in New York. There is a purpose served by some of that bad news.
XX and he hears exactly right there. We all really, really now need to know about the future. Where we are going, where might we be going? And the conversation we're having here, how do we think about it. How do we each come out of here with. And often you no webs were future is going I can see need nothing think about that, I am actually dry after mistake.
There is I had spinal structural problem with old brass not sure about the new one. and it's been very hard for journalists to write about alternatives. It takes time and effort. They've got a deadline in a few hours, and they're afraid that it's going to be mixed up with advocacy. And so the press, the traditional press, has had a structural bias against the future that does not reflect the market demand.
And I think that's a huge opportunity and it's one of the reasons that the old press is losing out. If you look at the world, of blogs, etc., etc., you find that restraint has been removed to a significant degree. But we're still living in a world where very few people have that skill. And I just want to use another example, in the Ghandian Movement uses storytelling and the media to get people to, he called it a truth force, to get people to confront that their behavior is inconsistent with their operating in life based on empathetic ethics.
And once people are faced with that, they will change. I, every Ghandian Movement in the world has succeeded because that is so useful to people that when an issue gets ripe there is no restraint on coverage. King asked in Birmingham the key question, "Will the press come?" And they did come because it was dealing with that fundamental need that people had.
So I'm very optimistic. We'll still have the unerics and need, but we've all got to figure out how to help think about, act about the future.
I want to stand on this a moment about story telling and values. And about Gandhi and the Martin Luther King. [xx] there is a question in here related to this. Do the new understandings into human behavior are either that people are not rational actors, that aspirational stories are more influential and stimulating action than critical ones.
Does all that require that journalism rethink how free presses help societies improve. I think that what we just heard Bill saying was the power of the story at the time when the movement is, I don't want to say matured, but when it is moving in to a more normative situation where people are just horrified by what is going on and they can no longer reconcile what they stand for with what's going on.
And that's often when the press comes in and helps to highlight this question. What I like about this question is that journalists have long known that human beings are not rational and journalists developed all types of story telling techniques exactly because so much information used to say all about AIDS prevention and cigarette smoking.
Information doesn't change behavior it rise rational crazy, information doesn't change behavior you are relationship information changes behavior. Your emotional attachment to that information changes behavior. Examples that Bill will It' s just given examples that we can all think of one of the so men is not a rational being and journalists understood and that is why you see stories told so many, so many different ways.
And how that will happen in the new world will be interesting to see. What's happening now though is As part of this relationship information only exist in relationship to something else. Right? It doesn't have meaning except in relationship to something else. increasingly people are able to have larger social networks on the web who are a mediating force in providing information.
Right, it used to just be people you knew or your family. you were a schoolboy than that. Now you can have a much larger network, if you would, of intermediaries trying, adding naming to your information, and I really need to wind down I'm going to go to these guys to ask this one because it's way too hard for me.
Is the theory of change behind traditional journalism out of date? It's a simple question. Scott, how hard, does it matter?
Well It's a theory of change behind traditional journalism out of date. I mean, well, our experiences are that, I mean, that journalists, there's still a place for journalism, so whoever is a journalist here, you are safe, as long as you do qualitative journalism and as long as you sort of help people through that myriad of information.
For instance, on parliament what have you got thousands of topics I know you are like more than a one hundred thousand answers and for us you know its not our, as moderators but its not our turn to set the agenda. So we still rely on journalist to sort of pick certain topics searched through the database.
They picked topics, make them big, follow up. For instance, there's a member of the parliament who have to resign that wasn't like a work. It's searched has started with the research of the journalist who discovered that on parliament watch, this member of parliament is not responding, is not going to the votes.
So, he took up this story and other was followed on, went to the constituency, asked other people, explored the story, presented it really well and then got this whole campaign started.
So, that's not what we're replacing, but we could still, what we can do is to contribute to more trustworthy information because when you didn't believe in that tabloid story for instance, you could still turn to this member of Parliament and say, "Well is that actually true? Did you never respond?" And you can check his profile and then sort of judge for yourself.
So it's another stage of controlling journalism, and actually to improve the quality of journalism and the trustworthiness. So, maybe new forms of media are just an add-on to sort of help journalists to get the facts right and to provide higher quality to their readers. And I'm sure that all of us would agree that if you want to get good news, you'd be prepared also So to pay a bit for it.
At least that is an experience in Germany for improved quality paper like and Titan all we known for qualitative journalism is actually is the one that doesn't loose circulation at the moment that has actually improved do you wanna take explain that yeah says what more simple. I think that the answer is yes.
I think that there is no journalism that the way we know, there is no media company the way we know it. I think in that phase, I don't know if they still make it on desktop computers. There used to be that button says reboot, so when you press the button, your screen goes black then you wait in fear for five seconds and that those are five seconds.
That is where we are right now and we are waiting to see when things come up again and how it is going to look like.
mm-hmm And that relates to the company, to media company as the unit, because that was totally Destroyed that's not exist any more to any individuals formally known as journalist because you know Be very honest and I am one of those it takes a lot of knowledge to become an orthopedic surgeon. Not too much to become a journalist.
There are people who were never trained as journalists who are probably among the top journalists in in all the countries. And to make the long story short. I think the situation is much more dramatic, and that we are in this chaos phase. Just happened and we have to try to do our best to put those pieces the way that it works well for us and we have probably the next two to three years to do it.
Okay, so there are a a number of questions here about trust. What can we We believe, how do we know? If we will be able to believe it all. I will read some of them. And give you all a little moment to think about it. With the exponential growth in. online media. How do we address the blurring of the traditional separation of news and facts from opinion?
Fact checking and corrections by the media has been a problem for the traditional media. Those problems have been amplified with the internet and there are other similar ones. How do we know facts, how do we verify them? How do we know what we can count on? Anybody ready? Phil? Well, there's been a lot of comment about how the new media with extensive involvement and people where and cell phone cameras everywhere.
That we actually have an opportunity to improve the trustworthiness. of the knowledge flows pearl. So, much of this turns on how we set it up. Are we going to. What's a bit of a framework a week and a half. I believe that this is such an important area. There are some things that We are going to need the law and that can be put in place in many different ways.
But you know I think that we are seeing the self correction going on. If you just listen to the comments here the thrust of the questions and the thrust of the discussion yesterday, it has a lot to do with trust. And if you go back, why would Harvard's motto and 1640 something. There are task truth because we're always struggling to find the truth, you know, the guy with the lamp in Greece.
we just, having everyone involved increasingly across the world instantly, we have an ability to do checking if we got the architecture right and the framework right. So, I am actually quite optimistic. I can see someone who isn't.
Really? But-
Well, my opinion would
be that providing access to firsthand information that can be, you know, like, with the website like Parliament Watch, you don't have to rely on journalists asking certain questions at some press conference and then maybe taking some parts of it and reporting it to you, but actually you can turn to those people that make that political decision and they can inform you firsthand.
And, you know, members of Parliament have access to government departments, etc. For instance, there's been a lot of questions on arms control recently on Parliament Watch, and so what civil servants of the Government Department for an office control experience. That there's a higher demand of members of parliament turning to them and asking them, and follow up on those questions.
And suddenly civil servants recognize Well actually I am you know Parliament is above me and should do a good job and inform the public so I mean it really changes you know that systematic change even government departments that people don't directly turn to, but through their member of parliament, they can get a lot more information and thus also get more trust put information.
Yeah. I think this is the key issue and I think this is the issue that it's not that they're not optimistic, but I'm mostly worried about it. for several reasons there's a whole set of literature that explains or argues that we are moving into something that is defined post affect society and the things just need to be true enough and they just have to be convincing enough to sell you whatever they need.
to sell. And see this actually becomes a world that abuses internet. In this sense, and information in this sense can from the world into this different mirrors in which everything you touch is partly true, partly not true, but you will because you know part of that is true by the whole information which opens this whole area for incredible manipulation.
See 20 years ago, Soviet Union, they thought that they could manipulate to the there's only one voice that control that one voice. What governments do now, is they higher hackers to bring down Burmese oppositional site. opposition site. It's not going to be there. The different governments as you know who are incredibly skillful and successful in which you cannot access from with in the country here there is this whole cyber war going about that one of the well known experts on that the topic is in this room so am not going to talk about that here is the biggest problem there is one solution is media literacy we must become incredibly curious about that.
That is one thing and the second thing is what I think is the biggest injury is if you know that there is so much money you tend to go to words to your group of people that you trust. Your group of people that you trust, your social group tends to. be people who more or less have the same political views and other views that you have, and if you are going to read and trust everything that they in your direction, you will end up being in this eco-chamber preaching to the convinced that you are going around things that you all believe, and therefore you'll have a society which will have these echo chambers without real that was a purpose of the newspapers and, and mass media as we knew them to start with.
So mindful of all the great risks out there I I choose to be very optimistic about it and only wish I had another lifetime to, to live and work in it. And, and my reason is, is this that too many people have chosen or have been forced to remain on the sidelines and we have not Had the benefit of their knowledge, their wisdom, their experience, everything, and I feel this most strongly as I think about this is a horrible way to describe it, but highly educated individuals who have who, who choose to hide behind their technical academic expertise and do not join the conversation, the sloppy conversations that citizens need..
to have to figure out what we believe and to set our policy and our shared course so I'm excited that you can as Clay Shirky so beautifully describes, you can say here's a puzzle and that talent you never knew was out there will will rush in. It's my fondest hope that everyone rushes in from the extremely well educated to the extremely wise who may not have formal education.
So, in my world too many people have opted out or have been marginalized. It 's just my hope that we can create a better world with more people in it.
Man 1: I can't resist. Paula just articulated what everyone at Changemakers Society is about. This is the fundamental change Where everyone has the skills and the confidence to be a change maker. Where anything is stuck or there is an. nothing to worried about every one is on it i bet you 80% of the people in this room have been thinking about the trust rooting this issue just look at these two stories I can give you many other stories of social entrepreneurs who are working on this, that you know we don't know But the answer is you never.
Because there isn't going to be any answer. Even if we get the answer, we'll need a new answer shortly thereafter because of the rater change. In an Everyone a Change-Maker world, you have the anybodies right away. Wherever anyone is, when they've given themselves that permission, they're going to be looking looking for truth.
I think we're at the magic moment of parting company. I'd ask you to thank my colleagues here and Pete, who got us organized. Thanks for joining us today, and we look forward to all of the change you are going to make in the world, and help us with news and knowledge. Thanks.
A more telling number, however, is that in the last two years. Let's withstand even best is the 100 million in media information. With the digital revolution turning journalism on next year we are going to make sure the future of news and information is instilled with the traditional value, journalism values so important in a democracy.
Ashoka, like Knight explores new solutions to problems both old and emerging. There focus of course is on finding and supporting, and advancing. social entrepreneurs like you all around the world. So the show launched its use and knowledge entrepreneurs which over three years, will cultivate thirty social entrepreneurs in journalism.
We seek people who strive to invent new strategies and models that more effectively inform, engage and connect people as active change making citizens. We are wedded to any one media model. We want fellows to explore our traditional thinking. Later you will hear from two of these fellows Gregor Hackmack and Shishir Bushnik about their successes.
While launching Fellow's program, Ashoka and Knight Foundation also decided to examine kinds of innovation going on in the media industry using the showcase on developing mosaic way of thinking. we thought we could begin to map innovation. We wanted to find the patterns so we could better talk about what is happening around the world, so we've created a framework of media trends which I will share with you in a moment.
I'd like to emphasize though, that this framework is very much a work in progress. We've hashed out some concepts and discovered some emerging patterns, but we need to advance to the next stage, to find the best ideas for the future of news and information that we, and you as social entrepreneurs, can use to advance society.
We hope that you will lend your insight during the question and answer portion of this forum. There is much urgent work to be done and we're really looking forward to you joining us in the work. Before we begin that, I would like to run through the frameworks basic concepts which you have just before you on the handout.
First off, there are two driving forces that are shaping the medialandscape . One is technology which has changed forever the way we create, deliver and consume information. It also has appended the old media models making them increasing outdated. With new media, publishing is virtually cost less, meaning any one can get into the game of providing or distributing information.
Also contenders now more, easily accessible to many previously information isolated peoples. Whether it via the web, mobile phone, or radio. This is particularly true in the developing world. We all know the internet is an increasingly popular source for news. But the few senors for research recently reported that for the first time the internet has surpassed newspapers in the United States as a source for national and international news.
The internet has also changed the way we receive news. Forcing articles to be delivered individually, separate from the traditional media packages and brands. Another driving force. relationship people have to information. We are no longer passive information consumers. Rather, we are active information users.
We know how to create information, how to edit it, distribute it, comment on it, molding and shaping In each time we come across it. Meanwhile the one time mass media market is growing increasingly fragmanent and often driven by Individual. Traditional news organizations are losing ground. And, we have seen blogs and ethnic media gaining steam, as people gravitate to the work of individual writer feeds and powerful voices.
They are moving away from institutional brands. In this slide you'll see that circulation of members of the Association of Alternative of news weekly's has tripled since 1999. Meanwhile, Spanish language media has grown exponentially. This dos not mean we are less interested in getting information about our world?
Quite the opposite, but we are less interested in the traditional sources and pathways to that information. So what are the results. The media are becoming decentralized. Large media organisations no longer are the gate keepers of information. The explosion of new media and the low cost of using net, have made the reigns of information available to all.
That's good news for people who care about open societies and governments. The [xx] availability of information promises greater transparency.... greater transparency in government, business, and other institutions that have been impenetrable to most citizens. We'll hear more about that later from one of our fellow panelist from Parliament Watch.
There also has been an explosion story telling. Throughout human history, story telling it has been the way the glue that unites communities and is the way people pass news and information. It is the way we share our values. The fundamental dynamics of it, though are changing. The traditional line between storytellers and audience has diminished, and digital media has allowed new groups of people to tell their own stories, free from traditional outlets.
The traditional line between story tellers and audience has diminished and digital media has allowed new groups of people to tell their stories this reminds me of a night news channel when We were in Philadelphia who is inspiring immigrants to create online digital newscast, and he uses the city's new broad brand system to distribute and tell the stories.
We are also seen aggressive experimentation and story telling with innovators using new technology that allow users to mold it. Think of footnote dot com. The website posts historical documents, say those from the Vietnam War, and lets people comment on them and post their own family histories and memories.
This slide shows the Vietnam War Memorial with people's comments on the names they find there. It's a powerful experience to browse through. Another element that has evolved is the rise of social networks, networks that encourage engagement and new forms of social expression. In this new world, we are the center of community life.
It's a citizen-centered world where people have more power to get involved and shape the public debate, whether on Facebook, or Myface, email listserv's, or Twitter. I don't know, if you've all been following the twittering of the conference. It's very vigorous out there. every one is an editor, parsing and recommending information that is consumed by everyone else.
The trustworthiness of that information depends on few paster. And how you feel about him or her. The conversation is at least as important as the information itself. And get in these social networks can be both powerful, a powerful act of citizenship and a pathway to activism. I think about a site that the crowd sources information in a crisis, allowing anyone to submit information through text message of the web.
It has been used to map Instances of violence in Gaza and exorbitant taxes in South Africa. In united states another example is in Park City very independent community that is trying to do its own part in the fight against global warming. They are the community foundation with funds from Knight is creating Social network to let people measure their carbon footprint compare it to their peers and exchange conversation ideas.
Certainly this new landscape has also brought its new sort of challenges too. At this point I would like to bring Bill in to the conversation as we began to explore the challenges and the opportunities which you'll see captured on your handout, as the discussion of values and the sustainability of these new media systems.
So Bill and I thought we would do is begin a conversation about how we frame and approach these issues, and Invite you in to the conversation. Later we meet the panelists and we will just see where we will go from there. Thank you. Is exposs sir we really hope this would be working session and sir I wonder that you limbered up for this.
In addition to asking for questions, we hope you will have suggestions or solutions. And so we reverse this about and ask more questions its this point and between my friend working so require this would be great success if we push this learning process ahead. Yesterday, we had a meeting with several people who are from the Professional journalism field.
And by chance with VVS, made an observation, that moved the ball ahead. I just wanted sure that was used as an example, so you can challenge his contribution leads so far. He said the web you know, we've got this problem of how you finance everything. And the free web seems to be may be insignificant part because people are happy to give free services in return for getting a lot of information from us.
That sounds interesting and that runs us into privacy issue. How comfortable are we with that. If Google is the most important new publisher, how much, to what degree did they think about privacy. To what degree did we think about it. Well, if the machine is supposed to be learning from us every time someone goes on the web, well maybe we want that learning.
But where is the difference which mean the warning from as all doing all things on the world and the point we can offer the boundary into well maybe there isn't a particular boundary. Maybe there are boundaries that fit particular situations and particular people, and how do we set that up? so that there's choice.
Our choice probably is what we'd like. So, now that's an example where just yesterday, less than Twenty four hours ago, I think Kim was moved ahead very east and anywhere here who can please switch on today will be wonderful. So I in thinking about this, we have this wonderful advantage that we have our colleagues, the fellows, the social entrepreneurs around the world.
Each of them, has not only seen the issue, but they're doing something really important it works at scale. And when you see a hundred, two hundred of those mosaic pieces you begin to see the pattern. And we're I think at stage where we're beginning to see the pattern or at least the frameworks of the pattern.
But we don't know. And I don't know what emphasis, we do not know three most historic opportunities to intervene and change the system are. That's what we're looking for. What are the one or two things that we could do together it would really change the field. Though we don't know, hopefully you get closer to that.
One thing I think distorts the conversation at the moment is that every time you pick up the newspaper, or I guess you do not do that anymore, you go on the web, you hear about five more newspapers that died yesterday and so we're really.... this conversation is very focused on the institutions of journalism.
And there is obviously difference between journalism and newspapers. But I just think that it's very helpful to recognize that the search for truth and making it available to people Since hence this particular function, the law is about finding the truth. In whatever while 1640, something rather, Harvard was set up with the motto "Veritas".
This is a " The values of journalism are much more universal and I think that gives us, it gives me a sense of great deal of confidence that, now that we're focusing on the institutions we will find solutions to the values issues. So, what are the, what's the larger environment, that we're dealing with here.
That's the other thing that helps, I think, frame this. It's obviously, the rate of change is accelerating and it's coming at us from more and more angles. So, the environment is one, and will be increasingly one where the types of information we need and the types of role we play will be different, because it's defined by that very different world.
That world is also one which is moving to organization structures are very different. it is, we do not have local communities that are isolated anymore. In 1900, 97 percent of the world's children were growing up in isolated. Small local agricultural village is gone. No one, almost no one, is in that situation.
We're moving to a world of teams of teams, all linked together and working together in different combinations depending on the need and the moment.
That is a completely different architecture than we've had historically. Well the web of course is brilliant at this. Linkages is one of its greatest strengths. Well, this is not surprising as I think The world is emerging as a cycle you develop a circulatory system when you need it, they were building, and overall it's a team of teams, where every individual, as a team member, has the skills and the enjoyment of being able to take the initiative and when they have proper overall working under team together.
This is a very very different world and what are the some of the implications for, the types of news and the types of journalism: Writing, information gathering, processing. First of all the users are very interested in the future. In a static world, the future was not that relevant. In the world we are in, let alone where we would be in ten or fifteen years, the users wants to know traditional scholarship has been very good at, because the market hasn't needed it, hasn't demanded it, but it now does.
The other obvious change in the environment is that we all have to be actors, we all have to be change makers. You cannot be a contributing person in this world of rapidly escalating, more and more complex change, unless you are in the game of change. So, we are not passive readers everyone's understood that we're transitioning to a world where we all have to be players.
That means that we all have to have skills. Gutenberg led to the spread of literacy and here's another example, in 1900 we didn't need psychology, we didn't have it, I would add. We invented psychology as a field and then popularized it through the media because as we became more and more independent actors, we need that skill.
So what sorts of skills do people have to have, and parenthetically what does that mean in terms with the knowledge that we have to be providing them through whatever sets of institutions. To be a change maker, you have to have social skills empathy team work leadership change making you also have to have not just media literacy in a defensive sense but now how do you contribute can I trust for the professional way in teams of, teams dealing with knowledge and information.
This is an information world and so the subject and the viewer. It all becomes very interconnected. So, let me just pause for a moment on the value I think this is the are that we in the social entrepreneurial field probably need to pay a special attention to. This is not driven by the economics.
It's driven by something else and we better be driving it. First of all, as I was saying, I think pressing for meaning, trustworthiness. Those are universals that cut across fields. That's why we think about this as the knowledge news field. How does one do trustworthiness? You have brand New York Times, Huffington Post.
You have personal networks. We all choose who we're going to have in our networks. We choose people who are probably we think are at least interesting and trustworthy. We have the Google algorithm and others and obviously we need to do more than thinking about trustworthiness, it's an area I think of tremendous scientific need, further advancement in psychology, but also, how do we build and enter the system in much more sophisticated ways, and then finally, there's thewar.
XX representative body we need to make some collective decisions. What are they? And what comes first, this is - where do we as a social entrepreneurial field push in terms of trustworthiness, accuracy, professionalism, freedom. I want to pause on privacy for a moment. And this is where John's suggestion yesterday I thought was so important there's a market for spy ware.
I think we need to think about how we develop a market that comes from the most largest number of places where we're competing with the people who want the information from us to build defenses. For those of you, who have a human rights background, trying to defend against preventative surveillance in the age of dirty bombs is probably not the highest leverage place to put one's efforts.
We're going to have preventative surveillance. How can we expand the universe of human privacy, human rights and freedom? Well, I think we need to go on the offensive say "We are going to give people a choice of privacy of their information and their lives." Well that's a major issue in the knowledge and news this field.
How do we enforce all of this? This is a second set of categories and there are two dimensions to it. How do you enforce at any one moment in time? Well, the skills of the users is obviously key. The users, the producers, the combinations, the tools we develop to make that easy. Having more players is really helpful.
One of problems of the big printing press natural monopoly monopoly is that it's very easy to control. And has been in much of the world. And so, Zasa's work in terms of encouraging media is part of the effort to open up that space. How can we make sure that we end up in a world where network effect, that leads in the direction of an even bigger monopoly.
You know, Google, eBay, they understand in network effect. Well, do we want that? How do we have competition and sources and users and this new architecture? Where are we going to end up? Well, we should think about about that. There's also competition and enforcement in the environmental and securities field through the key town laws.
If you see someone is polluting the river and you bring the case, you'll get rewarded in the courts for doing that. So you have private competitive enforcement which is not corruptible. It's an example of the sorts of mechanisms when we look beyond the narrow barriers of the press. And then finally systems creation.
We're aren't going to create a new answer that's going to stay there very long. In a world of geometrically escalating change, we have to be constantly, every day, changing the frameworks, staying ahead of the changes. How is our 19th, 18th, 17th century stovepipe traditional way of, you know, pre-modern government, gonna do that?
How are we're gonna help that change? So, I hope that helps a little bit in framing the challenge. And I think we now have our colleagues here who will.
No, I'm going to ask you some questions.
Okay, okay.
And then you're going to hear my little spiel.
Oh yes, I'm sorry.
Okay Which he demanded that I do last night. And so I missed going out, so you must hear it. But first, Bill I wanted to see if I could draw you out on a topic that is, I know, important to you, important to all of us. The matter of empathy. And how that will be enhanced or eroded. Or, how you see in the new evolving internet world.
A contribution for us to be able to be more empathetic or not. That's a sneak attack. That's a really good question. I, one of the difficulties the web has is that, although we're beginning to get the visual element, we do lose a lot of the interpersonal connection. We've evolved that over millions of years.
When you walk down the street you know whether you can trust this person. You make judgments every day: Will this woman or man be a good babysitter? Will I make a deal with this person? Will I get in the elevator? Those skills we have. And so, any part of the challenge is, how do we get the media, how do we evolve this, so that it plays to our strength?
So the better we're able to use the new media to in fact be able to judge as well as we can when we're face to face. That is going to help tremendously. And that's a big challenge. Quite aside from the media I am hugely distressed that society is moving away from talking openly about ethics. We're afraid we're going to confuse discomfort.
But with otherness, with trustworthiness. And so that's, that's something that, I hope we can avoid in the area.The emergence of psychology and its popularization is an example of how this can be done. I'm actually very optimistic because, in a world of very rapid change where everyone has to be a change maker.
Anyone who is in that ballet, being powerful, for good, but just being powerful, if they do that in a way that hurts other people or other institutions, they're out. And so we've an adverting device they removes people who are not skill for and thus we'd help people get there. How do we make sure that every young child masters empathy.
That is not a journalism issue, but journalism can certainly help by framing the issue. How many parents, how many school administrators know that they're failing if there's one second grader that hasn't mastered empathy? So I You know, we have, there's a reason that we have evolved this skill to be able to know whether or not we can trust people.
As one of the most fundamentals skills we've and a global team of teams for your transmaping quit to gather with people. Knowing that we have a trustworthy system and trustworthy people. And we can sense that. Because people really are trustworthy. That's I think it's completely central for the design of the system.
I'm sure we'll get back to this notion of trust; it certainly is the currency of news and knowledge I believe in relationships. I did do my homework assignment and it feels compelled to share it with you. I did a just a couple of notions. So, I'm a journalist of more than 30 years and eagerly hoping to nudge the evolution of this in some some way for the betterment of all of us.
Some thoughts as I look at it and work in it that I just wanted to share some thoughts with you. First of all this is very, I know, primitive to everyone here, but information is the fundamental driver of systems. Whether it's a political system, a financial system. We've referenced Darwin before, so we all really understand the role All of information as the agent of learning and either adaptation and that.
So, I like to take a really foundational approach to information and I'll invite you all to think about the systems in which you're operating and the information flows. I know folks think about them. But you might think, sort of, more systemically about what it means. And so, because of that, people want to have access to the inputs of the flows, they want to control the flows in the form of not allowing for a free press or a rigorous exhange of ideas, they want to manipulate them in the form of propaganda, and other forms that we know, all of which is much alive in our currently new chaotic world.
So, I think a foundational thought about systems and the role information plays in all systems and we of course want it to be free flowing but not everyone does. And so, a discussion about power arises out of all of that. And I'm not going to begin, here to have a discussion about power, but as this new world emerges, it's something I think we'll want to work on.
You know that some of the cliches about journalism are, they speak truth to power, or they hold power accountable, or they have too much power but sometimes people forget to put that on the table. It's a very primary part of news and information. What are the power relationships. And so, how are those going to change.
All sorts of institutional power has been amalgamated over more than a hundred years in certain types of news institutions that we now see fading. So what will the new world look like in terms of that? Often when we think about news and information the first instinct is toward civic processes, and it's an important instinct because it does underpin our freedoms our ability to participate in our shared governance, but I think there are some other important things to think about in the bundle of things that went on with news feel touched on most of them.
I wanted just to highlight some. This whole matter of community. How do we form a community. Who's in the community, who's outside the community. How do we reflect the community back? All of that has been a function of news and in an online world we say we can create bigger different communities and this gets to the issue of trust.
We spend a lot of time thinking about this matter of community, and I would want to think a lot about then, what is the role of the individual in this community? community. So riding right along with that idea is that news actually was quite an anthropological enterprise.So if you think of it as a google search, of course you know you'll be missing a lot.
Because the reason probably that you want your enterprise in a new story, or the individuals you're working within a story,have nothing to do with information search.What it's above is, partly, a norming process. The way a society says "What are our norms here, what are our shared norms?" Who's outside our norms?
When will our norms, when will things that were once taboo become norms. I was deeply involved in the women's movement and the redefinition of news. You would not have seen an education story in a U.S. newspaper on the front page prior to the involvement of women. who were able to have content areas that became normative that were not normative at the time.
So there's just a lot about norms, and you know that. And that's actually where most of the conflict I would say happens. When people are at odds with the media organization, it tends not to be around the facts. It tends to be these other grayer matters of norming. There are similar issues about culture...
how do we transmit cultures and that... you could read and learn about food, just as a way of cooking but it's mostly there to transmit cultural norms and identities, to try to create shared understanding, maybe even empathy every now and then and there are all hosts of content areas that you can look at.
So the idea here that I would like to think about is that there's a function well beyond information, knowledge and civic processes. But people tend to sort of first go to civic processes. And then there's all matter of how will we come to public judgement? How do we have our public discourses? Do we have a shared set of information from which to discourse, or you know what will that look like?
And I would say that most of that discourse is always around values collisions. So the sort of enervating thing about news is always about values and a set of values, collisions or trade-offs that people have to sort of dialog through hopefully. Some will command control, but it would be better to a come to a collaborative spirit about them.
So just thinking about the [xx] anthropological aspects. Another thing I wanted to share is that new news assumes action, it assumes action. It doesn't really... it's not meant to just sitthere and it stimulates all type of actions and what's one of the more fascinating things to me right now is the way the relationships between information, delivery of information, and action are changing.
What are the activation points? Am I, it's becoming more a continuum, and its happening more and more in cycle time, in a shorter cycle time, so increasingly from the footing of a journalist, I would say, hmm - are you and advocate or are you a journalist? What's the different there. And I think Peter Omidyar likes to say all the lines are going away.
I think this is a really interesting line that's changing. The relationship between information and action. And then, I am winding down. Just to understand Or that news is a process, really, about discovery, understanding, sorting out our belief systems and our values. The reason the story about distributing abortion information is news is because that's a values issue.
So really underline most of these things are civilization trying to talk to each other about values in the form, sometimes, of parables that appear as news. So, Bill, did you want to ask me anything?
I think I've indicated from twisting your arm last night. Paula has not only been a journalist, she's one of the most conceptual and thoughtful people I've met in the field and in this learning process. Every time we have a conversation, I learn something. I actually wanted to draw you out a little on something on the last towards the end you said that information and action are merging and maybe you could expand on that a bit.
Keith Hammond, our colleague, said that journalists and editors increasingly having to become, what was your phrase, a "social organizer."
Right. And I know the documentary film industry is dealing with this as well. It used to be that a journalist might have a value of saying, "I just focus attention, I uncover the facts and I put them out there for others to do with as they wish". There's also, sometimes it sprang from a point of view and so it's trying be directional in some forms of journalism.
But then they used to sort of say and that's the end of my obligation, then I'm out, I'm not further down the transaction channel. But increasingly, the action and the creating of the information are going on, in much closer in time. And more more journalists being drawn into what I call the transaction channel.
So that's to watch, interesting. We want to invite our colleagues who are actually doing real work Bill.
Out there in the world making a change in the world. We wanted to invite them up and hear a little bit, hear their stories and interrogative them.
You have their bios and so we'll dispense with the official introduction. Our other panelist was not able to be with us today, his visa was denied. Greg did you want to get us started?
Thank you Paula, thank you Bill for this really inspiring introduction My name is Greg Ohakmuk [sp?] and I'm the co-founder of the website that's called Parliament Watch that has been founded in, that we founded in 2004 already, and it gives the people in Germany, the citizens, the possibility to put forward public questions for their members of Parliament and to get public responses.
And the good part about it is actually that all the responses, all the answers from Parliamentarians, are saved on the platform and it builds up to a virtual voter's memory, which is a great source of resource, not only for journalists, but actually for citizens to follow up questions. We've been doing this principle and applying that since the last federal elections in Germany in 2005.
Also to the candidates, so we gave citizens the possibility to enter their postal code, find their constituency, find a short bio of all the candidates, and if they wrote questions they could put forward the questions and get public answers, and the good part about it is that even after the elections you can follow up on promises that candidates made in their election campaign.
And now in 2009 we have the second federal election that we will be covering, and in the mean time we have been following All representives or members of Parliament and through the Parliamentarian work doing the work in Parliament and recorded not only what I said but also what they did in Parliament, so you find a voting record on each member of Parliament, you find their committee membership, their extra earnings, and obviously also like in how they far they answered and responded to citizens, so how does that actually effect the new media.
First of all we gave people a chance to directly participate. They don't have to wait for the journalist to come up with the different with the certain topic or to ask a certain question but actually everyone can get on the web, in a sort of twenty-four seven press conference, and ask their members of Parliament.
And because it's public and because we are cooperating with the traditional media, we are like cooperation partners of like online media where you don't even have to leave your like. Shmigel [sp?] online for instance, or other media websites. You don't have to leave them to ask you members of Parliament, you can just enter the postal code in the political section.
You got a question about a certain topic, a certain media article and you are instantly on the profile of that person responsible for that political decision.Pose your question and get your answer and are xx in this field actually to be the moderators we want to ensure the values that their xx serious no private questions .No insults to ensure there is a safe space, both for citizens and for members of parliament, so we're not actually considered ourselves being the journalists but to ensure the certain conduct, a cord of conduct certain values on their platform so that's what we are doing actually in Germany, and it's been running quite successfully now.
We've just expanded to Austria and from next month on to Luxenberg, and you can find Parliament watch on the state level in Hamburg, on the federal level in Germany. And on the EU level, we've got about 300,000 visitors each month, up to three million page impressions, and the interest is just growing, especially since we are approaching the next election and it's already been changing Government departments as well because members of Parliament...
ninety five percent actively participating by now because it looks really bad if you don't give responses to citizens. Actually one member of Parliament had to resign about a year and half ago because it turned out that he never responded and he missed half of his votes in parliament. So the biggest tabloid in Germany titled, is he Germany's most laziest member of parliament, and the public decided yes he is and he lasted another six months and then he had to resign and even donated like his resignation money, about forty thousand euros, to a charitable organization, unfortunately not to us.
But I mean it just shows the effect that you can have as a citizen by actually getting actively involved in the democratic processes that are already there, by just using new forms of technology, and it's really inspiring what people ask on all sorts of topics, all sorts of questions, and its really fantastic to work on.
So as we puzzle through this matter of values in the emerging world, I think you said that the code of conduct is an evolution for you all, that you're kind of continuously learning your way to it. So you have a curated conversation between citizens and the elected officials who are answering. You screen it, you do some kind of gate keeping, but something you didn't start [xx] the code of conduct and there you're evolving one.
What was that about? of conduct from the very beginning. But the code of conduct has been evolving with the experience that we had in this process. And we have a steering committee of curators. We even have like a constitutional judge on that committee. So if you are not... if you don't agree on the moderator's decision, you can still turn to the steering committee who oversees the process and you can complain.
And this committee is also sort of adapting the code of conduct to like the necessities of the time. So, that principle actually works quite well, but in a way, we're investing a lot of time and resources in this moderation process. So if you have a question and your question's turned down because out of our view, it's in breach of the code of conduct and then we inform you why we think it's in breach of this code of conduct.
At the same time we make this process transparent to the member of Parliament that this question has been posted but not published by us because we think it's in breach of the code of conduct. Then they canthen complain to another outside moderator, and if they don't get an agreement, they can still turn to our steering committee that would then xx and make the final decision so that's really important to us and we are sort of educating people also you know we have some people like xx want to pass on their opinion.
And we say "Well, we actually want questions, we don't just want opinions." And so we feel being pressed into this situation of actually teaching people basic media skills. First of all you address people, you be polite, you're not insulting people if you want to...and you're actually asking a question and If your are making claims than you better provide the sources as well like by for instance posting a web link x you do some interesting work around the world, I wonder if you could share it with us?
OK, I'm not sure I'm going to impress anybody in this environment with my story, but here is the story Previous life I used to be a journalist and I was running the biggest and the most important independent media company xx in early 90's before the world starts where there you can imagine in that the environment xx restrict impressive government how difficult that was .So that experience actually gave me the idea that there must true have been an organisation, international organisation that type or world bank.
Type of financial institution that would be providing financial support to independent media companies all over the world because I figured Yugoslavia. Its only the country in trouble near the viewer the only media in the Perth media company in trouble. So, first step was to figure out if there is something like that,there was nothing like that.
Then the second step was to invent something like that which was easy, I did that. And then the third step was actually somewhat more difficult which was to find financing for that. To make a long story short, it goes for three years, I finally managed to convince George Soros to put first half a million dollars as an investment to that fund.
He took... he was actually resisting for two meetings, on the third one, he has said it will not work, but I will give you a rope to hang yourself which was in May of '95 and I'm not that type of a person who would do such a thing. So, since '95 we gave about ninety million dollars in funding to different media companies all over the world.
All over the world meaning 23 countries, those countries are widely known as developing countries. We call them majority world. We think there is a very important distinction there although we don't have time for that explanation it's about 186 projects, it can. We are providing primarily loans and equity investments.
It can be anything, investment or loan can be anything between five thousand dollars and five million dollars. And lastly, our last rate since 95, he is really embarrassing, its somewhere in between 2 ; 3 percent and no lot of fun there is actual last 10 years, like telling us that you must be doing something wrong if a last rate is so low and I know the reason how we came to resolve that problem, but i don't think it would be proper.
Just two last things about them is left. We are self sustainable. So, we had, from the very beginning we thought it was very important to be a self sustainable organization. have independence from funders, investors, and all the other potential influences. We had, we started with our first strategy June 85 that one crushed nearly in 98 .Then we built xx that knowledge and experience we there it is second srategy in 98 that one crush in really in two thousand one for we launch the third one which is actually the most simple and the most visible which was they exceed for 6 years.
That is that we also take equity positions in some of the companies which we give loans to. And over time, after we exited the first two investments that we made in late 90's we actually now have relevant in terms of numbers these days. But we have 3 years of operating expenses sitting in a bank account.
So we are covered for the next 3 years of operations. And the last thing... if we still have time, do we have time? The last thing that I think is important about the organisation is that we managed to tap into private markets. We issued... and I think that our underwriter should be somewhere here in this conference, Shari[sp?] Barinbaw[sp?], he's from Calvert Foundation...
they helped us issue investment notes in the U.S., so that is how U.S. citizens can practically buy our bonds. For Europeans, we did some thing similar if not more interesting with Swiss private bank [xx] and those specific bonds are listed on the Zurich Stock Exchange.
And basically, just the last point if I may.... what we were doing in mid '90s and to just make a link with our previous We are previous conversation what we are doing in midnight is was actually there is something very simple the world was the media world was very simple by were, good guys and bad guys, guys for press freedom, guys against press freedom.
There were not too many things to think about, you would find a person or we find change makers , as we calls them change agents. In those countries people who bet their life on press freedom and projects which they are running and we just provide financing for them and sit around sit back and see how they developing their projects so that was in mid nineties and it was I say very simple idea behind financing them was their companies, their work will over time will become a institution which practically would be an institution of the of democracy in those transitional societies.
Because sometimes independent media institutions are actually equally important as the whole branch of judiciary. Now 15 years later, that is much more complicated. We are doing things in a very different way, and we are doing very different things. But I don't think I have time to talk about that.
So we can just leave it for questions and answers or after that.
Right, and so I've lapsed as a moderator. You all should have index cards, or pieces of paper, or scrap or something around. Okay, good. It would be wonderful if we have inspired ideas and questions. If you jotted them down and sent them to the end of your aisle so that we could start to work them with you.
Our colleague Keith Hammonds, who actually is the leader of this effort at Ashoka, was going tohelp us, oh we got rid of it, capture them on a flip chart.
Capture some of the good thinking on a flip chart. But while you all are pondering and writing and sending their inpirations to the end of the aisle, I'm going to ask Sasha to continue on one thing. Much of your early work has was in print form and now I think you're thinking about a digital world .And about the contribution you could make to a digital world.
I think you're funding global voices. That's correct. Which Knight [sp?] Foundation also funds. Why don't you just share with us. How you're beginning to think about supporting digital news and knowledge.
Well, very simple, we were launched in '95, already 97 we started our some thing we called camps center for advanced media prog which was supposed to be a center to to take technologies invented in the West and adopt them for the majority world and actually deploy them quickly there. Because we understood that cutting trees and printing newspapers is not going to be business forever, so therefore we wanted to actually also steer some of our clients out of that business and get them into a digital world as fast as soon as they could get there.
Now you can only do that as fast as the market for that develops, and something that is pretty well known in the West is this theory of digital immigrants and digital natives. In the majority world has much more dramatic consequences just for the. If there are some who do not know the concept, the concept goes to divide the population into two groups.
One is digital natives, that is a younger generation, people who are born into digital technology. Feel very comfortable trouble using it. When they were five, they had their first DVD. They flip all of those buttons. And digital immigrants our generation, like mine. We kind of try to catch up but we still need two fingers to send an SMS and we have to think about it and we need 15 minutes for one sentence.
Now that is how it works in the west, where technology from PC down was accessible at the same time. Now, in the majority world, that is much more dramatic and you practically have two totally distinct audiences. You have the audience that is actually still reading and buying newspapers, that will be reading and buying newspapers forever, you have those that has already switched; there is practically no one in between.
Thank you. So, now I get to work and we really would invite your help and helping us think about future world building out this framework and Keith is going to help us keep track of things. So, let's see what we have here. Oh, okay. Three microphones.
Keith, i think that we should read the question from up here. Oh. Do we have a microphone? Help is on the way. Okay, my name is Jasera Corngood and i work with from Brazil, Rio De Janeiro. and I was thinking we are so much exposed to the bad news at eleven, and so how could we break that, and i think that is very much related to education.
People are used to believe that crime in Central Park is more important. That 2009 score award forum so we here heard lot about that on the news but don't hear about what is happening here so I think a news of ideas in terms of educating people, educating journalists, to expose us more to thesector news, and in terms of the web, what I was thinking, I would love, for myself, to be able to have my favorites in the at the news where I would have it pop up the news about the third sector.
So I would be constantly seeking in with information And I think by having statistics about that may be later on we will be contributing to the change and in the media by seeing how many people are actually accessing this kind of information and interested in hearing, you know, the good things that are happening throughout the world.
So, Sir one responded one thing if brings to mind for me also this idea that Bill racing I must say when he x was head spinning for my and set me my thinking on a different trajectory of this idea of tools to help us envision and build the future. So, you're asking to, to, sort of, change the norms of what people are interested in and what their condition and xx would be there overtime but unfortunately not there many people were interested.
So, what are the new tools? What are the new story-telling devices? What are the new platforms that might help to enable a real interest in this type of information. One of the places that I see it occurring is in the world of serious games. There is a company in New York called Area Code that really does gaming and engagement.
There's, there are games about thinking about conflict in the Middle East. There are games that enable you to think about oil and all the policy trade-offs regarding oil. I think they do cause you to sit in someone else's circumstances and start to learn perspectives. So, there's an interesting emergence of serious games as a form of journalism that I think has a way of, sort of, looking at a future world and changing some of the norms.
Yes, please.
Jan Erickson wrote a very interesting book and said that one of the main purposes for the press covering crime so much is that those are the stories that help people figure out the rules. They don't read law books but they read the Daily News in New York. There is a purpose served by some of that bad news.
XX and he hears exactly right there. We all really, really now need to know about the future. Where we are going, where might we be going? And the conversation we're having here, how do we think about it. How do we each come out of here with. And often you no webs were future is going I can see need nothing think about that, I am actually dry after mistake.
There is I had spinal structural problem with old brass not sure about the new one. and it's been very hard for journalists to write about alternatives. It takes time and effort. They've got a deadline in a few hours, and they're afraid that it's going to be mixed up with advocacy. And so the press, the traditional press, has had a structural bias against the future that does not reflect the market demand.
And I think that's a huge opportunity and it's one of the reasons that the old press is losing out. If you look at the world, of blogs, etc., etc., you find that restraint has been removed to a significant degree. But we're still living in a world where very few people have that skill. And I just want to use another example, in the Ghandian Movement uses storytelling and the media to get people to, he called it a truth force, to get people to confront that their behavior is inconsistent with their operating in life based on empathetic ethics.
And once people are faced with that, they will change. I, every Ghandian Movement in the world has succeeded because that is so useful to people that when an issue gets ripe there is no restraint on coverage. King asked in Birmingham the key question, "Will the press come?" And they did come because it was dealing with that fundamental need that people had.
So I'm very optimistic. We'll still have the unerics and need, but we've all got to figure out how to help think about, act about the future.
I want to stand on this a moment about story telling and values. And about Gandhi and the Martin Luther King. [xx] there is a question in here related to this. Do the new understandings into human behavior are either that people are not rational actors, that aspirational stories are more influential and stimulating action than critical ones.
Does all that require that journalism rethink how free presses help societies improve. I think that what we just heard Bill saying was the power of the story at the time when the movement is, I don't want to say matured, but when it is moving in to a more normative situation where people are just horrified by what is going on and they can no longer reconcile what they stand for with what's going on.
And that's often when the press comes in and helps to highlight this question. What I like about this question is that journalists have long known that human beings are not rational and journalists developed all types of story telling techniques exactly because so much information used to say all about AIDS prevention and cigarette smoking.
Information doesn't change behavior it rise rational crazy, information doesn't change behavior you are relationship information changes behavior. Your emotional attachment to that information changes behavior. Examples that Bill will It' s just given examples that we can all think of one of the so men is not a rational being and journalists understood and that is why you see stories told so many, so many different ways.
And how that will happen in the new world will be interesting to see. What's happening now though is As part of this relationship information only exist in relationship to something else. Right? It doesn't have meaning except in relationship to something else. increasingly people are able to have larger social networks on the web who are a mediating force in providing information.
Right, it used to just be people you knew or your family. you were a schoolboy than that. Now you can have a much larger network, if you would, of intermediaries trying, adding naming to your information, and I really need to wind down I'm going to go to these guys to ask this one because it's way too hard for me.
Is the theory of change behind traditional journalism out of date? It's a simple question. Scott, how hard, does it matter?
Well It's a theory of change behind traditional journalism out of date. I mean, well, our experiences are that, I mean, that journalists, there's still a place for journalism, so whoever is a journalist here, you are safe, as long as you do qualitative journalism and as long as you sort of help people through that myriad of information.
For instance, on parliament what have you got thousands of topics I know you are like more than a one hundred thousand answers and for us you know its not our, as moderators but its not our turn to set the agenda. So we still rely on journalist to sort of pick certain topics searched through the database.
They picked topics, make them big, follow up. For instance, there's a member of the parliament who have to resign that wasn't like a work. It's searched has started with the research of the journalist who discovered that on parliament watch, this member of parliament is not responding, is not going to the votes.
So, he took up this story and other was followed on, went to the constituency, asked other people, explored the story, presented it really well and then got this whole campaign started.
So, that's not what we're replacing, but we could still, what we can do is to contribute to more trustworthy information because when you didn't believe in that tabloid story for instance, you could still turn to this member of Parliament and say, "Well is that actually true? Did you never respond?" And you can check his profile and then sort of judge for yourself.
So it's another stage of controlling journalism, and actually to improve the quality of journalism and the trustworthiness. So, maybe new forms of media are just an add-on to sort of help journalists to get the facts right and to provide higher quality to their readers. And I'm sure that all of us would agree that if you want to get good news, you'd be prepared also So to pay a bit for it.
At least that is an experience in Germany for improved quality paper like and Titan all we known for qualitative journalism is actually is the one that doesn't loose circulation at the moment that has actually improved do you wanna take explain that yeah says what more simple. I think that the answer is yes.
I think that there is no journalism that the way we know, there is no media company the way we know it. I think in that phase, I don't know if they still make it on desktop computers. There used to be that button says reboot, so when you press the button, your screen goes black then you wait in fear for five seconds and that those are five seconds.
That is where we are right now and we are waiting to see when things come up again and how it is going to look like.
mm-hmm And that relates to the company, to media company as the unit, because that was totally Destroyed that's not exist any more to any individuals formally known as journalist because you know Be very honest and I am one of those it takes a lot of knowledge to become an orthopedic surgeon. Not too much to become a journalist.
There are people who were never trained as journalists who are probably among the top journalists in in all the countries. And to make the long story short. I think the situation is much more dramatic, and that we are in this chaos phase. Just happened and we have to try to do our best to put those pieces the way that it works well for us and we have probably the next two to three years to do it.
Okay, so there are a a number of questions here about trust. What can we We believe, how do we know? If we will be able to believe it all. I will read some of them. And give you all a little moment to think about it. With the exponential growth in. online media. How do we address the blurring of the traditional separation of news and facts from opinion?
Fact checking and corrections by the media has been a problem for the traditional media. Those problems have been amplified with the internet and there are other similar ones. How do we know facts, how do we verify them? How do we know what we can count on? Anybody ready? Phil? Well, there's been a lot of comment about how the new media with extensive involvement and people where and cell phone cameras everywhere.
That we actually have an opportunity to improve the trustworthiness. of the knowledge flows pearl. So, much of this turns on how we set it up. Are we going to. What's a bit of a framework a week and a half. I believe that this is such an important area. There are some things that We are going to need the law and that can be put in place in many different ways.
But you know I think that we are seeing the self correction going on. If you just listen to the comments here the thrust of the questions and the thrust of the discussion yesterday, it has a lot to do with trust. And if you go back, why would Harvard's motto and 1640 something. There are task truth because we're always struggling to find the truth, you know, the guy with the lamp in Greece.
we just, having everyone involved increasingly across the world instantly, we have an ability to do checking if we got the architecture right and the framework right. So, I am actually quite optimistic. I can see someone who isn't.
Really? But-
Well, my opinion would
be that providing access to firsthand information that can be, you know, like, with the website like Parliament Watch, you don't have to rely on journalists asking certain questions at some press conference and then maybe taking some parts of it and reporting it to you, but actually you can turn to those people that make that political decision and they can inform you firsthand.
And, you know, members of Parliament have access to government departments, etc. For instance, there's been a lot of questions on arms control recently on Parliament Watch, and so what civil servants of the Government Department for an office control experience. That there's a higher demand of members of parliament turning to them and asking them, and follow up on those questions.
And suddenly civil servants recognize Well actually I am you know Parliament is above me and should do a good job and inform the public so I mean it really changes you know that systematic change even government departments that people don't directly turn to, but through their member of parliament, they can get a lot more information and thus also get more trust put information.
Yeah. I think this is the key issue and I think this is the issue that it's not that they're not optimistic, but I'm mostly worried about it. for several reasons there's a whole set of literature that explains or argues that we are moving into something that is defined post affect society and the things just need to be true enough and they just have to be convincing enough to sell you whatever they need.
to sell. And see this actually becomes a world that abuses internet. In this sense, and information in this sense can from the world into this different mirrors in which everything you touch is partly true, partly not true, but you will because you know part of that is true by the whole information which opens this whole area for incredible manipulation.
See 20 years ago, Soviet Union, they thought that they could manipulate to the there's only one voice that control that one voice. What governments do now, is they higher hackers to bring down Burmese oppositional site. opposition site. It's not going to be there. The different governments as you know who are incredibly skillful and successful in which you cannot access from with in the country here there is this whole cyber war going about that one of the well known experts on that the topic is in this room so am not going to talk about that here is the biggest problem there is one solution is media literacy we must become incredibly curious about that.
That is one thing and the second thing is what I think is the biggest injury is if you know that there is so much money you tend to go to words to your group of people that you trust. Your group of people that you trust, your social group tends to. be people who more or less have the same political views and other views that you have, and if you are going to read and trust everything that they in your direction, you will end up being in this eco-chamber preaching to the convinced that you are going around things that you all believe, and therefore you'll have a society which will have these echo chambers without real that was a purpose of the newspapers and, and mass media as we knew them to start with.
So mindful of all the great risks out there I I choose to be very optimistic about it and only wish I had another lifetime to, to live and work in it. And, and my reason is, is this that too many people have chosen or have been forced to remain on the sidelines and we have not Had the benefit of their knowledge, their wisdom, their experience, everything, and I feel this most strongly as I think about this is a horrible way to describe it, but highly educated individuals who have who, who choose to hide behind their technical academic expertise and do not join the conversation, the sloppy conversations that citizens need..
to have to figure out what we believe and to set our policy and our shared course so I'm excited that you can as Clay Shirky so beautifully describes, you can say here's a puzzle and that talent you never knew was out there will will rush in. It's my fondest hope that everyone rushes in from the extremely well educated to the extremely wise who may not have formal education.
So, in my world too many people have opted out or have been marginalized. It 's just my hope that we can create a better world with more people in it.
Man 1: I can't resist. Paula just articulated what everyone at Changemakers Society is about. This is the fundamental change Where everyone has the skills and the confidence to be a change maker. Where anything is stuck or there is an. nothing to worried about every one is on it i bet you 80% of the people in this room have been thinking about the trust rooting this issue just look at these two stories I can give you many other stories of social entrepreneurs who are working on this, that you know we don't know But the answer is you never.
Because there isn't going to be any answer. Even if we get the answer, we'll need a new answer shortly thereafter because of the rater change. In an Everyone a Change-Maker world, you have the anybodies right away. Wherever anyone is, when they've given themselves that permission, they're going to be looking looking for truth.
I think we're at the magic moment of parting company. I'd ask you to thank my colleagues here and Pete, who got us organized. Thanks for joining us today, and we look forward to all of the change you are going to make in the world, and help us with news and knowledge. Thanks.
