Just over a week ago, my mother-in-law got her birthday card from me. This would be a good thing, if it wasn't for the fact that it was nearly a month late. It's tardy arrival isn't some blatant signal of my failings as a son-in-law, but a direct result of industrial action by the postal workers. Around three weeks passed from posting to arrival, which pretty much screwed the thought behind the action. This was a deeply counter-productive move on behalf of the union. While they're campaigning to preserve terms, conditions and pay in a declining market, they're messing up their customers so badly that I'm strenuously looking at ways of not using the post, if I can't trust it to deliver. In their battle with management, they forgot about the customer. And that will cost them.
All of which, of course, brings us to the NUJ. My union. The union which I have been a card-carrying member of for over a decade. And, which, after the last week or so, I'm embarrassed to be associated with. Why? The latest issue of Journalist, the union's in-house rag, contains some early reports from its Commission on Multi-Media Working. The response from all ends of the political spectrum has been pretty uniform, from The Guardian's Roy Greenslade to The Telegraph's Shane Richmond and many others besides. The report is a horrible, luddite and reactionary response to the changes in the market. (I particularly liked Kevin Anderson's dissection of just how offensive some of the comments are to those of us working in new media and Antony's view from outside the journalism world.)
So, just how did the NUJ get it so wrong?
Well, I'd like to suggest that, if a union is meant to represent its members, than the NUJ got it exactly right. It's showing exactly the same form of fear, uncertainty and doubt that many journalists are expressing right now. Truth be told, in my experience, most journalists have spent very little time interacting with what we call social media. They're working on second-hand knowledge, often derived from the sensationalist and inaccurate reports that many of our national newspapers carried about blogging and the like a few years back, before their management teams got all enthused by the idea. Frankly, it's hard to blame them. Most journalists are busy getting their publications or programmes out, and have precious little spare time to investigate the new media.
However, there's a deeper problem at work here, too. It's becoming all too apparent that many journalists are too in love with particular forms of the media, rather than the process of providing reporting to readers. It's not just that they don't have time to investigate alternative media, they actively don't want to. They want to be print journalists, or TV journalists or radio journalists. They have no interest in this new, blended and mashed-up world of multi-media journalism. And they're quite prepared to stick their collective heads in the sand as long as they can carry on doing what they're doing now.
The horrible truth is that many journalists have a slight disdain for their readers, seeing them as a necessary evil to allow the noble hack to pursue whatever type of reporting he wants to. When I took on my current role a former colleague asked me to explain blogging. When I got to the bit about comments and interacting, she stopped me and asked if that meant people could directly comment on what she'd written in public. "Yes," I replied.
"Oh, no," she said. "I don't think I want that."
That attitude worked in an age when access to publishing tools was scare. It falls apart horribly in an age when anyone can publish. Now, it's not fair to characterise all journalists in this way. Many are embracing the changes that technology brings with both arms, and I have the distinct pleasure of working alongside many such people. But, based on the articles in Journalist, the backbone of people involved in creating the report seem to have been exactly of that type.
On my way to have a coffee with Graham last week, I went through the issue of Journalist in question and highlighted all the references to readers/audience/consumers that were in it. In five pages of coverage I found three and a half mentions (the half was a rather disparaging aside to "illogical markets" - with the implication that "illogical" means "behaves in ways journalists don't like"). Most of references were negative, bar Donnacha De Long's reference to readers feedback being a good thing. Shame he had to ruin it by proceeding to erect a straw man by suggesting that reader feedback is being promoted as a replacement for journalism.
Perhaps this was inevitable. After all, the existence of unions is predicated on a struggle between employees and management. But at a time of profound technological change which is reshaping the environment for both halves of that struggle, so so marginalise the third, and most powerful, force in the debate, the consumer, is frankly stupid.
Now, let's be fair to the NUJ. This is just an extract from a coming report. Perhaps we'll see a little less of the worst excesses of tabloid journalism and a little more intelligent analysis in the finished report. But if we don't, if the report doesn't put the needs of the public we write for and how we can best serve them in the multi-media age, then it is an anachronistic relic before it's even published. And if that's the case, the real discussion on the future of journalism will happen elsewhere.
And, just like the postal workers, we deserve to be swept away by the tides of change if we can't keep out focus on the people we serve: our customers.
November 5, 2007 5:15 PM | Reply
I work for a big publishing company and one of the union conveners (is that the word? chaplain? some archaic term anyway) came to talk to the editors last year to explain that they weren't resistant to new media, they just wanted to make sure that their members got a cut of this new revenue stream from which the company and its shareholders was benefiting.
He didn't say what kind of pay cut his members would take in recognition of the fact that hard copy magazine revenues are going down the pan like a lead balloon (if you'll pardon the mixed metaphor).
What really puzzles me, though, is that by resisting the move of news online they are patently not acting in the best interests of their members. What's that all about?
November 6, 2007 11:58 PM | Reply
Adam, you're missing the whole point of everything that was in the Journalist and swallowing the blatant misrepresentations of our critics whole. The primary focus of a lot of our work these days is on how the cuts in the industry (from local Trinity Mirror titles to AOL) is damaging journalism - which effects the audience. You already know full well that I'm a new media journalist - the commission features another four out of the 6 members. That's right, a Commission largely elected by our membership at ADM selected four new media journalists to research the industry.
You don't mention my quotes about Facebook that were also in the Journalist, or the article about cuts in AOL - why not? You know well that the NUJ group on Facebook is the largest trade union group on it as you're a member, but you still claim journalists don't understand it or use it.
You repeat the allegation that the basis of my piece was a strawman - read this: http://www.journalism.co.uk/2/articles/53448.php .
Every single journalist we've spoken to wants to make the move to new media work - they want quality material online, yet far too many have told us how the ridiculous decisions of their management are making it impossible for them to do it right. That's the issue, for the upteenth time - it's about quality, not technology.
November 7, 2007 9:28 AM | Reply
Adam, you're missing the whole point of everything that was in the Journalist and swallowing the blatant misrepresentations of our critics whole.
These opinions are my own, not second hand. To be honest, I threw that copy of Journalist into the recyling bin in disgust after reading the article. I had to fish it out, much to my wife's amusement, to do the research for this post. And if I have missed the point, why have I done so? Is it that the unhelpful, reactionary attitudes on display in the article alienated too many of those of us working on professional journalism in that "crap" Web 2.0 world? That's the NUJ's problem, not mine.
The primary focus of a lot of our work these days is on how the cuts in the industry (from local Trinity Mirror titles to AOL) is damaging journalism - which effects the audience.
Sure - but why are those cuts being made? Is it because the audience is moving away from old models of publishing? (And the first wave of internet companies from the 90s certainly could as old models). Why is the union doing reflexive class-strife, management-bashing rather than actively engaging in a debate on new journalistic roles in the Web 2.0 age? Well, in some cases it is. The local chapel here at RBI is very proactive in that area. What a shame the mag failed to represent some of their very good work.
You don't mention my quotes about Facebook that were also in the Journalist, or the article about cuts in AOL - why not?
Because I wasn't doing a line by line rebuttal of the whole thing. I don't use every quote I get in an interview either.
You know well that the NUJ group on Facebook is the largest trade union group on it as you're a member, but you still claim journalists don't understand it or use it.
I state clearly that some journalists don't get it, and that I'm working with many that do. It's clearly the latter folks that are in the Facebook group.
You repeat the allegation that the basis of my piece was a strawman
I've read the article that you quote. That's not replacing journalists - that's using user content in an area that you couldn't afford to pay journalists to do. It's complimentary to professional journalism, not a replacement for it. I'd say the NUJ would be better placed working out how journalists can use all this to improve what they do, rather than just railing against it.
Every single journalist we've spoken to wants to make the move to new media work - they want quality material online, yet far too many have told us how the ridiculous decisions of their management are making it impossible for them to do it right.
That may well be the case. In which case, you failed to represent that in the Journalist articles.
And that's why I'm waiting for the full report to decide if I remain an NUJ member.
it's about quality, not technology
There we agree. But I think technology can facilitate quality, as well as undermine it. And I can't find that point anywhere in the article.
In the end, you made it harder for those of us who are actively promoting professional journalism in a Web 2.0 age, and that's why I'm so embarrassed to be a member. I've actively promoted the union and it's positive attitude to reshaping the way journalists work.
And you've made me embarrassed to have done that.
Perhaps you need to stop being so reflexively defensive and realise that many of the critics of the coverage are just as passionate about quality online journalism as you claim to be, and that there are solid points at the heart of what they, and I, are saying.