Mario Tedeschini Lalli, Deputy Director of Innovation and Development at Gruppo Editoriale L’Espresso, writes an article on technological disruption and how it impacts journalism for the 2014/2015 EMMA magazine. Tedeschini Lalli outlines the ways in which technology innovation changes journalists’ work, and how new challenges and constant new competition change and reshape the industry.
Technology and journalism: convergence?
He begins by reminiscing about the days when the only technologies that a journalist had to grapple with were the typewriter and the public payphone. As technology advanced it began to encroach more and more on the journalistic world. At this time technology had to do with the ‘means’ that helped report, produce and distribute news content – which is, after all, what journalism is about.
The separation between the technological world and the journalistic world are now increasingly blurred however. Tedeschini Lalli points out that,
“…journalism will be defined, constrained or enhanced by technology: modern reporting and storytelling is as much a technological endeavour as it is an intellectual liberal arts affair.”
Today we must navigate content management systems and algorithms that help us to get a sense of the data. As journalism and technology start on their path towards convergence, new concerns blossom such as those of editorial judgement and algorithmic control by technology firms.
“Modern publishing enterprises thus become as much technology companies as content companies.”
Although as Tedeschini Lalli indicates, these publishing companies are driven by a sense of public ethics as well as by profit.
Time to make adjustments?
For the first time journalists have had to realize that they are no longer alone on the field, indeed these days there are a plurality of voices, at many levels from amateur to professional. The typical evolution from story pitched to story reported, and on to story produced is now extinct. In a world without clear deadlines, when is the right time to publish?
Tedeschini Lalli notes that publishing a piece of work is no longer the end point for the journalist. Instead, as it travels on through the social networks the piece is annotated and curated by its readers as it goes. Transparency remains the most important value for journalists working alongside a sea of semi-professional, amateurs or citizens. Innovative technologies provide a new role for the public, as information verifiers amongst other things. Notably, journalists should take note of what this may mean for their work in terms of instant verification or falsification.
“A new multidimensional universe is there for the journalists to explore, as they did with the old, analogue world of yesteryear. Trust must be won every day.”
