Newsroom With A View

(Originally posted on Nov. 10, 2010)
Here’s some long-ish reading that’s well worth the time: a piece by Alan Rusbridger, the editor in chief of The Guardian, on the value that linking and collaboration bring to journalism. You may be unfamiliar with The Guardian because it’s in England, but it’s a leader in the use of new media tools in service of Big J journalism. The post linked above includes several examples of that.

Here’s the important underlying philosophy of the approach:

“Openness is shorthand for the way in which the vast majority of information is, and will continue to be, part of a larger network, only a tiny proportion of which is created by journalists. Information may not want to be free, but it does want to be linked. It’s difficult to think of any information in the modern world which doesn’t acquire more meaning, power, richness, context, substance and impact by being intelligently linked to other information.

“Collaboration refers to the way we can take this openness one stage further. By collaborating with this vast network of linked information — and those who are generating and sharing it — we can be infinitely more powerful than if we believe we have to generate it all ourselves.”

One thing I would differ with Rusbridger on: He describes himself in the post as a utopian based on his own embrace of the changes and experimentation going on in journalism. I’d call him a realist.