SLOW JOURNALISM AND THE OUT OF EDEN WALK

SLOW JOURNALISM AND THE OUT OF EDEN WALK

Don Belt and Jeff South

Journalism does not get much slower than National Geographic’s Out of Eden Walk, a seven-year, around-the-world journey being undertaken by two-time Pulitzer Prize winner Paul Salopek. This article explains how Salopek’s Walk is a particularly useful and beautiful example of slow journalism that renders the oldest story in human history using innovative digital tools of the twenty-first century. It also offers university educators ideas on using the Out of Eden Walk as a teaching tool, by exposing classrooms to the literary and visual delights of the project while having students design and implement a narrative walk of their own.

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CROWDSOURCING AS A KNOWLEDGESEARCH METHOD IN DIGITAL JOURNALISM

CROWDSOURCING AS A KNOWLEDGESEARCH METHOD IN DIGITAL JOURNALISM Ruptured ideals and blended responsibility

DIGITAL JOURNALISM 

Tanja Aitamurto

This article examines crowdsourcing as a knowledge-search method and an open journalistic practice in digital journalism. The study draws on data from four cases in which professional journalists used crowdsourcing in their investigations. Crowdsourcing resulted in an efficient knowledge discovery and a continuous flow of tips to journalists and thus benefited journalistic investigations. The horizontal and vertical transparency in crowdsourced journalism supported the knowledge-search process. However, the high volume of submissions in some cases made the journalists compromise the journalistic norm of data verification, which resulted in publishing unverified information. Crowdsourcing as an open journalistic practice thus ruptures journalistic norms and creates pressure for new ones to emerge, such as blended responsibility, in which the responsibility for data accuracy is shared by the journalists and the readers. The article extends the examination of open journalistic practices and contributes to the understanding of their impact on digital journalism.

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The Scramble for African Media: The British Government, Reuters, and Thomson in the 1960s

The Scramble for African Media: The British Government, Reuters, and Thomson in the 1960s

By John Jenks

 African Media

With the wave of independence in Africa in the late 1950s and early 1960s,theBritishgovernmentsoughtnotonlytomaintaininfluenceinformer coloniesbutalsotoexpanditintherestofthecontinent.Oneleverofinfluence wasnewsmedia.TheBritishgovernmentencouragedandsubsidizedLondonbased media to expand in Africa to block the Soviets, forestall competitors, and preserve British influence in a classic example of media imperialism. The Reuters news agency used a secret subsidy to greatly expand its Africa coverage and sign up new national governments as clients. Anglo-Canadian newspaper millionaire Roy Thomson, who sought a peerage, cooperated closely with the government as he invested heavily in African newspapers and television systems and journalism training. 

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MAKE EVERY FRAME COUNT

“MAKE EVERY FRAME COUNT” The practice of slow photojournalism and the work of David Burnett

Andrew L. Mendelson and Brian Creech,

MAKE EVERY FRAME COUNT

This paper presents a case study of the possibilities of slow photojournalism. Over the past decade, award-winning photojournalist David Burnett has used a 60-year-old Speed Graphic film camera to document US political events, several Olympic Games, and the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, among other projects. His photographs reveal a significantly different aesthetic from contemporary photojournalism and he is celebrated for the perspective his analog photographs offer. This analysis is based on two points of examination: first, a textual analysis of articles and videos discussing the work; and second, a semiotic analysis of the imagery. The examination suggests Burnett’s photo aesthetic signifies a longing for an imagined analog, journalistic utopia of yore, where individual journalists had the time and freedom to put care and attention into their work.

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MULTIMEDIA, SLOW JOURNALISM AS PROCESS, AND THE POSSIBILITY OF PROPER TIME

MULTIMEDIA, SLOW JOURNALISM AS PROCESS, AND THE POSSIBILITY OF PROPER TIME

Benjamin Ball

MULTIMEDIA JOURNALISM

Digital communication is fast and easy; but as a cultural process communication is difficult, especially when it engages with strangers and strangeness. Roger Silverstone describes the space necessary for respectful communication as a “proper distance” vis-a `-vis mediated Others —neither too far away, nor too close to see the Other, and to recognise in her our own inherent Otherness. What Silverstone describes in terms of distance can also be considered in relation to time. This article builds on Silverstone’s ideas to outline a working definition of slow journalism as process, and it is argued that multimedia journalism provides a platform for communication that approximates “proper time”—journalism that is fast enough to engage, surprise and retain our attention, yet slow enough to respect a story’s nuance and complexity. It is argued that the poetics of photography provides a subversive logic of efficiency, capable of both revelation and evocation, and of helping us hear the Other; and that audio can expand our vision beyond the photographic frame, providing us with the necessary context and narrative to properly see. This is a narrative warp and weft. The trajectory of one form crosses and expands the narrative arc of the other, providing colour, depth, and nuance. Multimedia journalism can be quick and profound, fast and slow, short-form and long-form, thus occupying a critical middle ground between the impenetrable overloads and binary simplifications of digital communication, and opening a space and a time for mediated Others.

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SLOWING DOWN MEDIA COVERAGE ON THE US–MEXICO BORDE

SLOWING DOWN MEDIA COVERAGE ON THE US–MEXICO BORDER

 News as sociological critique in Borderland

Stuart Davis

MEDIA COVERAGE

This article argues that though loosely configured and encapsulating a variety of approaches, the “slow journalism” movement offers a useful set of techniques and tools for critiquing the way print and television news currently represents the US–Mexico border. Working against the sensationalism and lack of introspection in contemporary news media, slow journalism advocates champion projects that focus on developing innovative techniques for providing deeper coverage of social issues. Drawing on Borderland: Dispatches from the US–Mexico Border,a multimedia collaboration launched by National Public Radio’s (NPR) Morning Edition staff and the Center for Investigative Reporting (CIR) in 2014, I will address the interaction between two complementary “slow” strategies: an ethnographic strategy that draws heavily on extensive interviews with individuals whose everyday lives are affected by border issues and an analytical strategy featuring visualizations created by processing large datasets related to annual seizure figures, ownership information, and demographics of border crossers Drawing on content analyses of newspapers and television programs on the US–Mexico border, in-depth interviews with staff members from NPR and the CIR, and a visual/textual analysis of the Borderland website, I hope to advance a strategy that incorporates multiple genres of journalistic coverage together in order to deepen and sharpen news’ investigative potential.

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NETWORKED NEWS TIME How slow—or fast—do publics need news to be

NETWORKED NEWS TIME

 How slow—or fast—do publics need news to be

What kind of news time does a public need? The production, circulation, and interpretation of news have always followed timelines and rhythms, but these have largely been seen as artifacts of press sociology, not central aspects of journalism’s public mission linked to the design and deployment of journalism infrastructure. Since different types of news time make possible different kinds of publics, any critique of the press’s material cultures of time-keeping is a critique of the press’s power to convene particular people and issues, at particular times. Motivated by the temporal needs of one type of public (a pragmatic public that ensures a public right to hear), this paper proposes a unit for studying news time (the temporal assemblage), and traces it across four intertwined sites in the contemporary, networked press: labor routines, platform rhythms, computational algorithms, and legal regulations. Beyond this article’s investigation of this public in relation to these dynamics, my aim is to contribute to the emerging “slow journalism” movement by asking: how slow—or fast—do different publics need news to be? And how are networked press paces set?

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