Jtm-dc-ecology

The New News Ecology

Excerpted from JournalismThatMatters.org

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The future of journalism centers around the power of storytelling to create healthy communities. Specifically:

• Cultivating “healthy journalists”, renewing the inner life of the journalist;
• Preparing the next generation, with an eye towards the emerging citizen journalist; and
• Inventing a new economic model.

As one participant put it, “Rather than further compromise the work, it’s time to separate journalism from its current funding sources and find a new model.”
Some of its seeds include:

• Journalism as a conversation – a groundbreaking shift from journalism as a lecture;

• Shaping a new “master narrative”— Recovering the mythic story of journalists as conveners and navigators through a changing world prepares them to support communities in shaping a new national “master narrative” for our times.

• High tech/high touch journalism – Whether on the web or in the café, new storytelling forms are emerging that engage us on cell phones and iPods, and in gathering places with food, music and the arts; and

• Ready, Fire, Aim – A strategy of “just do it,” moving from idea (ready) to implementation (fire) without months of planning (aim).

By metaphorically removing the newsroom walls and taking the journalist out of the cube, the qualities of the new news ecology emerge: