I'd been looking for this book for a long time. as trust in mainstream media falls to an all-time low, tensions grow between the tech companies and their reporters grow, and publications scramble to wane themselves off fickle Facebook ads, I desperately wanted context on the business side of the media industry.
what institutional incentives and trade-offs did publications face? has corporate accountability journalism always been so controversial? how have journalists adapted their storytelling as social media builds its own niche?
Alan Rusbridger, ex-EIC of The Guardian, answered these questions at more in this memoir-slash-commentary on journalism's digital disruption. by its sheer length, it's easy to see that Rusbridger is a reporter at heart. from The Guardian's early days experimenting with web forums to a rich chronicle of how he navigated the Snowden leaks (one of my favorite chapters), his storytelling lets readers get deep into the head of an editor balancing a philosophical commitment to a free press with competing financial, legal, cultural, and public pressures. this book can be slow at times due to the richness of detail, but it's fine to skim through chapters you find less relevant and drill into the depth of the ones that are.
I was pleasantly surprised to see how well Rusbridger understood the implications of Web 2.0. he clearly respects the power of the internet - that the public can do some tasks (commentary, personal narrative) better than professional journalists, that the social media has held newspapers to account in a new way, that he's been forced to prove the value of their reporting instead of relying on inertia to carry subscriptions. additionally, Rusbridger outlines clear, thoughtful principles for a new "open journalism," the implications of treating journalism as a product vs. a community vs. a public service, and other promising paths forward for a symbiotic relationship between tech, media, and the public.
finally, his ultimate call is to rebuild trust by being honest about what journalism is supposed to be. as candidly explained by David Broder, it's "partial, hasty, incomplete, inevitably somewhat flawed and inaccurate... but the best we could do under the circumstances" - and yet, with its role in supporting an informed and democratic public, still a service worth doing.
NOTE: You can find my Kindle highlights for this book on the Notion page here. I used Readwise to sync and manage my highlights.
(jul 27, 2020)
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