Having just watched "Page One," the documentary about New York Times reporter David Carr and the loss he represents in the rise of new media, I find myself contrasting today's data-based journalism (unique visitors, engagement ratings) with what used to be called database journalism, an investigative endeavor that was trendy in the early 1990s.
If you need a reminder, "database journalism" meant using computers and spreadsheets to uncover patterns in otherwise dry, undigestible data. If you were lucky and smart, this computer-enabled combing of detail would lead to some kind of shocker that was worthy of Page One and perhaps even a Pulitzer.
Few heroes persevered against dial-up
This was pre-Google (1998) and even pre-Netscape (1994), back when we made fun of the World Wide Web (as the Web was once known) by calling it the World Wide Wait.
In fact, I remember being led by a coworker at The Associated Press in San Francisco into a darkened room where an Internet-connected computer had been set up. There was just one, and it sat mostly unused beneath a frost-colored, plastic dust-cover.
My coworker flipped on the lights, pulled off the cover, booted up the machine, dialed up the connection and attempted to show me what a Web page looked like. We waited ... a long time, and in the end found nothing of interest. We turned off the computer, replaced the cover and went back to work.
Negotiation, angst and effort
Back in that day, database journalism was the coolest thing around, and only a few geeky wizards could do it. Usually it took months or even a year to produce a single story in this manner, making it a luxury and a status symbol.
I never did it. Hardly any reporters I know did it. Database journalism was elusively cool.
The New York Times documentary "Page One" triggered this memory for me because, as I watched, I began to feel again how much effort went into a single story, even an ordinary story -- never mind a high-status, investigative, database story. How much time. How much negotiation. How much angst and rethinking.
Logical yet demoralizing distractions
Nowadays, data-based journalism -- not database journalism -- is taking an opposite toll. Instead of inspiring reporters to tenaciously chase discoveries that could save lives, change policy or reveal a weakness just in time, data-based journalism is demoralizing to journalists and props up a logical rationale for publishing stories that are mindless distractions, like, say, a video of a kitten's silly antics.
With UVs and engagement front and center, decision-making about coverage is weighted even more heavily on the audience's side, not the reporter's. There's some good in that. But unfortunately, what's also lost in that shift is the once-familiar angst, ethics and negotiation that old-school reporters used to regularly bring to the process.
Greed grows when distraction is king
Today's reporters work harder than ever, with fewer resources. It's not fun or heroic anymore. The only way to survive the work day is to cut corners.
The pressure to cut corners, combined with the pressure to increase UVs, encourages the publication of distractions from what really matters -- that is, entertainment or whatever will draw eyeballs while taking little of a reporter's time and care.
Now, overlay the decline of newspapers in the past 10 years with the rise of greed on Wall Street and mainstream families' overspending on material enjoyment (distraction and entertainment), which triggered the housing industry collapse and the recession.
Bring back balance
Hmm, anybody else seeing the connection? When we surrender our human-focused values and base our decisions on quantitative data alone (dollars and UVs), we lose.
The online explosion is mostly good, in my opinion, but we need to restore balance. Data shouldn't rule. Overemphasis on profits and UVs is leading to new kinds of losses.
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