I Have No Idea What I am Doing

Bang up post Newspapers and Thinking the Unthinkable by Clay Shirky, sent by a friend on Facebook, complete with a history of the case of The Internet v. Print Publishing. He goes about it the classic way, by looking back—mapping where publishers went wrong, what they tried, and how to proceed based on what they failed to try, kind of. I say kind of because it was more a failure of imagining failure.

His best guess of an answer is a sort of citizen journalism, or something yet unnamed. Which is so exciting. What is the solution? It will take us several decades to figure it out, he says. I love this stuff, I love being in the thick of this. What will journalism look like in 30 years? We get to watch it develop (on Twitter and Facebook and iPhones), and I’m just so glad that I’m living through this time of uncertainty and not the solid, newspaper dominated past. I love the NY Times, but can you imagine a world of information coming only print, with the control and time lag? Gah, terrifying.

While I adore the romantic idea of living in the past and being one of those old fashioned journalists that hunted down and got the story, that brought it out when it wouldn’t have otherwise seen day, one that kicked and scratched and schmoozed stories from people, I abhor the thought of being that reader, putting down my paper and that being that.

But, with so much information from so many people available, without media giants and journalist heroes, will we pool collectively towards a dull median, all watching cat videos?

Shirky teaches at NYU’s Interactive Telecommunications Program, which I rediscover and drool over every year or so.

Some big quotes:

“In craigslist’s gradual shift from ‘interesting if minor’ to ‘essential and transformative’, there is one possible answer to the question “If the old model is broken, what will work in its place?” The answer is: Nothing will work, but everything might. Now is the time for experiments, lots and lots of experiments, each of which will seem as minor at launch as craigslist did, as Wikipedia did, as octavo volumes did.

Journalism has always been subsidized. Sometimes it’s been Wal-Mart and the kid with the bike. Sometimes it’s been Richard Mellon Scaife. Increasingly, it’s you and me, donating our time. The list of models that are obviously working today, like Consumer Reports and NPR, like ProPublica and WikiLeaks, can’t be expanded to cover any general case, but then nothing is going to cover the general case.”

And then:

“For the next few decades, journalism will be made up of overlapping special cases. Many of these models will rely on amateurs as researchers and writers. Many of these models will rely on sponsorship or grants or endowments instead of revenues. Many of these models will rely on excitable 14 year olds distributing the results. Many of these models will fail.”

If you’ve posted a cry for help at Twitter or Flickr, you’ve encountered Get Satisfaction, a customer support community. It works like this: Become a user, post your question, and other users as well as employees will post answers.

I’ve scanned these communities for answers before, but had never posted my own question until recently, regarding Rememble (more on that cool site later). In addition to a title, photo, and tags, users are asked how their issue makes them feel, and are presented with four face icons and a text box.

How does expressing your feelings outright change the way you’ll interact with a community? Selecting a face with a tongue did make my question (about updating my Rememble account through Twitter and Flickr, incidentally) feel trite, a feeling especially heightened when you notice that all the default user avatars are desserts. The effect can be a bunch of grumpy cupcakes. But I was also pleased just to have been asked about myself. It’s the “how are you” of retail–a question you like being asked just for the asking.

These communities can be helpful, but only if they’re watched over by alert employees and the users are prompted with relevant tags. Otherwise, it can become a bit of a mess of emotions and information.

I scrolled through the Whole Foods profile for examples, trolling for interesting questions in the Recently Active Topics list. This is one of the major flaws of this system–you’re led to look at recent topics, not the most relevant, but they’re often just one person complaining about chicken salad being unavailable. Users also frequently post the same question with different titles and tags, which can make a recurring problem seem isolated. I did find someone asking how and where 365 Soy Milk is made, complete with an illuminating response from an employee. That was interesting information because I drink that product. But I had to thrash around in the weeds to get there.

With 1,253 Whole Foods customers on the account, there’s quality peer information to be had, but you have to know how to get at it. Additionally, the profiles aren’t complete enough to see who you’re dealing with. See for example the post I found a bug in my Anutra, which spun into allegations that the owners of competing companies were slandering each others’ products and posting on the Whole Foods community posing as customers. So many cupcakes! Phew! Who is a reader to trust?

One exit thought: As collaborative storytelling evolves, will expressing your feelings become a way of interacting with the story? This plot twist makes me feel sad, etc. Sounds like an online book club that I’d be happy to try out, as long as my reading community excluded cupcakes.