Emily Bell

The public and the press

There are few more sought-after politicians in the United States at the moment than Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. In June, at 28 years old, by making a play from the left, she pulled off a stunning primary victory over Joe Crowley, who had represented New York in Congress since 1999—first from the 7th district, then the 14th. Wherever she goes, Ocasio-Cortez brings a media deluge.  A couple weeks ago, feeling mobbed by reporters, she decided to make two “listening tour” stops—one in the the Bronx and another in Queens, open to the public but not to the press.

Friend and Foe: The Platform Press at the Heart of Journalism

The relationship between technology platforms and news publishers has endured a fraught 18 months. Even so, the external forces of civic and regulatory pressure are hastening a convergence between the two at an accelerated rate beyond what we saw when we published our first report from this study in March 2017. Journalism has played a critical part in pushing for accountability into the practices of companies such as Facebook, Google, and Twitter, yet newsrooms are increasingly oriented toward understanding and leveraging platforms as part of finding a sustainable future.

The Platform Press: How Silicon Valley reengineered journalism

The influence of social media platforms and technology companies is having a greater effect on American journalism than even the shift from print to digital. There is a rapid takeover of traditional publishers’ roles by companies including Facebook, Snapchat, Google, and Twitter that shows no sign of slowing, and which raises serious questions over how the costs of journalism will be supported. These companies have evolved beyond their role as distribution channels, and now control what audiences see and who gets paid for their attention, and even what format and type of journalism flourishes.

This report, part of an ongoing study by the Tow Center for Digital Journalism at Columbia Journalism School, charts the convergence between journalism and platform companies. In the span of 20 years, journalism has experienced three significant changes in business and distribution models: the switch from analog to digital, the rise of the social web, and now the dominance of mobile. This last phase has seen large technology companies dominate the markets for attention and advertising and has forced news organizations to rethink their processes and structures.

How Mark Zuckerberg could really fix journalism

[Commentary] What independent journalism needs more than ever from Silicon Valley is a significant transfer of wealth. Publishers agree with this notion, although the loudest proponents are often those who would benefit the most from it. It is not necessarily enough just to re-energize existing institutions (although the involvement of Jeff Bezos and his money at The Washington Post has been, from a civic and journalistic point of view, wholly beneficial). Mark Zuckerberg has a taste for grand gestures and “moon shots,” in Valley parlance.Now, he has a chance to make a generational intervention which will dramatically improve the health of America’s journalism.

Remaking independent journalism requires funding that is independent of individuals or corporations, has a longtime horizon built into it, and offers complete independence and as much stability as possible.

[Emily Bell is Director at the Tow Center for Digital Journalism at Columbia Journalism School.]

Facebook and the press: The transfer of power

[Commentary] Journalism's business crisis is well known, but in the wake of the US presidential election it is increasingly obvious that the true existential crisis for journalism is its lack of influence. Fake news, a decline in trust, and plunging revenues are all proxies for a loss of influence and impact over public opinion and policy. But influence, like energy, is only ever transferred, never destroyed. And the reluctant recipients of the displaced influence once enjoyed by the press are technology companies, which now command not just the dollars but the attention of the global audiences they serve.

Without Twitter and Facebook to amplify the diminished messages of news outlets and individual journalists, most published news would feel very much like shouting into the wind. Facebook in particular, which is currently the exoskeleton of the news industry, has recently made minor adjustments to its policy in regard to journalism that nevertheless represent an enormous philosophical shift for the company. Exercising economic power for Facebook is second nature, but in terms of how it exercises influence, the company is still in the novitiate.

Donald Trump is a media organization

[Commentary] While Donald Trump might represent an alien being to political reporters, his modus operandi is unsettlingly familiar to those who have covered corporate media. Trump’s behavior is not that of a “normal” president, or even a regular politician per se, but of a loud, competitive, digitally attuned, populist media organization.

For Trump, the medium is not just the message, it is the office, too. His chief of strategy Steve Bannon was most recently editor in chief at Breitbart, and will essentially be editor in chief to Trump as president. Jared Kushner, the son-in-law with Trump’s ear, owned The New York Observer. Peter Thiel, the Silicon Valley billionaire who put Gawker out of business by backing the multimillion-dollar lawsuit brought by Hulk Hogan, is also in the trusted inner circle of supporters. Rupert Murdoch apparently talks to Trump two or three times a week—an extraordinary level of access to an incoming president by a media owner, if true. To cover him, and his presidency, we need to understand the platform on which he stands as not just a vector but a political ideology.

[Emily Bell is Director at the Tow Center for Digital Journalism at Columbia Journalism School.]

The tech/editorial culture clash

[Commentary] Without an informed and independent lens on the work of large technology companies, news organizations could easily surrender to the idea that they no longer belong in the business of shaping their own formats and production tools. But independent and creative advocacy for its own technologies is one of the most powerful ways journalism can retain its relevance.

It was once the case that more technology-focused resources potentially meant fewer reporters in the newsroom. That choice can now be seen for what it always was: a false bargain. As reporting and technology converge, it is not a matter of journalists learning code, but of journalism becoming code.

[Emily Bell is Director at the Tow Center for Digital Journalism at Columbia Journalism School.]

Diversity -- or lack thereof -- in journalism startups, cont.

[Commentary] Someone is wrong on the Internet, and I wonder if it might be me. I recently wrote a piece for the Guardian about what I saw as a disappointing trend: high-profile journalism startups reflecting the structures of old media. Namely, they’re led by white men.

Many women cheered both publicly and privately, saying, “Everybody wants to say it, nobody quite dares.” Others did not, saying that I was both overlooking and diminishing the roles of women in new journalism startups by writing them out of the script. The most thought provoking responses came from Melissa Bell, who elegantly pointed out that if my coverage overlooked her, then it added to the problem of visibility in the media. This is true. Had I been unfair in my assessment?

However, the numbers for all startups, where journalism is not broken out, are indisputable. Venture capital money mostly goes from men to other men. Estimates of what proportion of funding, exactly, goes to women-owned startups vary but never get above 15 percent, and are often as low as 7 percent.

The grander point that I tried to make, and will continue to hammer away at, is that journalism is important. It shapes information and the way people engage with vital issues. But doing it differently is not just words on page, or line graphs, listicles, and math. Doing it differently means considering the workforce, the outward face of the organization, and measuring it carefully. One of the most common refrains I heard was, “Are we still having this debate?” Yes, I’m afraid so.

Journalism startups aren't a revolution if they're filled with all these white men

[Commentary] The Internet has presented journalists with an extraordinary opportunity to remake their own profession. And the rhetoric of the new wave of creativity in journalism is spattered with words that denote transformation.

But the new micro-institutions of journalism already bear the hallmarks of the restrictive heritage they abandoned with such glee. At the risk of being the old bat in the back, allow me to quote Faye Dunaway’s character from Network: “Look, all I’m saying is if you’re going to hustle, at least do it right.”

Of the many others who have eloped from the portals of the industrial presses to big, shiny and new things (as in, not Yahoo or The Information), the sole female top editor or founder is Kara Swisher at Re/code. And she is running that technology site collaboratively with a man, Walt Mossberg. At First Look, behind-the-scenes Laura Poitras is one of two main female names on a virtual masthead that just added John Cook from Gawker (to run Greenwald’s magazine) to join Matt Taibbi of Rolling Stone (to lead his own).

It is not just the four new (and still exciting) breakout projects: Vice, Quartz, Buzzfeed, Politico, Grantland -- these, too, are led by white men, and filled with more of them. It is as if Arianna Huffington never happened. Or as if diversity of leadership and ownership did not really matter, as long as the data-driven, responsively designed new news becomes a radical and successful enough departure from the drab anecdote laden guff put out by those other men.

[Bell is director of the Tow Center for Digital Journalism at Columbia's Graduate School of Journalism.]