We need a new way of doing news.
Broadly, the current business model of production, distribution, discovery and consumption of news is built on hoarding attention to the detriment of education. This creates perverse incentives across the ecosystem to focus on a narrow range of short-term topics presented as entertainment. This is compounded by the fact that news organisations often align themselves to the world-view of their financier or benefactor.
But news also informs our world-view. Who we trust. How we vote. Who we make friends with. Where we move to. Where we spend and invest. This is especially true in a world that is going through as much change as quickly as today. It is far, far too important to be presented as a never-ending series of big fights.
When you tease the problem apart, it becomes clear that it is not a question of one or two bad players, nor is it a conspiracy – those would be easy to tackle. The ecosystem itself is not incentivised to serve us – the reader, the viewer.
At the same time it has never been more possible to set up, run and sustain an alternative way of informing the public. Technology has, to use a cliche, levelled the playing field. Most of the elements that make up 21st Century Media already exist. Now they need to be brought together for, and supported directly by, the reader.
Before we see what that looks like, we need to understand the problem better (part 2).