Information isn’t what it used to be. Enter policy.center
I’m sure my colleagues in a large Washington newsroom a few years back must have thought that my job description included bemoaning the state of journalism — both the craft and the business model.
And I’m sure I was mid-bemoan when the president of the company came to me to propose that I do something about it.
He asked me to step back from my editorial management responsibilities and assemble a team to develop a new product strategy for the company.
I was already brimming with answers; in fact, it’s possible that my incessant chirping contributed to my assignment. Nonetheless, the newly assembled team concluded we should figure out the questions before supplying the answers.
We settled on an approach that was, apparently, unprecedented: rather than build the next thing on an engineering checklist or a client’s wishlist, we would talk with clients and non-clients alike about their true expertise: themselves.
We asked policy professionals to tell us about their workdays — specifically, the ways they encountered and used information. We asked them what they were trying to accomplish with that information. We asked them what a year down the road looked like, what they saw as success.
It didn’t take many interviews before commonalities emerged, largely unremarkable: interviewees did the same things, in varying proportions, that we did at work, the same things all policy professionals do. What was striking was how little we had been focused on meeting those needs.
Armed with these insights and the enthusiasm of the newly righteous, our team worked feverishly on a blueprint for a new approach to our journalism and the needs of our readers.
Well …
The effort was not fruitless: we were able to provide some additional tools to help clients reach their goals. Our hopes of a broader transformation in our journalism fell short, however.
• • •
Newsroom culture is tradition-bound by nature.
When I started in journalism, typewriters — and typesetters — were headed out the door as I walked in. The tools were changing, but not the job: information was still a scarce resource; the means of delivery were expensive. Advertisers were grateful for the pipeline our newspaper provided to potential customers, and our readers depended on our newsroom for the high-value, hand-crafted information that they could get nowhere else.
Information today isn’t what it used to be. It’s cheap, or free, and abundant. The product journalists painstakingly produce — news — has lost value in the flood of information. Readers in pursuit of their professional goals contend with a surplus, not a shortage, of information.
Yet editors and reporters continue to work with the news model I used at the start of my career. They simply work faster, file more often, and use new means of delivery — aiming to be first with new facts or an irresistible narrative for the reader’s information queue. When they finish, they start the process all over again — read today, gone tomorrow.
They have responded to the information deluge with … more information.
So far, the results are mixed, at best. Amid a handful of conspicuous examples of success, the industry as a whole continues its slide. More information in an age of information overload is not a formula for long-term success.
Our little team couldn’t change that, but the lessons from that earlier effort — and dismal prospects for journalism’s current course — are inspiring us to try again.
Enter policy.center.
Early next year, a new team will be prepared to launch the first phase of a new approach to policy news and information, one that leverages the expertise of policy specialists to meet the needs of policy professionals. We believe our approach takes on the challenges facing both the craft and the business model of journalism.
Policy.center will not be competing with newsrooms or their readers; it’s intended to serve both. After all, policy professionals — analysts, researchers, legislators, journalists — are all producers and consumers of information.
It will be a small start, but with grand goals.
It starts by reaching out to the very people reading this.
