I got an interesting comment on my LinkedIn status line, which is “Jim would like to collaborate (or just brainstorm) with you on putting laid-off newspaper journalists back to work.”
The respondent said “Create a Truth Syndicate. The day is coming when when consumers will pay for vetted information.” The comment sparked a minor mudslide of questions that I thought I’d allow to spill into this blog.
I wonder in what way would a “truth syndicate” be different from what we now refer to as news. Not that news or journalism has ever had the truth market cornered. One thing I’ve learned for sure in my time in the biz: Facts are slippery little bastards. And truth is bloody vaporous.
Even well-intentioned sources get things wrong. Even diligent reporters screw up, miss a crucial detail, misunderstand the context. And there’s the vast ocean of disagreement. Not just on politics. Hell, it might be disagreement on what happened during that shootout. Or whether the refs are biased (as a long-suffering N.C. State fan, I can attest that they are. Grossly. In favor of Kerliner.)
Meanwhile, we’ve all learned to suspect that the news media harbor serious political biases. What those biases appear to be may depend on your politics, of course. But it’s common wisdom that Fox News is in the pocket of the GOP and MSNBC is not-so-secretly Team Obama. An awful lot of the “news” comes to us through the distorting filter of pundits. It’s hard to find a story that touches on national politics that isn’t infected with talking points that originated in the DNC or the RNC.
So how would a truth syndicate operate? Would it fact-check the news of the day as reported by other outlets? Or would it break news like any news organ? Would it be strictly enterprise and investigation, or is there room for sports and that jumble of everything else we call “features?” Would it just be a news wiki?
I have heard tell of corporations hiring journalists; perhaps they are performing a similar function privately, helping the bosses slog through the mire of he said-she said to find the meaningful gobbets in the day’s news. (Or maybe they’re just hacking out lame internal newsletters, I really have no idea.)
I would love to read your thoughts on what a truth syndicate might look like. What would the market be? On which media would it thrive? What’s the truth syndicate’s business model?
SMARTING OFF 