Author: Alexandra Borchardt

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Nieman Lab Prediction 2025: Newsrooms Reinvent Their Political Journalism

In traditional newsrooms, political journalists tend to be those who call the shots. Even in the absence of statistics, it’s safe to bet that the majority of editors-in-chief used to cover politics before rising to the top job. This has shaped pretty much all of journalism. The “he said, she said” variety of news coverage that makes for a large part of political reporting has pervaded other subject areas as well. The attempt to give opposing parties a voice led to the so-called “both-sides journalism” which operates under the assumption that on the marketplace of ideas and opinions those will survive that serve the people best.

But the past few years have already demonstrated that this kind of journalism is not sustainable. First and foremost, it doesn’t serve humanity well in the case of imminent and severe threats like climate change or attacks on democratic institutions where bothsidesism is not an option. Also, newsroom metrics have shown again and again that audiences tend to be put off by news content that just amplifies opinions and intentions of decision makers without linking it to people’s lives. News avoidance is real and has been growing.

“What if reporting on racist, misogynist, dehumanizing opinions and comments has the opposite effect from what most journalists intend — normalizing propaganda and even making political candidates seem interesting?”

The result of the 2024 U.S. election and the rise of authoritarian leaning extremists in other democracies should have served as the final wakeup call for political journalism. What if the media’s calling out those who don’t respect democracy and its institutions doesn’t deter people from voting exactly those politicians into office? What if reporting on racist, misogynist, dehumanizing opinions and comments has the opposite effect from what most journalists intend — normalizing propaganda and even making political candidates seem interesting? And what if newsrooms who complain about political polarization have contributed their fair share to it themselves? Polarization has been a successful business model for journalism after all. These are hard questions that demand answers.

If they want to stay relevant in serving the public, newsrooms will have to double down on studying the impact of their political journalism and think about consequences. Otherwise, they will continue to preach to the converted and fail in their mission to inform people about real threats to their livelihoods. While there is no quick recipe to disrupt and reinvent political journalism, some of the following ingredients might help to develop an strategy and improve the result:

First, studying human behavior. There is plenty of research and evidence out there on how propaganda works, how those in or aspiring to power use the media to amplify it, and how people react to it. If journalists don’t want to be tools in the hands of those ready to abolish press freedom and erode democratic institutions, they better familiarize themselves with these mechanisms. Insights from communication and behavioral psychology should be part of all journalism education and shape newsroom debates. It has become obvious that values and emotions like a sense of justice, pride, shame, and fear shape people’s voting decisions often more than rational choice theory would suggest. Newsrooms must account for that.

Second, chasing data, not just quotes. For political journalists, quotes are data, for other people not so much. They deserve to know what happened, not what someone says they might want to see happening or intends to make happen once in power. Data journalism — increasingly improved by the capabilities of artificial intelligence — provides plenty of opportunities to paint pictures of the real world instead of the world of intentions and declarations. Political journalism can be more interesting when people see how politicians have actually performed in contexts where they were responsible. Needless to say that data journalism needs to be made engaging to appeal to a variety of audiences.

Third, connecting reporting to people’s everyday lives. Politicians have an agenda and journalists are often swayed by it; people are likely to have different ones. Observers might have been baffled that voters didn’t give the Biden administration credit for the strong state of the American economy, but apparently all many people saw before casting their vote was their rising cost of living. Most people care deeply about issues like housing, personal security, the education of their children, health, and care for aging relatives. Only, most of these issues are linked to citizens’ immediate surroundings, their communities. Unsurprisingly, local news tops the list of interests in all age groups when asked for their journalism preferences, as the 2024 Digital News Report revealed. But with diminishing investment in local journalism, many of these topics have been under covered in recent years. A disconnect between political journalism and people’s lives has emerged that needs to be remedied.

Fourth, choosing appropriate formats. Modern newsrooms target different audiences with different formats on the platforms these audiences engage with. Political journalism is still too focused on the audiences that they have traditionally served. It is often made for well-educated groups and decision makers. If newsrooms really want to reach people beyond the community of like-minded news consumers, they need to explore how these audiences can be attracted. There are high hopes in the industry that artificial intelligence can assist in making journalism more appealing and inclusive by transcending formats — converting content to text, video, audio, interactive chat, or even graphic novel by the push of a button. It is too early to tell how this will affect news consumption and audience figures in the real world, but many media leaders expect opportunities for stronger news uptake.

Fifth, learning from other fields of journalism. Political journalists tend to be aware of their importance in the internal hierarchy. Many of them feel proud to do “the real thing” instead of covering entertainment, sports, personal finance, and the like. This might help them to digest the fact that colleagues in other fields score higher in the audience metrics department. But it’s exactly these colleagues political journalists could learn from to improve their own game. They could ask the science desk how to best deal with data and how to break down complex matters in digestible formats. They might get some advice on humanizing stories from those reporting on sports or celebrities. They could learn from investigative reporters how to pace oneself when seemingly sensational material is at hand and how to cooperate with others. And they could practice churning out one or the other service story. In fact, the whole newsroom should be interested in improving political journalism, since at times politics is part of most subject matters.

If journalism wants to maintain its legitimacy, relevance, and impact — particularly in an age when artificial intelligence will make content production ubiquitous — it needs to urgently rethink political journalism. Making it appealing to broader audiences and attracting them to engage with it might be no less than a matter of its survival. Many media leaders are aware of this. Chances are that in 2025 newsrooms will finally rethink the paradigm of political journalism.

This text was published by Harvard University’s Nieman Lab in their Journalism Predictions for 2025 series. 

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AI Labels in Journalism: Why Transparency Doesn’t Always Build Trust

The use of artificial intelligence in journalism requires sensitivity toward the audience. Trust is lost quickly. Transparency is supposed to remedy this. But labeling could even have a negative impact. This column discusses what to do.

In the case of Sports Illustrated, the issue was obvious. When it leaked out that some columns and reports at the renowned American sports magazine were not produced by clever minds but large language models, it cost the publication plenty of subscriptions and ultimately CEO Ross Levinsohn his job. Newsrooms that use journalist imitations made by artificial intelligence are therefore better off doing this confidently; a clear transparency notice is needed. The Cologne-based Express, for example, uses a disclaimer for its avatar reporter Klara Indernach. And even when stated openly, things can go wrong. The radio station Off Radio in Krakow, which had proudly announced that it would be presenting its listeners with a program controlled solely by AI, had to abandon the experiment after a short time. An avatar presenter had conducted a fictitious interview with literature Nobel Prize winner Wislawa Szymborska and asked her about current affairs – only the author had passed away in 2012. The audience was horrified. 

Nevertheless, transparency and an open debate about whether, when and to what extent newsrooms use AI when creating content is currently seen as a kind of silver bullet in the industry. Most ethical guidelines on the editorial use of AI are likely to contain a paragraph or two on the subject. There is a great fear of damaging one’s own brand through careless use of AI and further undermining the media trust that has been eroding in many places. So, it feels safer to point out that this or that summary or translation was generated by language models. How this is received by readers and users, however, has hardly been researched – and is also controversial among industry experts. While some are in favor of labels similar to those used for food, others point out that alerts like these could make the public even more suspicious. After all, the words “AI-assisted” could also be interpreted as editors wanting to ditch their responsibility in case of mistakes. 

We also know from other areas that too much transparency can diminish trust just as much as too little. A complete list of all mishaps and malpractice displayed in the foyer of a hospital would probably deter patients rather than inspire confidence. If you read a warning everywhere, you either flee or stop looking. Rachel Botsman, a leading expert on the subject, defines trust as “a confident relationship with the unknown”. Transparency and control do not strengthen trust, but rather make it less necessary because they reduce the unknown, she argues.  

Much more important for building trust are good experiences with the brand or individuals who represent it. To do this, an organization needs to communicate openly about the steps it takes and the processes it has in place to prevent mishaps. In airplanes, this includes redundancy of technology, double manning of the cockpit and fixed procedures; in newsrooms, the four-eyes and two-source principle. When people trust a media brand, they simply assume that this company structures and regularly checks all processes to the best of its knowledge, experience, and competence. If AI is highlighted as a special case, the impression could creep in that the newsroom doesn’t really trust the matter itself.

Felix Simon, a researcher at the Reuters Institute in Oxford therefore considers general transparency rules to be just as impractical as the widely used principle “human in the loop”, meaning that a person must always do the final check. He writes in a recent essay that it is a misconception that the public’s trust can be won back with these measures alone. 

Many journalists also do not realize how strongly their organization’s reporting on artificial intelligence shapes their audience’s relationship with it. Anyone who constantly reads and hears in interviews, essays and podcasts about what kind of devilish stuff humanity is being exposed to will hardly be open-minded about the technology if the otherwise esteemed newsroom suddenly starts to place AI references everywhere. As expected, respondents in surveys tend to be skeptical when asked about the use of AI in journalism – just as a consequence of the media’s reporting. 

It is therefore important to strengthen the skills of reporters so that they approach the topic of AI in a multi-layered way and provide constructive insights instead of meandering between hype and doomsday scenarios. The humanization of AI – whether through avatar reporters or just in the use of words does not exactly help to give the audience a realistic picture of what language and computing models can and cannot do.

People’s impression of AI will also be strongly influenced by their own experiences with it. Even today, there is hardly anyone among students who does not use tools such as ChatGPT from time to time. Even those who program for a living make use of the lightning-fast calculation models, and AI is increasingly becoming an everyday tool for office workers, just like spell checking, Excel calculations or voice input. However, it will become less and less obvious which AI is behind which tools, as tech providers will include them in the service package like the autofocus when taking a picture with a smartphone. AI labels could therefore soon seem like a relic from a bygone era.  

At a recent conference in Brussels hosted by the Washington-based Center for News, Technology & Innovation, one participant suggested that media organizations should consider labeling man-made journalism. What at first sounds like a joke actually has a serious background. The industry needs to quickly realize how journalism can retain its uniqueness and relevance in a world of rapidly scaling automated content production. Otherwise, it will soon have bigger problems than the question of how to characterize AI-supported journalism in individual cases.   

This text was published in German in the industry publication Medieninsider, translated by DeepL and edited by the author – who secretly thinks that this disclaimer might make her less vulnerable to criticism of her mastery of the English language.

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Trusted Journalism in the Age of Generative AI

Media strategist Lucy Küng regards generative AI as quite a challenge for media organizations, particularly since many of them haven’t even yet mastered digital transformation to the full extent. But she also has some advice in store: “The media industry gave away the keys to the kingdom once –  that shouldn’t happen again”, she said in an interview led for the 2024 EBU News Report “Trusted Journalism in the Age of Generative AI”. Ezra Eeman, Director for Strategy and Innovation at the Netherland’s public broadcaster NPO, thinks that media organizations have a moral duty to be optimists around the technology. It will increase the opportunities for them to fulfill their public service mission better. These are just two voices, many more are to come. 

The report that is based on about 40 extensive interviews with international media leaders and experts will discuss the opportunities and risks of generative AI with a special focus on practical applications, management challenges, and ethical considerations. The team of authors includes Felix Simon (Oxford Internet Institute), Kati Bremme (France Television), and Olle Zachrison (Sveriges Radio), Alexandra is the lead author. In the run-up to and following publication, the EBU will publish some interviews. They will be shared here:

Nic Newman, Senior Research Associate, Reuters Institute: “Transparency is important, but the public does not want AI labels everywhere“, published on 28th June 2024.

Sarah Spiekermann, Professor WU Wien: “We need to seriously think about the total cost of digitazation“, published on 13th June 2024. 

Kai Gniffke, Director General SWR, Chair ARD: “AI is an incredible accelerator of change ..It’s up to us to use this technology responsibly“, published on 3rd June 2024.

Jane Barrett, Global Editor at Reuters: “We have to educate ourselves about AI and then report the hell out of it“, published on 16th May 2024. 

Ezra Eeman, Strategy and Innovation Director NPO, “We have a moral duty to be optimists“, published on 17th April 2024.  

Lucy Küng, independent Media Strategist: “The media industry gave away the keys to the kingdom once – that shouldn’t happen again“, published on 27th March 2024.

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Nieman Lab Prediction 2024: Everyone in the Newsroom Gets Training

Up to now, the world’s newsrooms have been populated by roughly two phenotypes. On the one hand, there have been the content people (many of whom would never call their journalism “content,” of course). These include seasoned reporters, investigators, or commentators who spend their time deep diving into subjects, research, analysis, and cultivating sources and usually don’t want to be bothered by “the rest.”

On the other hand, there has been “the rest.” These are the people who understand formats, channel management, metrics, editing, products, and audiences, and are ever on the lookout for new trends to help the content people’s journalism thrive and sell. But with the advent of generative AI, taking refuge in the old and surprisingly stable world of traditional journalism roles will not be an option any longer. Everyone in the newsroom has to understand how large language models work and how to use them — and then actually use them. This is why 2024 will be the year when media organizations will get serious about education and training.

“We have to bridge the digital divide in our newsrooms,” says Anne Lagercrantz, vice CEO of Swedish public broadcaster SVT. This requires educating and training all staff, even those who until now have shied away from observing what is new in the industry. While in the past it was perfectly acceptable for, say, an investigative reporter not to know the first thing about SEO, TikTok algorithms, or newsletter open rates, now everyone involved with content needs to be aware of the capabilities, deficiencies, and mechanics of large language models, reliable fact-checking tools, and the legal and ethical responsibilities that come with their use. Additionally, AI has all the potential to transform good researchers and reporters into outstanding ones, serving as powerful extensions to the human brain. Research from Harvard Business School suggested that consultants who extensively used AI finished their tasks about 25% faster and outperformed their peers by 40% in quality. It will be in the interest of everyone, individuals and their employers, that no one falls behind.

But making newsrooms fit for these new challenges will be demanding. First, training requires resources and time. But leadership might be reluctant to free up both or tempted to invest in flashy new tools instead. Many managers still fall short of understanding that digital transformation is more a cultural challenge than it is a tech challenge.

Second, training needs trainers who understand their stuff. These are rare finds at a time when AI is evolving as rapidly as it is over-hyped. You will see plenty of consultants out there, of course. But it will be hard to tell those who really know things from those who just pretend in order to get a share of the pie. Be wary when someone flashes something like the ten must-have tools in AI, warns Charlie Beckett, founder of the JournalismAI project at the London School of Economics. Third, training can be a futile exercise when it is not paired with doing. With AI in particular, the goal should be to implement a culture of experimentation, collaboration, and transparency rather than making it some mechanical exercise. Technological advances will come much faster than the most proficient trainer could ever foresee.

Establishing a learning culture around the newsroom should therefore be a worthwhile goal for 2024 and an investment that will pay off in other areas as well. Anyone who is infected with the spirit of testing and learning will likely stretch their minds in areas other than AI, from product development to climate journalism. So many of today’s challenges for newsrooms require constant adaptation, working with data, and building connections with audiences who are more demanding, volatile, and impatient than they used to be. It is important that every journalist embraces at least some responsibility for the impact of their journalism.

It is also time that those editorial innovators who tend to run into each other at the same conferences open their circles to include all of the newsroom. Some might discover that a few of their older colleagues of the content-creator-phenotype could teach them a thing or two as well — for example, how to properly use a telephone. In an age when artificial fabrication of text, voice, or image documents is predicted to evolve at a rapid pace, the comeback of old-style research methods and verification techniques might become a thing. But let’s leave this as a prediction for 2025.

This post was published in Harvard’s Nieman Lab’s Journalism Predictions 2024 series on 7th December 2023.  

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Interview with Prof. Charlie Beckett on AI: “Frankly, I’ve never seen industry executives so worried before”

LSE-Professor Charlie Beckett, founder and director of the JournalismAI project, talks about what AI means for journalism, how to tell advice from rubbish, and how the news industry adjusts to the new challenges.

Medieninsider: Since the launch of ChatGPT, new AI applications relevant to journalism have been announced almost every day. Which one intrigues you the most?

Charlie Beckett: A small newsroom in Malawi that is participating in our AI course for small newsrooms, recently built a generative AI-based tool that is practically a whole toolbox, It can be used to simplify newsroom workflows. The idea is to quickly process information and cast it into formats, a kind of super-efficient editorial manager. It’s not one of those sensational applications that help discover deep fakes or unearth the next Watergate as an investigative tool. But I think it’s great: an African newsroom that quickly develops something that makes day-to-day operations easier. I think the immediate future lies in these more mechanical applications. That often gets lost in the media hype. People would rather discuss topics like killer robots.

 

Do you think small newsrooms will benefit most from AI, or will the big players be the winners once again?

The answer is: I don’t know! So far, when it comes to innovation, large newsrooms have benefited the most because they can invest more. But if small newsrooms can find a few tools to help them automate newsletters or analyze data for an investigative project, for example, it can help them tremendously. A ten percent gain in efficiency can be an existential question for them. For local newsrooms AI could prove to be a bridge technology. At least that’s what I hear in conversations.

Because they can do more with fewer people? There is this example from Sweden of a tool that automatically evaluates real estate prices; it has been successful generating subscriptions, because readers love that kind of stuff – just like weather and traffic reports.

At least, that’s what editors at small newsrooms hope. They say they could use AI to produce at least sufficient content to justify the existence of their brand. Reporters could then focus on researching real local stories. We’ll see if that happens. But AI will definitely shape the industry at least as much as online journalism and the rise of social media have.

AI seems to unleash enthusiasm and a spirit of experimentation in the industry, unlike back in the early days of online journalism, when many were sceptical.

The speed of the development is almost breath-taking. In the beginning, we looked at artificially generated images and thought, well, that looks a bit wobbly. Three months later, there were already impressively realistic images. We’re moving through this hype cycle right now. No matter which newsroom in the world I talk to everyone is at least playing around with AI; by the end of the year at the latest, many will have implemented something.

But you say it’s too early to make predictions?

We’re seeing an extremely fluid development right now. Advertisers don’t yet know what to do, and in the relationship between platform groups and publishers, a lot is out in the open again. In fact, I’ve never experienced anything like this before. It’s clear to everyone that we’re facing a big change.

But isn’t it risky to just wait, and see?

Automation is still very unstable. Setting up new processes at the current level would be like building a house on a volcano. The right process is: let employees experiment, learn, and definitely think about potential impacts. If you’re asking me now, what are the ten tools I need to know, that’s the wrong question.

That’s exactly what I wanted to ask, of course. That’s what a lot of people want to know at the moment, after all. And everyone wants to be the first to publish the ultimate AI manual for newsrooms. So, do you have to be suspicious when someone confidently claims to have solutions?

We are currently collecting who is using which tools and what experiences are being made with them. But we are not making recommendations about what is the best tool. I just spoke to the CEO of a major broadcaster. They are doing it this way: In addition to regular meetings and information sessions, they take half an hour a day to simply play around with new tools. If you’re a CEO, of course you must budget for AI. But it should be flexible.

Many newsrooms are currently establishing rules for the responsible use of AI. Bayerischer Rundfunk is one example; the person who pushed this was in one of the first cohorts of your LSE Journalism and AI Project.

Establishing rules is a good thing, but it should read at the very beginning: All this could change. It’s also important to start such a set of rules with a message of encouragement. Any CEO who immediately says we don’t do this, and we don’t do that is making a big mistake. The best guidelines are the ones that say, these are our limits, and these are the important questions we should be asking about all applications. Transparency is an important issue: who do I tell what I’m experimenting with? My supervisors, my colleagues, the users? And, of course, a general caution is in order. Currently there are swarms of company representatives out there, trying to sell you miracle tools. 90 percent of them are nonsense.

How transparent should you be to the public?

Bloomberg, for example, writes under its texts: This is 100 percent AI-generated. That’s not meant as a warning signal, but as a sign of pride. It’s meant to say: we can handle this technology; you can trust us. I think editors are a bit too worried about that. Today it doesn’t read under texts: „Some of the information came from news agencies“ or „The intern helped with the research.” Newsrooms should confidently use transparency notices to show consumers that they want to give them more value. Some brands will continue to have clickbait pages and now fill them with a lot of AI rubbish without disclosing that. But these have probably always produced a lot of garbage.

How does journalism education need to change? Should those who enter the profession because they like to write now be discouraged from doing so because AI will soon be extremely good at it?

The first thing I would say is that not much will change. The qualities and skills we foster in education are deeply human: curiosity, creativity, competencies. in the past 15 years, of course, technical skills have been added. Then again fundamental things have changed. Today, more than ever, it’s about building relationships with users, it is not just about product development. Journalism is a data-driven, structured process of information delivery. With generative AI, technology fades into the background. You don’t have to learn how to code any longer. But a key skill will be to learn how to write excellent prompts. Writing prompts will be like coding, but without the math.

Journalists may feel their core skills challenged by these AI tools, but couldn’t they be a great opportunity to democratize anything that requires language fluency? For example, my students, many of whom are not native speakers, use ChatGPT to edit their resumes.

Maybe we shouldn’t use that big word democratization, but AI could lower barriers and remove obstacles. The lines between disciplines are likely to blur. I used to need data scientists or graphic designers to do certain tasks, now I can do a lot of stuff myself with the right prompts. On the other hand, I’m sceptical. We often underestimate the ways in which inequalities and injustices persist online.

We’ve talked a lot about the opportunities of AI for journalism. What are the biggest risks?

There is, of course, the great dependence on tech companies, and the risk of discrimination. Journalism has to be fact-based and accurate, generative AI can’t deliver that to the same extent. But the biggest risk is probably that the role of the media as an intermediator will continue to dwindle. Already the Internet has weakened that role; people can go directly to those offering information. But AI that is based on language models will answer all questions without people ever encountering the source of the information. This is a massive problem for business models. What kind of regulation will be needed, what commercial agreements, what about copyright? Frankly, I’ve never seen industry executives so worried before.

This is indeed threatening.

It’s existential. First, they said, oh my God, the Internet has stolen our ad revenue. Then they said, oh my God, Twitter has taken attention away from us. And now they’re staring at this thing thinking, why in the world would anyone ever come to my website again? And they have to find an answer to that.

Do journalists have to fear for their jobs?

Media organisations won’t disappear overnight. But there will be more products that will look like good journalism. We have a toxic cocktail here that is fascinating, but also scary. This cocktail consists of uncertainty, which journalists always love. It also consists of complexity, which is exciting for all intelligent people. The third ingredient is speed, and the old rule applies here: we usually overestimate the short-term consequences and underestimate the long-term effects. Over the 15 years that I’ve been doing this, there have been people who have said, 80 percent of media brands will disappear, or 60 percent of journalists will no longer be needed or things like that. But today we have more journalism than ever before.

But the dependence on the big tech companies will grow rather than shrink. 

On the one hand, yes. You definitely need friends from this tech world to help you understand these things. On the other hand, suddenly there’s new competition. Google may no longer be this great power we thought it was. New competition always opens opportunities to renegotiate your own position. The media industry must take advantage of these opportunities. I’m on shaky grounds here because the JournalismAI initiative is funded by Google. But I think neither Google nor politicians really care about how the media is doing. Probably quite a few politicians would be happy if journalism disappeared. We therefore need to redefine and communicate as an industry what the added value of journalism is for people and society – regardless of previous ideas about journalism as an institution.

Quite a few colleagues in the industry say behind closed doors, „Fortunately, I’m approaching the end of my career, the best years of journalism are behind us.“ Would you want to be a journalist again under the current conditions and perspectives?

Absolutely. It’s an empirical fact that with all the possibilities today, you can produce better journalism than ever before.

The interview was first published in German by Medieninsider on 9th September 2023 and in English on 14th September 2023.

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Humor is constructive – Why laughing about climate change can open paths to solutions

Is it okay to laugh heartily even when the situation is serious? Yes, because it is precisely in these situations that humor can help journalism to make formats interesting even for people who might not care otherwise. A plea for more humor – in everyday life and at work.

Doom-scrolling rarely works. Research shows that journalism on climate change is more likely to have an impact if it not only highlights the many different issues involved, but also offers a few solutions. People who report that they regularly avoid the news would like to see more offerings that give them hope and explain things, rather than having to digest the same drama over and over again. This is also confirmed by the Reuters Institute’s latest Digital News Report. But what about humor? Is it okay to laugh heartily, even when the situation is serious?

One might seek permission posthumously from great humorists. In the 1942 comedy “To Be or Not to Be,” director Ernst Lubitsch even had his actors joke about concentration camps while World War II raged outside. But it’s not just about being allowed to joke – subject to a few rules, of course. Evidence suggests that humor is particularly effective at spurring people to action. This is, because jokes convey unpleasant truths the light way. They hold up a mirror to people without making them feel guilty, and for that very reason invite them to reflect about their behavior.

Laughing at yourself instead of feeling guilty

This also works when it comes to climate change. Matt Winning is a Scottish environmental economist. After work, he often climbs up London stages as a stand-up comedian; for a few years now, he has been combining hobby and profession. “We have to make content for people we don’t make content for,” he said in an interview for the report “Climate Journalism That Works: Between Knowledge and Impact.”

His shows, he says, are not so much for environmental professionals, activists and policy experts, as for those people who have been more peripherally involved with climate action. He says he is touched when such guests linger around at the end of the show to tell him that they have now got rid of their car, given up on flying for their summer vacations or found out about heat pumps. In his book “Hot Mess: What on earth can we do about climate change?” Winning tries to get people to understand the topic in a playful way.

Maxwell Boykoff and his colleague Beth Osnes are trying out something similar at the University of Colorado in Boulder. They had initiated the ” Inside the Greenhouse” project as a collaboration between the departments of theater and environmental policy. They published their first findings from it in an academic article in 2019: A light approach to the issues around climate change helps students confront their own feelings, especially fears, deal with them creatively and become better climate communicators, they said.

Why humor can help at the working place

Professors Jennifer Aaker and Naomi Bagdonas teach humor in management at Stanford Business School. In their book “Humour, Seriously – Why Humour is a Secret Weapon in Work and in Life” they describe the role that cheerfulness can play in achieving (business) goals. Humor builds community, strengthens problem-solving skills and resilience. Managers who can laugh at themselves appear close and authentic.

In journalism, young people in particular appreciate humorous formats. It is important to them that content is useful, but they also like it to be fun. A study published in 2021 by the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania found that young consumers remembered news better when it was presented in a humorous way. More brain regions would be activated during laughter. The rise of TikTok as a channel for news delivery – also documented in the recent Digital News Report – shows how quickly a platform specializing in lighter fare can catch on.

Of course, humor will always be just a complementary form of communication. This is the case also because only a few people have mastered the subject to perfection. For example, one basic rule is: Humor works when you punch up or among your peers. Anyone who makes fun of those conceived to be less powerful is most likely to miss the mark – which is why joking is a tightrope walk for leaders. In any case, what someone laughs at and what jokes he or she makes depends on the cultural context but also reveals a lot about character. As Aaker and Bagdonas write, “Humor is a kind of intelligence you can’t fake.”

This text first appeared in German as an Op Ed on Focus online on June 23, 2023. It was translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator and edited. 

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Why climate change should be at the heart of modern journalism

The best insurance against misinformation is strong journalism. Professor Alexandra Borchardt explains how climate journalism and the data and verification skills we need to do this properly can transform our newsrooms.

It is often said that an abundance of questionable information drowns out facts. In climate journalism, the strategy should be to do the opposite: make journalism about global warming, its causes, and its remedies, so pervasive, that everybody everywhere can tell facts and reality from greenwashing and wishful thinking; drown out the misinformation with factual journalism.

This requires rethinking climate journalism from it being a “beat” or “specialist subject” to something that frames all our storytelling, particularly business reporting. This is a tough call, of course. Many obstacles hold media organisations back from prioritising investment in climate journalism. Climate issues often lack a newsy angle. They may be complicated and difficult to understand Coverage may mean expensive travel, and stories can be depressing, politically polarising, and if the journalism is delivered in a less than spectacular way, may fail to attract big audiences. All of which makes the commitment even harder.

Nevertheless, climate journalism is not optional. Journalists have an ethical responsibility, even a mandate to inform the public of threats and help them to make better decisions for themselves, their children, and their communities. Media has the duty to hold power to account and investigate wrongdoing. And a lot has gone wrong. Far too often publishers and broadcasters have kept global warming in the silo of science journalism, rather than at the heart of wider business and news coverage, even though it has been known for decades that the core issues are primarily economic, with powerful interests at play.

The good news is it might help editors and media managers to know that an investment in climate journalism will generate all sorts of benefits for their organisation. Precisely because climate journalism is so complex, the lessons that newsrooms can learn from doing it well can also be applied to other fields. To put it differently: sustainability journalism can make media more sustainable. This is the major conclusion of a report recently published by the European Broadcasting Union: “Climate Journalism That Works – Between Knowledge and Impact”.

It identified seven such benefits:

  • First, climate journalism is about the future. Today’s journalism is too often stuck in the now. It needs to develop strategies to increase its legitimacy in the attention economy. This is especially true for public service media, which is under attack from various political camps. Who else should have a clearer mandate to contribute to the protection of humankind through better journalism? This way, public service media would also meet the needs of younger generations they are struggling to reach. Above all, it is their future.
  • Second, climate protection needs hope. People only act if they believe they can make a difference. In contrast, today’s journalism focuses on conflict, shortcomings, and wrongdoing. Constructive and solutions-oriented journalism offer a way forward. A project called Drive, in which 21 German regional publishers pool their data, recently proved that inspirational pieces were the most valuable digital content when it came to subscriptions.
  • Third, in climate change, it’s what’s done that counts. Today’s journalism still focuses too much on what has been said. The “he said, she said” type of journalism that dominates political reporting tends to be highly unpopular with users though. Modern journalism should be based more on data than on quotes. Fact-checking and verification come in right here: both need to become second nature for any journalist. Climate journalism is an excellent training ground.
  • Fourth, climate journalism that works approaches a variety of audiences with respect and in languages they understand. It explains. Today’s journalism often elevates itself above its audience in a know-it-all manner. Journalism must become more diverse and inclusive if it is to reach people, inspire them, and move them to action. This applies to formats and protagonists.
  • Fifth, climate journalism must be rooted in the local. In contrast, today’s journalism too often strives for reach, neglecting the specific needs of communities. To make itself indispensable, journalism should reclaim its importance as a community-building institution. Those who use or even subscribe to a media product often do so because it makes them feel they belong.
  • Sixth, climate journalism must have an impact, otherwise it is meaningless. It should therefore reflect on its own practices and use insights from research, especially from communication sciences and psychology. Today’s journalism does this far too rarely. Journalists tend to be curious but often surprisingly resistant to change. Media companies could gain a lot if their managers and employees developed more of a learning mindset and trained their strategic thinking.
  • Seventh, climate journalism benefits from collaboration. In today’s journalism, old-fashioned competitive thinking still dominates far too often. Yet so much potential could be leveraged through cooperation. This applies to networking within organizations among desks and regional bureaus, as well as to devoping links with external partners from within the industry and beyond. The journalism of the future is collaborative.

This blog post was published in March 2023 by the BBC’s Trusted News Initiative.

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2023 Prediction for Nieman Lab: The Year Of The Climate Journalism Strategy

For the longest time, most newsrooms felt they were doing an okay job covering climate change.

They would go all out when reporting on potentially climate-related disasters, cover conflicts about energy, highlight what happened at the big conferences like COP27. But then again, they might not have been so sure. In the 2022 Reuters Institute’s “Journalism, Media, and Technology Trends and Predictions” that is a non-representative international media leaders survey, 65% of respondents judged their own organization’s climate coverage as good, but only 34% felt that the industry as a whole was doing a good job with it. This gap in perception clearly revealed there were second thoughts, consequently room for improvement. As the warnings of scientists about a heating atmosphere intensify but audience engagement tends to lag behind expectations, many news organizations in 2023 will decide that their climate coverage needs a serious upgrade. And this requires a climate journalism and sustainability strategy.

It is badly needed. While the issue of global warming has been out in the open for decades, the media until recently hasn’t been too eager to jump on the topic — with the notable exception of The Guardian, which has been able to connect a climate strategy with the needs of its audiences and its membership-driven business model. The reasons for the industry-wide reluctance were manifold: climate change is a complex, slowly moving topic that doesn’t lend itself to capture audience attention for longer stretches of time in a news-driven environment. Reporting on it in a way that resonates with users requires scientific skills, time and thus considerable resources. And it is depressing, risking to drive people into news fatigue. Furthermore, in many countries it had evolved into a politically polarizing issue, making it necessary for newsrooms to rebut accusations of taking sides.

But things have been moving in recent years. Editors-in-chief have graduated from calling it “one of the defining issues of our age” (Alessandra Galloni, Reuters) to “perhaps the century’s biggest story” (Sally Buzbee, Washington Post). In 2022, large organizations expanded their climate coverage capacities considerably, sometimes with the help of external funders. In September National Public Radio established a new climate desk. In November the Washington Post announced to triple their climate team to 30 people. And these are just current examples from the U.S. Assistance from networks like the Oxford Climate Journalism Network, Covering Climate Now, and the Earth Journalism Network has been sought after.

Still, consistent climate strategies that are openly communicated and implemented throughout organizations are rare. Some examples: Norway’s public service broadcaster NRK developed one that establishes the role of climate coverage in the newsroom and how (not) to report on it. Radio France in 2022 published a strategy that includes a massive training program for all of editorial and sustainability guidelines for the organization. And French news agency AFP created its “future of the planet hub.” These are important role models, because while smaller players won’t have the capacities to establish hubs or desks, they will closely watch what happens in the industry and draw consequences that fit their individual context and needs.

A full-blown climate strategy makes good sense for several reasons beyond the obvious. Here are five:

First, engagement with climate issues needs to pick up, and this will only happen with excellent journalism that fits different audiences’ needs.

Second, younger, educated audiences are likely to be invested in the issue, and news organizations need to attract younger generations. So, this is a business opportunity.

Third, climate change needs to advance from topic to frame, gaining relevance in every beat to become more subtle and less one-off alarmist.

Fourth, comprehensive newsroom training is vital to make everyone climate literate, help them to apply it to their particular field, and to detect greenwashing.

Fifth, an editorial climate strategy cannot exist in a vacuum, it needs to be linked to an organization-wide sustainability strategy to maintain credibility.

At some point in the future, the absence of a climate journalism strategy might be a similar kind of negligence as the absence of a digital strategy. (Credit goes to Wolfgang Blau, who helped to elevate the issue to this level throughout the industry in recent years. For more, watch or read the lecture he gave as a co-founder of the Oxford Climate Journalism Network: https://reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/calendar/climate-change-journalisms-greatest-challenge.) Hopefully, this will help media organizations, citizens, and the planet alike.

This piece was written for and published by Niemanlab at Harvard University in the context of the 2023 prediction series. 

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Getting climate journalism right means getting journalism right

Many newsroom look at expanding climate journalism as a duty, but not as an opportunity. This might be one reason why just a few media houses have a climate strategy. At the Constructive Journalism Day 2022 organized by NDR Info and Hamburg Media School, I talked about why climate journalism holds great potential for bringing journalism as a whole into the future. 

In November 2022, many people took in another big dose of climate journalism. For some, it may have felt like an overdose. The climate summit in Sharm-El-Sheik dominated the headlines for days. And we learned from the media: it was a disaster. “Less than nothing” had been achieved, was the title of a commentary in the Süddeutsche Zeitung. In addition, there were the protests of young people who, in their rage, stuck themselves to streets or destroyed works of art. This, too, has been reported on in all its facets. Is that good?

It’s important, yes. But the debates about the protests, or even the big splash at events like COP27, obscure the fact that there are many reasons to be confident about the climate issue, too.

  • Researchers say the energy transition is no longer a technical problem, nor is it a price problem. It is a political problem – tricky enough.
  • New solutions are being invented practically every day, and a vibrant start-up scene has sprung up around green technologies, products, and services.
  • Most industries are intensely engaged in climate innovations, funds are shifting their portfolios, polluters are switching to climate-friendly technologies, even aircraft engine manufacturers have a climate strategy.

Only journalism does not. For the EBU News Report of the European Broadcasting Union – the world’s largest association of public service media organisations – we have been researching for months, interviewing editors-in-chief, researchers and other experts. We found that up to now, just a handful of newsrooms have strategically addressed the issue.

When you argue this way, you hear critics saying: What other industries are doing is often just greenwashing. That may be true in some cases. But if you want to be nasty, you could say that journalism often doesn’t even get greenwashing right.

When it comes to the climate, journalism lags other industries. Why is that?

  • Journalism is afraid of being perceived as partisan, activist. A small, vocal minority of skeptics sets the tone. Editors underestimate their audience. The majority has long since moved on, as surveys show. Most people know the problem – at least intuitively – and would like to see something happen.
  • There is little pressure. Many publishers are medium-sized, broadcasters are structured under public law. Newsrooms are not listed on the stock exchange, pension funds cannot withdraw money if the media botches on sustainability. Other things take priority, and cost pressure adds to the problem.
  • Climate journalism is misunderstood as one topic among many. Yet the protection of our planet’s livelihoods must be the frame under which journalism operates – just as it is with democracy or human rights. The climate must not only be an object to be observed and described. It must be the backdrop against which life plays out. It should define all storytelling.

The topic of climate is an opportunity for journalism because it exposes its major shortcomings:

  • Climate is about the future. Journalism is stuck in the now. The focus is on the quick news, the daily business. Surveys show: Too much is reported, too little explained.
  • Climate protection needs hope. Today’s journalism focuses on drama, omissions, failures. This is also expressed in language. Journalism warns, threatens, scares.
  • In climate protection, what counts is what is done. Today’s journalism focuses on what is said. The overproduction in “he said, she said” journalism often leaves people confused, empty, bored.
  • Journalism that works approaches people at eye level in a language they understand. Today’s journalism often arrogates itself above them in a know-it-all manner – especially when it calls itself quality journalism.
  • Journalism that wants to be effective respects its counterpart and relies on diversity, also in addressing the audience. Most of today’s journalism is still grounded in the age of mass media, where one size had to fit all.
  • Journalism that wants to have an impact reflects on its own practices and makes use of research. Today, many newsrooms almost pride themselves on ignoring academic knowledge. Yet there is a lot of knowledge about how communication affects people.

But can journalism that doesn’t have an impact be strong journalism?

To have an impact, you need to engage with your audience. What’s interesting is that the formats that win journalism awards don’t necessarily resonate with audiences – and vice versa. The impactful formats don’t win awards.

So, what is effective climate journalism, what do we know from research?

  • Effective climate journalism focuses on the here and now rather than the distant future when describing the problem. It anchors the issue where people live.
  • Effective climate journalism paints the possibilities of a good future, shows: What will be gained, instead of always emphasizing what will be lost, what will have to be sacrificed. It’s about developing a sustainable economic system. Climate journalism expert Wolfgang Blau calls it the biggest transformation since World War II.
  • Climate journalism works when it is constructive and solutions-oriented, instead of always painting the apocalypse on the wall. If you want to engage people instead of making them run away, even humor works better than constant alarm. Scientists are already looking at the effects of comedy in climate communication.
  • Climate journalism can work if it gives people agency instead of making them victims, or at least “those affected”, as is almost universally done in the news.
  • Effective climate journalism serves different audiences in a way that makes them listen. It takes note that the messenger is often more important than the message itself. At best, the ambassador is a person with high trust and credibility ratings. It also takes into account that an abundance of facts does not replace empathy.
  • Effective climate journalism is powerful journalism. Editors should not be too preoccupied with incidental details. A corset of language is not needed. What is important: depth, research, factual accuracy, strong images – especially strong images of solutions. What never works: Images of “men in suits,” as one Norwegian editor-in-chief put it.
  • Effective climate journalism needs a credible foundation. Media organisations should do their homework, work on their carbon neutrality. And that is possibly the biggest challenge. But anyone who writes flaming commentaries but does not live climate protection in a credible way is quickly exposed as a hypocrite.

Mark Hertsgaard, co-founder of the Covering Climate Now platform at New York’s Columbia University, said, “If we don’t transform the media industry, no other industry will be transformed.” You might hear some hubris in that. But the truth is that only constant public pressure will spur everyone involved to finally tackle the issue.

Climate journalism has what it takes to push journalism into its best future. It is high time to seize this opportunity – for journalism and for the climate.

I gave this keynote on 29th November 2022 at the Constructive Journalism Day in Hamburg, organized by Hamburg Media School and NDR Info. The research for this project has been funded by the news committee of the European Broadcasting Union. 

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Climate Journalism – What works?

While the war in Ukraine and the pandemic have taken up a lot of space and energy in newsrooms recently, there is hardly any issue that will define our future more than the climate crisis: how it’s reported and received by audiences worldwide and how journalism can spur the debate on how to rebuild our economies in a sustainable way. 

I’m lead author of the upcoming report “Climate Journalism That Works – Between Knowledge and Impact” – that will be published in full in Spring 2023. Working with me on this have been Katherine Dunn from the Oxford Climate Journalism Network, and Felix Simon from the Oxford Internet Institute. The report will look at how to craft journalism about climate change that is likely to have an impact and to resonate with audiences and how to restructure newsrooms accordingly. It will also include best practice case studies and Q&As from thought leaders and influencers on what actually works.

These are some key preliminary findings that we presented at the EBU’s annual News Assembly on 12th October 2022:

•    Facts alone don’t help. More facts are not necessarily more convincing
•    The messenger is often more important than the message. It is a matter of credibility with the audience.
•    It is important to make climate impact part of all the beats in a newsroom – rather than confine it to a dedicated climate desk. All journalists need basic climate literacy.
•    There is no one-size-fits-all model for newsroom organization, language to be used or visual policy. Everyone has to make it fit their resources, values, culture.
•    Images matter a lot and the formats need to fit the particular audience
•    Leaders experience little resistance when implementing climate strategies. When leadership doesn’t make the topic a priority, a climate desk might flourish but the rest of the journalism will stay the same. 
•    The media has a hard time living up to their own standards when it comes to measuring carbon footprints or making newsrooms more sustainable. Travel is a pain point. 
•    There is a lot of material out there on how to communicate the climate challenge successfully, particularly from the field of communication studies. Newsrooms just haven’t used it yet.

Academics doing research on climate communication have discovered: Stories are more likely to work if they are related to the here and know instead of to the distant future, tied to a local context, convey agency, are constructive or solutions-oriented, and envision a sustainable future instead of emphasizing sacrifice, crisis, destruction, loss, and disaster. While doom scrolling might capture attention for a brief moment, it also risks to drive people into news avoidance.   

We also uncovered some indicators on how climate change and the environment resonate particularly with younger audiences – and how focusing on sustainable issues could help public service media speak directly to this audience and solve some of their own problems in the process.

Interestingly the same focus also appeals to young staffers – and attracts young talent – in newsrooms themselves. And there is evidence that these topics energize veteran news reporters and help promote overall diversity. They make journalism broader, more constructive, and help to break the dominance of the “he said, she said”-type of political reporting that hasn’t served audiences too well anyway.  

We will cover all this and more in the next News Report. But you don’t have to wait that long to read our findings. We will be publishing selected Q&As with media leaders, climate journalists and experts in advance of publication. You can read Wolfgang Blau’s take on some of the challenges – and opportunities – for public service newsrooms.

Climate Journalism That Works – Between Knowledge and Impact by Dr Alexandra Borchardt, Katherine Dunn and Felix Simon, will be published on 1 March 2023. This blog was first published on the EBU’s homepage.