Journalism’s true strength in the Internet era is decentralized. It’s all about reporters — and reporting teams — working solo, but linking up in parallel to coordinate on stories, cross-promote, and share resources.

Parallel processing! Peer-to-peer networks. A network model harnesses the inherent strength of the Web as a medium, by providing a shared back office and standards of affiliation. This is the thesis behind Independent Arts & Media and Newsdesk.org.

Now, on a significantly larger scale, a collaborative of nonprofit news agencies is teaming up to create a new entity, the Investigative News Network, to take up their collective burden of business operations, fund development, and marketing/promotions.

Driving this is the proliferation of small to mid-sized nonprofit news bureaus around the United States. They’re cropping up in big cities and small towns. They’re tackling diverse issues and beats at the local, regional and national level. They have a variety of business models, publishing methods and partnership policies.

A glorious ferment! But resources are sorely lacking. Individually, these projects don’t have the financial and promotional clout to routinely achieve the impacts that a commercial media corporation can muster — even in today’s bruised and contused news economy.

Working in concert, it’s a different story. Resources are multiplied, as the diverse talents and resources of each node in the network are brought to bear on common issues.

Chief among those issues are the enormous challenges of social entrepreneurship in news media. Remember, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting’s Congressional charter is limited to broadcast. It’s the extremely low cost of publishing on the Web, rather than an abundance of charitable funding, that is driving the boom of professional, nonprofit journalism online.

Among these nonprofit bureaus, a sense of shared mission and challenge has at last caused some convergence on a larger scale. Yesterday, at the Rockefeller Fund’s Pocantico Conference Center in New York State, the attendees of the Building an Investigative News Network conference produced what I must say is rather thrilling document.

The future is NOW!

“The Pocantico Declaration: Creating a Nonprofit Investigative News Network”
July 1, 2009, Pocantico Conference Center, NY

“Resolved, that we, representatives of nonprofit news organizations, gather at a time when investigative reporting, so crucial to a functioning democracy, is under threat. There is an urgent need to nourish and sustain the emerging investigative journalism ecosystem to better serve the public.

“Recognizing, that there are many forms of potential collaboration …. “

The ongoing flow citizen media coming out of Iran amidst the turmoil has staggered me. I am astonished and weeping at the incredible bravery that is being revealed, at the greed and cruelty of the state, at the power of media as an expression of will and desire.

Here is a video that overpowers me. The shouts and cries rising like waves far into the night, the narrator’s tiny, quavering voice … she is anonymous, but she contains all the hope for liberation, and all the sorrow for its betrayal, that any human has ever known.

Much has been said about Twitter, YouTube and their roles in the Iran protests. I can’t add anything to that.

However, what I can say is … the convergence of citizen and professional journalism is at last taking place, with a thorough and wholehearted embrace by none other than the NY Times. Andrew Sullivan at the Atlantic is posting blog items and Twitter feeds — fine.

But the NY Time’s blog, “The Lede,” is at the front of the pack in terms of pro-am integration. Why? Because they recognize that the nature of the information posted as definitive cannot be established, and instead it must be recognized as fluid, in play, and subject to ongoing interpretation.

Because as they post content submitted by “the people formerly known as the audience,” they’re working in realtime to verify, and relying on not only their own skills, but feedback from the community of users.

See, for example, the comment in bolded-red text about 1/5th of the way halfway down the page, in which to members of the public offer differing views on the protest location a particular video depicts.

Real crowdsourcing + real journalism, in realtime.

This at last is convergence, is new media, is new journalism.

This has been an idea that’s been percolating in my noggin for some time. Every time I hear about the latest journalism initiative or major donor, this idea returns:

It’s time to pool the resources and create a “Journalism Social Venture Fund” that can provide for the basic needs of the many new/emerging nonprofit journalism programs.

• This entity would be non-elite and non-exclusive. It would not judge programs according to rarified criteria as to what’s a sustainable business model. No one has a freakin’ clue what a sustainable business model is right now. Sure there are plenty of ideas. But three-years of budget projections should not be the criteria. If a news site is up and running, and has a track record of publishing good material (see below for what “good material” means), it should be eligible for block grants to support its efforts.

• The JSVF would distribute block grants for both Journalism Programming and Journalism Operations. That means, if you have a hot story you need to pursue, you go to the Journalism Social Venture Fund to help cover the costs. That means, if you are publishing great material but you need a grantwriter or a bookkeeper or an individual donor manager to help solidify your business model, you go to the Journalism Social Venture Fund to help cover the costs.

• What kind of coverage is eligible? The Journalism Social Venture Fund would only support non-political/non-advocacy, public-interest reporting that can’t otherwise survive in a commercial context. No op-eds, no opinionating, no endoresements, no editorials, no signed columnists. The blogs have this covered already. Although funded news programming can support public discourse around the issues that may result in opinions being expressed or taking shape, please note that this is a meaningful outcome of the coverage, not the substance of it.

• What kind of news outlets are eligible? This would be focused entirely on the emerging nonprofit sector. (While there are interesting for-profit variations out there, such as the L3C model, those are still nascent, and the opportunity is distinct.) Therefore: For news programming support, a solid track-record of continuous and high-quality news programming for no less than three to six months would be required. For operational support, a demonstrated track-record of one year of continuous news-programming operations would be required.

• Who determines which news operations are eligible? Aha! That is indeed the most vital question of all, isn’t it? And worthy of extensive discourse as such. As a starting point, let me propose that the decisions must be made by, say, a nine-person Board of Advisers, elected annually by an open and inclusive process, with mandated and equal representation from: Local/regional journalism practitioners, members of the communities served, and social-venture advisers and practitioners. These individuals should, also, equally represent both the executive suite and the grassroots.

Obviously this is just an interesting idea right now … and only adjunct to Ted Glasser’s more ambitious notion of a National Endowment for Journalism. Consider it more of a local/regional take, funded by local philanthropists and community foundations who care about regional civic life.

Food for thought! I look forward to your feedback.

Another interesting item from the March 13 edition of On The Media, about the lack of concern among younger folks that their local newspaper may be going away.

One of the biggest issues that’s overlooked is “the crisis of relevance” … why shed tears over something that you never valued in the first place?

As is discussed in the interview, the younger demographic has no reason to read the newspaper because everything they basically need in terms of civics is already on TV. Why spend money on wood pulp when a) it’s online for free, and b) it’s also already on TV right before one’s fave nightly sitcom comes on?

What this says to me is that newspapers aren’t and haven’t been distinguishing themselves from TV. They’re not offering anything different, they’re not offering depth, they’re not bringing in compelling new topics.

Have newspapers made themselves irrelevant? If so, this is more than a technological phenomenon of people going to get the stuff for free online they’d otherwise pay for.

The issue becomes one of newspapers themselves making themselves matter by covering issues people want and need to know about, and that they can’t learn about anywhere else.