Inverting the Inverted Pyramid

Journalism's New Inception Might Come Back to Reality

Is journalism spinning in reality or a dream? (Illustration generated by ChatGPT)

In the 2010 movie "Inception", dream thief Dom Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio) employs the use of his dead wife's spinning top as a "totem" to distinguish between reality and a dream.

If the top responds to the laws of physics, wobbling as it reduces speed and eventually collapsing, Cobb is in the real world. If the top remains at a constant, endless spin rate with no wobble, he's in a dream.

For the last 15 years, a persistent debate has raged on the Internet over the meaning of the final scene of the movie as to whether the spinning top establishes his ultimate place in a dream or reality (I'm seriously hoping this isn't a spoiler after so many years).

https://youtu.be/XQPy88-E2zo?si=lYKkB5ok5W0tDyex

In much the same way, the owners of traditional journalism companies can be forgiven for being torn between reality and the dream.

For decades they were empowered to exist in a dreamlike state, largely free from the economic friction that slowed and destabilized other industries. If you had the means to own a printing press or broadcast tower, you were basically printing or generating fistfuls of money that kept that top spinning.

Sure, there was competition, but so little that the U.S. Department of Justice felt compelled to intervene in some markets to mandate joint operating agreements (JOAs) to at least introduce a second media voice. Even then, the bar for success wasn't satisfying your audience: You just had to be better than your few competitors.

The advent of the Internet has "democraticized" the media landscape, splashing cold reality on traditional media. Yes, I accidentally created a new word but am keeping it because it feels just as messy and combative as the current state of journalism.

Rather than waking up and embracing the challenge of a brand new day, traditional media companies have repeatedly turned off the alarm and rolled over to try and go back to sleep in hope that sweet dream comes back. In the meantime, tech-based companies have seized the seeds of information relevance and woven their own financially lucrative dreams (ironically, with many of those same economic frictions removed).

Nowhere is the wobble of the journalism top more evident than within the sacred "inverted pyramid". To non-journalism nerds, this term refers to the writing style drilled into J-school survivors like me, where the broadest, most important information exists at the top of your story (the "lede" - we refuse to even use normal spelling for words referring to the most important part), followed by important details and finally by foundational, background information.

That structure works great when you're operating in a dream world, unconcerned with the real-world constraints that the only way to keep a top stable is to keep it spinning at a high rate. But there's a real-world reason the ancient Egyptians did not build inverted pyramids.

Another real-world pyramid that governs every human experience is Maslow's hierarchy of needs, a psychological theory that describes human motivation as a five-tier pyramid. At the broad base of the pyramid are physiological needs for survival, progressing to narrower self-actualization at the top.

In his insightful 2019 summary of an informal meeting of change-minded journalists ("Is Your Journalism a Luxury or Necessity?"), City Bureau co-founder Harry Backlund made the case for an "information" hierarchy of needs.

He wrote, "A huge amount of journalistic resources go into the top of the pyramid to serve the abstract needs of a comfortable few, completely passing over the basic information needs of a great many."

Generated by ChatGPT

Notes from a City Bureau Fellowship brainstorming session.

Participating journalists observed, "Pretty much all narrative storytelling, investigation and political analysis goes (at the self-actualization top tier) - most of what we typically think of when we say 'journalism'."

Observations like this have triggered a re-examination of traditional journalism, inverting the inverted pyramid with the creation of "information needs" pyramids focused on creating resources that help key audiences address their most pressing concerns.

Beyond the theoretical, City Bureau's information needs approach has led it to develop practical news products such as "After the Trial", an illustrated guide that aids prisoners and their loved ones in navigating the appeals process - rather than just a story for people who have an abstract need to know.

From a journalism industry perspective, the non-profit News Product Alliance was formed in 2020 to "support news organizations to align technology, journalism and business decisions around audience needs to build a healthier and sustainable information ecosystem." It now counts its community at more than 3,000 journalism professionals.

The NPA points out that in the wake of declining traditional revenue models, the news product discipline has been employed by the most successful newsrooms. These newsrooms are taking a page from the most successful tech platforms, embracing digital product development practices and striving to better serve their communities by combining their rich content with business strategy and developing new revenue models.

One of the fastest-growing revenue models is non-profit philanthropy, which has accelerated funding over the past few years to fill the void of news deserts and underserved communities. In sharp contrast to funding handouts for PR boost from the now-dwindling Big Tech pockets, though, traditional foundations and journalism funders like Press Forward are demanding accountability in return.

It's a reasonable expectation in the waking (vs. dream) world: Current journalism philanthropy is coming from pockets with bottoms, where funders are having to shift dollars from other deserving causes to shore up struggling newsrooms. That wasn't the case when companies like Google and Facebook were concerned about increased regulation and rained millions of dollars on the journalism industry.

Enter accountability: Among the few editorial impacts routinely touted by traditional media (particularly newspapers), the most-mentioned are the decrease in civic participation and the increase in local government corruption. A convincing argument to squeeze out a few more paying subscribers, but not compelling to the much larger audience who don't care or don't have time to worry about such things (again, Maslow's pyramid).

Rather than join in journalism's favorite pastime of audience blaming, I believe the metrics to quantify the editorial impact of trained journalists are out there. We just need to start measuring the things the larger audience actually cares about.

As luck would have it, The Lenfest Institute reached out for session ideas earlier this year in advance of its May News Philanthropy Summit and embraced my recommendation for a focused conversation on identifying and standardizing editorial impact metrics amongst journalists, newsroom executives, funders and journalism support professionals.

Regrettably, my job became a casualty of the contracting traditional media landscape a week before the summit and I was unable to help lead that initial conversation. But my co-presenters, Madison Karas of Tiny News Collective and Patrick Boehler of Gazzetta, grabbed the standardizing metrics ball and doubled down on the foundational pyramid of editorial relevance.

In a post-summit writeup, Karas and Boehler invoke the albatross of "priesthood" that has limited journalists' scope and imagination in leveraging their skills, and proposed we "Start with service: A practical reset for media impact".

Credit: Madison Karas and Patrick Boehler

As part of that reset, they propose a concrete formula that is still abstract but a strong starting point:

Credit: Madison Karas and Patrick Boehler

I was so excited by the post-summit insights, I participated in the follow-up Zoom working session along with what appeared to be 75 fellow colleagues - despite the fact that I'm not currently an official "journalist".

You can take the boy out of journalism, but you can't take journalism out of the boy.

Hopefully the same is true for our democracy - before the top stops spinning.

Sean Fitzpatrick is a digital strategist, journalist, musician and singer/songwriter. He's currently available for freelance or permanent gigs - or perhaps a sync licensing deal. Reach him at sean@digitalthatfitz.com or sean@musicthatfitz.com.