Columbia Journalism Review

[Commentary] While the promise of virtual reality has been present in research labs, the gaming industry, and science fiction for over 30 years, it’s only now that we have the computational power, screen resolution, and refresh rate to use VR in a small and inexpensive portable headset. This past year, a wide range of virtual reality headsets has entered the market. VR content is being created by movie studios, gaming companies, and journalists, and the largest technology enterprises in the world are investing significantly in virtual and augmented reality R&D. As Facebook and others begin researching and developing technologies that could augment our lives in significant ways, a new space is opening up for journalism. Journalism inside these new virtual worlds will require an entirely different set of skills and approaches, and will challenge three core journalistic concepts: representation, witnessing, and accountability.

[Taylor Owen is Assistant Professor of Digital Media and Global Affairs at the University of British Columbia and the founder and editor of the international affairs site OpenCanada.org.]

Innovation comes in many forms. Popular imagination often bends toward the idea of isolated genius: Thomas Edison toiling away at Menlo Park, discovering 10,000 ways not to make a lightbulb; Steve Jobs sketching the smooth contours of the iPod. For many of today’s media leaders, innovation means looking beyond the horizons of their internal headquarters. From virtual reality to advertising technology to, yes, television for dogs, the major media players we analyzed have cast a wide net in their attempts to reach new audiences and develop groundbreaking products. The following graphics showcase the investments and acquisitions of 15 leading media companies and social networks, revealing strategies and some surprising results.

Some of the hardest-hitting documentaries in recent years have been forced to delay release or cough up hefty fees for attorneys, among them "Bananas!", a 2009 documentary about Nicaraguan plantation workers for Dole Food Co. who were sickened by a pesticide banned in the US; "Citizenfour", which followed Edward Snowden as he began to leak documents about US surveillance programs; and "Crude", which dealt with a multi-billion-dollar lawsuit against Chevron Corp. that claimed the oil giant despoiled the Amazonian jungle in Ecuador. Many in the documentary film world expect further assaults on free speech in the current divisive political climate. With a president-elect who has threatened to loosen libel laws and sue over reporting he doesn’t like, indie filmmakers are steeling themselves for open season.

[Commentary] The American media did not distinguish itself in the immediate aftermath of December 7, 1941. But time has let it off the hook. All the commentators mentioned above went on to increased visibility and impressive careers during the war. Americans then—and now—tend to be very forgiving of terrible punditry, inaccurate reporting, and ridiculous commentary. Perhaps we shouldn’t be.

[Michael J. Socolow is an Associate Professor in the Department of Communication and Journalism at the University of Maine.]

[Commentary] Two decades have passed since newspapers launched websites, and yet here we are. Big city papers have gone under, thousands of journalists have lost their jobs, and the idea that digital news will eventually become a decent business feels like a rumor.

The reality is this: No app, no streamlined website, no “vertical integration,” no social network, no algorithm, no Apple, no Apple Newsstand, no paywall, no soft paywall, no targeted ad, no mobile-first strategy has come close to matching the success of print in revenue or readership. And the most crucial assumption publishers have made about readers, particularly millennials—that they prefer the immediacy of digital—now seems questionable, too.

[Michael Rosenwald is a reporter at the Washington Post. ]

When CBS Chairman Les Moonves said that the Donald Trump phenomenon “may not be good for America, but it’s damn good for CBS,” he likely didn’t imagine his comment would apply to the entire news industry come December. While many in the media have expressed concerns over the impact a Trump Administration could have on press freedoms, the president-elect’s influence already is boosting news organizations’ bottom lines.

The New York Times said it signed up 10,000 new subscribers per day several times since the election, and the past few weeks recorded a 10-fold increase in new subscriptions over the same period last year. “Often after an election you expect a lull,” Times president and CEO Mark Thompson said recently. “We’re not seeing that, we’re seeing a surge.”

[Commentary] Journalists in the US are never off-limits for criticism. But what we’re seeing right now goes too far. We must fight back. We must fight a president-elect who obsessively attacks the press on Twitter, fight death threats toward reporters and editors, fight unrelenting anti semitism on social media, fight the resurrection of the Nazi-Germany term “Lugenpresse.” It’s an affront to our national heritage. And if the American people don’t remember or understand this, we need to remind them. Often.

So as we prepare to embark on a Donald Trump presidency, I offer a mini manifesto to share with press-hating friends, family, co-workers, and strangers. You can call yourself many things while you foment hatred toward reporters, but “all-American” is not one of them. Journalism is our original—and enduring—national anthem.

[Philip Eil is a freelance journalist based in Providence (RI)]

[Commentary] You've probably heard that news organizations such as AP, Reuters, and many others are now turning out thousands of automated stories a month. It’s a dramatic development, but today’s story-writing bots are little more than Mad Libs, filling out stock phrases with numbers from earnings reports or box scores. And there’s good reason to believe that fully automated journalism is going to be very limited for a long time. At the same time, quietly and without the fanfare of their robot cousins, the cyborgs are coming to journalism. And they’re going to win, because they can do things that neither people nor programs can do alone.

[Jonathan Stray leads the Overview Project for the Associated Press]

[Commentary] Without an informed and independent lens on the work of large technology companies, news organizations could easily surrender to the idea that they no longer belong in the business of shaping their own formats and production tools. But independent and creative advocacy for its own technologies is one of the most powerful ways journalism can retain its relevance.

It was once the case that more technology-focused resources potentially meant fewer reporters in the newsroom. That choice can now be seen for what it always was: a false bargain. As reporting and technology converge, it is not a matter of journalists learning code, but of journalism becoming code.

[Emily Bell is Director at the Tow Center for Digital Journalism at Columbia Journalism School.]

[Commentary] The 2016 Presidential election took a heavy toll on the vast army of journalists assigned to cover it, grinding down shoe leather, fingertips, and nerve-endings in equal measure. But for one reporter, Daniel Dale of the Toronto Star, the race for the White House was singularly burdensome, turning him into a night owl. So what happened to all this solid work, why did it appear to go up in a puff of smoke on election night?

There is a separate and febrile debate over whether or not opinion polls were in part to blame for giving the impression that the White House was in the bag for Hillary Clinton, but many other theories are circulating. One prevalent idea is that the media did its job but the public “just did not care.”The New York Times political reporter Jonathan Martin offers an opposite conclusion: that the coverage did hit home with voters, as reflected in Donald Trump’s historically bad popularity ratings. To which it might be added that Hillary Clinton is still winning in the popular vote.

[Ed Pilkington is chief reporter of the Guardian in the US]