Just about anyone in journalism has heard of the Knight News Challenge. In his ISOJ presentation, Seth Lewis, University of Texas at Austin looked at how it shapes journalism.
As background, he talked about the tension between professional journalistic practices, based on gatekeeping, and participatory logic of open and collective spaces.
He researched how winners of the Knight News Challenge negotiated this tension. He found that the tension was not there.
The winners saw journalism as a practice to be shared, rather than a proprietary profession to be protected.
Lewis argued that we should stop talk about being a journalist but actually doing journalism.
Once we see journalism as a practice, it can be opened to others. And, added Lewis, we can offer tools to allow others to do journalism.
Lewis said that since winners approached journalism outside of the occupation ideology, they look to preserve the key existing values and discarding the ones that no longer apply.
But it also gives rise to new values, said Lewis, such as participation. Challenge winners talked expressed a faith in the public.
Lewis found that they emphasised a shift away from individual expertise to collective intelligence, from gatekeeping to community management, and from content to connectivity.
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