[00:02.130 --> 00:07.010]  I'm really excited about this, sharing some thoughts with you.
[00:07.410 --> 00:09.430]  Some of them might be a little bit provocative.
[00:09.790 --> 00:15.350]  So when I last presented a version of this at a journalism gathering, like half the people left the room.
[00:15.590 --> 00:22.010]  So the intention here is really to work towards greater utility, greater public service.
[00:22.310 --> 00:28.910]  And so please don't take this as kind of like, journalism is dumb or journalism is useless or anything like that.
[00:29.050 --> 00:30.150]  That's definitely not the intention.
[00:30.990 --> 00:34.770]  When we first discussed this pitch, it was called New Journalism.
[00:34.830 --> 00:35.830]  So that's in your program.
[00:36.030 --> 00:50.490]  And actually also building on that feedback from that presentation and building on feedback that I got over the last couple of days, I actually tried to rename it to Reclaiming Journalism because a lot of things in journalism are not working.
[00:51.150 --> 00:54.510]  And it's not really about saying we need something new.
[00:54.690 --> 00:57.570]  I think we just need to discard the things that don't work.
[00:57.570 --> 01:00.390]  And so a little bit about myself.
[01:00.890 --> 01:02.970]  I started out as a journalist.
[01:03.270 --> 01:07.150]  My first journalism job was in Malaysia in Kuala Lumpur.
[01:07.410 --> 01:16.050]  I worked in exile and dissident media space most of my professional life in Myanmar.
[01:16.050 --> 01:24.890]  And then I had a dream job as a human rights China reporter at the South China Morning Post in Hong Kong.
[01:25.790 --> 01:33.790]  Ended up somehow working at the New York Times and then in newsrooms in Europe and mostly public media.
[01:33.790 --> 01:55.110]  And in my last role in a news organization, I was responsible for the digital transformation of Radio Free Europe, which runs newsrooms, exile and underground newsrooms in about 20-ish countries in Europe and in Asia, including Russia, Iran and Afghanistan.
[01:55.830 --> 02:02.890]  And about a year and a half-ish ago, I started my own little research lab called Gazetta.
[02:04.690 --> 02:06.170]  And why Gazetta?
[02:06.330 --> 02:08.850]  Because it's really about reclaiming journalism.
[02:08.850 --> 02:14.990]  And I went back to some of the first kind of newspapers in Europe.
[02:15.270 --> 02:28.170]  And this is one of the first editions of a local paper in Venice called Gazetta, because it cost one Gazetta, which was the currency at the time.
[02:28.490 --> 02:33.850]  And they had to explain why you're selling this piece of paper with text on it.
[02:33.970 --> 02:36.010]  Like they had to explain, you know, this new concept.
[02:36.010 --> 02:43.270]  And so in the beginning, the first editions of the Gazetta Veneta, they always had to explain.
[02:43.530 --> 02:51.350]  And so what they said is, well, here, what you're getting here is information that's partly entertaining and partly useful for the public.
[02:51.630 --> 03:02.090]  And that's really what I love about this, because often in journalism, we start to, we've kind of forgotten about that last part of partly useful to the public.
[03:02.950 --> 03:17.470]  When I was a journalist, I've really, when I was a reporter, I've really invested a lot of my energy into getting the stories, getting the stories because I wanted to be of public service, telling stories that were important.
[03:17.810 --> 03:21.310]  I have risked my life.
[03:21.310 --> 03:27.370]  I've risked my livelihood, my security, my mental health, and my wellbeing.
[03:27.690 --> 03:33.390]  And always in these challenges, it's like, here is something that's wrong, and how do I distribute it?
[03:33.490 --> 03:37.270]  How do I distribute that information that I documented to other people?
[03:37.650 --> 03:46.810]  And when I later became a media executive, I kind of realized after a while, at scale, maybe I'm asking the wrong questions.
[03:46.810 --> 03:49.050]  As a reporter, that's right.
[03:49.250 --> 03:57.430]  But if you think about media as a larger venture, how to reach people is just one of the questions that we should be asking ourselves.
[03:59.990 --> 04:13.350]  And I think because we're asking ourselves not exactly the right questions, I think this has happened, like a bit of an ecosystem collapse.
[04:13.990 --> 04:20.690]  And we see the traditional media organizations becoming less and less relevant, really, to people's lives.
[04:22.690 --> 04:26.010]  And partly that is because of the broadcast trap.
[04:26.270 --> 04:32.950]  We're so used to having large audiences, and we kind of take for granted that we have these large audiences.
[04:32.950 --> 04:35.890]  So when I have a story, it goes to many people.
[04:36.050 --> 04:38.230]  We kind of assume that it goes to...
[04:38.230 --> 04:41.390]  and they'll be listening in, or reading, whatever, what have you.
[04:42.130 --> 04:45.090]  And one of the wrong assumptions is there's content scarcity.
[04:45.330 --> 04:46.850]  There is so much content out there.
[04:48.350 --> 05:00.190]  If you look at any market, so worked on Turkmenistan, not in, of course, but on Turkmenistan, even countries like Turkmenistan, there is an abundance of content out there.
[05:00.190 --> 05:01.990]  You're not competing against nothing.
[05:02.170 --> 05:04.790]  You're competing against a lot, a lot of information.
[05:05.430 --> 05:07.610]  And a lot of it is very performative.
[05:07.790 --> 05:17.070]  So if you go to a journalism school these days, they will teach you how to sit in front of... behind a podium like this and read the evening newscast.
[05:17.230 --> 05:19.430]  That's still very well known.
[05:19.430 --> 05:25.710]  A lot of things are very formulaic, and because of our understanding of what journalism is.
[05:25.890 --> 05:30.990]  So you stand behind a camera, you have a microphone, and you tell your story.
[05:31.110 --> 05:35.070]  That's a lot of... and that's kind of where the thinking goes in journalism education.
[05:35.310 --> 05:38.030]  And I say that as someone who's taught in journalism schools.
[05:38.930 --> 05:41.250]  And the funding is another problem.
[05:41.250 --> 05:46.770]  A lot of it has gone away in the last year, of course.
[05:47.130 --> 05:49.330]  But a lot of... especially U.S.
[05:49.430 --> 05:59.190]  funding, but also in Europe, for journalism is... has been kind of thinly wheeled from funding for messaging.
[06:00.350 --> 06:11.590]  And that's not to say that the journalists who received the funding were complicit or willing to do messaging, but the intentions of the funders were messaging.
[06:11.890 --> 06:18.530]  And that has also done really, really serious harm to our industry.
[06:19.430 --> 06:22.930]  And lastly, it's just the world that we live in has changed.
[06:23.210 --> 06:25.190]  This is a Radio Free Europe newsroom.
[06:25.790 --> 06:27.790]  I don't know how many decades ago.
[06:28.750 --> 06:33.030]  This is just a generated image of someone actually getting their information.
[06:35.230 --> 06:39.110]  So, to say... like on distribution, one of the reasons...
[06:39.110 --> 06:50.270]  And I got this slide, a version of this slide from friends at Splice in Singapore, is really that we've been competing in the attention economy.
[06:50.470 --> 06:51.390]  So, we have a story.
[06:51.570 --> 06:53.350]  We have something that we think is very important.
[06:53.570 --> 06:57.230]  And then we want to get it out there to as many people as possible.
[06:57.230 --> 07:08.210]  And as long as these big platforms are... have... we share the economic or political interests or it's in their interests to distribute our work, we benefit from their distribution.
[07:08.670 --> 07:13.050]  Now, there is a shortcut in thinking that we already have a large audience.
[07:13.210 --> 07:15.250]  Of course, these platforms have a large audience.
[07:15.250 --> 07:21.310]  And these, as you all know here at HOPE, this attention economy is profoundly raked.
[07:22.390 --> 07:41.790]  And so, in theory, if we had a context, like a free and violent context in a liberal democracy, we will be able to have a supply of information of journalism and a demand of journalism, and they would meet in some way and somehow civil society would, of course, correct.
[07:42.170 --> 07:54.210]  The reality is that we have these intermediaries and we have polarization and this algorithmic distortion that prevent that Venn diagram from happening.
[07:54.930 --> 08:07.930]  And as more and more of the world is becoming more and more authoritarian, and, I don't know, in some instances, I don't know if fascist is the right word.
[08:09.790 --> 08:12.770]  These kind of barriers are getting worse and worse.
[08:13.050 --> 08:17.990]  And so, you have platform control, you have threats, violence, stigma, and poverty.
[08:17.990 --> 08:38.010]  And I really worry that the journalism industry or the trade or like the community of journalists that I also belong to, we really have created, with our expectations to this large reach and this kind of performative expectations toward change, we have created a lot of kind of unnecessary martyrs
[08:39.770 --> 08:44.010]  because the situation is... that's the reality in more and more places.
[08:44.430 --> 08:56.190]  And what has happened is that because we're unable to adapt to this new situation and we're kind of sticking and like kind of entrenching ourselves and our understanding of who we are and what we do.
[08:56.710 --> 09:11.050]  And I can tell you myself, I feel very strongly about wanting to live in an open society where journalism, the acts of journalism can happen and can course correct our shared lived experiences.
[09:13.090 --> 09:22.610]  But if we don't reflect on the changes that we have to navigate systemically, we have... we're irrelevant.
[09:22.990 --> 09:26.070]  And that leads to new constraints and less leverage on society.
[09:26.830 --> 09:28.990]  And so, it's kind of a vicious circle.
[09:30.290 --> 09:51.690]  And what has happened over the last maybe five-ish years is that we've really gotten really addicted to this really broad reach that we have enjoyed thanks to YouTube, thanks to Facebook, thanks to TikTok and what have you, and have been exploring two ways of approaching it.
[09:51.850 --> 10:00.810]  One is collaborating with these big platforms, and the other way is just trying to trick them in some ways or forms to work around them.
[10:02.570 --> 10:09.670]  And by focusing so much on distribution, this relevance gap, so this Venn diagram has widened even further.
[10:09.970 --> 10:17.170]  And I have been working in the Chinese discipline and exile media space now for 10, 15 years.
[10:17.590 --> 10:36.270]  And I can tell you that if this, in an autocracy, when we operate with the wrong assumptions, and especially if the donors, the funders, the people who support it operate with the wrong assumptions, this relevance gap leads to a lot, a lot of harm, but it also leads to irrelevance.
[10:37.070 --> 10:42.330]  And that is the most crucial indictment of what has happened over the last decade.
[10:43.790 --> 10:55.610]  And I think the misdirection that I myself have had and that others that we have in the wider industry is that we're really optimized for a different era.
[10:55.790 --> 11:01.570]  We're optimized for an era where we will be able to have a captive audience.
[11:01.570 --> 11:06.570]  We're also optimized for the metrics that these platforms give us.
[11:06.790 --> 11:08.910]  So Facebook can give you amazing metrics.
[11:09.090 --> 11:16.650]  Google Analytics can give you amazing granularity of consumption metrics, but it doesn't really say that much.
[11:16.790 --> 11:19.590]  And ultimately, they control who you reach next.
[11:20.930 --> 11:27.890]  And the business models is, of course, deeply broken, both on the advertising side and the subscription side.
[11:28.770 --> 11:32.070]  And there are amazing technologists in newsrooms.
[11:32.770 --> 11:36.190]  I think OCCRP was just talking earlier here.
[11:36.310 --> 11:38.350]  They have amazing, fantastic technologists.
[11:39.810 --> 11:53.650]  But I think one of the challenges for technologists in the newsrooms is even like, and especially also in the Internet freedom space, also is that you want to help journalists to be relevant, to stay relevant.
[11:53.930 --> 11:57.550]  And that leads you to keep thinking of, okay, what are the journalists needs?
[11:57.550 --> 11:58.770]  What can they need?
[11:58.890 --> 12:01.970]  And typically, the answer you get is, how do we distribute this to people?
[12:02.430 --> 12:21.270]  And that leads people, technologists, using their really, really smart talent to work on distribution, where you have diminishing returns on investment, because you keep kind of just trying to squeeze a little bit more out of these things, using VPNs and what have you.
[12:22.950 --> 12:25.170]  And so basically, it's a little bit like this.
[12:25.290 --> 12:28.990]  These are the technologists working for the reporters, working against the government.
[12:30.250 --> 12:38.050]  And I'm hoping to make a case here, just while I have your attention, that it doesn't have to be this way.
[12:38.310 --> 12:48.950]  This is how it worked until now, and it doesn't have to be this way, because it hasn't worked, at least in the time of my professional career.
[12:49.610 --> 13:07.090]  And I would love to work towards something that is a little bit more like this, where technologists and journalists work together and have a razor-sharp focus, not on a government or what have you, but really on the people that they're meant to serve in the first place.
[13:09.250 --> 13:26.990]  And while this is happening, while really we have seen that the newsrooms that I have worked in and the newsrooms that I have looked up to have lost in relevance and standing in their societies, and more and more countries have become less and less free,
[13:27.770 --> 13:44.910]  there are things that are happening in the world that I have only realized later that are really, really interesting and provide us opportunities to kind of rethink and reimagine and reclaim journalism.
[13:47.770 --> 14:02.430]  What I had not realized as much as I should have is that communities really don't wait for traditional journalists to share information, to get information, as they have.
[14:02.430 --> 14:09.190]  And this is some interesting research here in the United States that's upcoming.
[14:09.370 --> 14:11.290]  It hasn't been published yet.
[14:11.730 --> 14:31.430]  But Anika and Daryl here have been really looking at news ecosystems in the United States and kind of stepping away from the definition of kind of journalists, newsrooms, being like the kind of the node of it all, kind of that's how you define a news ecosystem.
[14:31.750 --> 14:45.590]  But really looking at like, who are the information providers in communities, even if they don't have a badge, like, you know, or an accreditation or what have you.
[14:45.590 --> 14:49.090]  And really found some... it was super interesting.
[14:49.250 --> 15:00.850]  It's super interesting to see this kind of research, find information ecosystems that exist, even when there's no kind of traditional news form.
[15:01.490 --> 15:26.670]  In my own work, I was... so over the last year and a half, I've been working with the Open Technology Fund and partners really on kind of rethinking how can we think about, in a highly autocratic space, what are the key elements of technology that we need to make sure that the acts of journalism really can continue to exist organically.
[15:31.210 --> 15:40.270]  And I was really amazed by a member of my team who was doing research in Columbia and for internews at the time.
[15:40.590 --> 15:50.350]  And he was embedded with Chinese migrants who were crossing the Darien Gap to reach the United States.
[15:50.710 --> 15:57.410]  And what was so interesting was for him to see that this is, you know, this is illegal everywhere.
[15:57.990 --> 16:00.850]  And it is... and it's totally not organized.
[16:01.190 --> 16:20.850]  But what he saw was that there was a rich, rich information ecosystem on information on how to get there, how to cross, where you can find a doctor, where you can exchange money, where you have to deal with bribes and worry about security, what have you.
[16:21.030 --> 16:24.750]  So in this, like, kind of highly illegal, like illegal...
[16:25.490 --> 16:38.570]  I'm not making a value judgment about this migration pattern, but it's something that no kind of authority would condone along the way, is a rich ecosystem exists.
[16:38.730 --> 16:40.350]  And I was like, wow, that's really interesting.
[16:41.070 --> 16:44.610]  Maybe there's something we can learn there from the space.
[16:45.430 --> 16:54.540]  And looking a bit more at... in China specifically, I started looking at the VPN market.
[16:55.500 --> 17:09.880]  When I lived in Beijing many years ago, I had people secretly install, like, a little satellite dish on my roof and realized that many, many people also had little satellite dishes on their roofs.
[17:10.000 --> 17:11.500]  This is no longer a thing.
[17:11.640 --> 17:20.640]  What you can get now is little boxes, kind of this size, that would be just a VPN.
[17:21.200 --> 17:31.620]  And you don't have to know what a VPN is or you don't have to know how to set it up or install it on your TV or your computer or your smartphone.
[17:31.960 --> 17:44.260]  You would just connect it with your router and you'll be able to watch Netflix or really what have you or access ChatGVT or what have you.
[17:44.260 --> 18:01.260]  So I started looking into that space and it turns out there is really a huge, huge kind of information space within China around these VPNs where people share information about what is trustworthy, what is useful.
[18:01.560 --> 18:06.160]  They even share information on the pricing and what have you in this space.
[18:06.300 --> 18:09.680]  And that's really, really exciting because it's just happening organically.
[18:09.680 --> 18:22.820]  And another example, this is not from my lived experience, but just really from an article I read on Rest of World is West Bank.
[18:23.740 --> 18:35.580]  There are these initiatives to track where you can cross checkpoints and where it's safe to drive, what have you.
[18:35.580 --> 18:53.080]  And this is really, I thought it's just a great example of when people, technologists and people who are gathering information, they want to share information, get together and provide services, information services to their communities.
[18:53.480 --> 19:03.860]  And I was thinking maybe that's more journalism than, you know, the performative acts of standing behind a microphone in front of a camera or publishing a newspaper, what have you.
[19:04.060 --> 19:10.200]  That is more of why I became a journalist in the first place all those years ago.
[19:11.700 --> 19:27.120]  And so one of my friends who gave me feedback on this presentation really said, okay, VPNs and Daring Gap and the West Bank, these are crisis moments.
[19:27.300 --> 19:32.860]  But so much of our lives are not defined by crisis, by these extreme needs.
[19:33.020 --> 19:37.540]  There are always these kind of latent constant needs that we worry about all the time.
[19:37.540 --> 19:40.460]  And so how about... what about those?
[19:40.840 --> 19:54.500]  And in our discussions, we ended up looking at this FCC report from 2011 that tried to think about what is the... what's the Internet for?
[19:54.660 --> 19:56.420]  What is communication for?
[19:56.580 --> 20:01.660]  What are the information needs that people have anyway all the time that are really important?
[20:01.660 --> 20:17.100]  And it listed these civic information needs that I find really, really interesting as a starting point to think about any kind of information service that can be provided to a community and that will always be relevant.
[20:17.420 --> 20:19.560]  We will always care about education.
[20:19.640 --> 20:28.980]  We will always care about transportation, economic opportunities, environment, and what have you, and healthcare.
[20:28.980 --> 20:33.900]  And I think that's really helpful because newsrooms traditionally have beats, right?
[20:33.980 --> 20:36.660]  Where you cover... you're in a healthcare beat, you cover this over time.
[20:36.840 --> 20:38.900]  And that's also gave me hope again.
[20:39.080 --> 21:00.140]  Like if we keep the skills of journalism and keep these specializations and that deep expertise that healthcare reporters have and just move kind of that... get away from that performative kind of superstructure that's above it, that maybe we can provide more utility to people.
[21:01.840 --> 21:18.060]  And so, one thing when we think about the VPNs and what have you, there are a couple of key elements that really unite any kind of organic information services that we see again and again.
[21:18.060 --> 21:24.400]  And that is really that people are connected through personal sharing.
[21:24.400 --> 21:27.720]  So, not through algorithmic amplification primarily.
[21:28.040 --> 21:28.800]  Like, hey, this is cool.
[21:29.000 --> 21:29.880]  Hey, this is useful.
[21:30.120 --> 21:31.460]  You should follow this.
[21:32.520 --> 21:35.040]  Trust is established over repeated interaction.
[21:36.340 --> 21:39.400]  Information on UX front is shaped for memorability.
[21:39.400 --> 21:50.520]  There is constant support for onboarding, for technical troubleshooting, and verification through network consensus.
[21:52.000 --> 22:05.060]  And so, if you think about it like this kind of traditional journalism versus this community information that's kind of happening organically, it's distributed.
[22:05.780 --> 22:07.220]  It's not institutional.
[22:07.560 --> 22:08.820]  It's through peer connections.
[22:09.220 --> 22:10.340]  It's many-to-many.
[22:10.640 --> 22:14.020]  And often, the impact is very, very concrete.
[22:14.260 --> 22:15.660]  So, it's not abstract.
[22:15.680 --> 22:16.600]  It's concrete.
[22:16.880 --> 22:19.680]  And this is really why most of the people left...
[22:19.680 --> 22:26.360]  So many people left my presentation last time because we talk about human rights as like this abstract level.
[22:26.360 --> 22:29.920]  And I've worked a lot in human rights coverage.
[22:30.500 --> 22:32.380]  But think about it.
[22:32.440 --> 22:36.220]  What does that mean in concrete ways, right?
[22:36.460 --> 22:43.320]  Does that mean that there is a human rights specialist of the UN making a press... giving a press conference?
[22:43.660 --> 22:57.340]  Or does that mean that we can do reporting that helps people actually navigate, you know, discrimination at school and deal with discrimination in healthcare, what have you.
[22:57.540 --> 22:58.680]  Like those kind of aspects.
[22:58.980 --> 23:01.060]  The level of abstraction is totally different.
[23:02.500 --> 23:17.180]  And then I came across this really, really interesting work here in New York by a group of people that are thinking about, okay, news is happening anyway.
[23:17.180 --> 23:24.580]  Even if there's no newspaper, even if there is no TV station, the communities organically share news.
[23:25.220 --> 23:27.180]  And so they start talking about...
[23:27.180 --> 23:34.440]  We shouldn't be talking about journalism as an industry, but we should be talking about acts of journalism that are happening in the world anyway.
[23:34.700 --> 23:39.140]  And so they actually renamed these acts of journalism to community news roles.
[23:39.340 --> 23:48.160]  But I really like the concept of acts of journalism because I'm really, really attached to the skill set and the mindset of journalism.
[23:48.160 --> 23:52.620]  So I would really love to preserve that rather than the industry.
[23:54.480 --> 24:00.660]  So Megan and Cole at the Journalism and Design Lab at the New School have defined...
[24:01.460 --> 24:03.020]  And this is upcoming.
[24:03.240 --> 24:03.620]  They haven't...
[24:04.220 --> 24:08.660]  They have published versions of this, but this is a new one that they're going to publish soon.
[24:08.660 --> 24:18.580]  And I'll share a link where you can subscribe to updates on their work, which I highly encourage, is they define these acts of journalism.
[24:19.240 --> 24:23.280]  And they kind of break the journalistic process into these parts.
[24:23.580 --> 24:31.320]  There's listening, documenting, there's commenting, there's inquiring, asking questions, sense-making, you know, what does this mean for us?
[24:31.520 --> 24:34.160]  There is amplifying, right?
[24:34.160 --> 24:35.020]  That's our...
[24:35.020 --> 24:38.240]  This distribution is only part of what we do, really.
[24:38.400 --> 24:41.380]  It is one thing that we do, but it's only part of what we do.
[24:42.200 --> 24:47.220]  Navigating a system, enabling people to achieve something.
[24:47.780 --> 24:55.680]  And then it's a bit of an iterative cycle of, okay, we've done this, provided this service, and we continue to provide this service.
[24:58.380 --> 25:08.980]  Now, organically grown information systems are typically very fragile and frail, and we might not be aware where there are weaknesses.
[25:09.320 --> 25:23.160]  And so what I'm trying to suggest to you here today is really to think about, okay, the journalism industry or the journalists and this kind of writ large, we don't control the information ecosystems.
[25:23.160 --> 25:27.820]  We're increasingly irrelevant, actually, in this space.
[25:28.020 --> 25:40.460]  And the question is not kind of to think about how do we get back to that dominant role, but how do we insert ourselves with our knowledge, with our expertise, into these information ecosystems?
[25:40.460 --> 25:45.880]  How do we contribute to them being better, right, than they currently are?
[25:45.880 --> 25:50.300]  So just going through these roles briefly.
[25:51.400 --> 26:00.700]  So listening, right, understanding what community needs are and priorities, documenting, archiving, helping preserve information.
[26:00.740 --> 26:02.720]  This is our shared memory.
[26:04.480 --> 26:15.420]  Commenting, sharing personal expertise and experiences with others, inquiring, gathering information and asking questions on behalf of the community.
[26:16.300 --> 26:24.700]  Sense-making in the sense of creating original contact that helps people understand and contextualize issues.
[26:25.120 --> 26:32.760]  Amplifying is the distribution still important and a part of it, but not all of it.
[26:32.760 --> 26:39.580]  And then navigating, helping people guide, guide people through complex systems by navigating them to resources.
[26:39.960 --> 26:49.240]  So if you think about all these telegram channels that these Chinese migrants were using as they were reaching Colombia, that was a navigating role, right?
[26:49.820 --> 26:51.340]  And then there's enabling.
[26:51.560 --> 26:54.480]  And enabling is really for the technologists in the room.
[26:55.120 --> 27:08.440]  It's really, like, how do we provide the infrastructure to set up the conditions so that communities can exchange information and that information is good and useful for them.
[27:10.600 --> 27:12.620]  At this point, it's like, give me examples.
[27:12.960 --> 27:14.540]  So people say that.
[27:14.720 --> 27:15.820]  And then, so here are examples.
[27:16.060 --> 27:18.300]  Not mine, but from Megan and Cole.
[27:19.560 --> 27:21.380]  Lots of examples.
[27:21.380 --> 27:25.340]  I'm not going to go through them one by one.
[27:25.540 --> 27:30.300]  But, and I'll share the slides afterwards if you're interested with you.
[27:30.440 --> 27:37.240]  But it really goes to show that a lot of people are engaging in these acts of journalism anyway.
[27:37.900 --> 27:47.420]  And what we can do is journalists just really support and contribute whenever this kind of cycle is struggling, right?
[27:47.420 --> 27:53.200]  Sometimes it really helps to come from you to see, okay, this is where we're struggling.
[27:53.240 --> 27:54.480]  Here is where we can support.
[27:55.840 --> 28:02.220]  In Internet freedom technology and in the freedom space, you could ask yourselves the same questions, right?
[28:02.860 --> 28:12.860]  A lot of the Internet freedom space, and I have some friends in this room who are very familiar with this, the focus is really, well, there's a project.
[28:12.860 --> 28:17.380]  How can we make sure we can distribute journalism more, get some more page views?
[28:18.800 --> 28:30.920]  And I would like to think about it, like, maybe we can think about it differently, is how can we build technology that helps with facilitation, with listening and facilitation?
[28:30.920 --> 28:36.540]  How can we build technology that helps people with inquiries, archiving, what have you?
[28:36.800 --> 28:42.360]  And a lot of technology exists, and it's just a different taxonomy of thinking of that tech.
[28:44.000 --> 29:01.940]  And so I really want to step away from kind of the journalists by badge, by education, by employment status, understanding of journalists, and really establish the idea that journalism is... it can be a job, but most of all, it's a mindset.
[29:01.940 --> 29:18.280]  And you are... you have that... you're part of that tribe if you are committed to... committed to pursuing acts of journalism to help your community navigate their lives better.
[29:19.420 --> 29:38.000]  And this is really a critical moment for collaboration because we have an unprecedented information crisis with fragmentation of information spaces, intermediation, thinking about AI, exhaustion, people are really tired, and fascism.
[29:38.700 --> 29:47.780]  Bad actors are, as OCCRP, which is here, have documented many, many, many times, well-organized.
[29:47.880 --> 29:51.320]  They are coordinating, and they are very, very well-funded.
[29:52.200 --> 29:55.220]  There's... it's... fascism is a business model.
[29:56.020 --> 29:59.600]  And no single group can combat this alone.
[30:00.660 --> 30:15.740]  So it requires really a mind shift that I also am working through, and that is to stop trying to fix journalism and just start enabling acts of journalism that already happen or enable new ones when that circle is struggling.
[30:16.500 --> 30:24.320]  And stop broadcasting and start... and stop building platforms for journalists, but really start enabling these community information flows.
[30:25.740 --> 30:30.160]  So for journalists, for traditional journalists, that's kind of why so many left a room last time.
[30:30.740 --> 30:34.060]  It felt like, oh, so what am I going to do?
[30:34.120 --> 30:35.140]  I'm no longer special.
[30:36.540 --> 30:37.340]  And yeah.
[30:38.100 --> 30:45.780]  But also, you are no longer... it doesn't matter whether you stand in front of a camera or, you know, all these things.
[30:45.780 --> 30:53.220]  It really requires a shift from these declarative, performative acts to a concept of journalism as a service.
[30:53.640 --> 30:56.020]  And a service like many other services.
[30:56.580 --> 31:05.800]  So you're no longer kind of... that's kind of where a lot of Excel and newsrooms really struggle, where they define themselves as kind of the elite and the vanguard who is like pushing for change.
[31:05.800 --> 31:10.680]  And actually, it's... you are... you have this position.
[31:10.680 --> 31:16.860]  You're unable to provide really a service that really no one else can.
[31:17.040 --> 31:28.060]  And that is the responsibility of benefiting still from this diminishing freedom that we still enjoy.
[31:30.800 --> 31:39.000]  So, a lot of funding applications in journalism, philanthropic funding applications, ask you, what is your theory of change?
[31:39.420 --> 31:43.620]  And that's kind of where these wrong... the funder expectations come in.
[31:43.740 --> 31:49.980]  It's like, how can we make people be different, be more... and sometimes it's well-intentioned, right?
[31:50.480 --> 31:56.480]  It's like, how can we make them more like us or like values or certain values or what have you?
[31:56.480 --> 32:03.440]  But sometimes it's also just very... cold, blooded, geopolitical... garbage.
[32:04.000 --> 32:04.500]  Sorry.
[32:05.160 --> 32:20.960]  And I want to step away from that and just encourage anyone who is in the funding space to just take that and throw it away and think about a theory of service on a functional, psychological, and social utility of journalism.
[32:21.300 --> 32:29.460]  Because that is the only way we can step away from that failed model that did not work, and was sometimes profoundly insincere.
[32:31.060 --> 32:34.420]  What can we do to help people navigate their lives better?
[32:35.600 --> 32:47.320]  And this is kind of the question that I ask myself as is like a much more exciting challenge, intellectual challenge, than a theory of change.
[32:47.320 --> 32:50.240]  Like, what can we do to make people behave differently?
[32:52.100 --> 32:59.540]  And I'd like to think in the long term, this has a way of being resilient and prevailing.
[32:59.800 --> 33:06.860]  Because propagandists, anyone who is trying to make you behave differently, they don't really have your interest at heart.
[33:07.000 --> 33:08.540]  They want you to change, right?
[33:08.600 --> 33:09.940]  That's in their interest, right?
[33:09.940 --> 33:11.580]  They aim to trick you.
[33:11.740 --> 33:14.000]  And over time, they always disappoint.
[33:15.320 --> 33:26.040]  And so, I worked with a Russian newsroom that really has like...
[33:26.040 --> 33:29.460]  We had these discussions about what is it that they want to do.
[33:29.460 --> 33:35.740]  And one thing they taught me was, actually, we don't want...
[33:37.040 --> 33:41.500]  We want to provide information that helps people make up their own mind.
[33:41.660 --> 33:46.500]  So, it's not necessarily that we want to tell people, here, this is what's happening now.
[33:46.500 --> 33:47.420]  This is helpful.
[33:47.960 --> 33:55.440]  But actually, we want to provide information value to people, and they can then navigate it and make their own mind with that information.
[33:55.440 --> 34:00.680]  So, it's really... For me, that was really eye-opening, is that there are actually these two moments.
[34:00.900 --> 34:04.000]  There is the moment we provide value and the moment people act.
[34:04.200 --> 34:06.980]  And not thinking about it as one moment.
[34:08.080 --> 34:21.660]  And traditional journalists are really super, super well-equipped to participate in that organic information ecosystem, because they care, they're creative, their work is rooted in truth, and they're trained experts in all of these, right?
[34:21.660 --> 34:30.120]  Like, how to ask the tough questions, how to tell the great story, how to navigate these tricky environments.
[34:32.620 --> 34:33.660]  Just examples.
[34:34.440 --> 34:36.000]  And so, for technologists.
[34:37.520 --> 34:42.160]  So, it's really shifting from what do newsrooms need, what technology do newsrooms need.
[34:42.340 --> 34:50.200]  If you now went to newsrooms and asked them for technology, I bet 80% of them will say, we need more, better distribution.
[34:50.560 --> 34:52.560]  We need to optimize our distribution.
[34:53.980 --> 34:56.300]  Especially in the Exxon and Descendant media space.
[34:56.480 --> 34:57.920]  How do we get in front of people?
[34:58.620 --> 35:01.040]  And there, really, it's a shift.
[35:01.540 --> 35:11.260]  And I really encourage you to take on greater agency and say, well, maybe that's not the best way in the long term we can work toward better information ecosystems.
[35:11.260 --> 35:14.160]  Maybe we need to think about this differently.
[35:14.820 --> 35:19.340]  Look at how does information already travel in this space?
[35:19.540 --> 35:22.560]  And where are the parts that we can strengthen?
[35:23.660 --> 35:25.840]  Aleph just mentioned OCCRP.
[35:25.840 --> 35:34.660]  It's such a fantastic tool in terms of tracking, commercial, financial connections amongst people.
[35:34.660 --> 35:39.700]  And, like, these are the examples around the investigating, inquiring part, right?
[35:40.380 --> 35:40.900]  Documenting.
[35:41.240 --> 35:44.180]  But then, how can we help with the sense-making?
[35:44.400 --> 35:46.280]  How can we help with navigating?
[35:46.600 --> 35:52.860]  Like, there are so and so many technology opportunities, if we look at it from this different prism.
[35:54.140 --> 35:56.660]  And security is really a foundation of service.
[35:58.140 --> 36:01.660]  And, like, how can we think about in all of these aspects on security?
[36:01.660 --> 36:04.600]  And I think that's why HOPE is such a great place.
[36:04.820 --> 36:20.460]  Because there's really... everyone who is here, or many people who are here, really have that awareness of how fragile and how our information ecosystems are, and how pervasive surveillance is.
[36:22.620 --> 36:29.220]  So, just some examples that I just... I thought about, like, thinking about, like, what could technologists do?
[36:29.220 --> 36:31.800]  And a lot of these tools already exist.
[36:32.000 --> 36:33.820]  I shared some from the Internet Freedom Space.
[36:34.060 --> 36:36.560]  But just some additional ideas.
[36:36.740 --> 36:40.360]  And I'd be really curious to hear from you on what your ideas are.
[36:41.100 --> 36:57.260]  Really so that we can move to a stage where we really don't build for journalists so their content gets distributed more, but that we build... that journalists and technologists work together to contribute to this cycle of information that is already happening organically and will,
[36:57.280 --> 37:10.880]  to some extent, will always happen organically, really, in every society, but with different degrees of quality of information and different degrees of reach everywhere.
[37:13.460 --> 37:18.940]  So, trust through service, not authority in a decentralized way.
[37:19.680 --> 37:33.960]  And I would also like to think that these are two examples, one in Russia and one in China, that if it works under extreme censorship, imagine the promise of this in an open or still open society.
[37:33.960 --> 37:48.500]  So, just on the threshold example is crowdsourced tracking of blocked websites and platforms across China and then shared on Telegram regularly with updates on where things are blocked and what's blocked.
[37:48.740 --> 37:57.360]  And then the other one is also often crowdsourced tracking of labor protests in China.
[37:58.840 --> 38:11.160]  And that helps people kind of navigate and make their choices on where to work and how to navigate dealing with their own employers, especially the migrant worker community in China.
[38:13.160 --> 38:14.600]  And so, how do you start?
[38:14.780 --> 38:17.760]  And really, you start where we are.
[38:17.980 --> 38:25.780]  We need to do better jobs and find new ways of really understanding how information flows in our communities.
[38:25.780 --> 38:29.180]  We need to identify the friction points in that circle.
[38:29.400 --> 38:31.940]  We need to build tools that reduce the friction.
[38:32.560 --> 38:37.040]  We need to test with real communities and share what works openly.
[38:38.440 --> 38:49.340]  And really, really, while this is happening everywhere anyway, like I shared with you examples from Russia and China, most communities are struggling, failing at some elements of this.
[38:49.620 --> 38:55.600]  There is an urgent need to help people to navigate their information ecosystem.
[38:55.600 --> 39:00.700]  And communities are often unaware which parts are broken or could be improved.
[39:00.860 --> 39:03.200]  So you have a lot of opportunity to work.
[39:03.440 --> 39:09.360]  Now, in the feedback, a friend asked, like, okay, that's all nice, but isn't it too late?
[39:09.360 --> 39:21.640]  It doesn't do the, you know, the Sam Altman's or the Jeffrey Bezos's of the world already determine everything and we're doomed.
[39:21.840 --> 39:29.200]  And I think, yes, to some extent, of course, the traditional local news ecosystem is collapsing or has collapsed.
[39:29.200 --> 39:31.360]  And autocracy is spreading.
[39:31.640 --> 39:34.080]  But information needs are not going away.
[39:34.280 --> 39:37.200]  People still need to navigate the world that they live in.
[39:37.360 --> 39:42.840]  They're just often filled by worse actors on a functional, psychological or social level.
[39:43.680 --> 39:47.500]  And the infrastructure of community networks, to a large extent, exists.
[39:47.780 --> 39:52.980]  It was built by people who are at HOPE to some degree and elsewhere.
[39:53.340 --> 39:54.920]  And it really also helps.
[39:55.040 --> 39:59.820]  It helps me, at least in this, that we don't need to save newspapers or TV stations.
[39:59.820 --> 40:02.740]  We don't need to save radio stations.
[40:02.800 --> 40:05.960]  We need to save the functions that they served.
[40:08.200 --> 40:12.300]  And so I'd just like to say that the right people are in this room and at HOPE.
[40:12.640 --> 40:14.380]  You have the security expertise.
[40:14.680 --> 40:16.860]  You think about distributed systems.
[40:16.940 --> 40:19.020]  You have a community-first mindset.
[40:19.380 --> 40:22.440]  You have a healthy skepticism of institutions.
[40:23.040 --> 40:26.480]  And you're just, this is just the most amazing group of people.
[40:27.460 --> 40:29.580]  So, just a couple of links.
[40:30.460 --> 40:35.000]  I shared all the articles I mentioned on my website.
[40:35.800 --> 40:38.060]  And I'll put the slide deck there as well.
[40:38.240 --> 40:52.040]  I'm doing a workshop with a couple of dozen journalists next Thursday to think about how we get from a more service-minded journalist.
[40:52.180 --> 40:53.600]  And we'd love to have technologists there.
[40:53.680 --> 40:55.780]  So, if you join, you're very welcome.
[40:57.020 --> 40:57.980]  And, yeah.
[40:58.280 --> 41:00.820]  So, just a couple of parting words.
[41:01.780 --> 41:05.840]  The question isn't whether we can build tomorrow's information networks.
[41:06.020 --> 41:11.980]  It's really the question is whether we will, whether we are willing to do that or just keep going.
[41:13.200 --> 41:17.680]  And the other one is, you don't need a badge to be a journalist.
[41:17.940 --> 41:21.400]  Someone should have told me that before I spent all that money on that journalism degree.
[41:23.020 --> 41:25.720]  You may just not call it that, you know?
[41:25.860 --> 41:35.180]  Like, when you document, when you verify information, when you help people make sense of, like, something that is really complex, you're committing an act of journalism.
[41:35.180 --> 41:39.420]  You're committing something that's really good and important.
[41:40.220 --> 41:47.380]  And I would also just finish by saying that the same systems that control information really control everything else.
[41:47.760 --> 41:56.460]  And what we need to work towards is really that communities own their own information networks so that they own their own power.
[41:56.980 --> 42:06.400]  And when we enable these acts of journalism, we enable ecosystems that are self-correcting and that are able to help people navigate these systems.
[42:06.400 --> 42:10.300]  And so we really don't need more broadcasters, you know?
[42:10.660 --> 42:15.460]  But we need more nodes that are part of this system.
[42:15.760 --> 42:21.900]  So I just want to finish by encouraging you to beat a node, build the tools, and share what works.
[42:21.900 --> 42:27.900]  And that we really need you to overcome this really, really, really shitty moment.
[42:27.900 --> 42:36.400]  But also really cool moment in terms of opportunities that we have if we understand it and really use it and seize it.
[42:36.800 --> 42:37.900]  So thank you very much.
[42:47.060 --> 42:48.560]  We'll now allow for a question.
[42:54.700 --> 42:55.800]  I love the talk.
[42:56.180 --> 42:57.680]  I applaud you.
[42:57.820 --> 42:58.360]  That's great.
[42:58.360 --> 43:06.660]  How do we prevent this type of system as it gets opened up to reduce the noise generated by AI?
[43:06.900 --> 43:12.680]  You know, AI could be good, but it could also create undue needs for verification.
[43:14.240 --> 43:15.860]  That's a great question.
[43:15.860 --> 43:19.300]  And I don't have a ready-made answer to it.
[43:23.120 --> 43:29.460]  Let me give you an example of a friend who lives in Georgia, the country, not the U.S.
[43:29.540 --> 43:29.620]  state.
[43:30.260 --> 43:37.800]  And so these AI systems, his daughter started using Chachipiti to do her homework.
[43:38.220 --> 43:51.250]  And what happens is that whenever they have a political, some history assignment, suddenly now this Chachipiti blurts out this in Georgian, this really kind of propagandistic kind of text, right?
[43:51.710 --> 43:57.910]  And then he got really worried because, you know, you don't need that kind of Soviet Union nostalgia.
[43:58.170 --> 44:03.370]  Like anyone with some exposure to reality knows how horrible that was.
[44:03.610 --> 44:07.210]  And there you have these AI models saying these things.
[44:07.210 --> 44:15.530]  So I think that there's also an opportunity there to really think about, can we create alternative systems that integrate with...
[44:15.530 --> 44:23.610]  so that the user experience can be, so that we can enable... allow for more memory, so that we can share, right?
[44:23.890 --> 44:25.250]  Or critical thinking.
[44:25.530 --> 44:27.330]  So it's a lot of work involved.
[44:27.510 --> 44:31.110]  And I don't have any answers other than that, but just... I don't know.
[44:34.150 --> 44:35.170]  Thanks for your talk.
[44:35.270 --> 44:36.090]  It was very provocative.
[44:36.090 --> 44:39.090]  I guess I have a reflection and a question.
[44:39.530 --> 44:42.890]  So the reflection is, I think, seeing that cycle of information.
[44:43.190 --> 44:48.030]  There's a lot of other actors besides journalists in that.
[44:48.130 --> 44:52.290]  And I would say I'm a librarian, and I see that and I think...
[44:52.290 --> 44:53.990]  I'm not doing acts of journalism.
[44:53.990 --> 44:56.270]  I'm doing acts of librarianship, right?
[44:56.750 --> 45:12.810]  So I guess just thinking about, you know, the role of information-seeking behaviors and things like that, which actually leads to my question, is one of the things I notice most when people do come to the library, they want information they can trust,
[45:13.070 --> 45:17.990]  because it's hard to know who to trust when there is so much information.
[45:17.990 --> 45:28.930]  So I think we often use the institution as shorthand because we cannot know everybody who's sharing information.
[45:29.110 --> 45:37.310]  So I'm just curious, as you think about this model, like, how does that work when trust is hard to earn?
[45:38.310 --> 45:41.410]  Well, first of all, thank you so much for being a librarian.
[45:42.350 --> 45:43.270]  This is...
[45:43.270 --> 45:56.550]  And I've been thinking about this in the context of the creator, kind of, like, news creators, that kind of space, where people are working on their own and sharing information on their own.
[45:57.530 --> 46:01.870]  And there are some people in the journalism space who are thinking that's the future of journalism.
[46:01.870 --> 46:03.470]  Like, we'll all be individuals.
[46:04.150 --> 46:08.290]  And I was thinking maybe there's still a space for institutions.
[46:08.750 --> 46:16.930]  It's just that they need to be defined by utility rather than by the formulaic kind of expressions of the past.
[46:17.330 --> 46:25.470]  And because you really need institutions for specialization of labor, for economies of scale, for all of these roles.
[46:25.470 --> 46:32.610]  And so I'm kind of hoping that we're going to see kind of new institutions emerge, what they will look like.
[46:32.610 --> 46:37.330]  I'm not entirely sure, but it's a little bit like cooperatives.
[46:37.590 --> 46:38.850]  There are news cooperatives.
[46:39.010 --> 46:41.310]  There are things emerging.
[46:42.910 --> 46:45.830]  And it's going to be really exciting to see.
[46:46.790 --> 46:47.610]  Thank you.
[46:50.970 --> 46:51.950]  Do you want to go online?
[46:52.350 --> 46:52.710]  Yeah.
[46:53.770 --> 46:54.430]  Oh, yeah.
[46:54.490 --> 46:55.990]  So we have two online questions.
[46:55.990 --> 46:59.390]  The first was, I believe I missed your thesis.
[46:59.810 --> 47:07.510]  Are you saying traditional journalism does not target specific individual communities or the content is too performative or something else?
[47:07.810 --> 47:10.670]  Bottom line, why is journalism not relevant?
[47:12.070 --> 47:13.490]  Why is journalism not relevant?
[47:19.460 --> 47:29.660]  I was hoping to get across that journalism isn't necessarily relevant or not relevant.
[47:29.900 --> 47:41.320]  What I was hoping to get across is that a lot of the journalism that is happening right now is not built with the intention of relevance or utility and service.
[47:41.320 --> 47:53.540]  It is built in the context of performative structures that have existed in the past, built on systems that have allowed for authority to continue to perpetuate.
[47:53.900 --> 48:07.660]  And in that, much of it has lost touch with reality and has created heroes that aren't heroes and martyrs that should not have been martyrs.
[48:10.080 --> 48:10.520]  Thank you.
[48:10.580 --> 48:10.640]  Thank you.
[48:10.640 --> 48:11.440]  You have one more question.
[48:11.660 --> 48:12.360]  That's one line.
[48:13.780 --> 48:14.440]  Thank you, Mike.
[48:14.440 --> 48:20.960]  So, they say, you raised the problems of inter-mediation and polarization slash fragmentation.
[48:21.200 --> 48:26.540]  I'm not seeing how acts of journalism or the democratization of journalism can address this.
[48:26.540 --> 48:29.900]  It seems like it would just increase the volume of journalism available.
[48:30.400 --> 48:42.960]  Personally, I find myself gravitating to slower, in parentheses, weekly magazines, close parentheses, or otherwise highly curated journalism to reduce overwhelm and outrage fatigue.
[48:43.280 --> 48:48.380]  Where do you see an editorial slash curation role?
[48:48.380 --> 48:49.120]  Mm-hmm.
[48:49.640 --> 48:50.560]  That's such a great question.
[48:50.740 --> 48:51.340]  Thank you so much.
[48:51.580 --> 49:05.260]  And it really goes to the point that, I think, in journalism, we're so hardwired to have expectations of large-scale quick fixes and huge power and influence, and that's just no longer the case.
[49:05.260 --> 49:20.600]  And once we accept that data is no longer the case, or wherever we have it, it's just kind of like what we have inherited, but we're not building, you know, that once we accept that, we can build again.
[49:20.820 --> 49:29.400]  And once we rebuild, we can build again towards scale, but we can never build towards sustainable scale when we start from the wrong assumptions.
[49:30.260 --> 49:30.880]  Thank you.
[49:30.880 --> 49:31.800]  Thank you.
[49:33.040 --> 49:34.660]  I appreciated your talk.
[49:34.820 --> 49:46.780]  And even though parts of it, I think, could be construed as provocative, I've heard this type of thinking from other traditional journalists, particularly about enabling community networks that already exist.
[49:47.120 --> 49:48.660]  So I really appreciate that.
[49:48.660 --> 50:00.920]  I do worry sometimes about this, like, in this new conception of journalism, about how we can help people to maintain traditional standards that we still appreciate.
[50:00.920 --> 50:12.160]  I think of an example from a couple years ago of a writer whose work I follow that calls himself a journalist, and he writes specifically about wine, and he publishes on Substack.
[50:12.240 --> 50:18.840]  And a couple years ago, he took a public tour of a relatively large winery in Austria.
[50:18.840 --> 50:31.760]  During that tour, one of the winemakers made, I guess, like, off-color comments about migrant workers, and he ended up writing about it on his Substack.
[50:31.840 --> 50:33.160]  It caused a lot of controversy.
[50:33.160 --> 50:38.720]  People were, you know, accusing the winery of racism, and the winery was very upset.
[50:39.080 --> 50:45.100]  And, you know, their reaction was to say that this person never identified themselves as a journalist.
[50:45.100 --> 50:47.380]  They never had the opportunity to respond.
[50:47.380 --> 50:54.140]  And I'm sympathetic to that because those are things in traditional journalism that I think we should have those standards.
[50:54.340 --> 50:59.000]  People should know when they're speaking to somebody who's going to be reporting what they say and have an opportunity to respond.
[50:59.160 --> 51:01.140]  So I'm wondering what your thoughts are on that.
[51:01.700 --> 51:05.060]  I 100% agree with your assessment there.
[51:05.820 --> 51:10.420]  And I think there is so much to the craft of journalism that we need to preserve.
[51:10.420 --> 51:25.160]  And then the challenge is, like, how do we... So how do we preserve that in a way that it is live, not abstract, in some kind of, you know, spaces that aren't seen by many people?
[51:25.160 --> 51:28.120]  And that's kind of what requires that reset.
[51:28.460 --> 51:44.560]  The other thing, though, is also I do feel like, especially as journalists who are very much attached to these values and the craft and skills and all of that, that we navigate some imaginary... we have some imaginary nostalgia of the past.
[51:45.200 --> 52:00.280]  Like, anyone who's worked in the newsroom the last 20, 30 years can attest to them being extremely misogynistic, toxic places that have not always had, like, the major newsrooms, right?
[52:00.520 --> 52:02.840]  That the interest of the public at heart.
[52:03.320 --> 52:05.580]  So... and talking about tabloids, right?
[52:05.580 --> 52:25.000]  So I think, how do we... so how do we kind of step... take these skills and all of that, create new services, and really root that also that legitimacy, that social... the skills in social legitimacy and relevance is going to be the challenge that we have to navigate the next couple of years,
[52:25.060 --> 52:25.440]  I think.
[52:25.600 --> 52:27.500]  I don't know if that answers the question or...
[52:27.500 --> 52:27.840]  It does.
[52:28.000 --> 52:28.180]  It does.
[52:28.180 --> 52:28.680]  Thank you.
[52:30.480 --> 52:30.960]  Hi.
[52:30.960 --> 52:32.540]  I used to work as a journalist.
[52:32.820 --> 52:34.420]  I currently work as a software engineer.
[52:35.560 --> 52:39.800]  So, I worked for the media the whole time and been to a bunch of conferences.
[52:40.040 --> 52:41.140]  I really enjoyed your presentation.
[52:41.520 --> 52:43.820]  And philosophically, I agree with most of it.
[52:43.960 --> 52:49.160]  But I think, like, we have a cycle of this... not this exact idea, but this type of idea, right?
[52:49.300 --> 53:01.520]  Like, we have local blogs, we had atomic journalism, we had hyperlocal, and they all face a specific challenge that I don't really see addressed here, which is, how do we keep them independent and funded?
[53:01.780 --> 53:03.900]  Because they keep getting captured, right?
[53:04.120 --> 53:06.720]  We see the local blogs captured by Nextdoor.
[53:06.940 --> 53:11.200]  We see hyperlocal get captured by big companies like AOL and shut down.
[53:11.720 --> 53:21.660]  And it just keeps being a problem, and that's a problem that exists here in a way that, like, it doesn't exist if you're running an illegal telegram chat in China, right?
[53:21.660 --> 53:29.880]  And so, I don't know, I saw you have the funders TBD, and that worries me a lot because all the funding's falling out.
[53:30.000 --> 53:33.440]  Public media, academia, all of it, right?
[53:33.600 --> 53:35.480]  Everyone's in dire straits now.
[53:35.640 --> 53:46.740]  So, what is the way this becomes sustainable so that the people who are doing acts of journalism don't burn out, don't fall apart, can make a living, can stay in the communities that they're reporting on?
[53:46.740 --> 53:48.680]  So, thank you for the question.
[53:48.980 --> 54:06.140]  And I don't have an answer, but I have like a starting point maybe to something that could get us to an answer, which is, I think it starts with what are people willing to give money to?
[54:06.140 --> 54:11.820]  There is a huge philanthropic, like, there's money available.
[54:12.760 --> 54:24.140]  The premise of a lot of philanthropic funding has always been theories of change, theories of like, we'll get people to be more democratically engaged.
[54:24.340 --> 54:32.300]  And if we could step away from that and think about, okay, here are the consequences of this failing.
[54:32.300 --> 54:43.600]  We have a shared interest in how do we invest in something that provides specific utility, rather than a newsroom that provides all of these things badly.
[54:44.000 --> 54:47.100]  I think it's the beginning of an answer.
[54:48.160 --> 54:53.220]  But from there and making the case for that is a long journey.
[54:54.180 --> 54:55.180]  Thank you.
[54:55.180 --> 54:55.780]  Thank you.
[54:57.080 --> 55:06.800]  I would like to give a reference, a book by a German professor, Bernhard Porksen, P-O-E-R-K-S-E-N.
[55:07.240 --> 55:09.920]  And it is titled Digital Fever.
[55:10.960 --> 55:14.000]  The English edition was published, I think, last year.
[55:14.220 --> 55:15.880]  I was asked to do the introduction.
[55:15.880 --> 55:31.180]  And his point to me was that he has realized that what social media lacks is journalism.
[55:31.840 --> 55:42.920]  And I had thought about that in my career in social media and put together some ideas, but it turns out he named it.
[55:43.840 --> 55:46.580]  And, of course, people know what journalism is.
[55:48.200 --> 55:50.320]  So, I want to make that as a reference for people.
[55:50.460 --> 55:53.960]  I'll be speaking in the next session, so I may talk more about that later.
[55:54.320 --> 55:54.740]  Okay.
[55:54.900 --> 55:55.760]  Thank you so much.
[55:56.260 --> 56:01.820]  Just to add to this, I was just thinking, like, a lot of the business model of social media was rage bait.
[56:01.820 --> 56:07.800]  And I'm really worried about the business model of AI right now, which is basically suck-up bait, right?
[56:07.980 --> 56:10.820]  Like these very kind of friendly chats.
[56:11.220 --> 56:16.360]  And it's something we have to think about is really, are we repeating the same mistakes?
[56:16.740 --> 56:20.360]  And how are we holding these platforms accountable?
[56:20.360 --> 56:20.500]  Okay.
[56:21.840 --> 56:23.640]  Thank you so much for joining us.
[56:23.780 --> 56:23.940]  Thank you.