The old model of news went something like this: “We talk, you listen.” With some notable exceptions, email and social media have done little to change that model. I’d argue that journalists are by and large tapping social networks to promote journalism already produced, not to shape journalism by gathering and synthesizing many, diverse perspectives.
The Public Insight Network is meant to change that dynamic by giving newsrooms the ability to listen “at scale” and use what they hear to guide their coverage. But that takes people, and hard work, and tools that are easy to use. As a co-founder and now product manager of the Public Insight Network, I can say that nine years into this project, we’re well on our way to helping our partner newsrooms incorporate active listening into their newsgathering. But I can also say we’ve got a long ways to go before our ecosystem is large and dynamic enough to make a dent in the old model.
Foremost, we have to demystify PIN and make it easier for journalists anywhere to use it. If we can do that (and we’re already making significant progress), then one day I envision an ecosystem of hundreds of newsrooms and thousands of individual journalists, all tapping into a source network that’s several times its current size, more than 140,000 sources, using tools vastly simpler and easier than the ones we offer today.
As any good product manager will tell you, the future of your business is not in your cube, it’s in the heads and hearts of your customers--and there’s only one way to discern their needs: By listening to them—especially to those who are using your tools in unique ways.
I was very curious to talk to several PIN journalists working at newsrooms that serve as hubs for the Local Journalism Centers we're working with. The LJC’s have a unique function, serving as focal points for the newsgathering resources of several newsrooms. PIN analysts end up supporting journalists distributed across a region, sometimes in other states.
I’m intrigued by the LJC arrangement as a model for extending PIN to many more journalists -- using trusted news organizations as hubs to extend access to the Network, and them with guidance and assistance along the way. The current model places the analyst in between them and the Network.
What I heard from the analysts at the LJC’s—Nick Blumberg at Fronteras, Sarah Alvarez at Changing Gears, and Peggy Lowe at the Harvest Network—is that while they feel like they’re having success at warming reporters up to PIN, they feel like it’d be far better if reporters could have access to the Network themselves. Without direct access, they said that PIN can feel mysterious to reporters—like it’s some Willy Wonka machine they can’t use because it’s so powerful it has to be secret.
And while reporters get excited when they see the results of a successful PIN query, the excitement doesn’t often ripple through the newsroom. Why? Because it’s not the reporters who are doing the engagement, and the discovery.
What’s more, because journalists aren’t actually engaging PIN themselves, they’re not building skills they can add to their professional toolkit, and take with them to their next job. Think about it: What if you had to ask someone in your newsroom every time you wanted to do a Google search? Weird.
So, we have some work to do. And thankfully, we’re on it. Our tech team is busy consolidating our three tools (email, Formbuilder and the database) into one seamless query machine. PIN journalists at MPR News, SCPR and Marketplace are all training reporters, editors and producers in their newsrooms to search the PIN database for sources, which is a step in the right direction (and staffers are experiencing just the kind of a-ha moments we knew they would). When we can finally allow a reporter to sign on to PIN and start sending full queries to sources in the Network without an intermediary, I believe we’ll have set the stage for the PIN model to spread widely, quickly. Maybe then it won’t be such a mystery.
