The formulas of traditional legacy media have become stale, was the message from Matt Stiles and Elise Hu to an advanced journalism class at St. Edward’s University this morning.
Stiles and Hu presented a PowerPoint detailing the inevitable transition to online to which journalists will have to accept and adjust. They said if journalists are willing to employ new digital technology and embrace the media convergence occurring in newsrooms and broadcast stations across the country, there will still be hope for the journalism industry.
“Technology is the future,” Stiles said.
Their presentation listed a string of media organizations that have successfully transitioned into the digital world, including ProPublica, Slate, and Politico, among others.
Stiles and Hu hope Texas Tribune, an experimental, nonprofit political online media organization, will join the ranks. Both Stiles, a former political reporter for the Houston Chronicle, and Hu, a former state political reporter for KVUE-TV, left their successful careers earlier this year to pursue jobs at Texas Tribune.
“I was convinced Texas Tribune was an exciting opportunity and an important endeavor,” Stiles said in an e-mail interview after the presentation.
Texas Tribune is set to launch this November and will be the first media organization in Texas to provide its readership with detailed taxonomies, databases and directories that readers can search, customize and best of all, access for free. Through an advanced linking system, the technology employed by Texas Tribune will allow readers to pull up archived articles, graphics and data to provide the necessary context for recently posted articles.
Stiles said context is key.
“People forget what happened yesterday, stories fly by so quickly and that is why it is important for journalists to remind them,” he said.
Both Stiles and Hu said the heightened competition to break stories first, with traditional media outlets competing against social networking Web sites like Twitter and Facebook, makes it critical to continually ensure accuracy.
“The rush to be first,” Hu said, “does clash with the need for information to be complete, in context and verified.”
Stiles said the principles journalism was founded on – truth, fairness, accuracy and credibility – will not and should not disappear in light of new digital technology.
The goal, then, of Texas Tribune is to provide as many readers as possible with a resource for strong, accurate and fair journalism regarding government, politics and events of public importance in Texas.
Underwritten by John Thornton and his venture capitalist firm, AustinVentures, as well as donations from philanthropic foundations and individuals, Texas Tribune is completely nonprofit. The company currently has a budget of $4 million according to Stiles, which will fund work for at least three years. In addition to contributions, Texas Tribune will also rely on sponsored events for income.
Stiles and Hu have joined a staff of 10 editors, writers, technicians and event coordinators, among them Evan Smith, former editor of Texas Monthly and Ross Ramsey, former owner and editor of Texas Weekly. This group, like many others, is striving to make the nonprofit model a reality in order to save the struggling journalism industry.
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