A soma e as partes | The sum and the parts

O novelo de informação | The information yarn

Antes as notícias eram uma camisola. Agora são um novelo. Antes os jornalistas tricotavam a informação para um formato. Agora somos nós todos que temos as agulhas. A diferença do novelo de antigamente e do de agora é que este tem mais do que duas pontas e tem város matizes. Talvez tenha sido sempre assim, mas agora é mais. Esta metáfora pode ser um pouco esticada, mas foi do que me lembrei quando li este post do Jeff Jarvis (ando a passar muito tempo com a minha avó). O que Jarvis defende é que a unidade fundamental do jornalismo deixou de ser o artigo per se, mas as ligações aos artigos, às fontes de informação, às reacções, a todas as coisas relacionadas com a história que transformam a informação numa massa viva. O artigo deixa de ser a soma para ser a parte. Os formatos continuam definidos e válidos, mas a estrutura mental que criamos com toda essa informação é agora radicalmente diferente: o ponto de partida é o tópico, ao qual se associa toda a informação, discussão e opinião à volta dele. Depois se fazemos camisolas ou cachecóis, ou uma gigantesca manta de retalhos colectiva, isso é connosco.

In the the old days, news were a sweater. Now they’re a ball of yarn. In the old days journalists knitted the information into a format. Now we  all have the needles. The difference between the old days yarn and todays’ is that this has more than two ends and several colors. Maybe it’s been always like this, but now is more. This metaphor may have gone a bit too far, but that was what i remembered when i read this post by Jeff Jarvis (i’m spending a lot of time with my granny). What Jarvis defends is that the fundamental unit of journalism is no longer the article per se, but the links to the articles, to the information sources, to the reactions, to all things related to the story that turn all that information into a living mass. The article is no longer the sum to become the part. The formats are stil valid and well defined, but the mental structure that we create with all of that information is now radically different: the starting point now is the topic , to which all the data, discussion and opinion associated with it is aggregated. Whether we knit sweaters or scarfs with it, or a gigantic collective quilt, it’s up to us.

I think the new building block of journalism needs to be the topic. I don’t mean that in the context of news site topic pages, which are just catalogues of links built to kiss up to Google SEO. Those are merely collections of articles, and articles are inadequate.

Instead, I want a page, a site, a thing that is created, curated, edited, and discussed. It’s a blog that treats a topic as an ongoing and cumulative process of learning, digging, correcting, asking, answering. It’s also a wiki that keeps a snapshot of the latest knowledge and background. It’s an aggregator that provides annotated links to experts, coverage, opinion, perspective, source material. It’s a discussion that doesn’t just blather but that tries to accomplish something (an extension of an article like this one that asks what options there are to bailout a bailout). It’s collaborative and distributed and open but organized.

The building block of journalism is no longer the article