Gatekeeping. This has to be the most (over) used description of what a journalist does that I’m hearing at the moment – gatekeeping. Conferences, blog posts, conversations……the G-word never seems too far away.
Even wikipedia accepts its connection to journalism:
“In human communication, in particular, in journalism, gatekeeping is the process through which ideas and information are filtered for publication. The internal decision making process of relaying or withholding information from the media to the masses.”
It’s cosy isn’t it? We, the journalists, can decide what’s good for you, the reader. Phew, we have a great and valued skill to bring to the world.
But there’s also something that makes me feel a bit uncomfortable about it, maybe it’s a bit complacent and assumptive which got me thinking about who keeps the gate for me, or how I gatekeep for my own sanity.
First there’s the things I don’t want to be subjected to – porn, gambling, material of a an abusive or corrupting nature. Largely I depend on software to keep these the other side of the gate and, largely, that’s successful.
Then there’s the things I want to find out about and for that I rely on my social network (Twitter, Facebook, Delicious), RSS subscriptions, Google alerts for certain subjects with some added serendipity via newspapers/magazines.
So yes, there are some journalist gatekeepers in here – the newspapers being the strongest of those examples – but, valuable though that activity can be, doesn’t this gatekeeping rather undersell what a journalist can bring to the world?
I think we’ve got a whole lot more to offer, skills which could be shared or put to good use in the new order that’s forming.
Just today a blogger within my Twitter network wanted to know where to turn for some libel advice – well a professional journalist friend might be a good start. All that legal training and practical experience could provide a repository of help to those writers and publishers coming from different backgrounds.
Then there’s fact-checking rigour, knowing where to go for information sources, an understanding of the institutions of public administration just to mention a few of the skills which we perhaps undersell in this gatekeeper/censor view of the world.
I’d be interested to hear from other journalists on this – what do you think is your most valuable attribute and how is it best utilised?
Dim Sum Digital 
this classic from jo geary broadens the issue
http://www.joannageary.com/2008/10/28/quick-incoherent-thought-2-why-most-news-doesnt-need-journos/
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this classic from jo geary broadens the issue
http://www.joannageary.com/2008/10/28/quick-incoherent-thought-2-why-most-news-doesnt-need-journos/
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I too would like to hear from journalists about what is the most valuable attribute and how it is best utilised. I am sure the thousands of budding journalists out there currently looking for work would, too.
Gatekeeping just means having the means to control access. The whole point of my work on networked journalism is that as a journalist, you stop being merely the gatekeeper. All the gates are being opened by the public. They can now gatekeep for themselves. So as a journalist, we have to do something (more interesting) else. That might be more ‘pure’ journalism such as specialist coverage, investigative, or personality-based reporting. Or it might be that you become a facilitator of the networks, someone who connects data to audiences and information through social communications.
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One of the blog posts I read recently which outlines some of the ways in which journalists could consider their skills is this one from Will Perrin; http://talkaboutlocal.org/2009/07/29/journalists/
Some very good pointers to what a networked journalist could bring to the party.
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In a time when every company, government department, whistle-blower, subversive and activist can shout their own story across the internet, I’d say the idea of journalist as gatekeeper is woefully obsolete. Doubly so when ordinary people with mobile phones can be first on the scene of something important and broadcast live video to the world.
No, I think that journalists should be sense-makers, not messengers.
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In a time when every company, government department, whistle-blower, subversive and activist can shout their own story across the internet, I’d say the idea of journalist as gatekeeper is woefully obsolete. Doubly so when ordinary people with mobile phones can be first on the scene of something important and broadcast live video to the world.
No, I think that journalists should be sense-makers, not messengers.
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Interesting. Isn’t the role of the organisations/corporations/publications journalists work for important too? Maybe the gatekeeping function isn’t so much down to the journalist herself, but to a bigger structure?
Maybe it’s too pedestrian of me to assume that gatekeeping is not only about filtering information or even granting/denying access to it. Isn’t it also about deciding who’s opinions/views/agendas really matter?
There is much talk about “the gates being opened by the public,” maybe because it is true in many ways, but isn’t it also a fact that big media corporations are getting stronger, defining more aggressively what the information landscape is like?
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I’m interested in your assertions that the big media corporations are getting stronger. I’m not sure that’s the whole picture as it would seem there’s simultaneously a trend where the information landscape is becoming more individualistic and granular.
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Odd experience to scroll down to comment to find I already have! Thanks Will.
Gatekeeping is an odd term and I personally find it unsettling. The whole concept suggests that there is something of someone behing the gate that is in demand and they have a gatekeeper to filter what information gets passed through it and who gets it.
That to me sounds like a PR person, or an agent. That doesn’t sound like a journalist to me
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Odd experience to scroll down to comment to find I already have! Thanks Will.
Gatekeeping is an odd term and I personally find it unsettling. The whole concept suggests that there is something of someone behing the gate that is in demand and they have a gatekeeper to filter what information gets passed through it and who gets it.
That to me sounds like a PR person, or an agent. That doesn’t sound like a journalist to me
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@Joanna – I agree that gatekeeping is a term that a lot of journalists find difficult. It’s the kind of word that raises hackles on the back of journalists’ neck when they attend an academic conference.
I think we need to be thinking more about journalism as intelligent filtering, wetware aggregators and knowledge workers (amongst many other things) rather than gatekeepers. The whole premise of gatekeeping relies on the fact that information is scarce and it can easily be controlled – that is clearly no longer the place.
@charlie – yup the idea of being of the network not in it is a crucial one that journalists need to get used to.
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I quite like the idea of someone, a journalists, deciding what’s good for me, the reader. I like to think there’s someone I can entrust with that, because they are part of my social network and I consider them friends (at least in the Facebook sense).
I very much dislike the idea of somebody telling me what I should be interested in just because they’ve been to college to learn how to be gatekeepers.
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I quite like the idea of someone, a journalists, deciding what’s good for me, the reader. I like to think there’s someone I can entrust with that, because they are part of my social network and I consider them friends (at least in the Facebook sense).
I very much dislike the idea of somebody telling me what I should be interested in just because they’ve been to college to learn how to be gatekeepers.
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For me the very concept of gatekeeper has been blown away by technology but maybe we are in a world where as individuals there is simply too much information for an individual to deal with.
For me one of the modern journalist’s roles is to sift the good from the ugly using the methods of RSS,twitter etc.I like Glyn’s description above of intelligent filtering.
Charlie also makes a good point that journalists have to offer an added value and maybe that added value should be as the facilitator of the debate.
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For me the very concept of gatekeeper has been blown away by technology but maybe we are in a world where as individuals there is simply too much information for an individual to deal with.
For me one of the modern journalist’s roles is to sift the good from the ugly using the methods of RSS,twitter etc.I like Glyn’s description above of intelligent filtering.
Charlie also makes a good point that journalists have to offer an added value and maybe that added value should be as the facilitator of the debate.
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That’s exactly what I mean by sense-maker: curator, knowledgeable host, adding good material to elevate the ongoing discussion.
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That’s exactly what I mean by sense-maker: curator, knowledgeable host, adding good material to elevate the ongoing discussion.
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I hate the term gatekeeper. The role of a journalist should not be to decide what access readers can have to information or not (although as Charlie and Nigel point out, technology has taken that away anyway). We should absolutely be contextualising information for our readers and helping them not only make sense of it but also aid them to a deeper understanding. That’s where we can add value as specialists – by building trust among readers so they will turn to us to read quality analysis alongside the facts. And hopefully entertain them as well as inform them. We have access to the same social means of finding news as readers do – RSS, Twitter, etc. The difference is how we use them as a basis for shining a light on something.
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I hate the term gatekeeper. The role of a journalist should not be to decide what access readers can have to information or not (although as Charlie and Nigel point out, technology has taken that away anyway). We should absolutely be contextualising information for our readers and helping them not only make sense of it but also aid them to a deeper understanding. That’s where we can add value as specialists – by building trust among readers so they will turn to us to read quality analysis alongside the facts. And hopefully entertain them as well as inform them. We have access to the same social means of finding news as readers do – RSS, Twitter, etc. The difference is how we use them as a basis for shining a light on something.
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Hi, Interesting post. I’m also suspicious of the term “curator” applied to content, especially because some museums bosses are currently trying to redefine themselves as “editors”! http://wp.me/p1bV4-aU
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thanks for that link – very funny in our household 😉 being married to a museums bod, it would annoy me no end if he started calling himself an editor – just as much if I referred to myself as a curator no doubt.
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Hi, Interesting post. I’m also suspicious of the term “curator” applied to content, especially because some museums bosses are currently trying to redefine themselves as “editors”! http://wp.me/p1bV4-aU
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thanks for that link – very funny in our household 😉 being married to a museums bod, it would annoy me no end if he started calling himself an editor – just as much if I referred to myself as a curator no doubt.
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thanks 4 ur comments on thsis issue of gatekeeping,it helped m alot as i was doing my assigment about it.However,i aggree with persn sayin that gatekeeping is becoming less important due to the internet.
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thanks 4 ur comments on thsis issue of gatekeeping,it helped m alot as i was doing my assigment about it.However,i aggree with persn sayin that gatekeeping is becoming less important due to the internet.
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