Andrew Spittle

There are a couple recently released interviews with legendary Braun designer Dieter Rams. The video below is a short discussion between the director of London’s Design Museum, Deyan Sudjic, and Rams. It is a short piece and I encourage you to watch the entire thing. In particular pay attention to the bit starting around the 3:30 mark.

Notice the emphasis on the user. Deyan puts it perfectly when he says, “In a way you invite the user to become a co-designer in that you allow them the possibility of change.”

Think about that statement for a second in the context of a news organization.

Rams argues that design means creating something that allows for change, even when it is initiated by the relatively uninformed user.

This coming from a man known for designing such traditionally fixed items as chairs, bookshelves, and radio systems. If Rams can design a chair that puts the user at the center why in the world are we still failing at creating a system for news that does the same?

Good design gets out of the way. Good design presents an object as what it is and then lets the user find the best use for it. Good design is not presenting the same tired information in the same tired manner and expecting the user to thank you for being so authoritative and progressive.

From Steve Woodward on the Nozzl Media blog:

We’ve gotten more than 60 responses to our survey on a next-generation “newspaper,” and I wanted to share the preliminary results, which are revealing. The feature that people crave most is a filter. People want less information, not more. But they want that information to be relevant, not noise.

This is just part of what I was trying to get at earlier with my post on minimalism. Good to see it’s supported by user feedback.

After watching the Us Now documentary this morning I started thinking about how participatory journalism could be improved upon. Here’s what I came up with:

One of the big things they emphasize in Us Now is the ability that the owners of Ebbsfleet United have to vote for not only who plays, but where they play. What if this notion were carried over to journalism?

The standard pitch page on Spot.us

Spot.us is already doing a great job of creating a model within which people can decide what stories get covered, but I don’t think it does enough.

The current Spot.us model allows for journalists to pitch story ideas that they would cover. The community then contributes until one such idea is funded. While definitely better than a traditional model couldn’t this be taken one step further?

What if we were to open a news organization completely up to a community? The people involved get to pitch story ideas and vote on which journalist they would like to see cover a story.

This could even be a way to generate revenue. A news organization could offer a premium subscription that would allow you access to these story pitches and newsroom decisions.

In my mind this would be a much better way to stimulate revenue than simply paying for the news to be delivered to you. Instead of being a passive consumer the reader would be engaged with the news process and would have a deep connection to what stories are covered and what perspective they are given.

Furthermore, by allowing the community to decide which journalist covers a story there’s a whole new range of perspectives that would be opened up.

For example, say I want to see more coverage of a sectarian conflict in South America, the traditional coverage would mean dispatching whoever the news organization’s specialist in that area is. What if instead I wanted the perspective of someone familiar with sectarian wars but who had experience in a different region of the globe? Maybe I would want Thomas Ricks to cover it because of his expertise in covering the conflict in Iraq. Who knows what this kind of new perspective might create.

There would certainly be downsides to such a model. For one, it would be a necessity for journalists to share and collaborate on their contacts. Ricks probably couldn’t just jump in and cover the conflict without first talking to the South American specialist about who he may want to talk to.

Ultimately though, I see a tremendous potential for allowing news coverage like this and I think that the types of stories covered could be quite fascinating.