The Goal

Okay, so what, exactly, am I trying to do here? What is this as-of-now-theoretical Project?

Basically, I want to use as many communicative tools as I have access to in order to show people how news is reported. I want to break news media down into its component parts and examine each in as much detail as possible. How, for example, does a typical newspaper story in North America get written? How is it edited and published? What about TV news stories? How is news gathered generally?

There are also specific issues I'd like to see explored. Remember when the National Post (a Canadian national daily newspaper) reported that Iran was about to make non-Muslims wear armbands? It wasn't true, but how did it end up on the front page?

Ideally, this will all culminate in a documentary endeavour that will episodically examine all these things. Right now, I'm thinking of video instalments uploaded to YouTube with a companion website that would post more in-depth articles written about our subjects. I've brainstormed a list of potential episodes.

1. The News Process
2. How Journalism Is Taught
   
3. Print vs. Broadcast
4. "Corporate" Journalism
5. "Independent" Journalism
6. Celebrity Journalism
7. News vs. Opinion
8. War Reporting
9. Covering Politics
10. Left vs. Right
11. Foreign Media Markets (India, Al Jazeera)
12. Big Blunders
13. Government-controlled Media
    
14. Media vs. Media (e.g. Olbermann vs. O'Reilly)
    

In addition to providing a non-video element to the reportage, the website could be used to document our documentary process.

And there's the key to the whole thing. Not only do we methodically and carefully examine each issue, we make transparent absolutely every element of our work. We give a behind-the-scenes look at our research and recording. We offer biographies of our reporters. We show unedited versions of interviews, articles and research notes. We use blogs to discuss why and how we chose sources, what worked and what didn't, et cetera.

This way, not only will people get a reinforced sense of how news is reported, but if we should make any mistakes, those mistakes are laid bare. The website would provide a forum for people to discuss not only the issues but our reporting of them. So while our egos may take a bruising, participants will have an ongoing exercises in media literacy.

In my head I refer to this process as open source journalism, though I understand that that's not truly what it is. Open source would seem to invite others to reorganize and re-edit our work for their own ends, which may not be desirable. I suppose it's really just transparent journalism, but I think any journo professor would argue that all journalism should be transparent.

In the end, the project may even provide something worthy enough to be used as a resource to students. But so long as people become aware of how their news is created and learn to be both skeptical and open towards it, I'll consider it a success.