Rji-interview-heider-solomon

Sheila Solomon and Don Heider's answers to pre-convening questions

Sheila Solomon: Educate on what will be missed if journalism fades

Q: What are you most passionate about, professionally?

• I am most passionate about being an advocate and adviser for students and less experienced professionals who want careers in the media.
  

Q: How best can we advance the values, principles and purposes of journalism in support of participatory democracy?

• My simplified answer is that we can do that by keeping journalism alive; educating our audiences and growing more journalists. Even before recent technological advances, media had done a very poor job of helping our communities to understand what will be missed if we truly go away. I believe we were so taken for granted and believed ourselves to be irreplaceable. We need to do more to invite the public to see and hear how we make the decisions.

How do we develop the ability to share context and actionable information in a community, and enhance the ability to make meaningful connections? We have already developed the ability but have not found the winning formula for successfully implementation. I don't think we need to reinvent the wheel.
Q: What is the common framework that can guide us as we take on this work?

• The time-honored journalism ethics and values that the majority of us have been following for many, many years. When it comes to the framework I don’t believe we need to reinvent the wheel.
  

Q: If they were starting from scratch today, what service(s) would news organizations provide to meet community information needs -- and how?

• More of our newspapers and broadcast newsrooms must remember how to again be relevant to their immediate communities and that doesn't have to come, for example, at the cost of international coverage. Also, media must do a better job of partnering with communities and providing information that makes it easier for people to go about their daily lives.
  

Q: What is the common framework that can guide us as we take on this work?

• Our common framework should include adherence to the First Amendment and our time-honored values and ethics.
  

Q: What would it take for journalists to be at the start of conversations about vibrant, sustainable communities?

• Our audiences need to see more of us as caring citizens whose work is about freedom and democracy for all.
  
  

Don Heider: Journalists need desire to listen, experiment and change

Q: What are you most passionate about, professionally?

• Helping young people understand the digital world--where they spend so much of their time--in a deeper way. And helping them make better decisions about how they use digital media, how they can express themselves through digital media and how to make good ethical decisions about what they do in the digital world.
  

Q: How do we develop the ability to share context and actionable information in a community, and enhance the ability to make meaningful connections?

• Seven decades of research on how media effect people have shown us one thing clearly; it’s very difficult to influence people in an simple, powerful way. What the advent and development of digital media have brought is an era where people expect the ability to participate and interact in whatever media they consume. Social media has shown people’s interest in connecting and keeping up with one another. The question is whether big, traditional media are or even should be the ones to set the agenda for public-policy questions as we move forward.
  

Q: What is the common framework that can guide us as we take on this work?

• We want citizens to be informed, engaged and responsible.
  

Q: If they were starting from scratch today, what service(s) would news organizations provide to meet community information needs -- and how?

• Traditional media left out (and still omits) significant segments of communities: women, people of color, lower socio-economic groups, and other disenfranchised groups. This omission cannot continue if there’s any hope of truly connecting with a community. For several decades we have had some roadmaps on community mapping, but have largely ignored them.
  

Q: In a world of data overload, what do we know about the information experience users seek, and how can we help them to discover trustworthy information that informs, inspires -- and entertains?

• People vote with their mouse. Accurate user data is much easier to obtain now on the Internet than it was when we used crude measures such as ratings and circulation.
  

Q: What would it take for journalists to be at the start of conversations about vibrant, sustainable communities?

• Journalists have to demonstrate an authentic desire to listen, to experiment and to change. The biggest question is what business model might sustain a vibrant journalism community.