[Be The Good] An internet built for journalism

There’s a quiet revolution taking place in different parts of the world. Newsrooms that used to see each other as mortal enemies are coming together a la Avengers.

In France, 80 French news outlets banded together to create a platform, Independent Media Portal, that aggregates their stories into one space. In Canada, various newsrooms created Unrigged, which also aggregates their content into one digital space.

In the Philippines, the Philippine Press Institute (PPI), came up with something similar, the PPI News Commons, which centralizes the articles of its member newsrooms into one page.

If I called this a revolution, what is it rising up against?

The answer: social media feeds that make it harder and harder to find journalism.

These social media feeds that have been the top source of news and information for 90% of internet-using Filipinos have changed the way we are accessing journalism.

Because of this served-to-you approach, most of us go on Facebook and wait for news to come to us. That worked for a while: news articles would reliably appear on our feeds. It was behavior similar to turning on the radio, or switching to a TV news program.

But now, Meta’s algorithms and Google’s AI Overviews, make it less likely we’ll read or find journalism if we just wait for it to appear on our screens.

This Columbia Journalism Review article sums up this revolution this way: “Independent media are turning away from the platforms that once promised visibility and toward shared, community-owned infrastructure.”

It talks of how newsrooms, once rabid competitors, are now building a “more cooperative internet for journalism.”

This revolution was top of mind for me on November 25, as the Rappler team welcomed special guests to our newsroom. Editors and newsroom leaders from various Southeast Asian news outlets spent a whole day with us to talk about our shared concerns about the future of news and journalism in our region.

We told them about how we’re also trying to build a “more cooperative internet for journalism” on our Collab Community platform on our app. Three Philippine news outlets – Daily Guardian from Iloilo, SunStar from Cebu, and PPI – now have public chat rooms on the platform.

Our guests included newsroom executives of Malaysiakini from Malaysia, Tempo from Indonesia, Mizzima from Myanmar, Kiripost from Cambodia, and Singapore-based The Straits Times.

All of us report from countries in Asia’s third most populous region, with over 680 million people, over half of whom live in urban areas. It is a youthful region, with almost a quarter of its people aged 15 to 29 years old.

Over 80% of the ASEAN population are on the internet. ASEAN is home to both the world’s third largest democracy (Indonesia), and Asia’s oldest (Philippines). One member state is an absolute monarchy, Brunei, and three are constitutional monarchies (Thailand, Cambodia, and Malaysia).

Such a diverse and exciting region, a region that must be reported on. A region with people who badly need quality journalism to navigate through transitions and turbulence.

Next year, the Philippines will be the chairman of ASEAN. Our government will also be playing host to our Southeast Asian neighbors, to foster cooperation in economic, security, and cultural policies. 

In the face of social media algorithms hostile to journalism, it’s high time journalists collaborate too. Not just that, journalists will also need to collaborate on a deeper level with their readers. This collaboration must be such that readers are transformed, from mere passive consumers, into partners in storytelling, and members of a community that support journalism.

For instance, the Independent Media Portal in France is partly funded by reader donations. A similar French news collective platform, La Presse libre, charges a subscription fee divided among the 8 partner newsrooms. 

In this time of creative destruction, perhaps what needs to be brought down are outdated siloes. What do we replace them with? We create the answer together.

What’s brewing

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– Rappler.com

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