 Okay, it's Think Tech, it's Community Matters, and we're talking about journalism here today with an assistant professor of the School of Communications, and that's the journalism program at the School of Communications, Brett Overgaard. Thank you for joining us, Brett. Thank you for inviting me, I appreciate it. We see you all the time. We see you in civil beat on a regular basis, and you come down here once in a while too. Yeah. We see you in civil beat every Monday. Okay, you're watching on Mondays. So last week, I think it was Wednesday, you were part of a roundtable discussion at East West Center that was actually organized by the East West Center and the School of Communications, you I guess, to discuss changes in the Honolulu news media. This is a very interesting topic, and Think Tech has been following it for a long time. And I wonder if you could, you know, give us some thoughts about why you set that program up and how it went. The other speakers in the program, let's see, were Patty Epler, who is the editor of civil beat. There was supposed to be a fellow named Ji Tao. He runs the China Daily News, and he couldn't show up that day, and let's see. And then you had, who am I missing? Why Public Radio? Why Public Radio? Jose Fajardo, who was the new president of Why Public Radio, taking over from Michael Titterton. My colleague, Dr. Ann Amman, was there from the School of Communications. So that's a pretty interesting panel. It was. Very fascinating. Yeah. So I have footage, and I'm just wondering if you could summarize how it went, how it may have surprised you, what kind of conclusions the panel reached, and what kind of, what did you learn that day? Okay. Well, to begin with, as you know, the media environment is changing very fast. So I think what struck me most about this panel is that all of these people on it were dealing with this change in different ways. And we were all thinking about how this affects our organizations or our activities. And where we're going in the future. So I think that's going to be like this never ending puzzle that's going to last for a long, long time. And I think it just keeps changing faster and faster. So the number one thing I would say is we need to be embracing this change and be ready for it and not feel like we're stuck in any particular model. I think back to when websites emerged in the kind of legacy media and everybody's very excited about putting their website up. And within, you know, five years or so of people establishing that, mobile has taken their entire audience, or 50, 60% of their audience. So you can imagine all these people working really hard to figure out how does our web site work. And then, you know, five years into that boom, all the everybody goes to mobile. So it's caused a lot of consternation, but I suspect this will just continue to happen. So we have to just kind of face it and embrace it, like a lot of people are doing. New York Times especially is doing a good job with that. Yeah, they're great. I read them on my telephone. You read it on your mobile device. There you go. And it takes only a minute, but I feel like I'm up to date. I'm not getting all the ads. That's okay. I'm not getting a lot of the, you know, secondary material. That's okay. But I do get the news every day and they send a summary of news. Yeah. So it's very accessible. Unconvenient. And you can see why people are less and less sitting at their desktop computer and logging on to NewYorkTimes.com. They're more and more going to their phone. Yeah. And that, just a footnote on that is that reading itself, I do on my phone. Because I download on Kindle, I can get the latest and greatest. I can get the best sellers, you know, in 10 seconds now I have it for relatively cheap. And I can read it wherever I go. I can actually, you know, keep aware of it because wherever I stop, I can read a little bit, you know, go to the next report. And whenever you have what's called a mobile moment where you're waiting in line at the bank or you're standing around waiting for a bus or, you know, waiting in a doctor's appointment, you have all this time that in the past you might have looked at a magazine on the table or something, but now you can access directly what you want to read. New news consumers, do we have a choice but to follow these new trends? Or are we, you know, are we really well advised, you know, to keep up with it and forget about the methodology of the past? Well, I think as an ideology we have to maintain journalism as a way we think about the world. So, in that respect, we should hold on to the past. We have to think about, like, what are our journalistic, you know, mantras. But in terms of how we deliver that journalism, that's the thing, you know, I recommend we just kind of let go of as much as we can without bankrupting our companies, but, you know, let go of it and say, where in the future will journalism be? And a lot of people have experimented with just amazing new forms, like virtual reality and drone journalism and augmented reality journalism, so people are trying these new ways of communicating out and they're doing journalism within those forms. So that's a very exciting time, I think, for journalists. It's maybe not so exciting for ad sales and analog papers, but it's very exciting if you think about it as an ideology. And as an investor, you really have to be especially alert because you could be investing in something in the wrong direction and lose your investment. It's like software, you know, you want to follow the trends so you're not going down the wrong road. Some of them won't work. Yeah, we have to embrace the failures, too, of trying things and they don't work out. I think maybe, and I haven't spent a lot of time pondering this, but maybe a newspaper was envisioned like a hundred or two hundred year investment as a company in the past and now it's more like three to five years. This is what your journalistic organization is going to look like and then it's going to be something else five years from now. So, you know, it just maybe changes the way people think about it. And that struck me in just reading on your discussion last week is that China Daily, China Daily USA is coming or has come to Hawaii to print, print press a daily print press newspaper. Does that seem like the right direction or does that seem like it's the wrong direction? Well, I mean, I don't know their inside business strategy, but I presume that they think that there's a market for people who will grab that print product, maybe downtown in a busy street or maybe somebody's sitting on a bus. I mean, there's a lot of ways that analog media still works well when you don't have good connectivity, when a long battery life is needed, when you're near water. And those are all things that I think relate to maybe urban life in Honolulu. That means a place for multiple models. But surely some models have demonstrated that they will be profitable and other models have demonstrated that they will not likely be profitable. For example, the print press, it's not likely. You can take a look at the dailies here. They have gone down, down, down in terms of readership and circulation. And as you said, the mobile phone aspect is going up, up, up dramatically. So if I'm an investor, I'm going to make a choice based on that. Well, you're probably not going to buy a $10 million printing press and then try to make your money back on it. Yeah, it's not going to work. When you could very easily spend one-one-thousandth of that on a new start-up mobile news organization. Yeah. And there's plenty of room for that. I mean, Civil Beat has one methodology. And I understand they're changing their news direction. What I understood was that what they said, what Patty Epler said, that they were going to focus on local news. They were going to focus on, they're not going to focus so much on sports or entertainment, but local news. And they were, over the years, they're doing citizen journalism videos that you take with your cell phone. They will somehow aggregate that and make it available, which I think is really a good idea. Yeah, I mean, as far as I know, their model hasn't changed much in terms of topics they cover. I don't think they've ever covered sports or entertainment, but they are very open to working with citizen journalists and people maybe outside the mainstream positions on media coverage. So journalism must change because of all these possibilities swirling around and the need of the public to be well-informed. A candidate like Donald Trump taking the press to task every time he gets a chance, if they don't support him, if they make fun of him, if they give any negative reporting on him, he will take them to task and then they must respond and defend themselves. So journalism, journalism is in flux and you have a school of journalism where presumably you cover that flux and you show those students to retain the old journalistic ideals but to write differently and to be in a position to influence people or at least send the facts where they message out in a way so that it has the same effect the print press used to have. What do you tell them? Well, we have a lot of opportunities to tell stories in new ways and in interactive ways. The media up to this point has primarily been a one-way channel and now there are a lot of ways to have the audience respond from reader comments to tips to citizen journalism. There are just a lot of ways to involve people in the journalistic process and I think that's generally healthy, although it doesn't always play out that way depending on how people use that power. There have been, of course, a lot of folks who try to take over stories with their political... I mean the audience, the readers... The audience, yeah. That's become a really serious problem. I think Twitter's struggling with it quite a bit. How does that work when they try to take over the audience? Well, they have kind of a grassroots organization of some sort and if somebody says something they don't like then they en masse try to blow the person out with hateful messages and misinformation posted to the sites. That's one of the reasons reader comments is so hard to manage because you open that door and then where's the line you draw and what people can say. Yeah, and they can do things that are terribly unfair, manipulative, so forth. Yeah, and then like in the Civil Beat example we had a discussion over the past few weeks about anonymity in the reader comments and the idea is basically anonymity will allow more commentary in a sense that people feel safer to comment but then it also diminishes the accountability of what they say because people don't know who they are and why they're saying it. And they can be mean. They can be bullies. They can be incredibly mean. They can be bullies. They can say misinformation. What's really kind of a terrible new trend is like I said that people will gather in these groups and then like a heat mob will come down on people and that's becoming very hard for folks to control. Yeah, the power of thing, the counter press if you will. So where do you stand on that? Anonymity or no anonymity? The position I've taken is it should be fully accountable for what you say and my suggestion is that people basically register to leave comments just like they used to do somewhat with the letters of the editor. You know you would say your name, your address, your phone number and then the editor would check all that information and call you up and say are you so and so and did you write this letter and then if you say yes then although that's not a perfect system because there have been abuses of that that did somewhat limit the kind of anonymous attacks and people generally felt like if they were going to say something in public like that they should stand by their words and so that's where I think we should go. Yeah, I absolutely agree. I think at the beginning of the internet, the beginning of electronic journalism there was this notion of let's make it free. You know it's free, it's unfettered, unrestrained. Free and anonymous. Free and anonymous, anybody can say anything but by then at that time we hadn't seen the bullying yet. We didn't know how it could be manipulated and abused and then we have found that sense and so we've got to contain it. Everyone. Right, I mean it makes sense to me. I understand the place for anonymity and so one of the arguments that people will make is well how do you deal with whistleblowers and how do you deal with people trying to say things and they're not comfortable saying them in public because of some retaliation and I would say the answer is then you on a case by case basis argue that and give the person anonymity if you feel like it's appropriate. You know you don't have to use such a broad brush on it and number one I don't see a lot of reader comments that are big whistleblower claims. I think those are handled in different channels with somewhat of a false argument but if there was and people said okay I would like to post this on this story if I don't feel comfortable using my name then I think the media organization could easily blot that out or whatever they want to do to allow the comment but then also be responsible for its content. They have a certain amount of due diligence there. Let's take a short break Brad then we'll come back and we'll talk about where this is all going. I mean predict the future. Hey everybody my name is David Chang and I'm the new host of a new show The Art of Thinking Smart. I'm really excited to be able to share with you secrets on giving yourself the smart edge in life. We're going to have awesome guests and great mentors of mine from the political, military, business, nonprofit, you name it. So it's something for everybody. Aloha I'm Kirsten Baumgart host of Sustainable Hawaii. We live stream every Tuesday from noon to 12.30 and you get a chance to hear what people are doing about sustainability in Hawaii and what the issues are impacting all of us in all the islands. Join us please. Aloha my name is Reg Baker and I'm the host of Business in Hawaii with Reg Baker. We're a show that broadcasts live every Thursday from 2 to 2.30. We highlight success stories in Hawaii of both businesses and individuals. We learn their secrets to success which is always valuable. I hope to see you on our next show. Aloha. We're here with Brett Obergaard and he's an assistant professor in the UH School of Communications, the journalism program there and he participated in a round table discussion last week at the East West Center covering the recent change in the news media in Honolulu and there have been many. But I wanted to catch this one thing with you and that is where is it going in terms of the political dialogue that we have especially here in election season where it used to be you read the print press you informed yourself they tried to inform you and to a certain extent you were informed before election day. Now there's so much chatter there's so much noise and you know people take advantage they say things that are not true and that there's no journalist to control at all and then when you multiply that out by hundreds of millions of voters what do you get is our society is our democratic society doing better in terms of an informed voter or not? No, I think we're less informed even though we have more information in our heads and partially that's because there's so many channels where people get confused about even what they think is true and we also have seemed to have lost a tether to the truth in our political discussions. I think both the candidates this time around are somewhat untethered to that but I mean one obviously is extremely untethered and we're almost pathologically but you know in both cases I've seen this increased sophistication in the kind of behind the scenes talking points surrogate advancement of these talking points which is I think this has always been there but it's much more sophisticated now and the whole behind the scenes team putting out misinformation or putting out some kind of spin has gotten really hard to overcome. Yeah, so it's theatrics and there's somebody doing the puppeteering from behind the stage. Now the press has the opportunity I mean I think this is a growing feature maybe relatively recent years of fact checking you know anybody says anything and the press will or some members of the press will fact check that and they will tell you is it true, is it half true, is it not true at all? How useful, how valid is that? Do you see that as an important element in the engagement? Well I think this is part of the whole rise of misinformation. I think journalism used to always be fact checking and there was no separation. It was inherent in every story. I just am so shocked by this rise of fact checking and I think part of it is a reaction to this constant misinformation that's being put into play. So I don't know really what to make of it other than this is basic journalism that always should be done so I'm not sure why we needed separate channels but maybe it's more than anything a delivery presentation mode. But what I've noticed maybe it's just me is that when the press does the fact checking comes back and says no no that candidate was wrong on that then the candidate denies the fact checking. So the public is left confused as to what the lie was in the first place whether the fact checking is really accurate or whether the final dismissal of the fact checking is accurate. So the question is how do you make people get into the process do their duty as civic entities you know in a democracy. The press is directly involved in this journalism directly it's an essential element of it but how do you make the public truly understand how do you clarify their thinking I'm asking an impossible question I know. Well I mean the answer is at some point people are going to get tired of getting manipulated I think it goes along with advertising or whatever. You're constantly getting these messages you feel bad about yourself you're hungry or your car is not cool enough or whatever it is at some point people get just exhausted with that constant negativity that leads them to buy things and I think in the political process you get the same sort of deal where you feel like everybody is always trying to spin you and manipulate you then at some point you think well if this is really important to me and not every issue can be really important to me like this is the issue or these are the issues that I think are important then the person should spend the time investigating them and finding out what is the real truth. So I'm sitting at the television because that's an easy way to be a couch potato and I see CNN which I no longer have the same credibility for and I see Fox which I have very little credibility for and so forth and they're just spinning messages at me and they do that for three or four minutes and then I get three or four or five minutes of commercials which is just as you say they're spinning messages at me and I feel like I'm being assaulted with all these messages and there's not a great deal of difference between the spin over here and the spin over there and I say enough so and I can come down here I can face the cameras and say you've got to stop doing this that doesn't really help or I can go and I can go to the oracle a real source a source that I trust a source that will clarify this for me what is that source where I find it in today's world of journalism and media. Well I mean part of it's a media literacy issue where people trust Jimmy's blog as much as the New York Times and they're not comparable so we like in our program we spend a lot of time on media literacy and news literacy and what are the sources you can trust and what is the process they go through to put this information in your hands and there's a big difference between what any you know any citizen can put on their blog and what it takes to get a story on the front page of the New York Times and just a dramatic difference. Now people I've heard argue about the bias of the New York Times which is fine to argue but also you have to say well compared to what and in my mind there are you know a few organizations around the country that really diligently look at what they put in every single word and then those are the places that I feel like I can trust you know on most subjects. How do you know how do you know that they're doing that? How do you come to trust them? I mean Donald Trump would tell you at the New York Times this bad journalism. Right. So gee I hope nobody buys that. But how do you know that you should trust this news media and not that one? Well it's a process of you know how transparent are they? How do they get their information? How is this sourced? When they use this source what is the credential of that source? How fair are they in countering any particular argument? So it's not fair time for different ideas like evolution versus non-evolution. It's more there is a legitimate difference of opinion on this particular issue. Does this journalistic source give fair time to those issues? Or does it try to slant them? You know I'm reminded of my own education I forget where it happened but I remember having a class in school about reading the newspaper and it was a whole semester just reading the newspaper how you fold it what you look for what you expect from the writing what you expect from where you went first and second and third and all that and it was largely based around the New York Times and I grew up in New York the papers in New York and the national papers but I don't think they have classes like that aside from journalism classes themselves in school anymore wouldn't that help? Wouldn't education about critical thinking in appreciating journalistic sources wouldn't that help? I think it would I think they are starting to implement that in school all the way down to elementary school I have a daughter in elementary school and she's learning about media watching the news that's been sanctioned for elementary school people to watch and they talk about the news and I have a daughter in middle school and a daughter in high school and they all are getting this information and analyzing it which I think is great and I think that their life is seen through media our first-hand experience is very minimal when you really think about it you sit on your couch like you said or you get in your car or you sit in your workplace or whatever it is and that's your first-hand experience but most of what you know about the world is through mediated sources so to understand how those mediated sources work on you and also I think the main thing is there's a lot of reality in very dramatic ways and if you're not aware of the filtering and distortion then even if you are aware of it it still can't see past some of the meta-narratives and as a body politic or a body electorate we are being educated through the media every day we are forming opinions about people, about issues about our relationship with government our society is individually and collectively defined by what we get from the media and we're getting more as you said, more information all the time this is there's a certain jeopardy in this it seems that we are more covered by it and more threatened by it than we ever were we need it and yet we can't trust it and if we don't handle it right our society is no longer as valid as the founders would have liked especially in the election I think there's always been that openness to all types of information if you think back to maybe the founding of the country you would have multiple newspapers in a town all telling you different things and people had to find their way through it so in some respects it's not that much different and we just have way more information so I think the real challenge is for every citizen to spend time and effort on that media and figuring out what it means and what you can trust and where it's coming from it's not just a trifling thing you spend five minutes in the morning reading the newspaper anymore it's all day long you're in your mobile moments at the bus stop or whatever looking at the media on Facebook a lot of times people will get information forwarded from their friends and because it came from their friends they give it a higher trust level but if they just encountered it searching the internet and so there are all sorts of dynamics at play that really make it a challenge and I think people need to they need to step up their effort in understanding the media or they're going to get washed over by it and one thing is for sure there are people out there who are trying to reshape it as we speak who will come up with new and brilliant and profitable ideas that you guys talked about last week and that we've been talking about today and that makes it so exciting and threatening and demanding of all of us yeah I try to keep an optimistic positive view in the sense that we have way more agencies than we've ever had we have the ability to connect with sources international national regional local to figure it out but it takes work it's not as simple as it used to be where you watch the 5 o'clock news and Walter Cronkite told you how it was or you picked up the daily newspaper and it was all true it's just not that simple anymore no but one thing is clear we should read Civil Beat on Mondays to see what you have to say about it yes I hope so read Overguard of the UH School of Communications journalism program thanks for watching see you next week