Old and New Consciousness Journalism

 

-The evolution of the dissemination of intelligence
 
If all the world’s problems, pain and suffering are due to ignorance then wisdom, intelligence and awareness are the solutions to all the worlds’ problems, who can deliver the solution? We have a world out of balance, who is there to bring it back into balance? It is a world of disinformation and bias, who can clarify the truth without distortion by special interest? Who is it that is defined by their intention to “make aware” and who is it that can facilitate the many to see the reality behind the appearances?

 

Organizations of journalists exist to achieve what no individual journalist can achieve alone. They provide collective wisdom and a large pool of knowledge and information sources combined with a little structure and discipline. The organized journalists leverage and share resources reducing costs for all the participants in the journalistic organization and the end user. A journalistic organization is a collective effort that combines areas of specialty to deliver a complete product to the organizations readers.

 

The role of the editor is a special one to assist the author in, identifying errors and omissions, review of the logic, analysis of the possibility and probability, determining what is known, highlighting what is unknown and needs to be known, defining the questions to be asked. For it is the question not the statement that is most powerful creating a vacuum in the mind that must be filled, and since nature abhors a vacuum it is soon answered. Spotlighting the rational and the irrational views and finding the wisdom that ends the conflict between them. The main function of the editor is to take a lot of information and detail and reduce it down to provide a concise understanding, an executive summary for today’s short attention spans.

 

The editor translates concepts requiring a specialty framework of knowledge into terms and examples understood within a general framework of knowledge while providing some details to validate. Those working in other vocations don’t have time to study all the detail so the value of the editor and the journalists is saving the reader the time it takes to become knowledgeable and informed, so they can make decisions. The reader with greater interest is then directed to additional detail and more information if they require it and where and when to find the follow-up on the unanswered questions and culmination of the story if it has not ended.

 

Time is money, time is in many contexts a limited resource; knowledge is power so this is the value generated for other economic system participants by the journalistic vocation. As such the journalistic agents should be duly rewarded by other economic system participants with a portion of the wealth they create for it is the journalist that enhances their wealth creation.

 

Good investigative journalism is an “effort” intensive vocation which can demand substantial resources to juice and invest in the development of the story and this creates the need for a supporting body to nurture the individual cells. Simple cut and paste is not journalism, it is propagation and validation, something we should all do. Journalism requires study, disciplined placement of attention, a discerning mind, benefited by understanding and comprehension resulting from years of experience.

 

Enhanced and well exercised cognitive capabilities and a sharp mind are essential to connecting disparate pieces of information and clues to form and assemble the complete picture, the whole story, and the untold story that becomes told.

 

Very efficient, advanced communications, data mining, research and collaboration tools, diversified distribution channels, and a database of  contacts and the maintenance of relationships to sustain information flow. The news organization is trusted by the readers to direct “attention” to the matters, issues, and solutions in order of priority. The news organization delivers the balanced view, one resulting from the integration of contrasting perspectives to deliver one that is whole and integrated.

 

The new journalistic organization is not a unidirectional flow of information it is bidirectional where readers provide feedback helping to evolve understanding, pose questions, and some actually becoming sources of information in their specialty area or as a result of their direct experience and involvement in the story line. 

 

Formats: Diversity is good, sometimes print is good on a train, a subway, a plane, at the beach, and in waiting rooms. Print does not require power or energy to read just natural light making it a green sustainable fail proof technology. Newspapers should be available in these locations. A newspaper vending machine is itself a quick informer showing the front page, and the priority stories and current state of affairs. Are things in balance or out of balance, what is being done to correct imbalance? What must be done to bring balance? The static printed medium can supply the entry points, the URLs leading to the dynamic and more expansive content.

 

On the other hand there is the dynamic real time energy efficient need for electronic distribution to meet the speed of change, the accelerated rate of evolution that is itself a product of the light speed information flow combined with the furthering development of the story. Also we remember there are those, a portion of us that are empowered by the simplicity of access to information provided by the printed medium.

 

Advertising: There is nothing wrong with advertising and marketing, and it is evolving. The new department name is the Awareness Department. No longer is it a medium of gimmick, manipulation of ego, or motivation through fear or a producer of envy. It no longer attempts to create an illusion and seduce with fictions, but portrays a reality. People want to know a service or product’s features and functions, the level of quality and intelligence that goes into it; the efficiency achieved in producing it. The consumer wants to be educated in how the product or service can benefit them and the lives of others they know. The consumer wants to be able to access the detail specifications if needed so they can compare and the various levels of need each model of product or service package can fulfill. The consumer wants to be aware of what is available as a solution to a problem or challenge they are having. The consumer wants to be able to find the information they want easily. The consumer expects to find this information linked to the channels of interest associated with the product. If one is a music connoisseur then what better to see what is newly available, the evolutions of products and services and their current status, related to their listening pleasure, while they are selecting music to listen to. Advertising and marketing is not a “push operation” it is a pull operation, not one of force, but one of gravity, and it does this by making itself intelligently available and nudging with the creation of awareness.

 

It is the job of the awareness department representing an organization of producers, a business, to deliver this to the right places in a concise and understandable form allowing the seeker to drill down to the detail. When the want or desire of a consumer arises it is the job of the awareness department to make sure there is a link to a path that leads to fulfillment.

 

News Story: the local, regional, and global scope of perspective and story are all separate areas of focus and need yet all combine to provide a holistic view. There is an understanding that the local gives rise to the regional and the regional to the global, the story lines are all connected to our Great Epic story, the story of humanity, and it is we all of us that together are writing it.

 

It is the job of the journalist to create awareness leading to balance in the world while promoting evolution and growth, and the ability to adapt. It is the journalists that query the technicians that can solve the problems and the experts that have the insight and understanding. It is the journalist that helps generate the impetus that comes from the people to direct the politicians to orchestrate. It is the journalist that eliminates the fictions that divide, for truth only creates unity. It is journalists that bring attention to issues and their solutions, to direct healing, repair and aid to those areas of humanity needing it, so we can all sleep soundly at night without worry, knowing that tomorrow all the children will awaken to play and pretend, and fill the air with the music of their laughter, and appease the gods so that everyone has a life worth living.

 

 

Richard Thomas Gerber – Feb 09