I have just returned from three weeks in the US. It is tense there, and people discussed the election's outcome in very dark terms across the political spectrum. Talking to friends, they expect violence if Trump is elected with one saying, without drama, that she expects civil war. Political scientists from John Hopkins University and the University of Wisconsin Madison found in 2021 that “20 percent of Republicans and 13 percent of Democrats said political violence was warranted these days, while 25 percent of Republicans and 17 percent of Democrats said threats to opposing party officials were defensible”. This is about the same level of support Catholics and Protestants had for violence during the height of “The Troubles”. My fellow Americans, we don’t want to go down this road. Once dehumanisation takes root, it is challenging to reverse.

Journalists have been concerned about restoring trust in their profession. I believe one way to do this is by carrying out projects where people restore trust in one another.

In an era of radical polarisation, tackling dehumanisation helps foster a mutual sense of good faith people have in each other. In 2023, the Georgetown Institute of Politics and Public Service (GU Politics) Battleground Civility Poll has been “tracking attitudes towards polarization since 2019”, and while respondents send mixed messages, 94% believe (with 72% believing so strongly) “Respect for each other is the first step in having a government that works.” And almost the same amount, 89% believe that civility is the language of respect. There is reason for hope.

Throughout my career, I have looked inside, adjacent to and outside of media for solutions to problems. Community and building relationships between media organisations and their audiences have been central to my work, and here are a few initiatives I think can support the restoration of a respectful, civil civic society.

StoryCorps: One Small Step

When I worked at Ideastream Public Media, we took part in a project that was a collaboration between StoryCorps’ One Small Step initiative and Ideastream Public Media to help foster conversations across political divisions.

The Public Spaces Incubator

As a young journalist, a major theme of my early work was using social media and community engagement strategies to engage audiences with public service media. However, digital social spaces also have an increasingly bad reputation. Almost half of Gen Z wish Tiktok had never been invented, and fully half wish the same of X. Instead of abandoning the concept of digital community, as I have written before, publishers and broadcasters have decided to reclaim them.

New Public is working with public service broadcasters including the CBC, Australia’s ABC and European PSBs ARD and RTBF on the Public Spaces Incubator. They want to re-establish direct relationships with their audiences but also experiment with and develop new digital conversational spaces. It’s exciting because they are designing prototypes for nuanced conversations and broader perspectives. For instance, one prototype Representing Perspectives … “explores including a broader spectrum of voices in conversations on different topics and inspires commenters to add their own perspectives”. Public Square View “brings new opportunities for participating in live virtual events and joining conversations to discuss them”.

Good.chat

Can an online chat with someone from the other side of the political divide help alleviate partisanship? Boldium, an innovation agency (for lack of a better description), has kicked off this project. Their team was worried about the same trends I outlined. “The number of Americans with very unfavourable opinions of the opposing party has more than doubled in the past 25 years. And about one-third of Americans believe the opposing party is threatening our nation’s well-being.” (Based on data from the Pew Research Center.)

Disclaimer: I have been so busy over the last month that I haven’t had time to test-drive this, but I’m curious. However, it will take all kinds of experiments to address the issues around polarisation, division and dehumanisation.

Weave: The Social Fabric Project

I first found out about the Weave project from Michael Skiler, the communications director for the project. I’ve known Michael since he founded the Public Insight Network at American Public media. I have long admired his work. Weave is based on the insights from Robert Putnam, who famously wrote Bowling Alone, an essay and then a book about the decline in American participation in civic, religious and political organisations. Weave draws from Putnam’s most recent book: The Upswing: How We Came Together a Century Ago and How We Can Do It Again. To summarise very quickly, the book tracks America’s long track from an “I” society during the Gilded Age of the 19th Century to a “We” society from the 1890s to the 1960s and then a regression back to an “I” society since then. As the Harvard Kennedy School summary says: “He draws inspiring lessons for our time from an earlier era, when a dedicated group of reformers righted the ship, putting us on a path to becoming a society once again based on community.”

The project tries to address “the problem of broken social trust”. It was founded in 2018 by New York Times columnist David Brooks at the Aspen Institute. Brooks started the project on a listening tour “to understand how people in different communities were working to move from a culture of isolation and individualism to one of relationalism”. That produced their founding document The Relationist Manifesto.

It’s an ambitious project looking to support community-minded doers who are working to increase bridging capital where they live to solve problems. You get a sense of the who and what they support through a recently released initiative, TrustMap.

Just writing about these initiatives gives me a little more hope. Now onto to some links I’ve seen this past week.

Major media companies continue to strike AI deals with major tech companies. I highlight this one because Reuters has done a deal with Meta rather than OpenAI, which has had a string of deals with media companies in the US and Europe.

On the audience side of media businesses, there is a new imperative to build direct relationships with readers, listeners and viewers, one that is not mediated through third-party platforms. On the commercial side, this translates into reader revenue through subscriptions and memberships as well as cutting out middlemen. Bloomberg has done this, and DPG Media is yet another example.

DPG Media will pull the plug on selling app ads in the open market

DPG Media will stop selling ads in its apps through open market auctions starting in November 2024. Advertisers must now buy ads directly from DPG Media.

digiday.com/media/dpg-media-will-pull-the-plug-on-selling-app-ads-in-the-open-market

Bluesky use is surging, and as a Bluesky and X user, I feel it and understand it. Musk’s decision-making for X is muddled by politics, which has led to poor financial performance. That drives short-term business decisions that aren’t in line with user experience, satisfaction or safety.

Bluesky surges into the top 5 as X changes blocks, permits AI training on its data | TechCrunch

Social networking startup Bluesky, which just reported a gain of half a million users over the past day, has now soared into the top five apps on the U.S.

techcrunch.com/2024/10/18/bluesky-surges-into-the-top-5-as-x-changes-blocks-permits-ai-training-on-its-data

Data Suggests X Could Post a Significant Loss in 2024

Elon’s X project could be in trouble, but there may be other avenues to consider.

www.socialmediatoday.com/news/x-formerly-twitter-could-post-a-significant-loss-in-2024/730370

Recently, I was asked by a friend who works in a senior editorial position whether product managers should also be project managers. it’s not a simple question, but it’s an important one.

In reality, it is a fuzzy boundary that varies from news organisation to news organisation. In my master’s research, one product manager at a large digital news organisation said: “(I) had to learn quite quickly and on the job what some of these titles even mean and what is the difference between a product manager and the project manager .… And also, what does that mean in every organization, because that can just mean very diffrent things.” This fuzziness - known as role ambiguity in academic circles - has been an issue with product management long before news organisations embraced the role. This is what the fuzziness means to working product managers. Another senior product manager at a large broadcaster told me, “What I find challenging is that inherently I don't think people understand what a product manager does … On any given day I am often referred to as a product manager, product owner (or) project manager.” More than that, on any given day, this product manager also said she might have product management, project management and operational responsibilities.

Some overlap between project management and product development will always exist because it takes some project management skills to deliver the product. After all, a good product roadmap is essentially a project plan. In reality, smaller organisations will need to blend the functions or have a senior manager act as a de facto product manager with project management done by a managing editor.

But clarifying the roles is important. Media managers need to understand the distinction between product and project management and be able to manage the separate functions or activities. Product managers define the product through audience and market data and are responsible for the ROI of the product. Project managers keep the delivery of the product on track. That is an ideal description of the boundary between the roles, and as I said, in reality, it’s a lot messsier. However, it’s one of the seasons, I believe it makes sense to keep these roles separate.

The lack of clarity about the role and managing it leads to several issues. The cross-functional work of product managers relies on their relationships, and I have seen those relationships damaged due to delivery issues. Media managers’ ability to manage product and project functions will mean better products delivered on time. Easier said than done, but understanding product management in media organisations still has a way to go.

More than that, this lack of understanding is also causing issues in retaining product managers. In my research, one of the issues that led to frustration amongst product management is role autonomy - the ability to manage how they get the job done. Not only does this help employees have more satisfaction, but it also helps organisations manage “volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous” (VUCA) environments. If product managers simply as project managers, they do not feel that they have autonomy over defining products. One product manager left a job at a major international media organisation because she felt as if she was working in a “feature factory”. She left and went to work for a succession of tech companies. (Click that link, written by John Cutler. I think a lot of news product managers will appreciate this: “Little appreciation for the health of the whole product as opposed to shiny new objects.” Also worth reading is his update three years later.)

Reading that, I’ll be honest. It makes me realise how much more I have to learn about product management. But in John’s last statement, there is a lot of value in “learning by doing”.

Now, onto the links.

Substack wants to do more than just newsletters, says Max Tani of Semafor. The company still isn’t profitable. Its next move?

But while Substack is attempting another pivot, as Max points out, there are some high profile defections as the economics don’t work out for them.

Mill Media says goodbye to Substack and moves onto competitor Ghost

Mill Media is to leave Substack four years after launching there in 2020, citing costs and a desire for greater tech customisation.

pressgazette.co.uk/newsletters/mill-media-leaves-substack-ghost

How to balance audience growth with public trust? That was the challenge that Sweden’s public broadcaster faced, and The Fix talked to Olle Zachrison, Head of Artificial Intelligence & News Strategy at Sveriges Radio, on how they managed these goals in applying AI to a problem.

What can newsrooms learn from Swedish Radio AI strategy? - The Fix

Interview with Olle Zachrison, Head of Artificial Intelligence & News Strategy at Swedish Radio about their approach to AI.

thefix.media/2024/9/23/what-can-newsrooms-learn-from-swedish-radio-ai-strategy

As data has become more important to publishers, they are working to make sure they get more of it by closing the door on people who don’t accept to get data for advertising.

'Consent or pay': Why UK news websites are getting tough with readers over data

Six of the top 50 news websites in the UK are asking people to "consent or pay" if they don't want to hand over their data for advertising.

pressgazette.co.uk/marketing/consent-or-pay-news-websites-uk

Want to know what it’s like to interact with AI bots? Here’s your chance to interact with lots of them.

New App Lets You Interact With Millions of AI Bot Profiles

SocialAI will feed you social media like responses from a wide range of AI bots.

www.socialmediatoday.com/news/new-app-lets-you-interact-with-millions-of-ai-bot-profiles/727451