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The Struggle to Ban Alex Jones + Membership Models for News Organizations

Published: Aug. 13, 2018, 9:30 a.m.

There\u2019s so much to unpack in this extremely timely chat with\xa0Jay Rosen. Jay teaches journalism at\xa0New York University\xa0and on this episode of Community Signal, he discusses an era of journalism where readers hold the power. The power of choice, the power to talk back to journalists and media organizations, and the power to rally with their fellow readers. And with this shift in power comes a (positive) shift in responsibilities for journalists.

Interestingly enough, technology platforms like Twitter, Reddit, Facebook, and YouTube, are being met with similar calls to action and Jay cites their inability to listen to their users as a clear absence of business culture and principles. But is\xa0the recent removal of Alex Jones and Infowars\xa0from a few of these sites a sign of an internal crisis of conscience? This journalism student and community pro sure hopes so.

Patrick and Jay also talk about:

Why audience engagement managers are in such high demand
The role that media organizations and journalists play in protecting journalism and the democracy
The benefits that a membership model could bring to journalism

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If you enjoy our show, please know that it\u2019s only possible with the generous support of our sponsor:\xa0Higher Logic.

Big Quotes

\u201cI was very interested in the way [Alex Jones being banned from social media platforms] unfolded with Apple's Tim Cook making the decision and then Facebook and YouTube following his lead, in effect. To me, that\u2019s very interesting because these platform companies don\u2019t really have principles that apply to this situation. They would prefer that these kinds of judgement calls don\u2019t come up because they don\u2019t really have principles and decision-making routines and any tradition, any culture, that would allow them to make smart editorial calls, which is essentially what this is. It\u2019s an editorial decision. This belongs on our platform, this doesn\u2019t. I think they have tried to avoid making these kinds of judgments. Then when Tim Cook at Apple just said, \u2018We\u2019re not going to host this guy anymore,\u2019 that was enough for Zuckerberg and for YouTube to say, \u2018Us, neither.\u2019 Which is funny because it indicates an inability to think for themselves.\u201d\xa0\u2013@jayrosen_nyu

\u201cWhen you talk about \u2018asymmetrical bulls***,\u2019 it just reminds me about one of the core principles of community that I adhere to, which is the idea that I serve the community that I manage, whatever that is. I don\u2019t serve one person in it. If I have to spend an inordinate amount of time on one person because they are Alex Jones, or because they\u2019re just in some other way problematic, destructive, damaging, harmful to the community, what it stands for, what it is, the standards it has, then something is wrong. You have to cut that out of the equation. Otherwise, you can get sucked into just serving one person instead of the community as a whole.\u201d \u2013@patrickokeefe

\u201cMedia companies, the employees of those companies who are journalists, newsrooms as professional communities; they should not be in the business of trying to defeat Donald Trump or make sure he loses his next election or elect Democrats, or anything like that. They have to find a way to oppose a political style that erodes democratic institutions and makes it impossible for a democratic public to function. I don\u2019t think that\u2019s an easy distinction to put into practice \u2026 but I do think that that is the germ of the distinction that we need.\u201d \u2013@jayrosen_nyu

\u201cSolving these riddles of participation [tied to the membership model], which is definitely an adventure in online community, is, I think, a really important challenge to journalism now.\xa0Because if everything goes to a subscription model, what we\u2019re going to have is a class of people who can afford to pay, who are very well informed, and then crap for everybody else, and that just isn\u2019t acceptable.\u201d\xa0\u2013@jayrosen_nyu

About Jay Rosen

Jay Rosen\xa0has been teaching journalism at\xa0New York University\xa0since 1986. From 1999 to 2005, he served as chair of the program. Rosen is the author of\xa0PressThink, a blog about journalism and its ordeals, which he introduced in September 2003. In 1999, Yale University Press published his book,\xa0What Are Journalists For?, which is about the rise of the civic journalism movement during the pre-internet era.

In 2008, he was the co-publisher, with Arianna Huffington, of\xa0OffTheBus.net, which allowed anyone who was interested to sign up and contribute to campaign coverage for the Huffington Post. He is currently serving as ambassador to the American market for the Dutch site,\xa0De Correspondent\xa0as it looks to expand to the U.S. In 2017 he became director of the\xa0Membership Puzzle Project, funded by the Knight Foundation and Democracy Fund. It studies membership models for sustainability in news. Rosen is also an active press critic with a focus on problems in the coverage of politics.