Storify, paywalls and niche publications could counteract 'filter failure'

Digital media guru Clay Shirky has identified "filter failure" - versus "information overload" - as a key challenge facing society today.

The economics of the digital age have made this possible: At no other point in human history, even though we have actually experienced information overload since printed books first became widely available in the 16th century, has it been so inexpensive for anyone to produce any kind of information anytime.

As Shirky puts it: "There's no economic logic that says you have to filter for quality before you publish." 

New filters needed

What this means for users of new media is that the traditional "filters" of yesteryear - such as publishers who sought to print only the most marketable books, lest they incur financial losses - are no longer in place.

So how can journalists help people overcome this new phenomenon of "filter failure," while at the same time attracting users to their own "product" via digital platforms?

Always be a reliable source

In the past, journalists followed fixed news cycles that no longer really exist. Beyond updating breaking news stories online, many reporters will now, for instance, provide up-to-the-minute "live" tweets from courtrooms as verdicts unfold or upload files from mobile devices directly to news sites.

The best way to build a reputation as a reliable source is to produce good content in a timely fashion.

This part should be a no-brainer: To drive traffic to their own sites, all media folk still need to stick to the basic nuts and bolts of good journalism and apply these fundamental tenets to a user-friendly format, including clear headlines, good ledes and nut grafs, concise subheadings and short grafs throughout (bar of course for long-form features and less time-sensitive content, such as most items published, for instance, in The New York Review of Books, The New Yorker, or Teen Ink).

Think in terms of the sum of a sites' multimedia parts

Now, however, all of this content must be packaged online - not to mention formatted to fit mobile devices - in an appealing way. Simply posting "shovelware" just doesn't cut it anymore.

Incorporating interactive elements, such as video or audio files, usually helps draw traffic to your site.

Using social media, including Twitter and Facebook updates might moreover expand your audience, boost today's "two-way conversation" between journalists and the public, and generally keep people - some of whom have taken on roles as "citizen journalists" - talking about your coverage.

At the same time, overdoing it could have the opposite effect, so best practices ideally should be identified.

This need to get the balance right has produced "The Rise of the Social Media Editor," as Saya Weissman recently reported for Digiday in an interview with new AP Social Media Editor Eric Carvin.

"Social media helps us see what people are interested in, what they are commenting on. Social media allows us to go to the public for news tips, eyewitness accounts, amateur videos. It’s a tool that makes journalism better if you know how to use it," said Carvin. 

Use new interfaces like Storify to aggregate disparate strands of information

Journalists can also help users in search of a one-stop-shop for accurate information by harnessing the power of nifty new tools such as Storify.

As reported in April 2011 by Claire Cain Miller for The New York Times "filtering the social web" can help journalists present news items via startups such as Storify, as well as Storyful, Tumblr and Color.

Fans of Storify include ReadWriteWeb's Jon Mitchell, who has hailed it as "the best way to gather tweets, comments, snippets and images from all around the Web and put them into one post." 

"Form follows funding"

One way newspapers, in particular, can help readers overcome filter failure is by providing paywalls for content - a trend predicted by industry experts to now be on the rise with the "appification" of media via mobile devices.

Shirky, for instance, in a recent blogpost entitled "Newspapers, Paywalls and Core Users" suggests that "form follows funding."

This means that as paywalls increasingly appear, only the more serious "politically engaged readers" will be willing to invest in this particular content. As a result, newspapers will start providing better content as they "figure out how to reward the people most committed to their long-term survival."

So this possible trend, in and of itself, could serve as a kind of "filter." 

Find your niche

Niche publications - focused on topics ranging from restaurants to antiques to travel - moreover have begun to flourish across today's digital media landscape like a riotous cacophony of dazzling wildflowers carpeting once barren grasslands after monsoon rains.

People interested in the latest tech trends, for instance, will likely follow sites such as TechCruch or ReadWriteWeb, or perhaps check out the recently launched Pandodaily. If they find it informative, it might eventually become one of their favorites, just as Politico has become indispensible to many political junkies.

Cultivate hyperlocal habits

Another trend is hyperlocal journalism. If hyperlocal sites are good, they will attract advertising and users. A popular hyperlocal site in Washington, D.C., for instance, is Prince of Petworth.

By focusing on very specific topics, hobbies, passions, pet peeves or geographic locations, both niche products and hyperlocal sites help users zero in on the information that most interests them individually. It's like an information "smörgåsbord" with everyone invited to the dinner table.

Filter, filter, filter ...

At the end of the day no one can ever possibly read or view everything online that might be of interest to them. People essentially need to act as their own personal "filters" much more so than they did in the past.

According to Shirky search engines such as Digg and Delicious, to a certain extent, have replaced the old "filters" of a bygone era.

But search engines alone do not a brand spanking new filtration system make. On a much deeper level, this is "not a design problem" but rather "more of a mental shift" that is required, according to Shirky.

A lot of how we find new filters is going to center "around rethinking social norms," he suggests.

So we should not ask ourselves "what's happened to the information?" but "what filter just broke, what was I relying on before that stopped functioning?" according to Shirky. "Because when you start asking that question, you're going to get some clue as to where to put the design effort."

Adapt, adapt, adapt ...

Journalism today is no longer a one-way conversation, but a two-way street, including seemingly endless possibilities for dialogue via various fora than ever before.

The part that journalists play in this ever evolving process will need to be continuously revisited and redefined as new technologies open up new avenues of information flow.