News Fix #40: Info needs are dead. Long live info needs!

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I can fit the number of full episodes of The Simpsons I've seen in one of my pockets. Truly. But I mentally replay a scene from an episode I saw decades ago at the frequency of a pop-culture tic. In it, Lisa Simpson is out of school for some reason and absolutely despondent as a result. Though close to catatonic, she manages to stumble through her house. “Graaaaadeeee Meeeeeee,” she groans. A lament for the ages.

Absurd. Relatable! I've tucked this moment away for myself all these years for reasons that have nothing to do with the external validation of grades (couldn't care less). What I've always seen in this little cartoon is a reflection of the primal need some of us have for feedback, for information to put to use as we charge forward, for benchmarking our effort in some way. It's so powerful and good and strangly human.

Lisa trudged through my brain last week as I was preparing to speak with Dick Tofel about the essential functions of the news framework. Dick is a mentor turned friend and used to be on Outlier's Board of Directors. I trust him for honest feedback. He is always willing to entertain new ideas but wants to engage them rigorously. His thinking is so organized he makes even complex or fraught conversations feel easy to navigate.

A necessary edit

Dick was into my first three essential functions of news: record creation, creating accountability, and meeting information needs, but the last one, responding to community needs, seemed extranous or like an “also ran.”

I love each of these functions, but I agreed. That fourth function felt unfinished, and I had trouble remembering it when I talked about the framework. And yet, changing what and to whom news is responsive is a central idea of the essential functions framework. News should be less responsive to events, economic markets, and power. When we reimagine what the news must become to better serve and have wider social utility, it will be responsive to people and to their needs.

This conversation helped me be less apologetic about that idea and simplify the framework. The function of “responding to community needs” should actually replace the function of “meeting information needs.” We're down to three essential functions of news!

The three essential functions of news

What’s the point of the news? For the last few centuries, longer even, this has been a pretty easy question to answer. Travel used to be expensive and dangerous, and basic education was a privilege almost everywhere. The things that could show up at your door unannounced unless a reliable

News FixSarah Alvarez

People who want to work with news already center information as the chosen tool for impact. When we respond to community needs, we are most likely to try to do so by reporting, selecting, and delivering information. It is the default.

I developed the essential functions framework to help us direct this instinct toward real-world utility. Meeting information needs reliably creates impact at both the individual and institutional level. But here's the real lesson: newsrooms can and should identify information gaps by looking at the challenges causing the most harm to the most people in a community. Outlier has surveyed Detroiters about challenges, needs, and goals for the last decade. We tease out the informational components of the most widespread challenges. The newsroom figures out how to meet the information needs and the accountability gaps those assessments uncover. It often takes more than just information to meet a real need. Using the broader umbrella function of “meeting community needs” makes space for newsrooms running toward those needs, like The Jersey Bee.

Reworked ideas are better

I might not have had the confidence a few years ago to work on this essential function framework in public. I might have wanted to keep it close until I felt sure it didn't need much more work.

I would have been wrong. Our frameworks always require more work, and I'm less hesitant to say so. I take my work incredibly seriously and want others to take these ideas seriously too. What I've realized as I've grown more comfortable in this work, however, is that to take an idea seriously doesn't mean you have to accept it.

To take an idea seriously is to want to work with it, to push back on it, to test it. To graaaade it, to call back to Lisa Simpson. 🎓

I'm grateful to everyone who has taken the essential framework seriously enough to engage with it and try to apply it to their work. I like this current version (previous version is in the archive), but that doesn't mean it's done. Keep the ideas coming!

What I'm reading

It's midterm exams day in my journalism classes. Wish all of us luck.

I continue to have my doubts about the value of journalism education as currently structured. Those doubts extend to exams, so I've worked hard to build assessments I hope will feel challenging but valuable. I enjoyed it more than I expected! I want to share the case study I adapted for my Business of Journalism class with all of you. This thing is good! It's based on a small Canadian digital newsroom, AllNoviaScotia. The decision point is in 2013, but trust me, many newsrooms are making the same decisions with less favorable fact-paterns today. It reads as a history through most of the sustainability fads you remember and some you don't! If you enjoy a case study, you'll love this one.

Take care until next week, and happy St. Patrick's Day from your favorite Mexican-Irish reporter. Viva la San Patricio's!