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Book review: Reporting beyond the Problem (eds. Karen HOPKINSON and Nicole DAHMEN)
by Allan LEONARD
9 September 2021

While there is a historic tradition of journalism that strives towards a common, public good (however defined), this has occurred in a paradigm of a professionalisation of journalism and a business model where editors responded to a pressure to publish content — whether print, radio, or television — that attracted audiences and satisfied advertisers. Some may say these were halcyon days, when advertising revenue subsidised reportage that took time and effort, such as investigative journalism or in-depth coverage.

The emergence of social media oligopolies has utterly upturned the news economy, by providing viewing metric information that individual media houses can’t offer. In response, traditional media raced to a floor of cost savings, attempting to retain whatever audiences they could whilst ditching reportage of local events and compelling journalists to multitask new production under shorter deadlines.

Reporting beyond the Problem is a compendium of eight alternative approaches that attempts to rebalance, if not reorientate, where journalism should be. The book covers civic journalism, constructive journalism, solutions journalism, explanatory journalism, participatory journalism, engaged journalism, peace journalism, and slow journalism. Helpfully, brief definitions are provided in the book’s Introduction.

The book’s editors couch these as “socially responsible reporting approaches that inform the public with the understanding that our democracy cannot prosper with an informed populace”. This infers that there are socially irresponsible reporting approaches as well as a debate about the role of media in enhancing democracy, for example its independent role in holding power to account and/or collaborating with communities to encourage civic engagement. Such dimensions get a good inspection throughout the approaches explored in the book.

Civic journalism is argued to be the origin of other approaches, such as constructive journalism and engaged journalism. The principles of civic journalism have been described as “a journalistic movement whose primary goals are to enhance civic commitment to and citizen participation in democratic processes”, including deliberative dialogue and cooperative problem solving.

Constructive journalism appreciates the unhealthiness of overexposure to a diet of negative, conflict-narrative news, and incorporates positive psychology with an aim “to improve societal well-being by covering stories about progress, achievement, and collaboration as much as stories about devastation, corruption, and conflict.” Constructive journalism differentiates itself from “positive journalism” in that the former has high societal significance and adheres to core functions of journalism, while the latter has no societal significance and does not adhere to core functions of journalism. Or as the editors say in their concluding chapter, “Focusing only on the darkness — or only on the light — is not productive.”

Solutions journalism shares a similar feature of reporting on evidence-based responses to social problems, but appears to have a greater ambition of encouraging civic action. Research to date is unclear about such results, which may reflect a confusion about whether solutions journalism is more than an approach, constituting instead a movement, as some participants refer to it. As with other alternative approaches explored here, there is a lack of a standard definition of impact.

A distinguishing feature of explanatory journalism is its drawing upon models of science, social science, and data science in providing context on the reportage of policy issues, as opposed to editorialising polemics. Although one can readily see how open data and other online resources such as Google Scholar and PubMed facilitate contemporary research topics, the principles behind explanatory journalism go back to Walter Lippmann’s books in the 1920s, which called for social-scientific approaches in news work to combat propaganda and to better understand an increasingly complex world. Or as journalist Edward Murrow said, the press must go “beyond mere stenography”. But in creating higher levels of meaning by going beyond the facts, journalists grapple with an age-old discourse on how their interpretive powers can best serve the public. At issue is the norm of objectivity, but even as a journalist may claim to present a dispassionate rendering of fact, the selection of what to report and how the reportage is framed immediately introduces subjectivity. With explanatory journalism, the motivation remains to prepare the public “to make smarter adaptive choices that can lead to resilience”.

For participatory journalism, a motivation for collaboration between professional journalists and ordinary citizens is “to set news agendas and to amplify the concerns of those who are otherwise systematically overlooked”. (This is not to be confused with “citizen journalism”, which does not involve professional journalists.) A significant challenge is the parameter of boundaries; namely, how do journalists collaborate with some members of the public without seeming like they are advocating for them? (But do some media such as Fox News already appropriate this?) On the other hand, the author suggests, social media and other digital technologies mix amateurs and professionals together in the same spaces, and citizens can already reach mass audiences; professional journalists have to accept an erosion of their role as gatekeepers of what mass audiences see. We may be witnessing what the author suggests is a “paradigm reconsideration”, where journalists are setting out new courses in the new world. However, does a professional boundary not still exist? A key differentiation of professional journalism is accountability, with legal and ethical parameters. One can appreciate the ideal of collaboration with loyal communities for civic engagement, but as with any negotiation of power, whose integrity is compromised when the project goes sour, through internal politics or external hijacking through disinformation or bad actors? Encouragingly, the web-based platform, Hearken, has a proven effective means of managing audience collaboration.

Engaged journalism shares many elements of participatory journalism; it is in the same realm of having citizens or a group of citizens play an active role in the production and dissemination of information. It has a vision of journalism as relational rather than transactional — building connections among communities for meaningful feedback loops between journalists and the public. The chapter explains a co-design/co-creation process, with the aim of power equally distributed among all partners. Like participatory journalism, evidence shows that professional journalists are reluctant to pursue this with vigor; there is other evidence that journalists will collaborate with each other. For example, in the discipline of fact checking, collaboration between professional fact checkers and crowd source fact checking has had mixed results, while collaboration among fact checkers has a proven track record (for example, through the affiliation with the International Fact-Checking Network).

The case for peace journalism lies in the argument that the manner — framing and word choice — of news reportage can itself “inflame conflict, exploit and/or deepen societal divisions, create distortions, and perpetuate stereotypes while ignoring solutions and reconciliation”. The chapter has sample, real news stories, with contrasting “Traditional Reporting” and “Peace Journalism Story” versions. Peace journalism is motivated by a version of peace theory — working towards “positive peace” with reportage that include non-violent resolutions to conflict. While there is a well articulated defence that this is not the same as advocating for peace, the term “peace journalism” remains hostile to many journalists. Perhaps this conflict can be seen in the more traditional debate about the role of journalists in “serving the public good”; who defines the public good or agrees what one’s peaceful society should look like (particularly when reconciliation hasn’t yet taken place)? In the case of Northern Ireland, for example, the pillarisation of much of its media (serving distinct ethno-nationalist audiences) provides ready channels for those who set out to offend and/or are easily offended. So while there is evidence that audiences will embrace peace journalism-style reporting, media landscapes can remain too incentivised to continue with the episodic and sensational, rather than the thematic and contextual.

Thematic reportage is practised by slow journalism, which is purposely deliberative. The idea is that there are few news events that must command your immediate and perpetual attention. The motivation is to reduce the amount of noise, including misinformation and disinformation that can be exacerbated by the speed of online news reportage. A piece of advice is to wait a full 24 hours before publishing what you have just seen or experienced. Obviously this makes slow journalism not practical for journalists bound by the 24-hour news cycle. One could argue that peace journalism doesn’t have this limitation; peace journalism says you cover whatever is newsworthy in the timeframe you’re afforded, but to do so in a more socially responsible way.

The editors conclude with a chapter on “Bringing Clarity to Productive and Socially Responsible Reporting”. By “productive”, they mean practices “that push the conversation forward, that engage and empower audiences, and that seek meaningful impact”. By “socially responsible”, they mean journalism “that considers society’s best interests by covering the news beyond the problem-based narrative, by reporting with depth and embracing complexity, and by emphasizing connection and collaboration…” The editors acknowledge the challenges that remain, such as the friction (boundaries) between journalists and their communities, definitions and evaluation of impact, mediating what a society’s best interests are (i.e. defining the public good), and having the skills and support to add depth and context to reportage. Meanwhile, they provide a helpful set of recommendations, for example sending a reporter to a local school board meeting and publishing tweets of key actions immediately but being allowed to spend more time writing a piece that puts the meeting in context.

Reporting beyond the Problem is insightful guidance for those journalists who take the profession’s value of public service seriously. The contributors spell out how the information ecosystem has irrevocably changed, with suggestions for adaptation that remain grounded in the fundamental elements of journalism: seek truth, minimise harm, act independently, and be accountable and transparent.

Old Ireland in Colour is an ongoing project of colourising black and white images by photographers in Ireland in the late 19th to early 20th century. The catalyst was John Breslin working on colourising some photos of his grandparents, when he discovered an automated system called DeOldify. He looked for more images to colourise, starting with old photographs of NUI Galway, then the Galway/Connemara area, and then of Ireland as a whole.

Breslin tries to use either public domain or Creative Commons images as much as possible. Resources include the National Folklore Collection (Cúchas), the National Library of Ireland, the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland, the Library of Congress, and Wikimedia Commons.

Essentially, the process of colourisation works by the computer applying colour based on a bank of millions of colour images. Accuracy depends on what is in the bank, so common items such as grass, trees, and the sea come out well; inaccurate colours or hues for clothes or skin need to be adjusted in human post-production.

An example of this is an image of Countess Markiewicz’s uniform, from an automatically applied purple to a manually adjusted bottle green.

The project became popular on dedicated social media platforms Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube. It was then suggested to Breslin to consider creating a book version. In early 2020, Sarah-Anne Beckley joined Breslin, to advise on the historical context for the book. He described it as “a Covid book”, as the authors, designers, and publishers never met each other in person during the process.

Old Ireland in Colour, the book, was published by Merrion Press in September 2020, in a hardback format of 304 pages, measuring 19 by 24 cms. There are over 170 images covering all four provinces of Ireland, spanning the period from just before the Great Famine to the outbreak of The Troubles. The images are grouped thematically: the Irish Revolution, society and culture, women and children, the Irish abroad, and scenic Ireland.

The physical production of the book is very good quality. The paper has a good thickness and touch, and the colour reproduction appears accurate (indeed, Breslin remarked that the print versions of the colourised images appear more forgiving than the screen versions). The saddle stitching is welcomed, as it allows the occasional double-spread image to lie flatter. The concise image annotations provide essential information, to help the reader place the image in context.

There is no faulting the attention to detail that Breslin gave to every single image in the book. It must have helped that many of the images would be obtained from high resolution original photographs, such as large format cameras of the day. This would have enhanced the colourisation effect, so that we are presented with high resolution colour images, akin to what we are familiar with seeing in contemporary magazines. Remember, in many cases the detail was already in the black and white photograph; but instead of 256 shades of grey, your eye and brain are now processing it in millions of colours.

Thanks to Breslin’s meticulousness, the result for the reader is a believable, literally colourful survey of Ireland and its people over a particular period of time. There is a good mixture of the notable, the landscapes, and the everyday lives of many.

A summary of photographic sources is listed at the end, as well as a detailed archive reference for every image. As the authors explain, “We acknowledge fully the ethical concerns that arise from altering these primary documents and hope that the book leads the reader to the original source, as opposed to offering a replacement for these records.”

The authors offer Old Ireland in Colour as “an illuminating look at Irish life, Irish people and the dramatic transformation and change that has occurred over the 125 years covered in this collection.” Breslin told Allan Preston at the Belfast Telegraph that he hoped it would help to spark conversations between different generations.

Old Ireland in Colour is successful, not because of the technical feat of artificial intelligence modifying original work, but perhaps because it offers us a new glimpse — even if an imagined glimpse — of what the original photographers saw when they captured the light onto their analogue films and papers. It remains to us to derive meaning from Breslin and Buckley’s compendium.

Originally published at Mr Ulster.

We read books of fiction and non-fiction, and may acquire a respect for how difficult it is to create such works ourselves. We are taught how to read the written word, and by practising reading, tend to appreciate its transformative power. The novel we re-read. The poem that lifts our spirits. The biography that provokes empathy. We call it literacy — to communicate effectively and make sense of the world.

But we don’t respect imagery as such, as our fingers flick scroll a feed of captured moments of light, with the camera having evolved from a click of a shutter to a button press of a mobile phone app.

Yes, we are all photographers, in as much as anyone who posts a tweet is a writer.

What Grant Scott makes a compelling case for in New Ways of Seeing is visual literacy.

Just as we learn styles of writing and some of us have a go at these forms ourselves, there are types of image making. Scott explains that it’s no surprise that we are relatively visually illiterate, as this discipline is generally not taught in school. Yet with so many young people creating so many images with their phones, he suggests that it’s all the more reason we should introduce some teaching.

Scott covers some essential ground of visual literacy in the book’s first-person narrative style. His weekly podcast, A Photographic Life, will help the reader hear his friendly and sincere tone of voice in his written word. He doesn’t shy away from controversy, however, whether it’s debating whether a mobile phone is a camera (yes; it records images) or whether only photographers who are paid for their work can call themselves “professional” (it’s snobbery; we’re all photographers, sometimes commissioned for work).

Scott explains how digital photography has democratised the craft, with ensuing debates between those with analogue experience and digital natives. What is more significant, he argues, is visual language. Whether your images are captured on film or a sensor, what do they say? The mobile phone enables us to more easily “take snaps”, but Scott wants us to see this alternatively as making visual notes. He encourages his students (and the rest of us) to use social media platforms such as Instagram to share such #photosketching.

But like a rough draft of a written essay, you need to learn what makes a good visual narrative. It is rarely a single image; rather, think more about how filmmakers use storyboards. Scott encourages you to develop a fluency of visual thinking and a confidence of expressing your visual voice.

What this non art student especially appreciated from this compact volume of visual art wisdom was its openness and welcome to all, as reflected in the book’s subtitle, The Democratic Language of Photography. In News Ways of Seeing, Scott lays out an environment for us to better understand how we can make images — I’ll call it “scribing light” — for visual storytelling.

Joel Meyerowitz is a renowned street photographer, long before the term became a familiar recognised genre (or subgenre of documentary photography). Once working as an art director, after an encounter with photographer Robert Frank, he quit his job and set out with a Pentax camera. Meyerowitz is known for his recording of street life in his native New York City, covering a span of several decades.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UaU2-4Rziq8

Meyerowitz features in the Masters of Photography online course. To complement this programme, there is a planned series of short books; How I Make Photographs is the first in the series.

This book is a collection of 20 short essays, accompanied by related images from Meyerowitz’s extensive catalogue. The chapters are easy to read and the images are used to good effect. The style of writing is that of a calm and kind conversation.

Meyerowitz shares his wisdom with the reader. He wants us to trust our passions and not to hesitate when making photographs. Not family album snaps but images that show the mystery and magic of people. It can be uncomfortable dealing with the chaos of the street, but if you show warmth and sympathy, you can reflect that in your images; yet resilience helps. Keep a sense of awe and keep your eyes open. Anticipate the moment—through practice. Make portraits through relationships. Let your images tell a story. See the visual humour of daily life. Look for the details of gestures. Challenge your inventiveness. Find a lens that suits your personality—but wide is better. Pay attention to composition (get your subject off centre). If a project excites you, go into it with an open heart and lots of energy. Reflect on your style and what you’re subconsciously been drawn to and make something of it. Give your work form and meaning.

The book took me less than two hours to finish. Indeed, one can see a purpose of this book as providing a taster of more insightful learning from the full Masters of Photography course. And that is fine, because this small but well formed book is a delight to read and be inspired by. How I Make Photographs can be a pick-me-up to remind you that documenting the everyday can be satisfying and a valuable element of discovering yourself and the world around you.

Great Thinkers is a compilation of 60 short essays -- about 1,500 to 3,000 words each -- published by The School of Life, which dedicates itself to “developing emotional intelligence through the help of culture”. It describes the book as a volume of some of the most important ideas of Eastern and Western culture, drawn from the works of philosophers, political theorists, sociologists, artists, and novelists “whom we believe have the most to offer us today”.

The individual essays are well written and easy to read. They provide the essential lessons through each concise biography.

For the individuals that you may already recognise and/or have studied as a youth, there are refreshing insights. For example, students of the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche are familiar with his maxim, “God is dead”, but did you know that he hated alcohol for the same reason that he scorned Christianity -- because both numb pain and sap us of the will to act for what we really want?

However, there are frequent references to characters’ sex lives and preferences, which many times seemed superfluous. This dimension might be better served in another book on its own?

Another criticism is the dearth of women. The first female great thinker appears over halfway in (p. 265), Margaret Mead. (I concede the relevance of her sexual history.)

And while there are illuminating perspectives of Eastern philosophy, Western culture and capitalism prevail. That can be grand; this is just to point out the book’s orientation.

The School of Life wants you to go to great thinkers to contemplate and consider how better to handle the dilemmas, joys, and griefs of daily life. It very much has a classical not romantic view of life, and the selections in Great Thinkers reflect that.

Perhaps the climax (!) of this view of life is encapsulated in the essay about Marcel Proust, which provides an interesting argument of art for the meaning of life:

“It’s to get us to look at the world, our world, with some of the same generosity as an artist, which would mean taking pleasure in simple things -- like water, the sky or a shaft of light on a roughly plastered wall.”

In other words, whatever provokes a stream of memories that provides hope and gratitude.

Released in hardcover in August 2018 and now available in paperback, The Colour of Time, by historian Dan Jones and artist Marina Amaral, is a collection of 200 colourised photographs taken between 1850 and 1960. With accompanying extended captions, this is a visually rewarding overview of personalities and major moments in world history, from the Crimean War to the space age.

A Northern lens reveals interesting insights.

There is a statue of Queen Victoria in the grounds at the front of Belfast City Hall. While many may be familiar with seeing photographic images of her in her later life, in 1854 a series of portraits was commissioned by her husband, Prince Albert. Aged 35, Queen Victoria had already worn the crown for half her life. Of the image above (p. 19), the Queen noted in her diary that she “was very successfully photographed, but it took a long time”.

Built in Belfast, the RMS Titanic sank on her maiden voyage to New York City, on 14 April 1912. There were 1,316 passengers and nearly 1,000 crew; 705 survived. This image (p. 230) shows newsboy Ned Parfett selling the Evening News outside the London office of the White Star Line shipping company, which was cleared of negligence in two official inquiries. Parfett, as a British soldier, was killed in France in 1918.

The Battle of the Somme was a five-month clash along a 24km front. On the first day, 1 July 1916, the British Army lost nearly 60,000 men. The 36th (Ulster) Division was the only division of the British corps to achieve the objectives of the opening day; it captured a long section of the German front. Shells tore the woods of the Somme Valley to ribbons, which this image shows (p. 254). By the end of this battle, some 600,000 were killed or wounded on the Allied side, including 5,500 from the Ulster Division.

A rebellion for Irish independence also took place in 1916. After the First World War, the Irish Repubican Army found guerilla battles with the British Army, the Royal Irish Constabulary, and other auxiliaries. This ended with the 1921 Anglo-Irish Treaty. Michael Collins, a key architect of the treaty, took on the military command of the new Irish Free State, which is shown in this image (p. 280). He was assassinated 15 days after this photo was taken.

During the Second World War, Hitler used air assaults, which targeted civilian and industrial locations in London, Hull, Liverpool, and Glasgow. It is remiss of the authors not to cite Belfast, where 1,000 were killed by Blitz raids. This image (p. 359) is a staged photograph, to emphasise the plight of children during the bombing campaign.

We have become familiar with the annual Christmas message delivered by Queen Elizabeth II. This image (p. 410) shows her first Christmas broadcast, by radio on 25 December 1952, from the Sandringham estate in Norfolk. This tradition began by her grandfather George V, in 1932.

In February 1953, violent storms in the North Sea caused flooding in the Netherlands, Belgium, and the United Kingdom. During the weekend of 31 January to 1 February, sea levels rose by as much as 5.6m, causing widespread damage. An estimated 30,000 animals were killed by the flooding, which this image depicts (p. 414). More than 2,500 people died, including 133 passengers and crew of the Princess Victoria car ferry, which sank off Northern Ireland in the North Channel. The wreckage lies five miles from the Copeland Islands.

The European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) was a supranational economic treaty created in the aftermath of the Second World War. This 1957 image (p. 418) shows a reception in Luxembourg being addressed by René Mayer, a senior ECSC official. The ECSC was the precursor to the European Economic Community and, in turn, the European Union.

This selection of colourised images from world history shows how local and global events are interdependent -- we affect and are affected by movements of history. This set represents epochs of colonial empire, rebellion, world wars, natural catastrophes, and international cooperation. What images will capture the essence of our future history, say, of man-made disasters and retrenchment?

Originally published at Mr Ulster: mrulster.com/2019/05/27/book-review-the-colour-of-time-dan-jones-marina-amaral/