I just went to a meeting for the Austin Music Commission, and without pre-existing knowledge of the issues they discussed, I had a very hard time following the meeting. It’s the same for readers when they read an “episodic” news story.

There definitely needs to be more contextual information provided in news stories, and features like “The Giant Pool of Money” are invaluable, but how do we promote this work-intensive type of journalism?

While reading, a few obstacles to explanatory journalism occurred to me.

First, the biggest obstacle seems to be that there isn’t a truly acknowledged need for explanatory journalism. As Elise Hu recapped in her post, many journalists view providing context as extraneous, unnecessary work. This mentality needs to change.

Second, we need to evaluate which mediums work best for this in-depth journalism. As Patty noted, not all mediums are suitable. Even in a newspaper, there are space limitations.

This reminds me of something John Ross, the independent journalist and author of “Murdered by Capitalism,” said when he came to speak at UT. After 5 decades of reporting in Latin America, Ross said he had gathered a rich background in the area’s history and he would try to put his stories in this historical context, but they would end up much too long, and no editor would publish them. But without the bigger picture, no reader could truly understand the issue, he said.

So even if journalists recognize the need for explanatory journalism and take the initiative to do it, it’s possible they’ll be met with limitations both with the medium in which they are working and with their editor.

I agree with Jay Rosen’s argument that “In the normal hierarchy of journalistic achievement the most “basic” acts are reporting today’s news and providing other current information as with prices, weather reports and scores. We think of ‘analysis,’ ‘interpretation,’ and also ‘explanation’ as higher order acts. They come after the news has been reported, building upon a base of factual information laid down by prior accounts.” He makes a good point of the necessity of explanation.

I think that explanation should be appeared and that makes readers informed properly. Throughout my experience, whenever I read an unfamiliar content from news articles then I search that content via online and finally can get tons of information about it. If plenty of information would be provided it was easier to understand when I read the article at the first time.

However, as Rosen says just a few organizations would be in charge of developing background stories because they have lots of things to do in very little time for very little money. It would be obviously hard work for journalists but it would be worth. And I guess journalists who live in digitized era can be easier to research and get information than past journalists because they can access the internet and find out great sources from tons of websites.

That is context.

I cannot agree more to the importance of context. While reading an article, more often than not I find myself scouring the Internet—mostly Wikipedia—for articles or entries on a given subject. The online format of news stories and Twitter are great at bringing things to my attention, just not so much at always explaining these topics. I know OF THEM, just not necessarily ABOUT THEM.

The idea of addressing this issue is great. As some of my classmates pointed out above, for most people, news stories do not provide enough for them to have an opinion or fully understand what is going on. Convenience takes priority here, and as Donnie mentioned, it is much easier for someone to latch on to another’s opinion about a topic, simply because they do not feel like putting the time into researching it on their own.

I think it is obvious that as journalism students, we have a firm understanding of the importance of context. Now, we need to get that across to the readers. I believe that this change could have a great impact on news consumers, and ultimately, the future of news itself.

I have no doubt that the This American Life podcast on the mortgage crisis was one of the best pieces of explanatory journalism ever to be come across, but the method of delivery (Public radio/downloadable podcast), the length of the piece (1+ hour), and perhaps most damning, relative obscurity in the minds of the masses (MSM vs. Public radio) all diminish the ability for the context of the story to reach a level of desired concern/interest. The very things that make news productions such as this so beautiful to watch unfold are what brings doom to the greater good.

For example, the older I get and the more connected I find myself being, the sooner I discover content and information that most people otherwise either never come across or must wait for the sound byte version to be developed. It is depressing to come across a story such as the one from Giant Pool of Money and be practically unable to have a discussion with another human being on the subject because they have already been conditioned with the breaking news mentality.

“Why should I care?” will always be a question the consumer asks, but if every piece of news in the future must fit into a Twitter-like word limit to get the point across in the most time efficient way possible, I fear for the diminishing value of context in society.

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Sorry, I started rambling. Hope there is some good stuff in there!

This article got me thinking. Rosen is right in that journalists “get paid to produce ‘the news,’ not the big narratives that permit more people to understand that news.” However, the irony lies in that if people don’t receive the background information to understand that news, they will not be the consumers the news organizations are seeking.

When I read the news, I completely agree with the quote from American Life producer Alex Blumberg where he feels that he’s “always entering the story in the middle or often at the end.” However, news organizations fail in providing the necessary preliminary or background information to provide the foundation for people to understand the news stories or even explaining WHY the news stories are simply that, news.

The example and importance that “The Giant Pool of Money” is seen in the fact that it was easily the most downloaded episode and the response from users showed that by “creating that scaffolding of understanding in the users that future reports can attach to, [it can drive] demand for the updates that today are more easily delivered.”

In conclusion, if news organizations would provide more narratives of explanations, or explanatory journalism, then their consumers would be better informed, creating a higher demand for the news that the organizations are producing anyways.

As was stated in the readings, most news stories just assume that the reader is caught up with the topics they are discussing. Unfortunately, in print, you can usually only fit the latest news with maybe only one paragraph explaining why the new information is important and where it came from.

With the capabilities that the web has to offer, some news organizations have begun presenting all of their context online. In some cases, this is the beginning of a larger trend, but some news organizations still only present graphics and other special sections that are designed for the educated reader.

I think more news organizations should take an active approach to explaining news stories. It seems to be a method of news reporting that reporters claim to do, but in reality they only focus on the episodic stories the authors discuss.

If more news is explained to the audience, the readers could make better decisions and would be better citizens. A reader with no comprehension is essentially a non-reader and there’s no point in producing information that can’t be digested.

In Contextualizing Context, the idea of a site like ExplainThis.org is a great way to create a haven for this demand on explanatory journalism. People who crave it can go there, people who don’t won’t have to sit through all of the background. Another great example of this that they reference is This American Life (which I just subscribed too, I have been meaning to since I heard it in a friend’s car).

A good local example of putting the health care reform into context is the Statesman’s timeline (http://www.statesman.com/news/nation/timeline-for-health-care-provisions-to-take-effect-416925.html). Though it is not an in-depth explanatory article, it simply puts into context when various provisions will take place.

I think the problem with this model is that I am not sure it is filling a large need. We (journalists and journalism students) are intrested, engaged and have the time/desire to read a 15 page manifesto about climate change and its effect on the Malaysian biosphere (for example). My question is: who else would care? I realize how depressing this is too say about people in general but we, as a whole simply aren’t interested.

Also, the most used mediums of news used are not exactly compatable with long stories. They have a place in a newspaper but not on an iphone or my laptop. We like T.V. news and Internet news; I do not think that these two ideas are cohesive.

That being said, I love this idea for revamping the way a story is written, or even better, the way we think about news. It’s based on understanding, engaging, question asking and answering, all things occasionally lacking in comtemporary news. Bottom line: this is part of the answer to how to update news for the 21st century. Not the whole picture.