How journalism lost its culture of sharing

If you’ve worked in a technical role in news for long enough, you likely remember when the “show your work” spirit was everywhere. Newsroom nerds shared code on GitHub, swapped tips on social media and unfurled long blogs guiding others on how to get things done.

You might also have a vague sense that — like reaction GIFs, demotivational posters and that guy who sang “Chocolate Rain” — you’re seeing less of it these days.

Well, dear reader, we crunched the numbers, and your hunch is right. In fact, it’s probably worse than you think.

The data are clear: The open-source culture that defined an earlier era of online journalism has collapsed.

That's the key finding of a study that Scott Klein and I published today on OpenNews. We analyzed more than a decade of data, interviewed a dozen leaders in the field and then led a discussion about how to address the issue at the latest News Product Alliance conference.

The explanations we heard revealed the changes that have pushed even the most inventive organizations to retreat. Despite the journalism industry’s well-reported recession, it’s clearly about more than money. Organizations that flourished online have also walked away.

Together, we generated ideas that offer a hopeful path forward. Unlike many of the problems facing journalism, this one seems solvable.

Read all of our findings in the full post. The code and data used to produce this analysis are, of course, available on GitHub as open-source software.