• Vision
• Opportunity
• Impact
• Change

Changing Media to serve the Global, Human Interest.

Today, the internet and billions of mobile devices make media truly global for the first time. Media’s audience - the public - is now the world, and that reality brings new responsibilities and opportunities. Today, the most pressing human concerns are the transnational issues we share across race, religion and nationality. Our media must reflect that reality.

It is time for media to shift from putting all events through a national prism because doing so reinforces our differences, pushing us further away from collaboratively resolving the problems that we face. Instead, media must take the stance that it serves all humanity, and report in the human – rather than the national – interest.

Below are some of the aspects of 4GJ that must be implemented together to ensure a successful future for media.

A New Relationship With The Public

Media’s relationship with the audience will also change by taking on a humbler tone.  Media must maintain the voice of authority while relinquishing the stale tone of omniscience. Journalists are learning about the world around them, just like everyone else. Exploring the world and then sharing that knowledge with the audience – in a tone of humility - will improve media’s relationship with the public it serves, and make it more credible. It allows for an acknowledgment – by both the media and the public -- that stories evolve over time. These are subtle changes, but the posture taken by the media can set the tone for how humanity interacts with the world.

A New Definition Of Community

Humanity’s understanding of community is changing. Our geographic community reflects our physical existence, as it always has. But with technology, we also have new communities focusing on topics, or interests across borders, race, religion, language and even belief. It may be a community of cigar lovers or people who care about saving the whales. Or people whose cultural traditions revolve around hunting whales. People are finding new communities and simultaneously discovering that they are part of one human community.

New Ways Of Doing Business

New business models will emerge from and be driven by new global attitudes about community and by the new structure media adopts. The financial realities media faces today are real and serious. But the desire for quality journalism – and a kind that potentially serves a global audience - remains. Good journalism will drive new financial success. No matter what format or platform in which the public chooses to consume good information, they will want it. And they will pay for it.

More specifically, there are two things media organizations must be mindful of as they move forward weighing different business models.

First, people who create original content – branded media outlets with professional journalists as well as bloggers, filmmakers and anyone else who values and must cover the cost of generating that content – need to charge for it online, most likely by finding a balance between free and paid content, pay and ad models. Why shouldn’t we pay for at least parts of the professionally generated content that tells us what’s happening in the world and what it means? Second, the original content must legally remain the property of the organization (or individual) that created it; they should be the ones allowed to derive most of the revenue from its use. Aggregators and search engines cannot repurpose or copy that content and monetize it. But they can still monetize the limited content the original creator agrees to hand over for free. Generators of original content, search engines and aggregators must establish a new, mutually beneficial relationship.

Transforming The Media

Media can change – not just technologically – but by redesigning itself to reflect the world we now live in. Most critically, media can do that by shifting its perspective – reporting in the human interest, rather than the national interest. That shift will dramatically impact our collective future: A global population consuming media that underscores and reinforces our human interdependence will in time share a core belief structure regarding our interdependent world. Those changed beliefs will drive action – resulting in dramatically improved global human and government cooperation towards resolving our shared challenges. At that point individuals will act as global citizens, with the global community in mind, driving change.

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