Time To Engage

Abstract

This article explores De Correspondent as a specific example of slow journalism that aims to establish an alternative for quality journalism governed by the objectivity regime. It offers an analysis of the way the platform redefines journalism’s quality standards against the background of the tension between traditional modernistic claims to truth and competing postmodern ideas on the social construction of knowledge. Moreover, the article examines how these ideals are translated into journalistic texts. The article argues that both in its rhetoric and in its actual practice, the articles in De Correspondent deviate from the principles of quality journalism under the objectivity regime. They are structured around the mediating subjectivity of the journalists and are thus openly subjective. Yet, they also draw on empirical research and scientific knowledge. Moreover, they are transparent about the reporting process, which through their reflection becomes an integral part of the story itself. Thus, being transparent about their combination of different forms of knowledge, rooted in more traditional rational-positivistic inquiry as well as in personal experience and emotion, they try to reconcile the tension between the modernist and postmodernist claims to truth.

KEYWORDS:

• De Correspondent
• I-Pistemology
• mediating subjectivity
• objectivity regime
• post-industrial logic
• postmodern culture
• quality journalism
• Rob Wijnberg
• slow journalism

Introduction

Within eight days former editor-in-chief of NRC.Next Rob Wijnberg crowdfunded the necessary €1,000,000 to realize his idea of an innovative, online-only platform for quality journalism: De Correspondent (Van der Valk 2015a). Wijnberg’s plan was based on the idea that nowadays quality journalism is held hostage by increasing commercial pressures, temporal demands of around-the-clock coverage, and outdated journalistic values and practices. In his view this has led to hasty, superficial, formulaic and uncritical journalism that only focused on a limited selection of events that were out of the ordinary. According to Wijnberg, this has resulted in quality journalistic outlets squandering their fundamental role of showing and explaining what is happening in the world. Moreover, they are scaring away a younger generation of news consumers (Wijnberg 2013a).

With this criticism Wijnberg joins the ranks of several journalists and scholars who have reproached journalistic developments since roughly the 1990s for its growing commercial or tabloid logic. With obvious disappointment, they argue how even quality news media are increasingly being determined by scandal-oriented click bait, forms of “churnalism,” journalism of assertion, infotainment, and soundbite culture (Davies 2009; Franklin 2008; Sparks 2000; Williams 2010). Their disqualification of the current developments in journalism is rooted in their—implicit or explicit—adherence to the core values of the objectivity regime (Hackett and Zhao 1998), such as independence, factuality, impartiality, neutrality, and detachment. This set of norms has been the dominant professional framework and quality standard for a large part of the twentieth century and shaped the routines and textual forms of journalism accordingly (Broersma 2010a; Harbers 2014; Schudson 2001; Ward 2004).

Although he agrees with the diagnosis, Wijnberg’s critique is not so much a nostalgic lament for the crumbling professional standards revolving around objectivity (cf. Harbers 2014; Le Masurier 2015). On the contrary, he sees objectivity as part of the problems journalism is currently facing and as an important part of the explanation why the younger generation is “tuning out.”

Objectifying news makes it much harder to feel engaged with what the news is about. Removing the narrator from the story, and thus the one that can establish engagement with the world, means creating a distance between the public and the world. That is exactly why De Correspondent says goodbye to the traditional objectivity ideal. Not only because objectivity is to a certain extent always feigned (that the subjective choices and considerations that precede every story remain implicit, doesn’t mean they are not there), but first and foremost because De Correspondent wants to close that gap between public and world (and public and journalist). (Wijnberg 2013b)¹

Wijnberg envisions an alternative form of journalism that is more in touch with the cultural customs and technological possibilities of our current network society, shaped by postmodern culture (see Castells 1996; Bogaerts and Carpentier 2013).²

With his journalistic platform De Correspondent, Wijnberg proposes an alternative and antidote to the news coverage of established quality news media. The way Wijnberg has conceived his new medium as going against the emphasis on speed and immediacy that has become such an integral part of contemporary journalism clearly relates to a broader discourse and practice of “slow journalism” (Greenberg 2011; Le Masurier 2015)—a predicate that is often used by others to typify the start-up as well as by De Correspondent itself (Njotea 2013; De Correspondent 2013). Slow journalism has emerged in response to the increasing importance of “fast and instantaneous journalism and the concerns about the deleterious effects of speed” (Le Masurier 2015, 138). Le Masurier defines it as a form of journalism that devotes time to in-depth research and verification; draws on the tradition of storytelling; is transparent about its journalistic methods and procedures; does not strive to score off their competition; is focused on a specific community; and draws on the input of an active public. The journalistic conception of De Correspondent seems to fit quite well into this broad concept with its emphasis on quality over quantity and speed, societal relevance over current events, on context over bare facts, on participation over consumption, and on professional independence over commercial gain (Wijnberg 2013a, 2013b).

The principles of slow journalism can be seen as a particular response to journalism’s struggle with its transition from an industrial towards a post-industrial logic. This development entails the shift from a top-down, one-size-fits-all way of producing and distributing news towards an approach centering on a more bottom-up, collaborative, and personalized form of news coverage and dissemination. Yet, what is too often disregarded is that these changes also challenge the corresponding core values of journalism, revolving around objectivity (Broersma and Peters 2013; Singer 2010). Although the emphasis on storytelling and transparency might be seen as signs that indicate that slow journalism distances itself from the objectivity regime’s attempt to hide the fact that the representation of reality is rooted in the mediating subjectivity of the reporter (Wahl-Jorgensen 2013; Karlsson 2010), it has not been researched yet to what extent slow journalism can be seen as a challenge to the objectivity regime. It is therefore interesting to analyze an example of slow journalism like De Correspondent, which explicitly rejects objectivity as a professional ideal and instead embraces a more personal and engaged approach to the news.

Next to an exploration of De Correspondent as a particular type of slow journalism, which aims to establish an alternative for quality journalism governed by the objectivity regime, the article also hopes to act as a further invitation to examine to what extent slow journalism is redefining journalism’s traditional core values. By offering analysis of the journalistic accounts published in De Correspondent, it elucidates the way Wijnberg cum suis redefine journalism’s quality standards against the background of the tension between traditional modernistic claims to truth and competing postmodern ideas on the social construction of representation and knowledge.

For this purpose a textual analysis was performed on the 63 major “stories of the day” produced in 2014 by six regular correspondents (16 stories by Rutger Bregman, 15 stories by Maurits Martijn, 9 stories by Lennart Hofmann, 9 stories by Maite Vermeulen, 7 stories by Joris van Casteren, and 7 stories by Vera Mulder). In addition, I have mapped the genre labels of the articles, the use of hyperlinks, the number of readers’ comments, and the number of times journalists interact with their readers of all the articles that these six correspondents have written throughout 2014 (406 articles). These particular correspondents were chosen because they offer a representative cross-section of the range of content in De Correspondent: the more analytic and investigative form of journalism by Bregman and Martijn, the on-site reportage of Hofmann and Vermeulen, and a form of narrative journalism by Van Casteren and Mulder. In addition, to gain more insight into the way their newsroom and content flow is organized and structured, De Correspondent’s senior editor, Andreas Jonkers, was interviewed.

Based on this analysis, I argue that both in its rhetoric as in its actual journalism practice, De Correspondent indeed deviates from the principles of quality journalism under the objectivity regime. As I will outline below, De Correspondent tries to reconcile the tension between the modernist trust in the positivist nature of journalism’s basic reporting routines and the competing postmodern perspective on the socially constructed nature of representation and knowledge by combining different types of information that are the result of rational-positivistic inquiry as well as experiential and emotion-based forms of information.

Post-industrial Logic and Postmodern Culture

According to several critics and scholars, the growing commercialization of the media and the rise of online media outlets turned quality journalism into a crowd-pleaser and eroded the professional quality standards (Davies 2009; Franklin 2008; McNair 2013). This critique generally points to three intricately related causes for this deterioration. (1) In order to keep attracting a large audience, quality news media adopted the logic of the lowest common denominator (Biressi and Nunn 2008). As a result news coverage became more focused on topics such as lifestyle, human interest, and celebrity culture, which was packaged in a more sensational way. This pressure to keep appealing to the public was exacerbated by (2) the rise of online news and the growing “culture of connectivity” (Van Dijck 2013), which also contributed to this growing pressure on quality journalism. Not impeded by set publishing deadlines, online media could immediately publish the news and update it 24/7. Being the first with a certain news story put a strain on the factual accuracy and exhaustiveness of the coverage (Kovach and Rosenstiel 1999). Finally, (3) the possibilities to actively contribute to the news that social media offered also made the—already not that sharply delineated—difference between amateurs and professionals fuzzier (Singer 2003). Subsequently, the blurring of this distinction put a strain on dominant professional quality standards, which started to lose prominence.

The critics subscribing to this “narrative of decline” (McNair 2010) try to find a cure by looking for economic and technological solutions to this problem. Yet, as Broersma and Peters (2013) point out, this perspective on the developments of the quality news media fails to question whether the state of turmoil (quality) journalism is in, is rooted in the core values of the journalistic profession itself. It assumes a static and self-evident set of professional quality standards firmly rooted in the objectivity regime. From this perspective, the “traditional” is basically equated with the “natural” and thwarts a fruitful debate on evolving professional journalistic standards (Schudson 2013).

The changes in journalism’s media ecology, however, are so fundamental that its modernistic professional framework is being uprooted (Bogaerts and Carpentier 2013; Broersma and Peters 2013). Journalism is in the course of a transformation from an industrial production logic to a post-industrial logic, in which well-known news consumption rituals, such as reading the newspaper at breakfast, are quickly dissolving. Based on standardization and economies of scale, the industrial logic in journalism refers to a top-down dissemination of “a limited amount of identical information in a fixed order to a mass audience in an effective, attractive, relatively cheap and convenient way” (Broersma and Peters 2013, 4). This production logic was conducive to the rise of the objectivity regime and was simultaneously reinforced by it. The norms of providing the bare facts in a detached, unbiased, and neutral fashion basically meant filtering out the “mediating subjectivity” (Chalaby 1996) of the reporter and provided a successful framework to hierarchically enforce editorial uniformity (Broersma and Peters 2013; Harbers 2014; Schudson 2001).

The post-industrial logic revolves around a personalized and on-demand supply of news, which draws heavily on a more bottom-up participatory culture of liking and sharing of news content and commenting on or contributing to it (Broersma and Peters 2013; Deuze and Bardoel 2001; Jenkins 2006). Part of the reason why particularly established media are having a hard time adapting to this new logic is that they fail to acknowledge that not only the consumption patterns have changed, but also the way news is conceived of by the public (Broersma and Peters 2013; Deuze 2008).

An important factor in the transformation to a post-industrial logic that is seldom discussed is the rise of postmodern ideas about epistemology, knowledge production, and truth (Bogaerts and Carpentier 2013).The professional framework of journalism under the objectivity regime is rooted in a modernist faith in people’s ability to provide a truthful and coherent representation of reality (Bogaerts and Carpentier 2013; Zelizer 2004). Subsequently, this ability enabled people to overcome the problems society is facing (Welsch 2002). Yet, literary and philosophical postmodernism cast doubt on the influential epistemological assumption that a combination of rational inquiry and positivistic methods makes it possible to represent reality in a coherent and universally truthful manner. Any representation is inherently partial and ideologically infused (Welsch 2002). Such ideas were conducive to the rise of a postmodern society and culture, doubting progressivist ideas about the ability of “grand narratives” to explain the world in a coherent and encompassing way (Welsch 2002; Van Zoonen 2012). This emerging culture is typified by a decline in people’s trust in core institutions, such as parliament, universities, and banks, and their ability to safeguard or improve fundamental aspects of life, like individual freedom, labor, welfare, safety, and prosperity (Beck 1994).

For journalism this meant that the objectivity regime and its underlying assumptions lost their self-evidence and increasingly met with critique. Scholars have pointed to the untenable oppositions between fact and value, detachment and engagement, neutrality and commitment, public and private, reality and story, and between information and entertainment that are foundational to the regime’s truth claim. They question the validity of the distinction between hard and soft news, often used as synonyms for quality and popular (i.e. low-quality) journalism, which is also based on these oppositions (Conboy 2008; Van Zoonen 2012; McNair 2013).

Van Zoonen (2012) argues that new forms of personalized and experience-based journalism are gaining prominence and should not immediately be disqualified as lacking quality in the traditional sense. She coined the telling term “I-Pistemology” to refer to a journalism practice and culture in which personality and individuality play a pivotal role: “the self [has become] the source and arbiter of all truth” (56–57). Her analysis is indebted to research by well-known cultural sociologists Ulrich Beck and Anthony Giddens. They both argue that professionals, like politicians, scholars, and also journalists, are losing authority, because for every analysis, argument, or assessment they offer it is possible to find somebody else who states the opposite. As a result, the routines and methods of knowledge production are hollowed out (Beck 1994; Giddens 1994). This has not resulted in the rejection of such “modern” institutions altogether, but to what Beck (1994, 25, 29) calls the “self-opening of the monopoly on truth” or the “demonopolization of expertise.” With this he means that the traditional domains of knowledge production have become more pervasive and that the accepted forms in which knowledge is disseminated are complemented with new ones.

Beck emphasizes the opportunities of these developments rather than pointing to possible detriments. Whereas in modern society such fundamental doubts about the possibility of a unifying and monolithic understanding of the reality was always felt as a loss, he embraces the rejection of this idea as an opportunity—or liberation even—within the context of postmodern society and culture (Beck 1994; Welsch 2002). He envisions a shift in knowledge production in general towards a more diverse, modest, cautious, and open-ended process. His idea of demonopolization can explain the declining authority of the objectivity regime and the (re)emergence of a range of alternative forms of reporting that fundamentally challenge the modernist rhetoric of journalism (Bogaerts and Carpentier 2013; Broersma 2013).

Slow Journalism Between Tradition and Innovation

Although postmodern culture has eroded the self-evidence of journalism’s traditional professional standards, several scholars have pointed to the remaining centrality of a universalistic truth claim in the way journalism has acquired and maintains its position and authority within society at large (Broersma 2010b, 2010a; Zelizer 2004). Marcel Broersma (2010a) argues that journalism’s authority centers on its ability to convince its audience that they are able to represent reality in a truthful way. According to him, the rejection of the objectivity norm would mean confessing its inability to depict reality accurately, thereby refuting its own truth claim. He thus points to the inherent tension between journalism’s goal to provide information that is accepted as truthful by as many people as possible and the realization that it cannot escape the inherent subjectivity of the reporting process. This leaves contemporary journalism with a structural tension between competing conceptions of what quality journalism should look like (Bogaerts and Carpentier 2013).

In her nuanced attempt to delineate what slow journalism is about, Megan Le Masurier (2015, 148) asks herself whether slow journalism actually offers a solution to the felt need to reassess journalism practice or if it is “just elitist, ‘nostalgic modernism’ pining after a simpler slower existence?”—indeed reflecting this broader tension within contemporary journalism. In her answer she shows the complex relation forms of slow journalism have with their faster counterparts. Le Masurier points out how slow journalism adopts traditional and broad criteria, such as independence, in-depth research, proportional coverage, thorough analysis, and contextualization, which are also fundamental to the norms of objectivity (McNair 2013; Ward 2004). Yet, the fact that these criteria are operationalized as transparent, reflective, interactive, and compelling forms of reporting (Le Masurier 2015) suggests that slow journalism is geared towards forms of reporting that do not conceal the underlying aspects of the reporting process in order to maintain the illusion of objective truth. Taking De Correspondent as a case study, I will further explore this way of conceptualizing slow journalism and illustrate how slow journalism might be regarded as an attempt to move beyond the idea that the objectivity regime is journalism’s self-evident professional framework.

The Guiding Principles and Institutional Structure of De Correspondent

Wijnberg clearly presents his new journalistic platform as an alternative form of journalism in comparison to traditional quality journalistic outlets. De Correspondent is a journalistic platform without any advertisements (not including self-advertisements for the books some of their correspondents have written and which De Correspondent has published) to ensure journalistic independence. It is a commercial enterprise, but making a profit is not its primary aim. To make sure that profit maximization will never overhaul journalistic considerations as the driving force behind the platform, the profit distribution is capped at 5 percent of the gross revenue (Van der Valk 2015a). As their senior editor Andreas Jonkers mentioned, this freedom from such commercial pressures allows De Correspondent, for example, to largely ignore metrics about the popularity of articles as a criterion for what they publish and how they package a story.

What Wijnberg envisions is a journalism practice in which a reporter no longer only delivers a final product, which in its presentation is disconnected from the process of reporting. Instead, journalists should take their readers along on their attempt to make sense of the issue. This way Wijnberg aims to re-engage his readership by offering stories that capitalize on the reporter’s mediating subjectivity. Reporters are encouraged to write from their own personal fascination and motivation, in which they do not have to maintain a neutral perspective. Based on thorough reporting and in-depth background research, they ultimately choose sides in a certain matter or determine what the best point of view is. The authority of the accounts is thus inextricably bound to the individual behind it.

The journalists are expected to give their readers access to their train of thought leading up to the definitive story, including their potential puzzlement, frustration, fascination, or commitment. This way, reporters can be open about any problems they have with truth verification and about the troubles they have to interpret what they learn, observe, or experience. Moreover, the readership is envisioned as actively contributing and discussing the reporter’s depiction and analysis of the issue at hand. In short, Wijnberg aims to move away from presenting a finalized and monolithic representation of reality towards a way of reporting that is transparent about its constructional character and invites the reader to actively engage with the reporter’s inquiry into an issue (cf. Karlsson 2010; Singer 2010).

Wijnberg is quick to emphasize that this conception of journalism should not be equated with partisan reporting or with the “journalism of assertion” for that matter. Although subjectivity and personality is embraced, independent truth verification remains at the heart of De Correspondent’s journalism practice (Wijnberg 2013b). Wijnberg’s emphasis on the reverence for the truth shows once more how fundamental this claim is in legitimizing journalism (Zelizer 2004; Broersma 2010a, 2010b; Bogaerts and Carpentier 2013). Yet, by acknowledging the participatory culture and collective intelligence (Jenkins 2006), Wijnberg (2013b) tones down the universalistic connotation of “the truth” a notch and characterizes the current culture as “an era in which truth is no longer set in stone, but can be constantly updated. And subsequently contested in thousands of responses below the article.”

This is why Wijnberg deliberately chose an online-only platform—besides avoiding the large costs that accompany any form of print journalism. He saw the opportunities of an online platform as a much better way to highlight the individuality and personal approach of the correspondents and to facilitate the actively participating readership he envisioned. In addition, it also allowed for more and more advanced ways to create digital files of interlinked and multi-media stories (Van der Valk 2015a, 2015b; Wijnberg 2013a). As a result, De Correspondent has an interface that shows the daily newsfeed, displaying the selection of stories for that day, but the platform is also structured through the personalized interest of their readers, who follow their handpicked selection of correspondents. These correspondents each have a so-called “garden,” in which they write about a specific, but broad theme that relates to their expertise or fascination, such as “technology & surveillance,” “conflict & development,” “progress,” or more unconventional “extraordinary and extra-terrestrial life.” These gardens function as a sort of dossier, in which the correspondents can shed light on these themes from different angles, delve into a specific phenomenon or ongoing development or event to build up expertise and gain in-depth insight. In other words: the gardens create the conditions for in-depth issue-based journalism (Haas and Steiner 2006). In addition, it offers a space for other voices in the form of guest correspondents.

According to Jonkers, the platform publishes approximately four articles on every working day, two or three on Saturdays, and one or two every Sunday. This obviously relates to the much smaller size of the editorial staff, which makes it impossible to even come close to the amount of articles that newspapers publish. Jonkers stated that De Correspondent employs about 10 full-time journalists and has a larger and fluctuating network of part-time journalists and freelancers. But this publishing rhythm is also a deliberate choice. Jonkers disclosed that full-time correspondents are roughly expected to produce two larger “stories of the day” every month and preferably also two follow-ups on earlier pieces. This is clearly a big change of pace compared to daily newspaper journalism. It allows journalists to take their time to really delve into a story, to research it thoroughly, and to think about a fitting narrative form. This results in articles that are often substantially longer than average newspaper articles. The “stories of the day”—basically their most substantial and eye-catching stories that draw on and synthesize smaller stories about specific aspects or elements of an issue—that I have analyzed, for instance, have an average length of almost 2500 words.

How the Ideals Translate into Stories

To see how the correspondents shape the journalistic ideals of De Correspondent in their everyday practice the focus needs to be on their journalistic output. The analysis shows that what is common in the pieces of all the authors is their struggle to find a solid foundation for the truth claim of their accounts. They search for a way to present their stories without relapsing into a modernistic framework of providing finalized and monolithic representations of reality. Yet, they also stay clear from relativistic or solipsistic positions, in which any representation is only one possibility among many equally valid alternatives. I will analyze and illustrate this by discussing three aspects of the stories of the selected six correspondents: (1) the mediating subjectivity of the journalist, (2) factuality, and (3) transparency and reflection.

The Mediating Subjectivity of the Journalist

Contrary to the objectivity regime, factual information is not separated from the values and opinions of the reporter or from the level of experience and emotion (Chalaby 1998). In the accounts of De Correspondent these traditional oppositions are rejected and truthful information is not restricted to the “bare facts.” This is not to say that all articles are an even mix of reportage, opinion or commentary, and personal experience. Some articles are predominantly analytic, written in a discursive mode, whereas others are clearly descriptive, written in a narrative mode (cf. Broersma 2010a). Nevertheless, in all accounts it is clear that the consciousness of the correspondent is the organizing principle of the story. He or she operates overtly as “mediating subjectivity” between reality and the reader. De Correspondent thus clearly moves away from the way stories governed by the objectivity regime are presented—as a “unified text which conceals the editor’s intervention” (Bell, as quoted in Bogaerts and Carpentier 2013, 65). In no way do they hide that the representation of reality that is put forward is theirs, inherently influenced by their values, beliefs, impressions, and experiences. On the contrary, the correspondents employ several narrative techniques to signal to the readership that they are actively shaping the story.

The most basic way the correspondents do this is by using a first-person perspective in their stories instead of filtering out their presence in the text. It is a clear sign that the journalist has a role in the story. They exploit this technique to intervene in the story to explain the approach to the story, to share their impressions and experiences concerning a certain event or person, or to convey their thoughts on the matter at hand. It is a way for them to share their personal fascination or interest for a certain topic and explain to their readers why they think it is an important issue to focus on. Take the article by Vera Mulder (issue focus: society, behavior, and groups) on sexual intimidation of men. She starts out by describing how she was baffled by the machismo in the responses to an incident at her old high school where a female teacher sexually harassed a 16-year-old boy; the boy was generally characterized as a sissy. Her puzzlement about such responses and personal engagement sets off a broader inquiry into the sexual harassment of males and how it is viewed in society (Mulder 2014a).

At times the correspondents also relate their stories to their own personal experiences, which they share with their readers. This strategy enables them to elucidate abstract ideas or to convey their response to certain information or experiences. In his piece on the performative power of ideas in shaping society, Rutger Bregman (issue focus: progress) discusses Leon Festinger’s famous research that shows how hard it is to change peoples’ minds when it comes to their fundamental beliefs. To elucidate this mechanism he takes himself as an example:

Half a year ago I wrote a piece about why we should shorten the working week. I had found all sorts of supporting arguments … I had to think about that piece while I read about Festinger’s work. And particularly about the article I had come across at that time. The title read “Shorter Workweek May Not Increase Well-Being”. It was an article in The New York Times about a study from the Republic of Korea where they had shortened the working week by 10 percent, without increasing the happiness of people. When I googled some more I read in The Telegraph that working less could even be bad for people’s health … I immediately set off a few defense mechanisms … How certain were these research results exactly? Furthermore, I thought: ah well, those Koreans are total workaholics, they probably kept on working when they were off. And happiness, are we really able to measure it? Not really, right?

I did not study the research any further. I had already convinced myself it wasn’t relevant. (Bregman 2014a)

Next to their illustrative use, such personal elements make the journalist in question come across as more authentic; not just as a distant figure, but as an actual person. It therefore helps to build up a relation between the journalist in question and his or her readers.

This is reinforced by the writing style of the articles, in which the reader is regularly—explicitly or implicitly—addressed by the correspondent. Particularly the more analytic pieces by Rutger Bregman or Maurits Martijn make use of this strategy to make their readers part of their train of thoughts. They call out their readers by integrating short interjections in their stories, such as “Sounds plausible right?” (Bregman 2014a), “short question” (Bregman 2014b), or “Do you still remember?” (Martijn 2014a). In addition, in the way they set up their story and formulate their argument, it sometimes seems as if certain ideas are based on the input of their readers. When Martijn (issue focus: technology & surveillance) discusses the wiretapping policy of Obama he conveys that Obama has promised not to listen in on his allies unless there was “a compelling national security purpose.” When he returns to this particular statement to point out the broad way this can be interpreted he formulates it as follows: “And yes, a ‘compelling national security purpose’ obviously offers a lot of space for a broad interpretation of this ‘prohibition’ [to tap the phones of his political allies]” (Martijn 2014b). The authors deliberately employ such a conversational register to make the readers part of the way they set up their argument and draw their conclusions. This is also why both correspondents occasionally move from the first-person singular (“I”) to the first-person plural (“we”). The “we” refers to the correspondent and the readers together and suggests a shared perspective. By doing so, the correspondents implicate their readers in their implicit or explicit moral stand they take in the accounts.

The correspondents of the reportage pieces do not address the reader as often, but also try to involve their readers by providing them with a vicarious experience. Their on-site presence lies at the heart of their accounts. By detailed observations and in-depth interviews about the experiences of the people involved they try to depict concrete situations that shed light on an encompassing issue. On top of describing and explaining what is going on, they write in a way that aims to lend their senses to their readers and thus convey their impressions. When Maite Vermeulen (issue focus: conflict & development) examines how and why a large part of the humanitarian aid supplies that different humanitarian institutions distribute at different places all over the world comes from Dubai, she starts her account by sketching the environment:

A brand new patch of asphalt draws a straight line through the desert of the United Arab Emirates as far as the eye can see. The skyline of Dubai disappears in the rearview mirror; the long antennas of an infinite number of skyscrapers fade away in the dusty air. The sand has paled all colors. It isn’t summer yet, but the temperature outside moves close to 40 degrees [centigrade]. Nothing but low and gray vegetation, electricity cables and an occasional camel. (Vermeulen 2014)

Such accounts not only share information with the readership, but also aim to convey events and situations that are largely alien to the readership, such as the Papua New Guinean battle for independence and the Yezidi massacre by Islamic State, but also more mundane things like being part of a subculture of funfair attraction owners, on an emotional and experiential level (cf. Harbers 2014; Wahl-Jorgensen 2013; Zelizer 2007).

In both cases the correspondent acts as some sort of “witness-ambassador” who observes—and researches and analyzes in this case—on behalf of the readership. Muhlmann (2008, 21–22), who coined this term to characterize a type of reporting in which the journalist keeps on “reminding us, more or less implicitly, that they see in all our names, hence reminding us of the pact which binds them to ‘us’.”

Between Detached Fact and Lived Experience

The merging of factual information and commentary or personal experience is usually criticized as the deterioration of journalism, contributing to a “fact-free” democracy in which “truthiness,” i.e. truth based on a gut feeling rather than on well-researched factual information, dominates (Ettema 2009; Van Zoonen 2012). Although the journalists of De Correspondent challenge the God-like status of detached fact, they do not reject the concept of factuality altogether (cf. Zelizer 2004). They are well aware of the potential critique of only offering unfounded statements based solely on punditry or personal experience or shortsighted and purely emotionally driven commentary; Wijnberg’s discursive strategy to carve out a position within the field of quality journalism is partly built on the same reproach concerning the established media. It thus shows the split these journalists are in: they need to honor their constructivist reflexivity without abandoning the basic positivist principles of referentiality and vice versa. Their attempt to tackle this problem centers on the juxtaposition and merger of lived human experience—their own or that of their sources—and more abstract and encompassing quantified data and background information.

The critique of the superficiality and predictability of the choice of news topics as well as the coverage by the established media is both implicitly and explicitly voiced in the articles in De Correspondent. The following remark by Lennart Hofmann (issue focus: forgotten wars) in his reportage on the emancipatory effects of the participation of Kurdish women in the war against Islamic State exemplifies what all the correspondents aim for:

In western media women such as Selgan are often portrayed as glamorous Amazon horsewomen who fight fearlessly for the survival of their people. Hidden behind this stereotype is an entirely different reality. A reality in which women use their new prominent role in society to free them of the patriarchal yoke. (Hofmann 2014a)

Rutger Bregman especially makes no secret of his attempt to go beyond the common interpretations and explanations concerning broad social-political issues. He extends the critique on the press to the domain of politicians and policy-makers, constantly pointing out where they go wrong. What is striking is the way he cements his analyses and arguments, for he strongly relies on and emphasizes the necessity of sound empirical research to base policy on—implicitly criticizing “fact-free politics.” In his pieces he therefore strongly relies on scientific research and interviews mostly researchers for their expert perspective. In one of his articles about income inequality he introduces the research of Thomas Piketty as more or less the first one who sought to base his analysis of income inequality on sound empirical data.

Forty years later Piketty realized that no decent historical research into inequality had been conducted since 1953. The debate was based on an abundance of prejudices and a chronic absence of facts. Kuznets [a Nobel prize-winning economist] himself had even written that his theories consisted of “5 percent empirical information and 95 percent speculation.” (Bregman 2014c, italics added)

This emphasis on facts—in the sense of detached facts obtained following the standard scientific method adhering to the strict demands of reliability and validity—is exemplary for his stories. They are often set up as a way to debunk conventional wisdom, which, as Bregman then comes to show, lack a valid empirical basis. Moreover, he rhetorically presents his diverging take on the matter as quite obvious or even almost self-evident as long as the facts are taken into account. He also actively attempts to show that his alternative explanations are not only compelling from a left-oriented political position, but that they exceed conventional oppositions such as right versus left or conservative versus liberal. Bregman is the strongest representative of this reverence for a solid factual foundation, but the importance of first getting the facts straight underlies the stories of all the correspondents. All six journalists regularly draw on research and interview scholars and experts to cement their analyses, arguments or to contextualize their on-site observations and experiences.

Still, even the most analytical accounts in De Correspondent are never solely logical-abstract treatises or aloof contemplations. Such an abstract approach to reality on a macro-level is not considered to convey the entire picture. This comes to show that detached facts are considered important, but certainly not the only source of trustworthy knowledge. The correspondents also rely on lived experience. Firstly, they go to great lengths to carefully portray their sources. By giving them space to tell what happened and how it affected them and by describing their facial expressions while they do their story, they aim to convey the emotional impact of events, such as war, or the way they perceive reality. In that sense they bring cultures and events that are alien to a western public closer. As Karin Wahl-Jorgensen (2013) has shown, this “strategic ritual of emotionality” is not uncommon in quality journalism. By outsourcing the emotions to the people they talk to, this way of integrating the subjective level of the personal experience remains within bounds of the objectivity regime.

Many of the articles in De Correspondent go a step further though. The journalists also convey their own experience—which is directly related to their mediating subjectivity as organizing principle of their accounts. In an attempt to grasp the state of mind of George Orwell while he wrote 1984, Joris Van Casteren (2014a) traces Orwell’s steps to the Scottish island Jura, where he wrote most of this seminal novel. Such accounts clearly value a more experience-based inquiry, which can convey knowledge in a much more concrete and applied way. Illustrative for this approach is Maurits Martijn’s (2014c) story on the risks of public Wi-Fi networks. Instead of just analyzing the various risks, he asked a hacker to join him on a tour of several of Amsterdam’s cafés and terraces to learn how easy it is to hack the computers, smartphones, or whatever kinds of device using public Wi-Fi. Martijn himself is the first guinea pig and experiences first-hand how easy it is to be hacked. Consequently, he makes the unknown or abstract risk of being hacked almost tangible. Such an approach adds to his authority in these matters and enables him to put more weight behind his moral appeal to the readers to take better care of their online privacy in an age of increasing surveillance.

Towards a Transparent Reporting Practice

Arguably the most innovative aspect of De Correspondent is its attempt to be transparent in the way journalists do their research, reach their conclusions, and construct their stories. The correspondents do so in several ways. Firstly, they make clear on which information they base their accounts and when possible enable the readership to consult it by integrating a link to the source. On average every article contains about three links and the “stories of the day” contain even more than double that number. This way the readers can actually verify the information the correspondents use to construct their story or just out of curiosity delve further into the topic.

Furthermore, the “garden structure” of the platform enables journalists to keep their readers updated about their progress on a story or to follow up on the story after publishing it. The journalists clearly exploit this opportunity as approximately 45 percent of the stories of the six correspondents is devoted to what I will call “process pieces.” Such articles are labeled as “updates,” “notes,” “calls” (for input), and “suggestions.” In anticipation of a larger story, Lennart Hofmann, for instance, writes a daily “note,” which he uses as a sort of journalistic diary. This way he makes his readers part of his reporting process. Yet, this strategy is not restricted to such process pieces. One of the stories of the day by Maurits Martijn can be read as an encompassing follow-up on his older article on the risk of public Wi-Fi networks. The account starts off with a quick recap of the preceding story, but then Martijn pauses to seriously reflect on his own role:

I formulate it as “we”, but my role was rather limited. To prepare myself I had delved into technology and software the hacker would use, and during the story I kept on researching as well. That way I could grasp enough of the matter at hand to confidently write the story. But the hacker performed the actual fieldwork. I couldn’t do what he could. I could only sit and watch. (Martijn 2014d)

The rest of the story is basically a summary of his experiences at a course to enhance his knowledge and skills of digital network technology. The article therefore conveys interesting information about how digital networks operate and simultaneously also gives the readers insight in the way Martijn goes about his journalistic work.

Making the reflection on the reporting process part of the story is something all correspondents do—though some correspondents more frequently or elaborately than others. The first-person perspective the correspondents employ already highlights their active presence and implicitly draws the attention to the reporting process. In addition, they also draw attention to their journalism practice in a more explicit way. Their accounts are interlaced with short moments of reflection on their own conduct. This ranges from a subtle comparison between the conventional coverage of the mainstream quality media and their own way of approaching a story (Bregman 2014d), conveying how they approached or experienced an interview (Martijn 2014e; Mulder 2014b) or by emphasizing the on-site presence of the reporter (Vermeulen 2014; Van Casteren 2014b; 2014a; Hofmann 2014b). The reporters exploit this reflection generally as a way to reinforce their authority by making clear how thoroughly and independently they examine an issue. Subsequently, it adds weight to the status of the value judgments they make in their accounts and the conclusions they draw.

Conclusion

Clearly, slow journalism offers a fruitful perspective through which to examine De Correspondent. Not only does Wijnberg’s basic conception of journalism match the premises of slow journalism, but the actual journalism practice also lives up to these ideals. It would stand firm against the credo of “good,” “clean” and “fair,” which can be translated in terms of journalism as referring to careful research, nuanced and ethical coverage, and independent but morally engaged reporting (Le Masurier 2015). Yet, as Le Masurier acknowledges, this combination is not necessarily very innovative and has a long tradition in forms of quality journalism such as investigative reporting and long-form or narrative journalism.

What makes De Correspondent innovative is its explicit rejection of the objectivity regime as a suitable professional standard for our current digital and postmodern era. According to Wijnberg, this professional framework has become outmoded as it cannot adapt to a post-industrial production logic and as such fails to engage a new generation of news consumers (Wijnberg 2013a, 2013b; Broersma and Peters 2013). The alternative Wijnberg proposes is more in touch with the epistemological affordances of postmodern culture, yet does not accept a relativistic perspective on truth and knowledge. De Correspondent has traded in a top-down “Truth” for a work-in-progress aggregative truth with an overt moral grounding. The articles revolve around the mediating subjectivity of the journalist, who guides the readers through the relevant information and research, observes and experiences reality in lieu of the public, and implicates the reader in their moral judgments. On the one hand, the reporters show an unwavering faith in scientific empirical research, which they use to cement or contextualize their analyses, arguments, and experiences. Yet, they acknowledge the partiality of the information on this level and try to juxtapose it to or even fuse it to the more concrete level of human experience and emotion—either their own or that of their sources.

In their stories they are clearly aware of their subjective position, which manifests in the implicit and explicit reflection on their own position. The journalists of De Correspondent mainly use this reflection to be transparent about their reporting practice, thereby building their authority as well-informed and thorough professionals.

DISCLOSURE STATEMENT

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. All translations into English are the author’s.

2. In this article, I use the term “postmodern” to refer to changes with regard to ideas on epistemology and knowledge production. I am well aware that it is only one option and is closely related to notions such as “liquid modernity” and “reflexive modernization” (see Bauman 2000; Beck, Giddens, and Lash 1994).