Over the past week we’ve been featuring a series of visualizations that examine how media makers can work with various layers of networks to increase their impact. These layers include:

• Networked users
• Self-organized networks
• Institutional Networks
• Networks of Institutions

For our last visualization, we’re taking a closer look at how outlets can engage and collaborate with users at every stage of production, from conceptualization to distribution to evaluation.
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Hello again! We’re on the third layer of our Four Layers of Networks taken from our book Beyond The Echo Chamber where we are not only defining, but visualizing how media makers can interact with each of these networked layers for maximum impact. So far we’ve described and visualized the first two layers:

• Networked users: See Monday’s post.
• Self-organized networks: See Tuesday’s post.

The next two layers move from ad hoc networks to more durable and deliberately organized networks.

• Institutional Networks
• Networks of Institutions

Today, we zero in on “Institutional Networks.

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As we noted yesterday, we’re proud and excited to be releasing a series of visualizations that bring to life our theory of the “Four Layers of Networks” that journalists and media organizations must strategically integrate into their planning for maximum impact.

Those four layers are:

• Networked users
• Self-organized networks
• Institutional Networks
• Networks of Institutions

Today, we tackle “Networked Users.”
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Neiman Journalism Lab has a great post this a.m. in reaction to a new Google Lab release: a Google News timeline view,:

which gives users the ability to see and scroll through headlines, photos and news excerpts by day/week/month/year. The sources of this data can also be customized to include not just traditional news sources but also Wikipedia, sports scores, blogs, etc. It’s a fascinating way of interpreting the news — not something that is likely going to replace a regular old Google News headline view, but an additional way of looking at things.

One question kept nagging at me as I was looking at this latest Google effort at delivering the news, and that was: Why couldn’t a news organization have done this? (I’m not the only one to wonder this). Why not a newspaper, or even a collective like Associated Press (which seems to prefer threats to creativity)? Isn’t delivering the news in creative and interesting ways that appeal to readers what we are supposed to be doing?”

I had the EXACT SAME REACTION when I saw the Google Timeline yesterday. Progressive media peeps–it’s time to put the creativity hat on. So I have a proposal, something I’ve been thinking about for a while.

I think we should do a multimedia timeline of our collective economic coverage over the past 8 years–maybe focused on a single issue or two (i.e. predatory lending, Wall Street regulation) and input coverage from video, text, audio, blogs, reports, etc. from key progressive media sources. I think this effort could do a couple things:
a) Everyone keeps asking where the financial press was during this economic crisis. Well, the progressive media has been reporting furiously on the economic meltdown for years. Let’s show it. Let’s prove that what the “lefty” press was reporting and predicting came true.
b) We’re wondering how to tell this very complex and sprawling story to our audiences in a way that makes sense of the past and sets the stage for future reporting. A visual, searchable component that connects the reporting together into a larger narrative and makes it comprehensive for our audiences is a critical informative tool.
c) The opportunity factors: There’s an opportunity to start playing/integrating new storytelling and journalism formats. (We need to start figuring it out soon). This is an opportunity to leverage and utilize individual content into a collective, larger story and the opportunity to reach a potentially larger audience. And this could be an opportunity to have our audience be part of the creative process. Can our audience crowdsource to research, identify the reporting to go in the timeline?

What do you think of this idea? What would you add or argue with?

The right wing built up a powerful echo chamber over the last few decades. In contrast, progressives have built dynamic networks of information and communication over the last few years.

For the past two years, several hundred left-leaning bloggers, political reporters, magazine writers, policy wonks and academics have talked stories and compared notes in an off-the-record online meeting space called JournoList.

Proof of a vast liberal media conspiracy?

Not at all, says Ezra Klein, the 24-year-old American Prospect blogging wunderkind who formed JournoList in February 2007. “Basically,” he says, “it’s just a list where journalists and policy wonks can discuss issues freely.”

But some of the journalists who participate in the online discussion say — off the record, of course — that it has been a great help in their work. On the record, The New Yorker’s Jeffrey Toobin acknowledged that a Talk of the Town piece — he won’t say which one — got its start in part via a conversation on JournoList. And JLister Eric Alterman, The Nation writer and CUNY professor, said he’s seen discussions that start on the list seep into the world beyond.

Oh my god–Toobin used a conversation he was involved in as the genesis for a news piece? Stop the presses! Liberal Media Conspiracy Alert!

Seriously folks, how do you think half of journalism, reporting and analysis occurs? From conversations, information sharing, bouncing ideas off each, arguments and more. J-list is great for all those things. It’s not an “echo chamber.” No one on this list serve is telling anyone what to write about. No one is planning out how talking points are going to be distributed and bombard the public from all angles.

The list serve is just a small, small example of how today’s media system works. It’s a network. There are private and public networks forming, connecting, dissolving, and reforming every day. Some are sustained, others serve their purpose and disappear. It’s part of the media ecology that we now live in for people to connect, share, and discuss. It’s not a conspiracy, it’s human nature.

In this case, J-List is a private conversation among as diverse a group you can get of political journalists, professors and bloggers. And if I find them too inside-the-beltway one day, I turn to my other networks: Facebook, feminist list servs, and Twitter to get other perspectives and ideas. Progressives have been much more quick to adapt and integrate these different online networks into their daily lives, making it seem far less sinister than others would perceive them.

Calderone, of course, hits up the right for their take on J-list and gets a quote from “Michael Goldfarb, a former McCain staffer and conservative blogger.”

“There is nothing comparable on the right. E-mail conversations among bloggers, journalists and experts on our side tend to be ad hoc,” Goldfarb said. “The JournoList thing always struck me as a little creepy.”

Creepy?? The right created, built, and implemented the very definition of a political echo chamber over the last few decades. That’s creepy. Maybe the fact that they don’t talk to one another and share ideas is one of the major reasons the GOP is in a state of collapse. Maybe they should try it out. These are smart people, surely they can figure out how to set up a google group list serve, right?