A digital journalist: Innovation ideas and entrepreneurial digital media concepts

Pam Maples, the director of innovation for the Stanford Knight Fellowship, has written up a perspective on the new focus of the Knight Fellowship at Stanford.

You can find the article here.

A list of resources was recently mentioned on a twitter account that might be of interest to entrepreneurial journalists, particularly those seeking funding for ideas.

You can check it out here from the Knight Challenge team.

When you starting up a business, you are asking a long list of questions.

Here are a few questions that I heard during this year that venture capitalists often put to those asking for money. They are also good questions for entrepreneurs can ask themselves first as they work on their big idea.

“Do you have a defensible technology?”

Variation is “What are you going to do when the big boys come to town?”

“Is this a good business?”

Variation is “Will it continue to be a good business?”

“Will the problem become worse over time?”

Variation is “Will this problem fade away?”

And because I collect questions, here is an interesting set of ten questions that one blogger suggests any entrepreneur ask themselves.

My favorite of those questions? “If you could get one solid hour of advice from a guru you respect, what would you discuss and what would be the goal of the meeting?” This question forces you to think of what you would ask…and may make you think of who can answer those questions for free.

Addition: I was reading The Spectator magazine where a columnist talked about how people behind start-ups always talk about how there is a gap in the market. The columnist, Rory Sutherland said that he says he has this “simple riposte”: “Yes, but is there a market in the gap?”

One of the fellows quoted Henry Luce.  Could this quote from long ago apply to journalism today?

“Journalism is the art of collecting varying kinds of information (commonly called “news”) which a few people possess and of transmitting it to a much larger number of people who are supposed to desire to share it.”  Henry Luce

This fellow, Gabriel Sama, had an interesting thought…that the best publications could become adjectives:

Wired-like

Salonesque

National-Geographical

(with one other fellow suggesting HuffingtonPostal as describing a sort of attention grabbing presentation)

Sama said that newsrooms could define themselves, help create that adjective, by asking these four questions:

• What we do
• Who we serve
• How we do it
• When we do it

Interesting thoughts from one of the Knight Fellows finishing off an intense year.

I was reading a Wall Street Journal article about Peter Buffett…yes, the son of Warren Buffett.

The article talked about how the father gave Peter “enough to do anything, but not enough to do nothing.”

What did Peter (a Stanford student btw) do with his father’s money? He bought “time.” There is more to the story but I thought that was one of the qualities of the Knight Fellowship. It is buying time to do something new and different with your life.

Many journalists think they specialize in communication but I know that I didn’t appreciate the nuances of making in person presentations. One of the professors here at Stanford, JD Schramm, focuses on teaching that topic along with strategic communications at the Graduate School of Business.

I was just reviewing my notes from his class and thought I should share some of his insights.  He says effective communicators do two things:

connect

stick

He shared with his class six key elements to help you make that connection and make your ideas memorable:

• Consider the unexpected (which means plan to do something the audience might not expect)
• Ask What’s In It For You
• Establish common ground
• Parachute in…don’t pre-amble
• Choose first words with care
• Develop vivid analogies

His thinking is shaped in part by the books The Exceptional Presenter by Timothy Koegel and The Guide to Presentations by Mary Munter and Lynn Russell, The Everyday Writer by Andrea Lunsford, Slide:ology: The Art and Science of Creating Great Presentations by Nancy Duarte.

Having seen a presentation by someone from the company that Duarte runs, I can recommend that last resource.

Here are a few other presentation resources that I’ve had recommended to me that can be found on the Stanford ecorner website.

How to make a good pitch

Another perspective on how to make a good pitch

The importance of a good presentation

Paul Radu, one of the Knight Fellows and a noted international investigative reporter, has announced the new website that he has set up to share information and ideas between investigative reporters.

You can check out his Investigative Dashboard here. This is an early version of the concept and will grow as more and more people contribute resources and ideas.

I hope you find this as interesting as many of the other Knight Fellows did.

One of the themes that has come up time and again during my year here at Stanford has been the topic of social capital. It was a phrase I had only the vague awareness of when I arrived but now have been involved in discussions on it in a number of classes. In one class the instructor challenged us to think about what it meant to social media. With that thought in mind, I wrote down what I had learned and discussed, as much to help me crystalize my notes and understanding as to finish a classroom assignment.

How does this relate to journalism? In many respects it is at the heart of journalism for it speaks to the conversations and connections that we are part of, the trust and sense of community that we can champion.

Here are the rather long thoughts posed in a series of questions.

What is Social Capital?
Social capital is a phrase one can often hear today being used by a range of disciplines and for a number of purposes. The very flexibility of the term is both an obstacle and an opportunity. An obstacle to understanding since it lacks the precision that scientists often like to attach to an idea but an opportunity in that it offers a flexible concept to consider in our constantly changing world, particularly in this new age of rapidly evolving social media and virtual communities.

Beyond the very definition of the words, there are other questions. Where can it be found, how does it work, who has it, and of course, does it matter? I believe it matters very much to anyone who is trying to get something done, for social capital is a concept that should be discussed and debated as we move into a world of increasingly complex problems requiring multi-disciplinary and cross border collaboration.

I also believe that just by having a discussion about the very existence of social capital and the definition of it, (Is it glue that holds things together, or is it, as one academic paper proposed, “A multi-dimensional construct usually applied to describe communities and the relations among people who live there”?) we will enrich our community and support the qualities needed for democracy to succeed.

What I have found is that even here at Stanford there are many definitions because there are many people in many disciplines using it with each of their different purposes and agendas creating their own specific meaning for each of the words.

We can begin with the word “capital,” which is familiar to any business school or economics student. “Capital” invokes a very specific idea, often that of cold hard cash. In the broadest and simplest definition, financial capital is an economic asset, a resource, like a factory’s equipment, that can be used in pursuit of goals. By extension of that concept, there are other forms of capital that can also be used to pursue specific achievements such as human capital, the brains and the hands available to do work and natural capital, the water, trees and minerals ready to be used.

And then there is social capital. The debate begins regarding what it is and how it manifests itself, moving on to how it is created and even how it is “spent” for unlike cutting down a tree, which disappears or is converted into cash once the wood is taken to the mill to be made into furniture, with social capital, some think that when you aggressively “use” it, you might actually see it grow. My favorite definition so far and one worth taking a moment on is this one from the writer Paul Bullen:

“Social capital is the raw material of Civil society. It is created from the myriad of everyday interactions between people. It is not located within the individual person or within the social structure, but in the space between people. It is not the property of the organization, the market or the state, though all can engage in its production.
Social capital is a “bottom-up” phenomenon. It originates with people forming social connections and networks based on principles of trust, mutual reciprocity and norms of action.” Paul Bullen

I grant you that the above is long and fairly dense but worth “unpacking” as so many of the professors here at Stanford like to say. Bullen uses social capital as a term not unlike a physical asset, something that sounds more substantial than a soft sounding phrase like “social fabric”. He argues it is something that is constantly created not by people but by their conversations and exchanges with others. Social capital thus is not something a person can own and carry with them to another town, but instead is one way to represent the relationships of that person. The point is that unlike other assets where value can be transferred, social capital is not “owned” by any group but all types of formal and informal social activities play an important role in helping to create it.

Social capital, as Bullen defines it, is not something that can be mandated by a leader. Instead, it depends on the creation of trust between people, the sense that you can believe another person and that they will do what they said they will do. Such trust between people, when widespread, creates a sense of reciprocity, the simple idea that you do something good for others, perhaps not even people you know, with the idea of that good will be shared and repeated and might even return to you in some undefined way and future day.

Who created and defined the term Social Capital?
The sociologist Pierre Bourdieu is often given credit for starting the debate about what is “social capital”. He looked at a wide range of capital, economic, cultural and social capital with an eye to how they interact. Some of this work, in the shortest definition, looked how the rich get richer by their access to social capital.
Taking a look at very different communities, sociologist James Coleman explored how those who are not rich but with high social capital can have a better outcome, a look at social capital that sees how relationships are resources.

Harvard professor Robert Putnam is probably the best-known writer on this topic. He looked at what he considers to be a crisis in civic engagement through an examination of the complex mix of networks, norms and trust that have been changing in America. His work raised questions about the role of media (particularly TV as an influence on people staying home) and other forces that he believes has resulted in people being more isolated from each other than in past decades of America’s democracy. He also raised an interesting paradox that strong interpersonal ties, for example, those with your closest family, can weaken the larger family of society. He was interested in what he sees as weak ties that are created by memberships or association with secondary groups. He thought that something as simple as a bowling team, (the source of the title of his best known book “Bowling Alone”) creates one level of community, one that can fuel other conversations and shared actions.

There are critics that say that America was not becoming less social but changing the type of interactions we are having with each other. The explosion of social media since the book came out points to a new way for people to connect with and care about each other. The term “virtual communities”, coined by Stanford instructor Howard Rheingold speaks to how these online conversations have created very real communities for those involved.

Discussions about social capital in this new digital environment bring up interesting questions about how communities will work in the future. Students in Stanford Instructor Howard Rheingold have explored this topic and with his help identified six important concepts that on line or in person define social capital:

• Participation in networks (a capacity to create new relationships/networks)
• Reciprocity (people care for each other)
• Trust (you can take risks and assume that the others mean you no harm)
• Social norms (you can expect others to behave a certain acceptable way)
• The commons (shared resources owned or supported by all)
• Pro-activity (willing engagement and activity)

When talking through each of these, the students (I was one) realized that it described the Stanford University campus in the best possible way, a real world place where you where encouraged to participate in many different networks, from the classroom to the larger campus, that good works would not just be for your own benefit but would help the larger academic community, that you could generally trust others to do as they say, that the social norms on campus meant you could sleep in the library and walk the streets in relative safety, that overall, people were respectfully using common resources like the library and not to belabor the value of the Stanford environment, that this was a community comprised of proactive future oriented people. That said, the physical interactions of Stanford are increasingly being replaced by virtual ones, the community has moved out of the red tiled buildings and now often takes place on the MacBook Pro computers that many students use.
In either case, in person or online, this discussion by the students in Rheingold’s class confirmed the incredible social capital generating capacity of the Stanford campus and how a community rich in social capital confers on its participants many different benefits.

What is the value of social capital?
Those benefits or the value of social capital in the case of Stanford students are readily apparent to even casual visitors to the campus. The sense of possibilities and progress here is why so many people come from around the world to visit Silicon Valley and Stanford, to see in person what makes this place so special.

Certainly there are physical and intellectual resources concentrated in this area but one could argue that other regions could duplicate the buildings and even the number of master students and still not achieve the disproportional impact this small region has the world. The high level of social connectedness, at least in a business sense, the movement of people from one company to another and the many mix and mingle opportunities from conferences to chance meetings at Buck’s (a Silicon Valley breakfast place frequented by some in the venture capital community), creates many small networks that work together to bring people, ideas and money together.

There is particular interest from business leaders who come to Silicon Valley trying to see if they can understand social capital as a way to drive strategy in social media consumer interactions but also come away recognizing that creation of social capital inside their organization can have long term implications for improving productivity, collaboration, recognizing and engaging all of their stakeholders, and building valuable expertise networks.

The success of Silicon Valley is one reason why a growing number of people in academic and policy circles believe that understanding social capital can explain why development/growth and collective action take place in some places and not in others.

Some of the greatest interest in this topic is being expressed by those involved in the creation of and sustaining of democracies. The very essence of a democracy is based on people trusting others that they have never met in person to act on their behalf. This civic order, that an efficient government comes out the community with a density of social interactions and associations, is something that Robert Putnam has identified:

“The historical record strongly suggests that the successful communities became rich because they were civic, not the other way round. The social capital embodied in norms and networks of civic engagement seems to be a precondition for economic development as well as for effective government. Civics matters.” Robert Putnam

What happens if there is a lack of or decline in Social Capital?
One way to establish the existence and value of an object or concept is to remove it from the environment and see what changes. In areas where there are low levels of trust, where people are not willing to help others and civic cooperation is almost non-existent, one could point to this as a decline in social capital. This type of environment is recognizable by just walking down the street. There can be a lack of community services, damage to public property and a sense that even the most basic rules not being respected or enforced. A community where social capital is low can also be seen as having little public discourse on issues of importance. Instead, people have social interactions with a limited family circle, isolated and not spending time in public spaces.

This is a challenge that the US government is facing in certain regions. In setting up local governments and services in emerging states, the officials in charge of reconstruction apparently find themselves focusing on building social capital as much as building bridges and schools. When representatives of the US government surveyed some communities, one indicator of how long it will take to rebuild the economy and civic structure was the finding that people felt that it was necessary to be cautious when dealing with other, that they could not trust their neighbors.

What does this all have to do with social media and the social data revolution?
Patterns of participation and connection have changed in a fundamental way. Your ability to give and get attention, become a participant and make contributions have moved from the town hall and the corner post office to anywhere you carry a mobile phone or have a connected computer.

The physical boundaries of those you can create social capital with have been changed, as your voice carries farther but beyond changing definitions of personal geography, there has been a change in the way people perceive and interact with society’s many hierarchies. As most social media use open systems, there is less traditional direct control of the conversation or barriers in preventing people of different social, economic, religious, and political backgrounds from having conversations. These conversations and exposure to people who are different may be making people more tolerant but it raises the question of if it is improving trust between people. However, as we are seeing on a daily basis, all of these social media opportunities create more opportunities for people to make calls for action and in turn create opportunities to share a common concern and take action even if those involved never meet in person.

How can you build Social Capital?
There are those who believe horizontally organized clubs and associations are strong mechanisms for generating social capital. These organizations help create shared norms and values which in turn can support micro trust between individuals and macro trust between organizations. Sociologist Eva Cox has been an advocate of this technique of building meaningful interactions between individuals saying:

“Learning some of the rough and tumble of group processes… has the advantages of connecting us with others. We gossip, relate and create the warmth that comes from trusting.” Eva Cox

With this vision in mind, some police departments hold community meetings in neighborhoods with the idea of hearing the concerns of the community but also starting conversations between neighbors. This seed can then become a block party that can lead to other conversations on the street corner, leading to shared concerns and over time, greater trust and the sense of watching out for each other, a development that many feel is the best tool available to most neighborhoods in fighting many crimes.

There are others who believe that social capital can be created or at least encouraged through educational efforts, not so much classes in how to create a civil society, as through the process of bringing people together to learn and share.

How can you measure Social Capital?
If social capital is created through hundreds of hourly interactions, thousands of neighborhood conversations each day and millions of relationships and interactions of associations and organizations every week, the challenge of measuring social capital is considerable. Surveys and first hand observations can document some of conversations, relationships, and memberships to see how engaged people are with each other and their institutions. Putnam has been particularly effective in marshalling numbers that point to declining civic engagement.

The emergence of sophisticated social data media tools can now help to measure new interactions and help us see what up to now might have been hidden patterns. Finding those links, however, is only part of the challenge. A full examination of these connections could require a careful review of how many, how far they reach, how long they have existed and how strong they are.

One value of this data is that a careful examination of it can point to those who serve as brokers or bridges in bringing together different communities or individuals. These influencers will be much sought after by those who want to sway the connections this person or association and thus much of the future research into measuring social capital may be done with an eye to how the connections and areas of trust can be used for commercial purposes.

One other value of this social media data is that it can also point to those who are isolated and identify why they are not part of an on line community, be it a lack of time, resources, or even broadband connectivity. The larger rapidly expanding world of social data does not just speak to twitter accounts or Facebook activity but valuable insights can be made gathering information about a community’s crime rate (particularly corruption), voter registration, church attendance, PTA membership, number of registered cars, and any other number of data points about people’s movements and purchasing patterns. As much of this “off line” data is rapidly moving on line and being made accessible, we can expect ways to see a much more complete picture of the interactions in a community.

This increasing amount of data will enrich the conversation about who has social capital and how it is used. As sociologist Eva Cox once explained, being able to measure this concept has a value in helping a community make decisions:

“Social capital is…appropriate because it can be measured and quantified so we can distribute its benefits and avoid its losses.” Eva Cox

Can Social Capital be misused?
In the most extreme example, there are many that believe that Hitler used a variation of some of the themes of social capital to build the Nazi regime. The Mafia depends on some versions of social capital to function. It has distorted set of social norms, a level of internal trust and other qualities one typically associates with any other association or small community. It could even be that some aspects of social capital are the causes of wars. One group of researchers have found that disorganized families of primates in the jungle are not a threat to neighboring primate families but once a family has a group of males that are related, a sort of “association” that shares communication and trust along with time to spend in activities beyond essential survival, these male primates can become a threat to others.

The glass ceiling is an example of males creating an association, the old boys network, which can be seen to be using their social capital in pursuit of a unified goal, one of inhibiting the progress of others not like them.

What long-term benefits can Social Capital have?
When one reads the works of those who advocate social capital, the benefits seem almost endless. There are those who say it can have direct and positive health benefits for those who have more social capital vs. those who do not. People with high social capital can find jobs more quickly. Neighborhoods with strong social capital have lower crime and better schools. Communities that are seen as having widely distributed social capital often are attributed as having more efficient and responsive government and even more altruism and philanthropy, which in turn is an ingredient in supporting some of the associations and activities that can create more social capital.

While I cannot imagine that social capital is a cure all for all that is wrong with society, a conversation about the definitions of social capital, the value of the concept and the ways that it can be created and distributed is worth engaging in. Our communities face problems that are increasingly complex and interconnected with the challenges faced by others. To solve these problems will involve proactive participation by as many of the stakeholders as possible, the capacity to create new relationships, committed efforts to grow trust along with the sense that people care for each other and respect for shared resources.

Those communities, virtual or in person, that commit to encouraging those qualities will find that they are building social capital one conversation at a time as the individuals involved begin to know each other better, care about each other more, and act with an eye to the future.

There are many distinguished journalists in next year’s fellowship but I have a particular interest in one of them.

Her name is Di Pinheiro , the Editions Coordinator for The Wall Street Journal Americas, New York. She will be doing a very interesting project to “create an online platform where Latinos can affect news coverage through participatory journalism.”

As a colleague in News Corp, I can say that I’m very proud of my company supporting back to back Knight Fellows and want to thank all of the media companies that have supported their fellows this year and next.

I believe it is very important for media companies to have ambassadors to the Stanford community and the Silicon Valley because there are so many important initiatives and ideas bubbling up here every day. The Knight Fellows and other journalists working in the Bay Area can act as a listening post in this high tech capital of the world so that the larger journalism community can understand the technology and the trends that will change their world.

This weekend many of the Knight Fellows met at Point Reyes to share one of the last weekends before our fellowship ends. We were to share good conversation and great food created by one of the fellows, Teru Kuwayama. He was a master chef creating plate after plate of delicious combinations of noodles and vegetables.

His skill in the kitchen is topped by his skills with a camera. His work as a conflict photography is known to readers around the world. You can see a few of his pictures here.

He will be speaking at our last “backstory” tonight…which has been a weekly presentation by each fellow about how and why they came to Stanford. If you want to read a little about his philosophy and his thoughts about digital cameras, you can read an interview here.

Update: And to prove that we are not alone in being in awe of his many skills, Teru was just selected as a Ted Global Fellow. Here’s the press release announcing this honor.