Most of the dis­cus­sion of journalism’s future takes place around tech­no­logy. There’s very little reappraisal of how we act to present stor­ies and inform­a­tion. It struck me again read­ing Edward Tufte’s Envi­sion­ing Inform­a­tion. Tufte presents a piece by David Heller­stein from Harper’s in 1984, called “The Slow, Costly Death of Mrs K–.”

Heller­stein ana­lyses and com­ments on the med­ical bill of a dying woman, as she spends her last 26 days on an intens­ive care unit. Tufte rep­res­ents the piece graph­ic­ally as the actual bill with annota­tions. It’s an extremely effect­ive portrayal.

Tufte’s latest book — Beau­ti­ful Evid­ence — out­lines some of his thoughts on journ­al­ism as a sec­ond­ary mar­ket not in inform­a­tion, but in present­a­tion:

Evidence-based reports are repack­aged and mar­keted by bur­eau­cra­cies of sec­ond­ary present­a­tions: pub­lic rela­tions, advert­ising, pro­grams for pub­lic out­reach, school­book pub­lish­ing, journ­al­ism, and the vast gov­ern­ment Min­is­tries of Propaganda…

In the sausage-making, chop-shop pro­duc­tion of many sec­ond­ary and ter­tiary present­a­tions, absent are meth­ods that routinely help enforce the intel­lec­tual qual­ity and integ­rity in primary work: external review and final approval by con­tent experts, pro­fes­sional stand­ards of evid­ence, skep­tical intelligence.

Tufte sug­gests dump­ing the inter­me­di­ar­ies by hav­ing primary presenters pro­duce sec­ond­ary present­a­tions of their work.

Rede­fin­ing part of journ­al­ism as a facil­it­a­tion pro­cess in sec­ond­ary com­mu­nic­a­tion present­a­tion sounds ugly, but it just might be prom­ising. We’ll start by rewrit­ing that line.