A brave new media world was the theme of the 2014 Roland Quest lecture by Chris Hughes, the openly gay Facebook co-founder and editor-in-chief and publisher of The New Republic March 6 at Elmhurst College.
An advocate for both print and online journalism, Hughes bought The New Republic in March 2012. Since taking over the century-old New Republic, Hughes has redesigned the print publication and website to take advantage of the digital age.
Before taking the helm of The New Republic, Hughes co-founded Facebook in 2004 with his Harvard roommates Mark Zuckerberg, Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, and Dustin Moskovitz. He served as the website's first spokesperson and then as leader of its product and user experience team. In 2007, Hughes served as the director of online organizing for Barack Obama's presidential campaign through the campaign's My.BarackObama.com website where he revolutionized the use of the web as a political tool to generate grassroots support. He also helped the Obama campaign raise more than $500 million in online donations from more than two million donors.
Hughes is also a member of the UNAIDS High-Level Commission on HIV prevention, a trustee of the Knight foundation, and an independent investor in technology and media companies.
Craig Engstrom, assistant professor in the Department of Communication Arts and Sciences at Elmhurst College, introduced Hughes. Hughes then told the approximately 120 people gathered about the origins of Facebook and what he felt the movie The Social Network got wrong about his role in the creation of Facebook as well as what the movie got right about Facebook as a model of U.S. ingenuity and entrepreneurship in the 21st century.
Hughes noted that people have respect for entrepreneurs who create new ideas or things. What made Facebook possible was an environment that called on them to think big, be ambitions and take risks, said Hughes.
The key ingredients for entrepreneurial success, Hughes explained, are determination, diversity of perspective and investment capital. Without those things any new enterprise will fall by the wayside, Hughes noted.
"The digitization of our daily lives is radically changing almost every industry and social practice that's out there," said Hughes. He noted that the one area that has seen a rapid change is the news and media landscape with more and more people getting their news via digital sources and not through traditional print media sources.
"Meanwhile, everyone wonders if newspapers and magazines are going to be able to survive on the web where people seem to be more interested in Buzzfeed quizzes and numbered lists than what happened in Syria yesterday," said Hughes. "Before grappling with that question we have to look at why does it matter? Why do we need journalism anyway? Isn't it just a factor of nostalgia for days gone by?"
In 1946 Harold Ross, the founding editor of The New Yorker, decided to devote an entire issue of the magazine to a single story, John Hersey's "Hiroshima,", Hughes said. He added that Hersey's piece about the lives that were affected by the bombing of Hiroshima by U.S. forces forced readers to imagine how the blast felt to the people on the ground.
"With that single piece of journalism the unprecedented horror of the attack across the Pacific Ocean entered the homes of an English speaking audience ... In my view, this is what great journalism does," said Hughes. "It helps us see the world in all its glory and gore a little more clearly and asks us as individuals big ethical questions in the process."
Hughes' interest in the kind of journalism that Hersey did was one of the reasons he bought The New Republic, despite everyone's warnings of the death of print media in the face of social networks and blog posts. The New Republic, Hughes noted, was anything but predictable—fiery arguments, refined feature writing, and earnest criticism.
"There are four main effects of the rise of social media on journalism which I would argue are actually creating stronger, broader, more interesting and inspiring journalism," said Hughes.
The first effect is social networks drive 50 percent of news site's traffic today with people reading and/or sharing stories with each other from various news sources through postings on Facebook, twitter, Digg, reddit et. al., said Hughes. Hughes noted that what makes an article social network friendly are lists, outrageous and inspiring videos from places like Upworthy ( of which Hughes is an investor ) snackable content like maps and charts that tell a story, and stories that take a definitive take on an issue or current event. Of the long-form articles, Hughes said that most people read at least half of the article.
Hughes said that the second effect is moments of downtime are now used to consume more content especially through mobile technology and the result is that people are reading more content including long-form articles than ever before even as print journalism is waning.
Third, Hughes noted, is the explosion of narrative and storytelling techniques that are available to ordinary people such as graphs, maps, and charts. This has bridged the gap between long-form articles that are geared towards a small group of people and a larger number of people who are curious and want to learn more, said Hughes.
Lastly, Hughes shared that more information is available than ever before in real time from around the world. Journalists are able to parse this information and determine what is true from what is false while an event is unfolding due to information sharing via social networks, said Hughes.
Journalism is affected by some of these changes because increasingly people are walling themselves off into social bubbles where they only get information from sources that they agree with which is addictive and corrosive, Hughes noted. "We should all adopt practices where we open ourselves up to opposing viewpoints. I challenge all of you subscribe to publications and follow people on twitter who you know have different opinions than yourself," he said.
"To thrive today news institutions need to raise the bar to be more timely, relevant, engaging, and charismatic," said Hughes. "Our generation has the capacity to invent a better [journalism] future for those who come after us."
A Q&A session followed Hughes' lecture.
See www.newrepublic.com for more information.
