Geopolitical Intelligence, Political Journalism and 'Wants' vs. 'Needs' - 2 views
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At Stratfor, the case is frequently the opposite: Our readers typically are expert in the topics we study and write about, and our task is to provide the already well-informed with further insights. But the question is larger than that.
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We co-exist in this ecosystem, but geopolitical intelligence is scarcely part of the journalistic flora and fauna. Our uniqueness creates unique challenges
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Instead, let's go to the core dynamic of the media in our age and work back outward through the various layers to what we do in the same virtual space, namely, intelligence.
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You could get the same information with a week's sorting of SEC filings. But instead, you have just circumvented that laborious process by going straight to just one of the "meta-narratives" that form the superstructure of journalism.
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For the fundamental truth of news reporting is that it is constructed atop pre-existing narratives comprising a subject the reader already knows or expects, a description using familiar symbolism often of a moral nature, and a narrative that builds through implicit metaphor from the stories already embedded in our culture and collective consciousness.
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There's nothing wrong with this. For the art of storytelling -- journalism, that is -- is essentially unchanged from the tale-telling of Neolithic shamans millennia ago up through and including today's New York Times. Cultural anthropologists will explain that our brains are wired for this. So be it.
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Meta-Narratives Meet Meta-Data There is nothing new in this; it is a process almost as old as the printing press itself. But where it gets particularly new and interesting is with my penultimate layer of difference, the place where meta-narratives meet meta-data.
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Where the online battle for eyeballs becomes truly epic, however, (Google "the definition of epic" for yet another storyteller's meta-story) is when these series of tags are organized into a form of meta-data called a "taxonomy."
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And thus we arrive at the outermost layer of the media's skin in our emerging and interconnected age. This invisible skin over it all comes in the form of a new term of art, "search engine optimization," or in the trade just "SEO."
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With journalists already predisposed by centuries of convention to converge on stories knitted from a common canon, the marriage of meta-narrative and meta-data simply accelerates to the speed of light the calibration of topic and theme.
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If a bit simplified, these layers add up to become the connective tissue in a media-centric and media-driven age. Which leads me back to the original question of why Stratfor so often "fails to sync up with the media."
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For by the doctrines of the Internet's new commercial religion, a move disrupting the click stream was -- and is -- pure heresy. But our readers still need to know about Colombia, just as they need our unique perspectives on Syria.
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Every forecast and article we do is essentially a lab experiment, in which we put the claims of politicians, the reports on unemployment statistics, the significance of a raid or a bombing to the test of geopolitics.
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We spend much more time studying the constraints on political actors -- what they simply cannot do economically, militarily or geographically -- than we do examining what they claim they will do.
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The key characteristic to ponder here is that such methodology -- intelligence, in this case -- seeks to enable the acquisition of knowledge by allowing reality to speak for itself. Journalism, however, creates a reality atop many random assumptions through the means described. It is not a plot, a liberal conspiracy or a secret conservative agenda at work, as so many media critics will charge. It is simply the way the media ecosystem functions.
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Journalism, in our age more than ever before, tells you what you want to know. Stratfor tells you what you need to know.
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"Just last week, the question came again. It is a common one, sometimes from a former colleague in newspaperdom, sometimes from a current colleague here at Stratfor and often from a reader. It is always to the effect of, "Why is Stratfor so often out of sync with the news media?" All of us at Stratfor encounter questions regarding the difference between geopolitical intelligence and political journalism. One useful reply to ponder is that in conventional journalism, the person providing information is presumed to know more about the subject matter than the reader. At Stratfor, the case is frequently the opposite: Our readers typically are expert in the topics we study and write about, and our task is to provide the already well-informed with further insights. But the question is larger than that."
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Excuse me while I guffaw. Stratfor is not the first to claim that they're the only ones not swayed by financial factors. Stratfor has its own metanarratives (especially geographic determinism) as much as anyone else does.