Getting past the future: journalism ethics, innovation, and a call for ‘flexible first’

Journalists have long used ethical principles to define who they are as well as how they should behave. Ethics become a boundary marker to distinguish journalists from non-journalists, and familiar practices from unknown ones. As a result, journalists initially tend to frame a new approach as posing a terrible challenge to normative principles – that is, as something that must be resisted on moral grounds. Such resistance can easily become an impediment to thinking productively about how best to respond to innovation. This essay proposes that journalists should instead confront change by asking how they can adapt to – and adapt along with – the new thing, while at the same time preserving their core values.