How Decisions Are Made

New technology has changed how we think about time and how we spend it in the form of attention. Spend any amount of time with a digital product or company that has a website and you’ll hear phrases like: Time on site. Minutes watched. Click-through-rate.

Easy access to attention metrics offered by digital technology has fundamentally changed how newsrooms think about the success of their work. And how we think about success, our intended outcomes, influences the decisions that are made in the newsroom.

One place where this decision making process can be seen is in the rise of tabloid headlines --what is often called “ClickBait”-- across the internet. These headlines and the stories that accompany them are written for the click. Headlines written to capture people’s attention and in most cases turn that attention into profit.

How we make decisions in the newsroom is important because it has an impact on the types of stories, quality of work, and critical review we engage in. How we measure success might influence if we push further on an investigation on things we don’t believe. Or perhaps our measurement and how we choose to invest our time will cause us to not push for further investigation when we agree with something or when it will lead to lots of attention, even if it is wrong.

Journalism As Spiritual Discipline

But what does all this have to do with “Spiritual Disciplines”? And what are spiritual disciplines anyway?

According to Lacy Clark Ellman, a Doctor of Ministry and author of the A Sacred Journey blog:  

“A spiritual practice is a regular rhythm that calls us to return and remember—to return to our intention and remember what it is that we seek.”

As  journalists we are regularly engaged in the rhythms of the newsroom. Sometimes we are so engaged with these processes that we forget to take the time to remember and reflect on why we began writing in the first place. To direct our efforts toward presenting truth for the public good.

As Christian journalists we are called to a different set of metrics than those used in the media landscape around us. To carefully teach as we lead others through the words that we write. A conviction to use our positions and editorial opportunities to embrace being fishers of people rather than fishers for the work product of our day --time and attention.

To use Ellman’s words we need to find the spiritual discipline inherent in returning to our intention and remembering what we seek, to follow Christ with the intention to love our neighbors as ourselves through truth, justice, and humility.