For editors, the accelerating evolution of media has not been kind. Modern communication tends to banish the middleperson.
Someone expresses a thought—in text, with video, whatever—online. Countless others receive it. If the medium of expression is tricked up with the latest frills of search-engine optimization, the thought might, if at all interesting, “go viral.” Thousands of strangers view it. Millions, maybe.
And no one, it seems, wonders about the extent to which the thought correlates with observable reality—if it’s true, in other words. Someone’s argument went viral; therefore, it must be valid. Someone’s observation went viral; therefore, it must represent wisdom. But what if it’s balderdash? What if it’s thoroughgoing fabrication designed to manipulate opinion, influence elections, and undermine cultures?
A regrettable proliferation of viral skullduggery is now much in the news. Indeed, the new aristocrats running social media platforms lately feel obliged to hire battalions of workers tasked with identifying sources of misinformation and expunging it from their burgeoning, electronic money machines. Those wizards will develop algorithms able to identify mischief. The mischievous will develop algorithms to evade them. This competition should be profitable for algorithm developers on both sides of legitimacy. But it won’t do much for truth.
Traditionally but diminishingly, editors filter information destined for mass transmission. To the extent of their skill, energy, and time, they conform communication with standards of expression and veracity. The process is imperfect. Errors happen. The success of any given team of editors depends on its ability to minimize the error rate.
Yet modern communication increasingly bypasses the editor, that literate scold responsible for correcting grammar, fixing typos, streamlining prose, and—oh, yes—checking facts. As economists would say, the web and social media disintermediate communications: Consumers of information procure what they want directly from the source. And the information they receive might or might not be true.
Demand for editors, meanwhile, dwindles.
Oil & Gas Journal still honors editing and employs editors. It also embraces the many advantages of modern communication—the broad access to information, the research tools, the potential for meaningful interactivity. OGJ thus has adopted a strategy of capitalizing on the positive while suppressing the negative of social media tools to explore new possibilities for trustworthy communication. The concept was introduced as Oil & Gas Community in this space in May (OGJ, May 7, 2018, p. 16). As promised, the community has expanded.
Six channels, each with its own topic, have joined the original offering, Project Collaboration. Each channel has a tailored newsfeed, a blog, a forum for informal discussion, and a chat capability. Other features will emerge as channels respond to users’ interests.
What’s most important is that each Oil & Gas Community channel has an OGJ editor as its moderator.
With active moderation and membership screening, communication on this platform can stay informal but remain serious, professional-to-professional. It can occur in multiple directions. And it can involve OGJ editors to unprecedented degrees.
The channels and their moderators, in order of their appearance on Oil & Gas Community:
• Project Collaboration—Editor Bob Tippee.
• Energy Markets—Senior Editor-Economics Conglin Xu.
• Energy Finance—Editor-News Mikaila Adams.
• Oil & Gas Processing—Downstream Technology Editor Robert Brelsford.
• Oil & Gas Upstream—Upstream Technology Editor Paula Dittrick.
• Oil & Gas Transportation—Managing Editor-Technology Christopher E. Smith.
• Commentary—Editor Bob Tippee.
To participate, go to www.ogj.com/oilandgascommunity. Instructions appear there. After you click the sign-in link, you’ll be asked a few questions to screen for trolls and robots and to let you select channels—as many as you like. You don’t have to be an OGJ subscriber. Membership costs nothing.
The hope here is that you and like-minded professionals will join, exchange thoughts with one another and with OGJ editors, and profit from enlightened interaction.
If that happens, this project will, by some new, elevated meaning of the phrase, go viral.
