NAVIGATING THE NEW ERA: THE INFLUENCE OF DIGITAL VOICES IN JOURNALISM

When our media landscape seems to be changing by the day, when the disruptive rise of digital platforms has questions about the future of traditional news journalism opening up new existential problems, it is easy to exaggerate the role of figures such as Phil Lewis, an ageing former teacher who bestrides the digital age like a colossus, precisely because he is able to go on opening those windows on overlooked stories and to give a voice to a crowded and noisy world. This feature examines how a man who never lost his instinct for stories went on to become a key window on the world.

FROM CLASSROOM TO CYBERSPACE: THE GENESIS OF A DIGITAL NEWSFLUENCER

Phil Lewis’s path from elementary school teacher in Detroit to pioneer of reportorial work on X (formerly Twitter) is a tale of displacement and adaptation. There was no plan to relocate or change industries, but around 2015 – a turning point for digital media – Lewis found himself at a crossroads. As new platforms for news consumption and dissemination began to rapidly evolve, Lewis used the name recognition he’d amassed on social media to highlight stories that would have normally gone under the radar, taking advantage of his nose for news.

BRIDGING GAPS: THE RISE OF A NEWS CONDUIT

Just like the networks that came before them, from MySpace to Vine, these services have since died down. Along the way, the notion of influencing has gained clarity, and Lewis’s role has changed. His work framing stories – offering context, humanising them, understanding them – resonates with a wider audience looking for depth amid the engagement-baiting online noise. Lewis still picks stories because he cares about them. His judgement creates the bonds of trust with his audience. The contextual responsibility that informs his impact is central to what makes his influence so valuable in the new digital news marketplace.

THE CONUNDRUM OF ATTENTION IN THE DIGITAL AGE

When Elon Musk bought X, and the subsequent debates over its continued existence, the stories themselves contributed to showcasing the platform for independent and nontraditional media. This exposure that Lewis brought focused attention on more than the voices that would be heard, but who would be telling the stories in the age of digital media. His new brand of journalism/influence navigates the shifting attention economy with its infinite news sources and finite consumer time and product.

CRAFTING A TRUSTWORTHY BRAND IN A SEA OF NOISE

Lewis’s personalised style of news-sharing defies the authority of ‘proper’ journalism, blending the two, and becoming a hybrid model that emphasises truth, authenticity, and reliability. Possessing a sixth sense for what stories will speak to others in the community, and knowing how to share them, points to the possibility of more inclusive and community-based journalism becoming the new normal. Lewis’s approach to news – acknowledging the pitfalls of misinformation, and understanding the value of getting a story right – makes him a model of trust in what has become a fragmented media scene.

EMBRACING CHANGE: THE FUTURE OF JOURNALISM IN THE DIGITAL REALM

Phil Lewis’s story is about how the changing media environment means that a deft sense of community and a willingness to be flexible are becoming the new norm for journalists. And it’s a story that speaks more broadly to why, in the face of a ‘digital disruption’ of media, journalists are challenged to evolve their identities as their roles and their publics change. Lewis’s transformation from a traditional classroom teacher into a digital newsfluencer is a story of the future of journalism, one in which the roles of news and noise and influence are up for grabs and in which the status of journalists as arbiters of fact and reliability are challenged by an engaged, empowered, and participatory public.

TOWARD A NEW HORIZON: THE EVOLUTION OF SENSE IN JOURNALISM

Phil Lewis continues to show how the sense of a journalist is the best guide to making sense of the information society in its most challenging phase. The news must still be carefully selected, curated and communicated with empathy, accuracy and with sense of an audience. The sense of the journalist is the core of quality in the digital age. Journalism’s success in the coming decade will depend on the extent to which the new generation of journalists and owners remain philosophically grounded and committed professionally to this sense of what makes journalism such an essential human profession in the early 21st century.

So, to conclude, Phil Lewis’s evolution from classroom teacher to the ‘Anderson Cooper of Black Twitter’ is a testament to the potential of sense-making in journalism: individual voices can rise to be the public faces of online collectives that fight for a greater sense of fairness, that emphasise and amplify what is important and necessary. They can make entertainment out of really important issues. We can’t predict who or how this will happen, but we know that making sense is going to continue to shape the contours of journalism for years to come.