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I was at a small, journalism-adjacent conference last week. Somebody who sees me at a lot of these things, usually trying to convince folks about the need to increase the utility of reporting, asked me if I was getting through to people.

I appreciate such an honest question. The answer is both yes and no. But the more established a newsroom is, the more often it's a no. This could be both a messenger and message problem. As a messenger, my identity might say outsider to some insiders, an invitation to not take my ideas seriously. 

But the real sticking point is the message. My message happens to overlap perfectly with my goal to re-examine the essential functions of news. Lucky us! My message is that utility should be our North Star, and the easiest way to increase utility is to begin with finding and filling information gaps.

(You can revisit the essential functions we've already worked through; record creation and record correction and continue to send feedback.)

I'll be honest. I'm not open to reconsidering whether filling information gaps is an essential function of news. Let me instead convince you that filling information gaps is the most essential function of news. Let me cook, as the kids unfortunately no longer say.

Getting on the same page first

Definitionally an information gap is the space between what one needs to know to meet their challenges and verified, understandable, and actionable information that could help them.

Information gaps are not all created equal. They can be mundane or life-threatening. They can affect individuals, groups, or both. Information gaps exist even now, when information is abundant and so much of it is easily accessible.

Here's a fictional example. I turn on my water, and it looks different; usually it runs clear, but it's now a little brown. I turn to Google. I google “Is my water safe” and “boil water advisory." I see mostly ads for water testing, an old Consumer Reports story, and a link to the CDC telling me to call the health department. There are no active advisories or news stories.

I don't know how serious this situation is or how hard I should push for answers. I decide not to drink the water until it clears up and go about my day.

A real version of this information gap, multiplied across thousands of households, hit Flint, MI, startng in the spring of 2014. The state had taken control of Flint's city government and decided to switch the water supply from Detroit's municipal water system to a source it had used decades earlier to save money. The pipes carrying this water were very old. The water looked dirty. Officials contended—promised even—that the water was safe. It was full of harmful lead. 

Everyone who drank unfiltered water from their taps was impacted. Dozens got Legionaires disease from the water and some of them died; others got E. coli. It took the state a year and a half to accept the crisis and switch to a safer supply of water. When the Pew Research Center studied the crisis years later, they looked at what Flint residents were googling as they were trying to find information to keep themselves and their families safe. Here's what they found:

The data, based on nearly 2,700 different search terms associated with the crisis, reveal that residents of Flint were searching for information about their water before the government recognized the contamination and before local and regional news media coverage intensified beyond a handful of stories related to the initial switch of the water supply.

Proactive and responsive. Not reflective

It's impossible to refute how life-changing verified facts about the danger of Flint's water could have been to people living there in 2014. Can news be designed to make gaps of this severity less likely? Of course.

Not all gaps are this widespread or cause this level of harm. But preventing harm and providing benefit can be two sides of the most valuable journalistic coin. If you build a newsroom to fill information gaps and prevent harm, you can't help but prioritize the production of relevant and actionable information closely tied to community needs. You can't help but try to deliver this information in a way it can be most easily used—a way that is more personalized, responsive, and caring.

This is where, I think, the resistance begins to set in.

When the most essential function of news is to fill information gaps, it creates tension with contradictory ideas about the role of news and information providers.

• News can help set the local and national agenda by choosing what kind of information matters.
• News stories have inherent utility, even when they simply reflect events
• The most desirable news audience has abundant time, information, and resources.
• Being responsive to community needs threatens the prestige and independence of a news organization.

These ideas about the role of news are also myths. They stand in the way of news and information providers being of greater benefit to a larger public.

A note on quality control

Any essential function needs to be flexible enough to be operationalized by newsrooms with different audiences and resources. This is true about filling information gaps, too. But because this function is explicitly tied to utility in the real world, there are a few more “rules.”

• Newsrooms need a method to identify the existence and severity of information gaps for an audience or local community. They will also need a way to determine which needs will be prioritized.
• A tight feedback loop between an info gap-filling newsroom and audience or local community is necessary and desirable. The loop helps the newsroom better understand the utility of the information they are offering, additional needs they can help meet, and other gaps in the community (accountability, resources, etc.) making their information less effective.
• Filling information gaps requires less context and more direct information than traditional stories usually offer. Newsrooms should be guided by audience preference when developing different formats for filling gaps

Filling information gaps is not the only essential function of news. It is not a cap on what a newsroom can or should do. It's just a strong foundation on which additional utility and additional functions can be built. There are newsrooms filling information gaps first that also have newsletters, membership programs, longform investigations, features, visualizations, video, arts, and culture coverage.

Filling information gaps is a news function that forces a newsroom to prioritize community needs and forces a newsroom into service of them. Not every newsroom needs to fill information gaps, but every community does need one newsroom dedicated to filling these gaps. It is the essential function of news.