photo by Cheyenne Thorpe
Slow News: A Manifesto for the Critical News Consumer by Peter Laufer was originally published in Italian. The book later received a U.S. publication in 2014.

Slow news is a response to the 24 hour news cycle, the innumerate web publications, and the endless social media circle of misinformation. To call it a “new” movement is disingenuous because it was born out of the slow food movement from Italy and the slow food movement can be described as a return to traditional means of food production and consumption. Likewise, slow news is a return to form, both for consumers and producers of news.

News and food is not an apples-to-apples comparison. There are, however, many parallels that can be made between the way nourishment is consumed and the way news is consumed–not just the effects on the consumer, but effects on the community, and producers as well.

Director of the University of Oregon Urban Farm, Harper Keeler, teaches the importance of local foods to his students.

“There’s been an industrialization of how we produce food in the U.S.” said Keeler, “We depend on a massive industrial system that has divorced our understanding, for a lot of people, about food.”

There’s been a digitalization of how we produce news in the U.S. We depend on a massive world wide web that has divorced our understanding, for a lot of people, about news.

While industrialization has led to the decline of local farms, digitalization has led to the decline of local newspapers. For Keeler the loss of local institutions has had an adverse effect on the sense of community. “For every advancement you have to jettison something else and unfortunately what we’re jettisoning is togetherness and neighborliness and equity, and the price is expensive,” said Keeler.

Slow food seeks to correct the detached production-consumption relationship. Followers of the movement support local farms. The movement’s manifesto defines quality food as fair:

Social justice should be pursued through the creation of conditions of labor respectful of man and his rights and capable of generating adequate rewards; through the pursuit of balanced global economies; through the practice of sympathy and solidarity; through respect for cultural diversities and traditions.

Similarly, quality news is fair, and should generate adequate rewards. Objectivity in news reporting has always been a matter of debate. For journalist Hunter S. Thompson, objectivity did not exist. “So much for Objective Journalism,” Thompson wrote. “Don’t bother to look for it here–not under any byline of mine, or anyone else I can think of. With the possible exception of things like box scores, race results, and stock market tabulations, there is no such thing as Objective Journalism. The phrase itself is a pompous contradiction in terms.”

But quality news is fair. Quality news seeks social justice. The Code of Ethics for the Society of Professional Journalists says, “Ethical Journalism treats sources, subjects, colleagues and members of the public as human beings deserving of respect.”

Slow food was started in Italy in response to fast food. The movement traces its roots to an Italian protest of a McDonald’s opening on the Spanish Steps of Rome in 1986. Slow food promotes cooking local healthy foods, which takes time, instead of relying on the convenience of questionable quick-stops at McDonald’s and the like.

Slow news is a response to the current state of news media. In 2016, former BBC radio director Helen Boaden announced her resignation. She cited clickbait, the lack of depth and quality in reporting breaking news, the 24-hour news cycle, and social media.  She valued slow news “which is engaging and dynamic, of course, but embodies impartiality, accuracy, expertise and evidence; the things which take time and resource.”

Keeler said new followers of slow food begin to recognize the value of the movement. “People start making decisions where they say, ‘I want that farmer to survive–I’m going to pay a penalty for that, but it’s what I believe in.’”

The goal of slow news is to imbue news consumers with the same realization of their news media sources. Slow News: A Manifesto for the Critical News Consumer was published by University of Oregon Professor Peter Laufer. Delayed Gratification is a U.K. magazine that covers news three months after the events occur. Slow Media: Why Slow is Satisfying, Sustainable and Smart is a book by Jennifer Rauch set to publish in September, 2018.