Last week in the car I was listening to this discussion of the state of journalism today. Centered mostly around a new study from the Project for Excellence in Journalism.
The study looked at all forms of journalism; print, broadcast, and online. As I understand it, the news is not great. We have probably all heard about print readership being down as people switch to online newsreading, and an increased fragmentation of the news audience. This translates into less ad revenue and less money available to invest in news gathering. More and more outlets are closing their international bureaus and greater amounts of information are coming from wire services and what is being called "user-generated" content such as messageboards, bloggers, and vloggers. The report calls it an era of shrinking ambitions, as in:
News organizations need to do more to think through the implications of this new era of shrinking ambitions. The move toward building audience around “franchise” areas of coverage or other traits is a logical response to fragmentation and can, managed creatively, have journalistic value. To a degree, journalism’s problems are oversupply, too many news organizations doing the same thing. But something gained means something lost, especially as newsrooms get smaller. There is already evidence that basic monitoring of local government has suffered. Regional concerns, as opposed to local, are likely to get less coverage. Matters with widespread impact but little audience appeal, always a challenge, seem more at risk of being unmonitored. What do concepts like localism and branding really mean? Should only national newspapers maintain foreign bureaus? Does localism mean provincialism? Should news organizations, so as not to abandon more high-level coverage, enlist citizen sentinels to monitor community news? To what extent do journalists still have a role in creating a broad agenda of common knowledge? Those issues, debated in theory before, are becoming real. And the wrong answers could hasten, not stave off, the decline of news organizations.
For me, that raises questions of quality. I sometimes think that if I had known myself a little better or had gotten some decent guidance in high school or college, I would have gone on to a journalism program. Then I look at the shape that the news media is in today and I think maybe it's a good thing I didn't go that route. I'd likely be horribly frustrated with my job.
Every evening for about a year I was hungrily watching a EuroNews feed that I first discovered while in Russia. Comcast has recently removed it from my lineup and I feel like I have lost contact with the outside world. Though focused mostly (as you might imagine) on the European Union, the broadcast also opens a window on the Middle East and Africa in a way that you don't often see here in the United States. And, unlike the BBC, I have not been able to detect any obvious anti-American slant. For the record, I do like the scope of news that the BBC offers, but they are sometimes a little too fond of showcasing the more ridiculous aspects of American society.
Of course, American news has been doing a fine job of that all by itself. In an effort to stop the hemorraging of advertising revenue, there has been a perceptible shift away from hard news to infotainment. Even cable news has succumbed to this tactic as evidenced by a recent count of minutes spent on the life and death of Anna Nicole Smith vs. the war in Iraq. There is a place for escapism, but it's at the supermarket checkout, not CNN.
In that regard, the news industry has often been its own worst enemy in hastening its irrelevance. A glance at the local news gives you the usual litany of shootings, car accidents, fires, traffic jams, and a segment I like to call "Parental Scare of the Week." (Insert voice of doom here) Hardly more than a few seconds are devoted to anything happening at the State House. I don't even watch TV news anymore. It's irrelevant to me.
Americans are already woefully ignorant about the world beyond our shores, and many of us have met the foreign friend who knows more about our American system than we do. The closing of foreign bureaus not only exacerbates this problem but helps allow disasters in other parts of the world to go unchecked or ignored by one of the few remaining nations with the power to influence change.
But what really concerns me is the increased fragmentation of our media and its audience. Relentless political attacks and a few significant missteps by institutions such as the New York Times have chipped away at the notion of an authoritative source for the facts of an event or issue. No longer do we as a nation sit down with Walter Cronkite every evening. In addition, the proliferation of Web-based outlets has created a situation where everyone is preaching to their own choirs. As a reader, I can select only those news outlets which present my preconceived notions of the world, and be entertained by snarky attacks on those who do not share my views. I may or may not be aware that what I am reading, watching, or hearing is largely opinion or agenda journalism rather than news or analysis, but it gives me confidence in my views and reinforces them, so I know I must be right about them. Indignation about the errors of others is strangely empowering and often convinces me that people who disagree with those views are beneath consideration.
What I'm reading may be the result of an unsubstantiated rumor, a retaliatory leak, or just outright bias, but if I hear, see, or read it enough times, it must be true. For instance, maybe there is an upside to the civil war in Iraq. Maybe Mark Foley was really a Democrat (don't believe me, check out the eyebrow-raising screenshots at this link).
The traditional role of the press has been that of watchdog on the government, but the media increasingly needs its own watchdog, and possibly a new injection of gravitas. More than ever we need a well-informed citizenry, what we are getting instead is a partitioned nation of media consumers high on their own outrage.
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