To all who anguish about the prospects for journalism, here is an
invitation: Let us turn our energy toward possibility. There are many
opportunities to help ensure the survival of good journalism — various
steps that could be taken by different individuals and organizations.
But focusing on those possibilities requires a change of perspective.
For
one thing, it is difficult to embrace new prospects while clinging to
the past by our fingernails — however natural a reaction that has been
to the fearsome developments of late. To champion journalism
effectively, we will have to distinguish between our traditions and our
principles. We have wonderful memories of all the things that once
were, but few of them are essential to democracy. We must concentrate
on those that are. If we spill our passion on keeping ads off the front
page, will we have enough fight left in us to champion investigative
reporting?
In these days of
fast-paced change, we will have to give up on looking at things as
simply as we have in the past.
Similarly, we must open our
minds to the possibility that some activities we have held ourselves
resolutely above may now in fact be required of us. Our journalism must
speak for itself, we have said. But nowadays the sound of journalism is
easily lost amid the din of the many who scorn, misportray and revile
it. Who, if not we, will make journalism’s case? We must be prepared,
too, to work together with people whom we have always kept at an
“appropriate” distance. (A local citizens’ group is worried about media
ownership? That’s their business, not ours. Or is it?)
And we
will most assuredly have to get it through our heads (and hearts) just
how exciting and full of possibility for journalism’s future are
today’s new venues — all those new digital platforms that so many have
simply wished would go away. What could be worse than having journalism
on iPods? How about NOT having it there? Take a cruise through
some of the Web sites that, say, give ethnic news a well-deserved wider
hearing. Or that enable people to search crime news by type, time and
location. Or that pay the sort of loving attention to what’s going on
in a particular neighborhood that only an old-fashioned weekly once
knew how to do. How wondrously they put us to shame, all of us with our
endless reasons why we can’t possibly fit something in our newspaper or
newscast.
In these days of fast-paced change,
we will have to give up on looking at things as simply as we have in
the past. Take media ownership, which is fast becoming a much more
complex picture. Nonprofits are an increasingly key source of
everything from international investigative reporting to local-local
news. And consider this: Given the way newspapers are changing hands,
perhaps former editors and publishers should offer their services as a
kind of traveling think tank to some of these folks who’ve suddenly
ended up as local newspaper owners. Meanwhile, should public policy be
shaped so as to make it easier to take publicly held companies private?
The
bountiful opportunities to affect the future of journalism are
available to people in all kinds of different positions. Board members
could demand that the health of their companies’ journalism be audited
as avidly as its fiscal health — and that their executives be rewarded
as richly for the one as for the other. Shareholders could band
together to exert pressure for corporate responsibility among media
companies, much as they have pressed for corporate environmental
responsibility.
We’ll
have to open our minds to new possibilities, take risks, experiment and
engage one another (and lots of others) in lively discussions about new
and unsettling prospects.Elected
representatives could pass tax legislation to make it easier for news
companies to be organized as nonprofit, tax-exempt corporations.
Colleges could make civics and news literacy classes part of their
entrance requirements. The journalism academy could turn its massive
research capability toward questions of practical import for
journalists: How can the concept of objectivity best be formulated to
serve journalism today? How can journalism’s enduring values be
translated even more richly online? Journalism organizations could
recognize excellence in ways that strengthen the craft: Master copy
editors, say, anointed by the American Copy Editors Society,
would have responsibilities to nurture the craft back in their
newsrooms. The opportunities go on and on. Some are easy to ponder,
others immediately discomforting: Should the government provide tax
breaks for under-heard voices? Should an independent council be
established to track, promote and define the news function in the
United States?
But here is something truly
unsettling: the prospect of a journalism hollowed out by corporate
dictates, undermined by rants gone unanswered and swamped in a sea of
“media outlets” meeting every need but democracy’s.
To ward that
off, we’ll have to move past a lot of givens. We’ll have to figure out
what is really essential, and prepare to jettison what isn’t. We’ll
have to open our minds to new possibilities, take risks, experiment and
engage one another (and lots of others) in lively discussions about new
and unsettling prospects. We’ll have to take responsibility for our
future — and for the future of this craft we love.
We can save journalism — if we open ourselves to the possibilities.
