Thoughts on the Future of Journalism
I’m extremely busy with school (of course) so a bit of this is spliced from various school essays. I’ll be looking at some of the major problems with journalism day, not in term of profits but in terms of coverage.
Modern journalism consists of a daily race for scoops that offer little to no real insight on situations, and leave the public just as uninformed as they were when they started. Traditional conventions of journalism began in the 17th century in a world that was too different from the one today to continue to be used simply for tradition. They began with the idea of journalism for profit. Are these conventions outdated? For the most part, yes.
By focusing on appeasing and drawing in large non-lower class audiences, newspapers have lost sight of their purpose in society: “to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable”. By taking “newspaper” or “news channel” too literally, the news industry has reversed this purpose. The cobbled together, thoughtless feed often only serves to afflict the afflicted by perpetuating stereotypes without informing readers about the causes behind current events, and comforts the comfortable by essentially just parroting their press releases and sound bites.
Examples: How many times in the news have you read that China or North Korea is a communist nation? How many times did you read that Al Gore said he invented the internet? Or that the “global warming emails” were scandalous? How many times did the news not mention the background behind Somalian pirates, or the reality of who is on welfare in this country, or the connection between property values and white privilege, or the historical reasons behind underdevelopment in third world countries, etc, etc…?
News organizations have done a fine job of covering these events as they happen but a horrible job providing real knowledge of what’s going on.
The typical news values of "timeliness, proximity, unusual nature and prominence" are not enough. The defining value editors and reporters must focus on should be relevance.
The daily news feed allows little time for a reporter to think. It is understandably difficult to take in-depth, close looks at society and the causes behind the news in a daily or 24-hour broadcast. But it comes at the cost of better reader understanding of issues, especially complex ones with a deeper than immediate background. When it comes to topics like politics in the middle east, Somalia, race and poverty in the United States, etc., there is far too much background than can be provided in a 30-second update.
Aside from changing the guidelines for what is and isn’t a news story, and adding more background, there are a few specific areas where the industry could improve.
Journalists need more education. It can take only two years to get a degree in journalism, yet journalists should be among the most educated members of society. In order to even report on an area or beat, a journalist should understand the historical context behind that topic. The public reads news articles more often than history books, so it’s important for journalists to bring that historical understanding into their stories. Without that contextual understanding, the reporter simply isn’t qualified and may only perpetuate falsehoods, both about race and gender, and other issues, and may fall into the trap of thinking that qualities are inherent instead of a result of historical causes.
Audiences today may desire, and be used to, instant and easily consumed information, but that need not come at the expense of remaining informative and useful. Editors and owners of news organizations must recognize that the press plays a vital role in society, one which “news as entertainment” does not satisfy, and that greater understanding of their subjects is required.
What about having a more diverse staff? The newspaper industry long ago recognized that having an all-white, all-male news industry wasn’t the best idea for covering a diverse country. And while it’s taking a long time and there is little progress, covering a diverse community does not stop at simply hiring minorities.
If the news industry’s goal is to be accurate coverage of its entire community’s world, the amount of minorities and women in the newsroom does matter. In The Face of the Front Page, Cynthia Lont and M. Bridge analyzed the front pages of newspapers around the world and found that men were by far the most referenced, quoted, and photographed. The people writing these male-centered stories were, by and large they found, men. My local paper follows this trend: its front page is almost exclusively male, and the opinions presented in the op-ed pages are similarly male dominated. Yet this same paper is one of the most diverse out there. News organizations must recognize that simply hiring a diverse staff is not enough. It must respect those staff members as authoritative, intelligent, and valuable people. It is not enough to simply hire non-whites because they are non-white. Women and non-whites must be hired based on their abilities and allowed to take pivotal roles within the newsroom.
By changing the hiring process to include a more diverse hiring staff, and by conducting “blind” hiring practices, the industry can hire based on ability and not simply physical factors. Hiring bilingual reporters, especially those who can speak Spanish fluently would allow the industry to not only better cover the various communities in states like California with more depth and accuracy, but it will allow the industry to serve those communities better.
The news industry could also improve its ability to serve diverse communities by training all of its reporters and interns to do so. Reporters should be educated in the history of the communities and areas they are covering, and the causes behind the current situations they are now reporting on. Reporters should be trained to seek out more than official sources and to recognize that a better suit does not mean a better quote. Because the working class is larger and has more to gain from in-depth newspaper coverage of local issues, the industry has much to gain from seeking them out as readers. For many of the towns and small cities, large papers and channels should invest effort into developing community-specific online publications and having at least one reporter for each town. The reporter, or reporters, should be knowledgeable of the communities within the areas they are focused on.
Creating a “minority beat” would reinforce the false idea, mentioned above, that people are separated by their demographics. If something newsworthy happens to a minority, or in a minority community, it is still relevant and important for readers to know about. It’s the reporter’s job to make readers care, and they should be encouraged to do this in their stories.
The news industry needs to do more than just update its audience on what’s happening, or focus on bringing in minority reporters. That will never be enough. It needs to connect communities within communities, make them aware of each other, and make them aware of each other’s problems.
With “Modern journalism consists of a daily race for scoops that offer little to no real insight on situations, and leave the public just as uninformed as they were when they started.” you manage to catch journalism in a nut-shell.
Among the many other valuable points you make, I would particularly like to second education: Looking at papers in my native Sweden, I have the impression that most journalists are from the bottom of the college-educated barrel. Even the most basic requirement for their trade, the ability to write, is usually lacking—to the point that the average WordPress blog has a better sense of style, grammar, relevancy, whatnot.
As for areas like critical thinking, good background research, general and field-specific knowledge, etc., most are absolute disasters.
I would raise some reservations in the area of diversity, because, in my own experiences, it is far more important to hire and promote by competence and (as you acknowledge) attempts to increase diversity often lead to the hiring of less competent people. “Blind hiring” may be a help here, but unless the pool of interested candidates changes, I do not see that large a gain.
Notably, the front pages of papers may show disproportionally many white men because there happen to be disproportionally many white men in positions to be news-worthy. To fill them with Spanish women, we would need more female Spanish high-level politicians, leaders of industry, and similar.
Thanks for the comment!
Your observations with education are pretty much what I’ve seen as well. I edited for a community college newspaper for a term and it shocked me to see the writing level of college students who weren’t straight out of high school but nearing the end of their careers. And writing was the focus of their education.
You are right in that a large problem is that minorities are just not interested – one suggestion I remember hearing is that news organizations need to reach out to community colleges and high schools more, instead of more easily white/middle-class dominated universities.
As for the front pages…very true. However part of the problem is that it’s white men writing everything on the front page, not just being covered. And when you turn to the opinion section, it’s often white men giving their opinions there as well. Why, I’m not really sure, and I doubt many people read the byline, but it still points to a problem when this happens (for example, at my large local paper) in a very diverse paper.
Great piece that very neatly addresses many of the problems with modern journalism. I would argue, however, that the single greatest issue facing journalism and those of us who depend on journalists to accurately depict the world for our benefit is corporate entanglement. The more entrenched the business world becomes in national governance, the more those businesses seek to and generally succeed in molding the news to their benefit. Bah!
You are right, corporate journalism is really the cause of all the problems pointed out.
Also: Bah! indeed. :)