New Year Wish: Print Journalism Does Not Die

Newspapers – or at least print journalism – cannot be allowed to die.

I’ve always had a soft spot for good print news reporters.  Many of them become deep experts in the subject matter of their beats and find enlightening ways to bring this background to their often limited space in the newspaper.  Many also have an uncanny ability to quickly take in information, retain it and apply it to the bigger picture of our world.  Learning about sometimes complex issues and being able to write about them in a way that is accessible to the masses is a huge talent.  Finally, the best journalists are endlessly curious.  Intellectual curiosity is a gift and journalists share this gift with the world every day.

A Reuters story caught my eye the other day.  Frank Nicastro, a Connecticut lawmaker, wants to extend the economic bailout ethic to the newspaper industry.  He’s asking other legislators to support his proposal for the state to prop up some of Connecticut’s local papers.

Nicastro and fellow legislators want the papers to survive, and petitioned the state government to do something about it. “The media is a vitally important part of America,” he said, particularly local papers that cover news ignored by big papers and television and radio stations.

2008 was a year with lots of bad news for newspapers big and small all over the country.  Many dailies cut staff, including newsroom personnel.  Others announced plans to cease publishing newsprint editions on certain days of the week.  The Christian Science Monitor, one of the best sources for international news for decades has ceased to publish a print edition, period.

Since this country’s founding, a free and active press has been crucial to our democratic institutions and a necessary adjunct to good causes such as the abolitionists, worker health and safety and civil rights.  The free press has been described as the “Watchdog” over government.  It’s even been described as the “Fourth Estate” – or the de facto fourth branch of the federal government.

What lengths would Nixon et al have gone to without the investigating of the Washington Post?  More recently, the Post exposed major problems with the medical care being given to veterans and service members at the Walter Reed Amy Hospital.  The Toledo Blade’s news coverage of “Coingate” expedited the state government response to corruption in public office.

Put simply, we need the Fourth Estate.  Television news is often rushed, vapid infotainment.  Radio news, outside of NPR, CBC or the BBC is practically non-existent.  Radio talk, while sometimes entertaining, is an abysmal source for information because it’s mostly cloaked in a partisan fog.

The news pages of newspapers are the last bastion of daily, objective, dispassionate dose of information one can use to be better informed citizen.  Newspapers cover the things like city council, zoning boards and civic events that TV and radio only cover when there’s death or dismemberment involved.  Newspapers are the only purveyors of news where a sense of journalistic, civic duty seems to be still alive.

Is Nicastro’s government bailout of newspapers a good idea?  Loans, maybe.  The Reuters story also said:

Relying on government help raises ethical questions for the press, whose traditional role has been to operate free from government influence as it tries to hold politicians accountable to the people who elected them. Even some publishers desperate for help are wary of this route.

Providing government support can muddy that mission, said Paul Janensch, a journalism professor at Quinnipiac University in Connecticut, and a former reporter and editor.

“You can’t expect a watchdog to bite the hand that feeds it,” he said.

The newspaper industry needs to do one thing.  The best minds in journalism, the business of advertising-supported media and the internet need to work together to build the next business model for delivering the news the public needs.  We can’t lose the sense of objectivity or the ideals of journalistic ethics just because we may quit soaking newsprint with ink.  Shame on publishers for not recognizing this and coming up with the business model that will support their noble business through the next decades.  Because they’ve lagged behind technology, unfortunately many more of the nation’s newspapers will die than was probably necessary.

Publishers across this country need to ask themselves everyday: “How do I translate the daily newspaper into a business and medium that serves society as well in the 21st century as it did for the last 300 years.

What’s to become of the Fourth Estate?

• LA Times more cuts to pages, personnel – Associated Press

Someone please come up with the business model to keep serious journalism alive in this country. 

Several newspapers around the country have announced yet another round of budget cuts – many of which are coming right out of their newsrooms.  Foreign bureaus mostly became a thing of the past for large newspapers years ago.  The numbers of reporters assigned to state executive branches and legislatures has diminished, you can see it in our own Ohio media.  You can’t count on television.  At the local level, including cities such as Columbus, Clevleand, and Cincinnati news coverage on local tv is superficial or sensationalist.  Smaller media market tv news is downright unintelligible.  As for the networks, including cable news, one word for most of it: fluff. 

The best quality information, crafted to any ongoing standards of objectivity, facts, and ethics is now only regularly found in the news operations of daily newspapers.  I can see promise in the “new” media, but it’s still gunslinger territory and I wouldn’t stake my professional reputation at work on information gleaned from a blog.  In fact, this blog only works because of the information in the “clips” or links to stories from the media, usually respected newspapers.

With all the problems this country is facing it’s extremely unfortunate everytime a professional news organization has to scale back.  What fills the void is worse than nothing, it’s usually background noise.  It doesn’t do anything to educate or move a debate forward.

One thing we can all do is subscribe to our local paper.  I subscribe to the local paper, even though I read it online before I even take it off the porch in the morning.  (Except for Sundays, there’s still something about the Sunday paper …)