Does journalism need saving?

The current issue of The Nation magazine (‘published on 7 January, but with an issue date of 25 January) has an article entitled “How to Save Journalism “, co-written by John Nichols (described as “a pioneering political blogger [who] has written The Beat since 1999 … [and] The Nation’s Washington correspondent”) and Robert W. McChesney [Professor in the Department of Communication at the University of Illinois [who] hosts the [radio] program Media Matters on WILL-AM]. Together, the co-authors of this piece “are the founders of Free Press, the media reform network, and the authors of Tragedy and Farce: How the American Media Sell Wars, Spin Elections, and Destroy Democracy (New Press) and The Death and Life of American Journalism (Nation Books)“.

Their article states that “American news media are being steered off the cliff by investors and corporate managers who soured on their ‘properties’ when the economic downturn dried up what was left of their advertising bonanza. They are taking journalism with them. Newsrooms are shrinking and disappearing altogether, along with statehouse, Washington and foreign bureaus. And with them goes the circulation of news and ideas that is indispensable to liberty. This is a dire moment for democracy, and it requires a renewal of one of America’s oldest understandings: that a free people can govern themselves only if they have access to independent information about the issues of the day and the excesses of the powerful, and that it is the duty of government to guarantee both the promise and the reality of a free press”.

The main argument of this article is that there should be public funding — government funding — to support journalism.  (Among other things this article says this has long since been accepted as common sense by the rest of the world”…)

Leaving the pros and cons of that proposition aside, there are a number of interesting observations here:

(1) “…as 2009 wore on and the crisis extended–with the venerable Christian Science Monitor and newspapers in Seattle and Ann Arbor ceasing print publication to exist solely online, with papers in Denver, Tucson and other cities closing altogether, and with talk of closures from San Francisco to Boston–the urgency of the moment, and the recognition that journalism would not be reborn on the Internet or saved by foundation grants, made it harder to dismiss subsidies”…

(2) “No reasonable case can be made that journalism will rebound as the economy recovers from a recession that accelerated but certainly did not cause the crisis confronting newspapers–or that a ‘next big thing’ will arrive as soon as news organizations develop good Internet business plans.  Many of the nation’s largest papers are in bankruptcy or teetering on the brink, and layoffs continue at an alarming rate.  The entirety of paid journalism, even its online variant, is struggling.  There are far fewer working journalists per 100,000 Americans today than existed one, two or three decades ago.  At current rates of decline, 2020 will make 2010 look like a golden age.  When the Federal Trade Commission held its unprecedented two-day conference on the state of journalism in December, the operative term was ‘collapse’.  Conversely, the ratio of PR flacks to working journalists has skyrocketed, as spin replaces news”…

(3)  “…we face a future where there will be relatively few paid journalists working in competing newsrooms with editors, fact-checkers, travel budgets and institutional support.  Vast areas of public life and government activity will take place in the dark–as is already the case in many statehouses across the country. Independent and insightful coverage of the basic workings of local, state and federal government, and of our many interventions and occupations abroad, is disappearing as rapidly as the rainforests.  The political implications are dire. Just as a brown planet cannot renew itself, so an uninformed electorate cannot renew democracy. Popular rule doesn’t work without an informed citizenry, and an informed citizenry cannot exist without credible journalism”…

(4) “The most dangerous misconception has to do with journalism itself. Journalism is a classic “public good”–something society needs and people want but market forces are now incapable of generating in sufficient quality or quantity. The institution should be understood the way we understand universal public education, military defense, public health and transportation infrastructure. The public-good nature of journalism has been largely disguised for the past century because advertising bankrolled much of the news, for better and for worse, in its efforts to reach consumers. Those days are over, as advertisers no longer need or seek to attach their appeals to journalism to connect with target audiences. Indeed, to the extent commercial media can scrap journalism standards to make the news ‘product”‘more attractive to advertisers, the cure will be worse than the disease”.

(5) “This takes us to the second great misconception: that the crisis in journalism was created by the rise of the Internet and the current recession.  In fact, the crisis began in earnest in the 1970s and was well under way by the 1990s.  It owes far more to the phenomenon of media corporations maximizing profits by turning newsrooms into ‘profit centers’,  lowering quality and generally trivializing journalism.  The hollowing out of the news and alienation of younger news consumers was largely disguised by the massive profits these firms recorded while they were stripping newsrooms for parts.  But that’s no longer possible. The Internet, by making news free online and steering advertisers elsewhere, merely accelerated a long-term process and made it irreversible.  Unless we grasp the structural roots of the problem, we will fail to generate viable structural solutions.  By ignoring the public-good nature of journalism and the roots of the current crisis, too many contemporary observers continue to fantasize that it is just a matter of time before a new generation of entrepreneurs creates a financially viable model of journalism using digital technologies”…

(6) “Internet traffic mostly gravitates to sites that aggregate and reproduce existing journalism, and the web is dominated by a handful of players, not unlike old media. Indeed, they are largely the same players”…

(7) “…there is no evidence that the news media democracy requires will be paid for by advertisers or subscribers. Nor will they be supported by foundations or billionaires; there simply are not enough to cover the massive need. And while it might be comforting to think we can rely on tax-deductible citizen donations to fund the news media we need, there is scant evidence enough money can be generated from this source”…

(8) “…today’s direct and indirect subsidies–which include postal subsidies, business tax deductions for advertising, subsidies for journalism education, legal notices in papers, free monopoly licenses to scarce and lucrative radio and TV channels, and lax enforcement of anti-trust laws–have been pocketed by commercial interests even as they and their minions have lectured us on the importance of keeping the hands of government off the press. It was the hypocrisy of the current system–with subsidies and government policies made ostensibly in the public interest but actually carved out behind closed doors to benefit powerful commercial interests–that fueled the extraordinary growth of the media reform movement over the past decade.  The argument for restoring the democracy-sustaining subsidies of old–as opposed to the corporation-sustaining ones of recent decades–need not rest on models from two centuries ago. When the United States occupied Germany and Japan after World War II, Generals Eisenhower and MacArthur instituted lavish subsidies to spawn a vibrant, independent press in both nations. The generals recognized that a docile press had been the handmaiden of fascism and that a stable democracy requires diverse and competitive news media. They encouraged news media that questioned and dissented, even at times criticized US occupation forces”…

(9) “…When the United States geared up to invade Iraq in 2002, commercial broadcast news media, with only a few brave exceptions, parroted Bush administration talking points for war that were easily identified as lies. In contrast, public and community broadcast coverage, while far from perfect, featured many more critical voices at exactly the moment a democracy requires a feisty Fourth Estate. Not surprisingly, public broadcasting is the most consistently trusted major news source, with Americans telling pollsters it deserves far greater public funding.

(10) “Digital technologies have dramatically lowered production and distribution costs. Still, the main source of great journalism is compensated human labor, and, as the saying goes, you get what you pay for. We’re longtime advocates of citizen journalism and the blogosphere, but our experience tells us that volunteer labor is insufficient to meet America’s journalism needs. The digital revolution has the capacity to radically democratize and improve journalism, but only if there is a foundation of newsrooms–all of which will be digital or have digital components–with adequately paid staff who interact with and provide material for the blogosphere”…

This article can be read in full here.