Everett Erlich calls Dean a Third Party “taking over” the Democrats. Jeff Jarvis says the Dean campaign is really a one way machine pumping out propaganda like all before it. Mewanwhile Tom Mangan, newspaper editor, wonders what good “theory” does in…

Everett Erlich calls Dean a Third Party “taking over” the Democrats. Jeff Jarvis says the Dean campaign is really a one way political machine pumping out vote-for-me propaganda like all before it. Mewanwhile Tom Mangan, newspaper editor, wonders what…

That’s an excellent statement of the problem as I see it. To paraphrase Rummy, many journalists don’t know what it is they don’t know.

It seems to me your second paragraph answers your first, although I would challenge the assertion that “the stuff we need to fix its failings simply is not available.” I do believe the stuff we need to fix its failings may be found in challenging “organic reflection” (although I may certainly be mistaken).

Now, how do you do that?

Here are two examples:

1) Resist the more simplistic notions of narration, e.g. that news “stories” have a natural narrative structure and are populated by set characters. Resisting master narratives about the presidential candidates and acknowledging that the primaries are stable and predictable political events would be a good place to start.

2) Become true language experts. Many journalists believe themselves to be language experts of a sort because they write for a living. But few have ever had any education in rhetoric, linguistics, or semiotics (semantics, syntactics, and pragmatics). Such education would challenge the objectivist noetic field of the profession–that “organic reflection” you mentioned.

I appreciate your asking a very good question. And I apologize for these sketchy answers. Part of what Rhetorica is about is working all of this out.

I suppose a simpler way to put this: Greater understanding of practice (theory: the how/why of practice) offers the practitioner choices.

The journalism we have feels like an organic reflection of the environment we live in. Maybe my own blindness to the profession’s “under-theorized” tendencies is another of your structural biases … I wouldn’t deny there’s a sense that we know all we need to know about how to report the news, and that the stuff we need to fix its failings simply is not available.

I suspect most working newsies would say, “don’t give me more theory; just give me more time, talent and money.”

Why I have hope: Print journalists work with the best medium for presenting propositional content. With their large audience, they are uniquely positioned to make an impact by following the story lines Rosen suggests.

Why I despair: Because too many journalists still do not understand the structure (those biases I talk about) of their own profession. The profession remains under-theorized and, therefore, at the mercy of any cultural/technological wind that blows.