: On the stump…Helping us make a choice…
I was stunned when I first read this sentence a few years ago:
“The newspaper secured unprecedented access to the plant by persuading executive and government officials that it was serious about being constructive in its reporting.”
[re: A civic journalism project in Dayton, Ohio regarding the impact of the closing of a defense plant.]
The old-fashioned reporter in me recoiled in horror. But the rhetoric scholar in me, the new emerging me, saw the light. I nodded in agreement and made this margin note: Change in the noetic field–interested rather than disinterested.
This sentence comes from page 87 of Jay Rosen’s book What Are Journalists For?. If one can pinpoint a single idea that leads to important change, I’d say for me that this sentence represents it. I’m in the middle of re-reading Rosen’s book in preparation for a major project. More on this later. But I will tell you that my current blog series, “Toward a field theory of journalism…” (parts 1, 2, 3, 4), represents notes to myself, and to you, in my preparations.
I recalled this sentence as I read some of the campaign coverage in today’s editions of The New York Times and the Washington Post, including Howard Kurtz’ column. And I have two questions that follow from Rosen’s sentence: What could journalists do to be constructive in their reporting of the election? What can journalists do to help us make the best choice (one definition of “constructive” in this case).
I would submit that very little that you read in the links above qualifies as “constructive” reporting (in the sense Rosen means) or helps in making an informed choice.
And journalists wonder why: 1) Their profession is losing respect; 2) Their newspapers are losing money and readership; and 3) Far too many people don’t seem to care about politics.
Drearily, I asked my students on their first class meeting how many read a newspaper. One or two per class at best. Most of them can’t name more than one candidate for the Democratic nomination. Most of them have a difficult time naming any issue before the public except the war in Iraq. And you know, I don’t think this sorry state of affairs is all their fault. What if the press were interested in cultivating an interest in public issues among these students?
As one of your students, I must say I would not know what little I do even know if I hadn’t been in your class last semester. I do watch things of this nature somewhat closer now. So there is a testimonial to the fact that, with the “right” approach, one (a journalist) could possibly persuade someone to be more interested in such issues.
PS- I do think I will, for the most part at least, always prefer getting my information from the Internet as opposed to a more traditional form of media.
Josh…I think the internet “counts.” It’s a text-based medium with extra bells and whistles.
What could journalists do to be more constructive. . .?
One thing contemporary journalists and broadcasters could do to provide a more constructive product is to improve their communication skills. As respect for and markets for journalism have declined, so has the quality of the product. Contemporary journalism is replete with weak writing, errors of fact, poor interview technique, grammar errors, spelling errors, errors of pronunciation (radio, network and cable television, local and national) and a nearly universal lack of knowledge about their subject(s).
When journalists cover military affairs and cannot get the names of military units and equipment right, or cover diplomatic affairs and cannot correctly pronounce the name of a French official, or write prose so clumsy that it would drive high school English teachers into early retirement (or should have), or cover a story about local school property taxes in a way that one realizes the reporter knows nothing about property taxes and is therefore at the mercy of the interviewee, or interviews an author and clearly has not read the book, then one becomes hesitant to accept the content or argument of the news story however constructive its intention. If journalists were airline pilots airplanes would fall out of the sky with some regularity. Can one imagine Jason Blair or Jack Kelley as surgeons?
Allow me to illustrate. Here is the opening paragraph to a news story headlined “Throng at Smallpox Case”:
“While the chauffeur and male nurse on the city ambulance devoted to the carrying of smallpox cases drove from the General Hospital to the municipal garage on the North Side today to have engine trouble ‘fixed’ a man, his face and hands covered with smallpox pustules , lay in one of the entrances to the Union Station. One hour and fifteen minutes after having been given the call the chauffeur and nurse reported at the hospital with the man, G. T. Brewer, 926 West Forty-second Street. The ambulance had been repaired.” (Ernest Hemingway, February 18, 1918, Kansas City Star, p. 3.)
How could one not to want to read a news story with such a beginning (which you can do at: http://www.kcstar.com/hemingway/heml.htm/).?
I am looking at the A section of my local city newspaper this morning, and I don’t see a lead so compelling that one would really want to read the story.
Before contemporary journalism can become more “constructive”, it must improve the quality of its communication to the extent that people really want to read it or listen to it.
The famous nineteenth-century journalist Charles Dana once quipped that the point of journalism is to buy a sheet of paper for three cents and sell it for ten cents. Yet, for all the discussion about contemporary journalism being driven by corporate profit motives, is it not curious that contemporary journalists seem incapable of adding Dana’s seven cents of quality?
Robert Cook
Historian and Independent Scholar
Reynoldsburg, Ohio
I also recoiled when I read your opening quote. I think the truth is that journalists will recover their reputation when they don’t have to work so hard to convince people that they can be constructive.
I also don’t know all the particulars of this “civic journalism” project, but making promises about being “constructive” can open up more possibilities for misunderstanding, feelings of betrayal, etc. if (when?) the newspaper *doesn’t* come out with positive portrayals.
Contrast this with the embedded reporting experiment in Iraq. No one in the press guaranteed positive coverage, but the government wagered (correctly, i think) that open access would provide a more sympathetic picture.
I’m also not sure that Rosen’s sentence represents a quantitative change in journalism. Given how low the public regard for journalists is, obviously, a lot of reporters, editors, etc. didn’t get the memo.
Bryan…Jay’s sentence was for me another in a mounting pile of evidence of a potential noetic field shift (which I think is due in our culture…more on this later).
In the current field, objective (so-called “disinterested”) discourse is privileged over subjective (or “interested) discourse as the source and conduit for knowledge. To want to be “constructive,” to see yourself as an actor in a process rather than merely (and mistakenly) as an observer, is a step toward a change in the field (if one assumes, as I do, that journalism plays an important creative role in establishing, maintaining, and reflecting the field).