There is a very interesting, yet extremely lengthy, analysis that has been conducted by Journalism.org titled The State of the News Media 2006. The report is massive, totalling 178,000 words.
I wanted to quote a few items from the major trends section to picque everyone’s interest in the report. I’m sure that there is much more digging that can be done here.
The report identifies 6 new trends which I found to be fairly interesting and hopefully worth discussing.
1. The new paradox of journalism is more outlets covering fewer stories.
- The species of newspaper that may be most threatened is the big-city metro paper that came to dominate in the latter part of the 20th century.
- At many old-media companies, though not all, the decades-long battle at the top between idealists and accountants is now over.
- That said, traditional media do appear to be moving toward technological innovation — finally.
- The new challengers to the old media, the aggregators, are also playing with limited time.
- The central economic question in journalism continues to be how long it will take online journalism to become a major economic engine, and if it will ever be as big as print or television.
The first and perhaps most important thing I wanted to highlight is observation #3:
At many old-media companies, though not all, the decades-long battle at the top between idealists and accountants is now over. The idealists have lost. The troubles of 2005, especially in print, dealt a further blow to the fight for journalism in the public interest. “If you argue about public trust today, you will be dismissed as an obstructionist and a romantic,” the editor of one of the country’s major papers told us privately. An executive at one of the three broadcast networks told senior staff members in a meeting last year that “the ethical anvil has been lifted,” meaning the producers could dispense with traditional notions of journalistic propriety. One of the most celebrated editors in the country, John Carroll of the Los Angeles Times, stepped down in frustration in 2005, but only after taking weeks to persuade his successor not to join him. The most celebrated journalist still at ABC, Ted Koppel, left for cable, but only after announcing that neither cable news nor network news was amenable to the long-form work to which he aspired. The most cogent explanation for why journalism in the public interest has lost leverage was probably offered by Polk Laffoon IV, the corporate spokesman of Knight Ridder. “I wish there were an identifiable and strong correlation between quality journalism … and newspaper sales,” he said. “It isn’t …that simple.” From here on, at many companies, the fight on behalf of the public interest will come from the rank and file of the newsroom, with the news executive as mediator with the boardroom. There are some notable exceptions, and journalists who work in those situations today consider themselves lucky. Meanwhile, at many new-media companies, it is not clear if advocates for the public interest are present at all.
I don’t think this is anything folks here didn’t know in their hearts but here is the proof – there is no more 5th estate and the era of the media having an ethical duty to inform the public is over. We must accept that we are living in an era where the only thing that matters is the dollars and that means media entities have to compete with “entertainment” shows for ratings, viewers and avertising dollars. As the analysis notes there may be certain reporters that still feel this sense of duty to the public but as a whole this battle is lost and we either need to give up or find a new way to fight it.
The second item worth exploring in full is point #1:
The new paradox of journalism is more outlets covering fewer stories. As the number of places delivering news proliferates, the audience for each tends to shrink and the number of journalists in each organization is reduced. At the national level, those organizations still have to cover the big events. Thus we tend to see more accounts of the same handful of stories each day. And when big stories break, they are often covered in a similar fashion by general-assignment reporters working with a limited list of sources and a tight time-frame. Such concentration of personnel around a few stories, in turn, has aided the efforts of newsmakers to control what the public knows. One of the first things to happen is that the authorities quickly corral the growing throng of correspondents, crews and paparazzi into press areas away from the news. One of the reasons coverage of Katrina stood out to Americans in 2005 was officials were unable to do that, though some efforts, including one incident of holding journalists at gunpoint, were reported. For the most part, the public — and the government — were learning from journalists who were discovering things for themselves.
We’ve all seen this happen. Hell probably the best example was that painful evening during the 2000 election when Fox News called Florida for Bush and all the other major networks followed them. What this says to me is that if any of us want to be informed in the coming decades we are going to have to rely more on international sources and blogs and less on the news entities here at home.
The one thing I think this report does miss (well it may mention it – I certainly haven’t read all 178K pages!) is it completely omits the importance of blogs and the citizen media. On any given day I’ll stop by places like DailyKos, Booman Tribune, My Left Wing, AmericaBlog, etc before I ever crack open a more traditional media site to see what is going on.
This report is huge, but I figured it might generate some good discussion. (cross posted in the usual places)
