Last Updated: January 25, 1999
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Every ASNE president undoubtedly spends more time perusing the journals
and reviews of our craft than previously had been his or her habit.
What strikes me in doing so is not only the number of publications examining
us but their improving quality and depth. The AJRs, CJRs, E&Ps, Nieman
Reports, etc. are offering thoughtful analyses on our most serious concerns.
They are especially good on what some of us see as the struggle for the
soul of American journalism: how to do good journalism in the face of increasing
competition and market pressures.
Even the new kid on the block, Brill’s Content, is suggesting answers
for editors — despite purporting not to be aimed at media professionals
but rather at consumers.
Each of these journals and reviews has its own approach. With The American
Editor, for example, ASNE gives voice to working editors on key newspaper
issues. Under co-editors Deborah Howell and John Carroll our own publication
is outstanding in this regard.
These publications, whether academic or professional in approach, are
extremely important in the search for professional practices that work
in today’s commercial environment. And, their vigorous examination of mistakes
and errors, even crimes and frauds, is relentless.
The Hutchins Commission a half-century ago spawned these sorts of reviews
by advocating improving standards through mutual criticism. Interestingly,
a recent Ford Foundation study of Latin America came to the same conclusion
about professional standards there. It recommended independent reviews
and journals as the cure for media foibles.
And they do work. Even on Steven Brill. It was quite extraordinary watching
the singeing of Brill, the man who would hold the media’s feet to the fire
for public consumption. After widespread criticism of “Pressgate,” his
exposé of so-called media abuses at the expense of President Clinton
in the Lewinsky affair, he had to acknowledge he made a political donation
to the Clinton campaign, to ban anonymous pejorative quotes and to declare
in the future he will tape interviews. Thus the education of Steven Brill.
Brill’s new magazine looks like a success and will help sort out professional
issues. It has articulated rules on accuracy, labeling and sourcing, corrections
and letters, conflicts of interest and accountability that, once it learns
to live by them, should be examples for all of us.
Another interesting newcomer is the Project on the State of the American
Newspaper currently appearing in the American Journalism Review. These
in-depth reports, funded by The Pew Charitable Trusts, are a critical look
at today’s newspapers.
The series clearly laments the commercial pressures on today’s editors
and longs for the “heyday” of professionalism when newspapering was seen
first and foremost as a public trust. This approach began coming apart
with Vietnam and Watergate, pushed along by increasing commercial pressures
and declining public confidence in authority.
While the appeal of a “golden age” is hard to resist, new times require
new solutions. Media analyst Daniel Hallin points out in a recent Media
Studies Journal that it is neither possible nor desirable to return to
the practices of the so-called golden age. He maintains the societal conditions
for that professional model simply no longer exist. But “The logic of the
market and the logic of citizenship are not the same,” he believes, “and
a media system that serves only the former is sure to come under criticism
eventually.”
Hallin says the old professional model of separation of “church” and
“state” — of journalism and the media business — was problematic in many
ways. “It was (and often still is) overly entangled with the culture of
official Washington,” he writes, “narrow in its conceptions of newsworthiness,
naive in its assumption that the professional journalist could rise above
the culture and political biases that affect the rest of us.”
This is an important moment in our history. We need clear thinking and
new ways of thinking. We have to maintain our values, but must try new
approaches that continue the economic success needed to support our role
as guardians of democracy.
I don’t have the solution. I do know there is no precise guide to the
future through the past. We can’t simply hunker down in the belief that
our own problems can’t be solved. We must continue to give readers what
we believe they should have, but we have to do so in ways that make them
care. The public simply isn’t as interested in the process of government
as it used to be.
In the journals I read about innovative media companies finding their
own solutions. I see Belo winning the battle through greatly expanded business
and sports coverage. I see Tribune Company continuing its commitment to
great journalism while taking new approaches like merging print, broadcast
and online or developing the critical mass in online classified. I see
Times Mirror going after neighborhoods.
What we don’t need is an exercise in nostalgia. We must conserve our
values, but our practices that no longer work must be changed so we continue
to be relevant to our communities.
Seaton, ASNE president, is editor-in-chief of The Manhattan (Kan.)
Mercury.
