The State of the News Media

A major shift in news coverage and the mediums through which audiences prefer to consume it has changed, and continues to change, dramatically. This has created many obstacles for journalists and news organizations. The top two challenges seem to be keeping the high journalistic standard that many reputable journalists before us have built and discovering a sustainable way to make a profit; something that is vital to journalists’ survival and therefore, the well-being of our democracy.

            It is becoming easier for journalists to report news of less-quality for a few reasons. Acccording to The State of the Media report, one poll showed the number of Americans who regularly go online for news jumped 19% in 2008 and 2007 combined. Many students in our class agreed this is where they go for news because it is convenient and free. While many journalists in the report expressed optimism in online news because it allows for greater feedback from the audience, more views on topics, and greater technological potential for news organizations, they also expressed concern about declining accuracy and quality because of the strong emphasis on speed and breaking news online.

President Obama addressed his concern with this trend in his speech at Walter Cronkite’s memorial service last week. He told a story about how Cronkite came to be known as the most trusted man in America. He told a story from Cronkite’s early days of reporting that really grasped his persistence to get a story right when Cronkite’s boss told him there was a huge fire and he needed to get on the air and report it as soon as possible. Cronkie refused to do so until it was confirmed by the fire department. Other stations aired the story first, but Cronkite got it right. It turned out it was much smaller than the stations were reporting. President Obama said this reputation is what earned Cronkite the nickname, not a marketing technique, and that this kind of work ethic needs to return to journalism for the well-being of our democracy. Obama can say this as a first-hand victim of more opinionated, slanted and less factual, investigative journalism like political rants and arguments, that he endured during the 2008 Presidential Election period, as described in the report.

Based off my own experiences, I agree this standard has become more difficult to remember and uphold. I think this is due not only to the rush to get the stories up as soon as possible, but also because of how many components the audience now expects to come with it: photos, audio clips, video, records. With more layoffs in the newsrooms and increasing demand for multimedia, less reporters have to do more. This leaves not only more room for error, but also less room for creating good, balanced content, just like the report shows. Many students in class expressed concern about this growing burden on journalists because many of us that work at news organizations now, whether on or off campus, already feel the effects of this.

Not only has journalists’ workload increased from a reduce in revenue, but content has been effected as well. One student in class recalled newspapers masking advertisements as news stories, however that is not the only change that stemmed from a drop in revenue. News has become much more narrow because of different factors such as declines in revenue and more concern with ratings. For example, by the end of 2008, none of the three major networks had full-time reporters in Iraq, according to The State of the News Media report.  Many networks are also filling much of their 24/7 news broadcasts with commentary or wire stories, because it is cheaper to produce than sending out a reporter to cover a story.

 Many of these problems that stem from a decline in revenue are mostly because readers are moving online and no one has discovered a solution to turning a profit, instead of giving the information away for free. We discussed many options in class with professor John Schmeltzer from the Chicago Tribune, but all the suggestions I remember from class were mentioned in the report as already proved unsustainable overall: adopt a cable model, build major online retail malls within news sites, develop subscription-based niche products for elite professional audiences. The report claims these have all proven to be unsuccessful for the majority who tried them and that  “...the closest thing to a consensus right now is that no one source is a likely magic bullet.”

On the upside, whoever figures this out will get rich really quick. Until then, I guess we should all learn how to work faster and better than all the bloggers out there.