Category Archives: Media revolution
Journalism failed us badly. Here’s how.
People will be parsing this election for years to come. Here’s one thing I know: Journalism failed us badly. Since we are going to need good journalism more than ever in the days ahead, I offer some thoughts about what went wrong:
- The bottomless well of Trump coverage early on. This is mostly attributable to cable, but it was true of television more broadly, and it influenced print and online media as well.
I included this chart from the New York Times in my March 28 blogpost: A tough test for Journalism and the Midterm Grades Aren’t Good.
As the Times story said, “Over the course of the campaign, he has earned close to $2 billion worth of media attention, about twice the all-in price of the most expensive presidential campaigns in history. It is also twice the estimated $746 million that Hillary Clinton, the next best at earning media, took in.”
Of this development, CBS Chairman Les Moonves famously said: “It may not be good for America, but it’s damn good for CBS.” Here’s what else he said: “Man, who would have expected the ride we’re all having right now? The money’s rolling in and this is fun. I’ve never seen anything like this, and this going to be a very good year for us. Sorry. It’s a terrible thing to say. But, bring it on, Donald. Keep going.”
He did. So did they.
Making Journalism Indispensable
Last week, I was part of a national conference https://sustainlocal2016.sched.org/ on journalism sustainability convened by Montclair State University’s Center for Cooperative Media. Our panel was asked to begin with an overview of the state of local-news sustainability.
Having no particular expertise regarding the mix of revenue streams everyone is testing these days, I decided to focus on what I think lies at the heart of the question: the public. Whatever happens with advertising and subscriptions, events, membership or repurposing of content, I’m convinced that a key to survival will be a public willingness to support journalism. We must come to see information in the public interest as we do the arts or education – as a civic good, one we are responsible for sustaining.
This is no small challenge, since we’ve trained the public for years to believe that the news comes to them for free — or really cheap. You turned on the TV, or you plunked down your quarter for the paper, and you never really thought about the fact that advertisers were paying the bill. This means that we are going to have to make our work so important, so engaging, that people will feel they can’t do without it.
In other words, we’ve got to make our journalism indispensable. Here are a few thoughts I shared with the journalists at the conference about how to go about it:
— Be IN and OF your community. When I started as a cub reporter at the Colorado Springs SUN, the editor and publisher wrote a column published on the front page. As a newly minted Medill master’s graduate, I found this unorthodox custom disquieting. But it surely worked for the readers, who sensed the editor’s engagement with the community. Later, when I became editor of the Des Moines Register, we kept alive the paper’s historic tradition of running our cartoon on the front page. Register cartoonists had won two Pulitzers over the years; more important, they’d won the hearts of Iowans. In particular, the Sunday cartoons, poking fun at the state and its residents, made it clear that we were all in this together.
Civic Journalism, Engaged Journalism: Tracing the Connections
By Geneva Overholser / 2016 August 3rd
“Want to attract more readers? Try listening to them.” That’s the headline on Liz Spayd’s debut as the New York Times’ new public editor. That she devoted her first column to the need to pay attention to readers’ views shows how central the idea of engagement has become for journalists.
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Please see article as published by the Democracy Fund.
It’s not just the Fox, it’s the sheep’s clothing
The New York Times’s new public editor worried recently that the paper is perceived as liberal; she advised trying to address that problem. Like NPR’s bid to shed the “liberal-media” epithet by shedding Vivian Schiller, like Walter Isaacson’s attempts to cleanse CNN of it by paying a visit to Trent Lott, this is doomed to fail. Thanks in no small part to Roger Ailes.
Ailes, when he set out to create a cable network with a point of view, was clearly filling a market need. But his real brilliance lay in the motto he chose: “Fair and balanced.” The outlet designed to serve conservatives was inoculated at birth from charges of bias by claiming that it alone was free of that taint.
A few years into Fox News’s existence — on the occasion of an award being given to Fox’s leading newsman, Brit Hume — I suggested a public discussion about the merits of this new (for the U.S.) kind of journalism, The Washington media were so dog-whipped by the “liberal-media” lashings that nobody wanted to own up to noticing that Fox was conservative. But the reticence protected no one. The “liberal-media” accusations have only grown, as the public editor’s column reminds us.
Continue reading It’s not just the Fox, it’s the sheep’s clothing
Election 2016: A tough test for journalism, and the midterm grades aren’t good
The 2016 presidential campaign is handing journalism an extraordinary challenge: How to deal with so many remarkable developments — a mold-breaking Republican front-runner, a former first lady in the lead for the Democrats, an extremely volatile electorate — all at a time of disruption for news organizations.
Given the importance of this election, trying to figure out what is happening in time for some mid-course correction feels critical. Toward that goal, here are a few thoughts about some of the factors at play:
1. All Trump, much of the time.
The catnip of Donald Trump’s candidacy has been irresistible to the media, resulting in coverage that is unprecedentedly cockeyed. As a recent New York Times article put it, “Over the course of the campaign, he has earned close to $2 billion worth of media attention, about twice the all-in price of the most expensive presidential campaigns in history. It is also twice the estimated $746 million that Hillary Clinton, the next best at earning media, took in.”
This chart, from the Times article, shows how utterly out-of-whack Trump’s “free-media” coverage has been:
This constant coverage – even of the outrages (maybe especially of the outrages, in Trump’s case) — has undeniably served to elevate him above all others.
Continue reading Election 2016: A tough test for journalism, and the midterm grades aren’t good
The Media Revolution: What It Means for You
As part of the University at Buffalo’s International Education Week, I gave a keynote address about what’s happening in the media world today — what we’re losing, what we’re gaining, and what the students ought to do about it. I urged the students to “seize the opportunity to make contributions. And take responsibility for the contributions you make.”
Here is the text:
University at Buffalo, International Education week, November 2015
“The Media Revolution: What It Means for You”
It’s a pleasure for me to be here as part of International Education Week. And I’m especially delighted that you have made media your focus. Nothing could be more essential to an understanding of this fast-globalizing world than media.
You know, we say that we are what we eat. More generally, we are what we consume. And that surely goes for media. Our media diet, like our food diet, shapes us every day – for good and for ill. If we select wisely, we nourish ourselves and contribute to good health. If we choose junk, we pay for it. Moreover, our society pays for it. Just as the nation’s health and economy are affected when people eat poorly, our democracy is undermined when people fail to nourish their understanding of the world around them. A government of the people, by the people and for the people is only as good as the thinking and participation OF the people. A democracy of know-nothings will get what it deserves: poor public policy, an inability to progress, a loss of international standing. You, individually, are part of the recipe for good health – for yourself, and for the society of which you are a part.
Continue reading The Media Revolution: What It Means for You