On March 4, 2020, Geneva Overholser spoke at the Overby Center for Southern Journalism and Politics on the topic, “A Crisis in Journalism and Democracy.” She was interviewed by Charles Overby, the center’s chairman, and Greg Brock, a senior fellow there. This transcript has been lightly edited for clarity.
Charles Overby: Welcome to the Overby Center for Southern Journalism and Politics. I’m Charles Overby. It’s my pleasure to welcome you to what I know is going to be an interesting and informative evening. I’m joined by my colleague Greg Brock, who’s a senior fellow at the center with a distinguished career in journalism. And we both have the privilege of having a conversation with Geneva Overholser. Geneva was an editor at Gannett, and she has done so many things in journalism. For all the distinguished people that we’ve had here, I can’t think of another person who has done more different things in an excellent way in the field of journalism.
Geneva was editor of the Des Moines Register when it won the Pulitzer Prize gold medal for Public Service. She was on the editorial board of the New York Times. She was ombudsman for the Washington Post. You know, any one of these things would probably be a capstone for anybody else. She was director of the Annenberg School of Journalism at the University of Southern California. She was chairman of the board of the Pulitzer Prize. She’s really done it all in journalism, and the fact that she and her husband David Westphal, who’s here with us tonight and also was a distinguished journalist. But they’ve come here to Oxford and Ole Miss to share insights with us. It’s a terrific thing Geneva has been spending time, after you’ve had such a distinguished career, thinking about some of the major issues before us. And we titled this program tonight, “A Crisis in Journalism and Democracy.” Sometimes, titles can be overhyped and so, Geneva, I would ask you just to get started; is there in fact a crisis in journalism and democracy and if so are they related?
Geneva Overholser: Thank you, Charles, and thank you for that lovely introduction. I think what it really means is I’m old but I’m glad to be here. And I do think this is not one statement that is overhyped. We do have a crisis and I bet most of us would agree that these two crises are related. There is no question that good journalism is good for democracy. It helps people understand their communities and helps people come together. Healthy communities have often gotten that way in substantial part because they had good newspapers and there’s no question that the demise — it’s way too strong a word — but the enormous weakening of journalism that we have seen particularly locally has contributed to a sense that people are not confident about what they know. Many people are divided because the sources of information have fractionalized.
I know when I became editor of the Des Moines Register, the then-Governor Bob Ray ,,, said to me you know The Register pisses me off all the time but I am so lucky because when I go to national governor associations a lot of people have run big states and they have four or five different newspapers. He said I am able to say that I know what the people of Iowa know. Well, now you really don’t know the same thing in any given community and we all have our different sources of information and many of them are designed to make us split apart more than bring us together so I think that crisis in journalism has definitely helped create a crisis in government that we’re seeing.
Overby: So if I went to the doctor’s office and said doctor I’m feeling weak what’s wrong with me I guess you’re a doctor in journalism and are there a few specific things that you can cite that is causing this spill over into the decline in democracy as well as a lack of reporting or what are the specifics?
Overholser: Well, there’s definitely a diminishment of reporting, particularly on the local level, so if you live in a community and you’re no longer able to tell who is running for a given office or who are the candidates are, what are their qualifications. Or how can I select wisely if I live in a community where no one is figuring out what’s going on in the nursing home or no one is paying attention to the school board, then you really are not able to make the same kind of choices in your life as a citizen.
I mean we live in a democracy… How do you be responsible for the quality of our government … if you don’t know what the hell is happening? How do you vote in people who will improve your community? How do you understand that the jail is a for-profit jail or a not-for-profit which is being run in a way that counters the best of our traditions as a people? How do you know these things? How do you make a choice to be sure that something is improved in your community if you don’t know what’s going on? How do you know what your neighbors know? We’re sort of driven to be more divided. So yes, I think that that contributes directly to the decline in government.
I think the other thing the doctor needs to say, if you come in and say I’m feeling bad, is that you really have to be responsible for your own health… When some of us were growing up there… were three television stations and you got that news, (there) was a major newspaper and you got that news, everybody was on the same page. Now there’s no question that you can be very well informed, better than ever with these new sources of information. It’s a miracle what you can find online. The trouble is you have to be your own editor and that’s what I would say to people.
You need to take care of your own nutritional health. We now need to take care of our own information health, and it’s a very hard thing to do. Most of us have not been trained to do it. First of all you don’t really think you have to do it, but all of you do it, you do it all the time. You determine your own media diet, right, and a lot of it’s junk food. It’s hard not to eat junk food and it’s hard not to eat junk diet media food but it’s a big piece of what’s happened. It’s just not as easy to be well-informed if you don’t make that responsibility take care of your own media health.
Overby: So do you have some advice for us on nutritional media?
Overholser: Be mindful about the sources that you’re looking at. Go to the about clue so it tells you who’s funding it, what is the intent? There’s nothing wrong with having a media that is partisan if it’s a media outlet that says, look: I am serving you this sort of right-leaning viewpoint. There’s nothing dishonorable about that as long as it says this is my goal. I am funded by these organizations but know what their intent is and know who’s funding them because you are being manipulated by people if you don’t understand what their intent is. So be sure that you are mindful about your own sources of information.
But at least as important, be sure that you are a responsible contributor to media. Because everybody in this room is helping shape the media environment. Be sure that you are a responsible contributor, shaping the democracy locally and nationally with your network of friends and followers, whether it’s on Twitter or Tik-Tok or Facebook. We don’t often feel responsible for our media imprint. I really do believe that the turnout of all this terminal turmoil about how we get information will depend almost entirely on the decisions that individual people make. If people want a good information system then we’ll end up with one. If they don’t give a damn, well, we won’t have it.
Also, you’ve got to understand that good newsgathering is expensive. You’re gonna have to pay for some of it. You’ve got to understand that you’re shaping.
Overby: You know the media have always had their critics. It seems to be more prevalent today than ever. Before you got a good insight into critics or skeptics of the media both as editor of the Des Moines Register and then ombudsman of the Washington Post. What insights did you get by talking on a daily basis to irate readers?
Overholser: That we would be a lot better if we listened to readers. I mean when I was editor of the paper I thought… by God I’ll listen to the readers. Well, editors don’t have time to listen to readers and if they do listen they want to explain to you why they’re right. An ombudsman is paid to listen and paid to try to bring the ear of the newspaper person to the mouth of the reader who’s weighing in. People in the Post’s newsroom would… say to me, you’re not going to listen to those fools, are you? And I fear deeply that is happening in newspapers today, and I hate that this is happening at the New York Times. I live in New York. The Times is, I believe, our strongest news organization. It’s a great paper but they do not believe that they seriously need to examine whether they’re serving our democracy well. I think they have serious problems adjusting to a very different political situation, a very different government situation. They’re trying to play by the same old rules and when critics try to reach them there’s this wall of we know what we’re doing.
I understand why you put up a wall. It’s very hard to be constantly on the receiving end of people who are hectoring you and mad at you from the left and from the right. But you know they just go farther apart. They got rid of their public editor Margaret Sullivan, who I know was here. Margaret was fantastic. But they (got rid of the public editor) and set up a Reader Department. Now they’ve even moved that into their standards department and what the standards department does if you call and say I really wish that you would report differently on this, what they do is explain to you why they’re right to be doing what they’re doing. I mean it’s a terrible recipe so the answer about what I learned is we are a lot better journalists if we listen to the people we’re supposed to be serving.
Overby: Donald Trump has changed the landscape in a lot of ways the way people view media both positively and negatively. What’s your insight into the role Trump plays in all this?
Overholser: Huge, huge damage. David and I just got back from India. India has a leader who is a bit like our leader, an authoritative, authoritarian sort. The two have a lot in common — a powerful… sort of leader and he inveighs against the press. You know, even presidents who have not been great about defending the First Amendment at every turn or might have been very bad at pursuing those who leaked. I mean Obama, many people think he was so great in so many ways, and he was, but he wasn’t particularly great with the press. But every president, George W. Bush, Barack Obama, when they went abroad they talked about the essential quality of having a free press for a democracy. And Trump talks about how awful the press is… and it has huge damage. It has huge damage at home. It’s not that the press is great in every way — I mean I’m always complaining about the press myself — but when we have a president who essentially says you shouldn’t believe anything they say, we become a people who don’t know what to believe. If we become a people who don’t believe anything, we’ve become people who distrust everyone. I think we’re very close to that where, you know, we’re deeply divided, we have a hard time talking together. I don’t want to overstate the case but there is no question that his inveighing against the press is enormously damaging in my view.
Overby: In nine months or four years and nine months when Trump leaves will we be able to put the toothpaste back into the tube?
Overholser: We have to be able to, our democracy depends on it. There are plenty of people who believe in the importance of our having an ability to determine the closest thing to the truth that we can. Most Americans believe in that, I think. A lot of Americans are unnerved by how hard that is to do today and we’re more skeptical about whom to turn to, but people want to know the closest thing we can to the truth. One thing I think is that if we covered elections better, if instead of the famous horse race we really helped the public know what candidates’ positions were, after a debate instead of saying here’s my loser and who won big.
Overby: I’ve been involved in studies for twenty years or more every four years that say Point Blank less coverage of the horse race and it never happens.
Overholser: Why? You tell me Charles you’ve been around even four years longer than I have really why doesn’t it happen? We are terrible at change.
Overby: Clearly, people like to know who’s ahead and who’s behind.
Overholser: And it’s a lot easier to write about a horse race than it is to write about issues. Journalists like conflict.
Overby: I’m gonna let Greg talk here in a minute but I wanted to ask you since you brought up presidential politics, the Des Moines Register every four years is ground zero for the beginning caucus, first out of the chute. And this year there was massive disarray in Iowa. Any insights?
Overholser: That’s over. I mean I think we all know the caucuses are over, which of course as the editor of the Des Moines Register, talk about fun, I mean Iowa is a really fun place to be during a presidential election. And of course I like some of the things about the caucuses. I like some of the sense of community. I like that the candidates have to come and do retail, but what kind of an operation this year. I mean in many ways some of these things happened at the caucuses you just didn’t pay as much attention to (in the past). It’s done. It doesn’t serve democracy well. People who can’t afford to get off their jobs, people who can’t leave their kids behind, it’s no way to run a railroad. I’m glad I’m not at the Register anymore and I can now say that they’re over, there shouldn’t be caucuses. We should have primaries. It’s too bad for Iowa. But the Register itself suffered. They had one of the great polls in the U.S. and they couldn’t even release the results because it got screwed up. So it was a sad day for Iowa.
Overby: I want to ask you, it seems to me we talk about substance and the lack of substance contributing to the crisis in both journalism and in democracy, but the debates have taken on a food-fight mentality where your candidates have one minute and 15 seconds to give an answer to solving the problem of health care. As you look at crisis and democracy isn’t there a better way for us to choose our presidents?
Overholser: I’m afraid again a lot of it is on us. I myself had an interesting experience the other day. Before Super Tuesday it happened that CNN interviewed all the candidates in fairly significant chunks. David and I almost never watch cable TV. I mean it’s not that I don’t understand there’s great stuff going on but I rely too much on too few media. I’m an avid reader of the New York Times and the Washington Post and I watch every debate to the bitter end. But I’ll tell you sitting there and watching these interviews which I haven’t done enough… I learned a lot about each of these candidates that I could never have learned in the debate. So some of it is on us. You can inform the hell out of yourself if you go to the candidates’ websites, but again, it’s a laborious undertaking. Are we gonna do this? I don’t know. We’re not getting spoon-fed anymore. Well, those town hall meetings are definitely an improvement. How many of you watched a town-hall meeting? A lot, right, so that’s great. I mean good on you.
Greg Brock: I was looking at the tapes of the Nixon Kennedy debate, the first one in 1960, and they each had the opportunity to give an opening statement of eight minutes. Eight minutes! It seemed like it went on like 30 minutes. You once said now everyone has a press with the internet but you also made the point that has to be now a collaborative process. Could you just talk a little bit about how journalism is collaborating and how far they should go?
Overholser: Well what I’m worried about is that the Times still DOES think journalism is what we say it is. I don’t ever want to see a press where we hold our finger to the wind and say, ‘Oh what do you think that people would like to hear about today?’ But we have to think about what’s going on in our communities and what our effect on the community is. I don’t actually know how we create this new form of journalism. Many people are talking about engagement journalism. I didn’t like civic journalism even though many people would rightly say that’s part of what I’m talking about here. But I think what we need used to exist in community newspapers that were small enough that the (journalists) went to the same grocery store that the readers went to. You had to pay attention to what readers thought. I mean readers would be mad at you if you said a bad thing about the police chief. You would (stick to your guns) but you were there to hear what was on people’s minds and you would edit the newspaper accordingly. I really think that in the largest newsrooms people aren’t listening. You know more about this than I do in many ways, Greg, because you’ve worked on standards at the Times, but my impression is the Times really needs to listen better.
Brock: We have lots of students (in the audience), and in journalism we’re always talking pushing them to do critical thinking on issues. It would be easy when they graduate if we gave them a book that says do it this way don’t do it this way. But as we know journalism doesn’t work that way. Geneva had a really interesting case in Iowa. She was heading the Des Moines paper. I’m gonna let you actually explain if there’s been the rule forever you don’t print the name of the rape victim, And you had a woman come to you and said, I want you to tell my story. So what was your critical thinking? How do you get to the decision to do that? And also their series triggered a national discussion about this and re-examination.
Overholser: I think in many ways it was a precursor to the “Me Too” movement. Because an awful lot of the thread going through this is women who are in one way or another sexually mistreated, and the question of whether they’re willing to be named, which has huge power. All of us know as journalists that when someone is named there is a very different situation than when they are not. We name names in the press because we believe that that the person speaking is thereby held accountable and also we know that people feel that it’s a more credible thing. So I had actually written a piece when I had just left the Times shortly before all this took place, and I wrote a piece that appeared in The Times op-ed page about how I had always felt as a feminist and a journalist that our decision not to name these adults bringing charges was an exception to the real rule we have. Which is we name names in every other case of crime involving adults. And I said that I understood why we desired to protect rape victims from an especially cruel crime… but I raised the question of whether we weren’t contributing to the continued stigmatization of rape victims. People who are bringing charges of rape are advised not to talk about it because you will be further victimized.
So I wrote this op-ed piece and it was published in the Register too. And this woman who had been raped called me and said I wish you would tell my story and use my name. We didn’t run it for months because you know we didn’t want to prejudice the trial, but I did feel that what we really were doing was telling an under-told story. We were not looking at rape in the press then at all. I mean, it was just never talked about. And we were telling it with power because of the courage of this woman who wanted to be named. Then the debate became well do we force all rape victims to be named and that was never my intent, but I know that one reason the story was so powerful was it was an individual. This was the same thing that happened (initially) with AIDS. I remember when the Times wouldn’t list AIDS as a cause of death and people were turning to each other and thinking, what’s happening to all these young men dying of pneumonia, right? And when we did begin to list it people then thought, wow, that brilliant theatrical producer, oh wow, this dancer. We put a face on things, they become real to people.
We have only now seen the power of the “Me Too” movement because women were willing to stand all that you have to put up with and name themselves. So this question of critical thinking is a really interesting one. All of you who are journalists and journalism students, you know we do have rules and we need to abide by them, but so much of journalism is about figuring out exactly how to apply them.
I think I lucked into this nice invitation because I wrote a piece about “both sidesism,” which is one of the worst things going on in journalism today. It’s one of our rules, right, to tell both sides of a story. But led to a complete failure to understand what was going on, for example, with global climate change because we were devoted to telling both sides of this story when one of the sides of the story was fundamentally being funded by corporate and industrial and energy interests and by certain conservative economic interests, and we were bending over backward to give equal sides to the story when 98 percent of scientists understood exactly what was going on. We become the tools of certain interests who are hiding their identity and we do this regularly now in politics. I think it’s a real disservice, and yet the Times is sticking with “both sidesism.”
Overby: And would you apply that to political reporting?
Overholser: I would, and this is very difficult and a conversation that is hard for people to have because it’s hard to piece out what is partisan. But I think we bend over backward when we’re talking about political issues to be sure that we don’t offend people who lean heavily to the right. The fact is ever since Rush Limbaugh had such great success on talk radio and then with the coming of Fox News, we really have had a kind of media outlet that is different. It’s not trying to do as good a job as it can of giving you the facts, however imperfectly. It is aiming at giving you a story that it knows a lot of people want to hear.
I went on Brian Lamb on C-Span one time and he pitted me against an extreme right-winger. I was from the Post and I was supposedly representing the left. That was the symmetry. And that’s the way we pretend it is today. I’m not saying there aren’t haters on the left. I’m not saying there isn’t horrible stuff on the left. But this is not symmetrical; we are acting like it’s symmetrical. I know a lot of people are going oh she’s some lefty, but we are treating it as if all the right-wing power of Fox News and its connections to Trump are the very same thing as everything else that happens in the media. So we bend over backward in most of the media to be balanced and reporting on Trump to be balanced and we’re more hesitant to call out lies. We are normalizing things we shouldn’t be normalizing.
I’ve been feeling this a long time. In 2004 I was on the National Press Foundation board and we decided we wanted to give Brit Hume (of Fox News) an award as broadcaster of the year. Brit Hume is a very smart guy, he’s a hell of a journalist, but he was the Fox anchor and I said if we’re going to do this we need to have the discussion about this new model… But I think media bent over backward not to be the liberal media — oh, we don’t want to be called the liberal media. Tthere are a lot of thoughtful moderate Republicans who really want the truth. But we’re not giving anybody the best effort we can to give them the truth when we’re so devoted to “both sidesism” that we don’t want to look like we’re favoring anything. It is not a symmetrical situation and we act like it is.
Overby: I understand what you’re saying but I know so many people who think the New York Times is going over the precipice in its reporting against Trump and has removed any semblance of fairness. How do you balance those two seemingly different opinions?
Overholser: If you’re really listening only to Fox and then you come to the Times, of course you think that A lot of the critics aren’t really reading it, or everything else they’re hearing of course makes them believe it’s unfair to Trump. And of course, a lot of people beat up on the Times for being unfair to Hillary. I know the Times is not alone in this “both sidesism” thing. I mean, it’s easier in a way to talk about it with climate change because it’s not such a partisan issue. There is a lot of money going toward making Americans think certain things and I think it’s true on certain issues and I think it’s true in politics. If you choose as a mainstream media person to be neutral in a situation like that then you become a sucker to the people who are spending the money.
Overby: So being neutral on these issues that you highlighted contributes to the crisis in democracy.
Overholser: I believe it does. I believe that it’s a false neutrality. But you’re not giving people an accurate picture if you make Trump look like a normal president. You’re not giving people an accurate picture if he is leading the news all the time. We should be reporting on what really is happening in health care, (Trump) is brilliant at manipulating the press, absolutely brilliant. I’m not saying disrespect the president. We have to report but we don’t have to report on every damn tweet. So yes, I think it contributes to the crisis. We report on utter lies as if they were reality.
I thank God I’m not editing a newspaper now but I know one thing: Don’t dance to the tune all the time. Come up with our own coverage about what we think people need to know — what is happening in the nation, what’s happening in other nations. So much of it has just been Trump all the time and controversy all the time and bitter partisan divides all the time. We should be serving the public interest better than this.
Overby: What would your advice be to the Washington press corps?
Overholser: You know, we’re really not reporting on what’s happening in the Department of Agriculture anymore. I happen to notice that, because we used to report on it a lot in Iowa. The Department of Agriculture is really important. It’s not just about you know how corn farmers are doing. There’s so much reporting, good reporting that could be done (in agencies around D.C.) and instead the news is hugely dominated by the president more than with any other president.
Overby: Is there any organization or any way to take voices like yours and make them louder and more widespread?
Overholser: Well, I think the NiemanLab — actually my husband bless his heart — he’s always seeing these things on Twitter, an invaluable tool for journalists. NiemanLab is a great place to read thoughtful thoughtful looks at what really is happening with the press and sort of fearless looks. I do think Nieman Lab is great at this. I keep struggling with how did this all happen. I do think early on no one was willing to say wait this is a new kind of media outlet we’ve got here and I remember Howard Kurtz at the Post said that Fox News reporting isn’t any different than any other reporting which is just balderdash. Eric Alterman, he said this is like assisted suicide the way we in the mainstream press have gone along with not saying look American public this is a different kind of thing what Rush Limbaugh does, this is a different kind of thing what Fox News does.
I do think we should think about whether we are serving the democratic needs of our nation by trying our damnedest to give people the information they need to be good voters and good citizens and good members of their community and not care if we’re gonna be called names.
Overby: Would you put MSNBC in the same category?
Overholser: If I’m tuning in to a news station I don’t want to have my itch scratched. I want to be informed. It’s fun to be in a dinner party with a lot of people who think just like us but it’s actually more interesting to be in a dinner party with people who have different views if we’re wanting to say them passionately but civilly. I actually don’t watch much cable because everybody’s yammering at each other all the time.
Overby: I want to go to the audience because I know that you want to have a conversation with Geneva as well.
Audience Question: Do you think the 24/7 news cycle plays a hand in the deterioration of all this? It seems like we’re more interested in breaking news than we are a studied response to what’s happening.
Overholser: Yes, absolutely. It’s harder to know even as a consumer of news when will I get what really matters. I think many media are attempting to give you what do you need to know today, and we need to look for that because if we really do just tune in to 24/7 cable and shouting at us, or what is the latest on Twitter or Facebook, then it’s like a constant distraction. And I think for most of us we just go who needs that? Who wants to bother with that? I got enough tension in my life anyway. So having thoughtful touch marks. (Today’s 24/7 news) is an ocean constantly coming at us, and you can mine from it and be better informed than ever but most of us are just overwhelmed. So I think if you could pick. I know this takes time.
We really need to have news literacy in classrooms — another of my hobby horses. Canada teaches news literacy in every province to junior high school or high school students. Somebody joked with me that they have to do that because of all the schlock coming across the border. We got plenty of schlock, and we need to know how to be our own editors, right, how to curate our media.
Overby: Are there three or four new sources that you’d recommend?
Overholser: Well, I think I’m a bad example. I really did sit there like a fool watching these candidates being very thoughtful and I thought, I read the New York Times and the Washington Post and The New Yorker and I follow a lot of interesting people on Twitter and of course I’m on Facebook and I have interesting thoughtful friends and I follow links in different places. But I hadn’t done the simple thing of going and listening to these (candidates) for myself, so I’m a bad example. I don’t have a narrow media diet but it’s more of a smattering after my sort of a top four or five. I’m gonna take my own advice and be a better curator.
Audience Question: This is a non political question so my question relates to your comment about newspapers in particular being responsible to the community and listening to the community. So my question is about the right to be forgotten. If there’s a story that so-and-so is alleged to be your rapist or something like that and then that person is tried and acquitted. I know the Cleveland Plain Dealer has set up a permanent board to review complaints from people and ask them to have those that information be removed from their servers. So my question is do you feel it’s a responsibility of a newspaper to do that? Is it practical to do that and do you know whether any other cases where it’s being done besides the Plain Dealer?
Overholser: I’m not a techno whiz but I’m afraid it’s very hard to remove things from sites. But I don’t have the technological equipment to answer that. I do know one thing and that is when people are acquitted of crimes, newspapers have been way inadequate at reporting that at the same level that they initially reported the charges. As for the wiping out thing, I think that states should be much better about having time periods beyond which people aren’t held responsible for minor crimes. But I don’t know enough about the wiping out.
Audience Question: I have two related questions. One, I’ve always felt that if there’s a conspiracy in the press to make money, get the most eyeballs on a newspaper. And you have a vested interest in conflict and crisis to the point where it feeds on itself. And another related question: Is there not a curator out there, perhaps an academic website, that curates the news so that I don’t have to go look at Axios and try and figure out what it where it’s coming from? Or is there not some source that you can recommend that will do some of that work for us.
Overholser: I really think the best curator is to find I think two or three really reliable news organizations that you feel are reliable and and at least two or three because only one you know it’s not gonna be broad enough. But your characterization of the press as being addicted to conflict is absolutely right. It’s not always about the money, but yes, I think journalists are jazzed on conflict. The good news today is that people have done quite a bit of research showing that conflict stories don’t actually attract more readers than stories that give people tools to think about how they can solve problems. Stories like this are actually better read and read over a longer period of time. Now that’s a really good finding. People would like to find solutions to things. We don’t all like to think the world is going to hell in a handbasket and there’s nothing we can do about it. I think it’s one of the reasons people quit reading newspapers. It’s like, yeah, you know my life is hard enough without finding that the schools don’t work and you know so I think that helping people figure out how to solve problems will actually do better.
As far as saying newspapers do this to make money, actually we should worry that newspapers aren’t making any money now. Newsgathering costs a lot of money and we’ve sort of trained people to think they aren’t going to have to pay for information, and you know what you get a lot of junk because that’s free. But when investigative reporting dies and when substantial enterprise reporting dies you get what you pay for. So we shouldn’t complain that newspapers wanted to make money. At one point they perhaps made more money than we ever dreamed we’d make, but they sure as hell aren’t now. They are dying across the country, especially in big cities, and we’re gonna see them continue to die and our democracy is going to suffer more from that. We have to be responsible for the quality of the information around us. And we do that partly by tending news organizations.
I think we’re seeing some models that work because some wealthy individuals — a little bit back to the future — wealthy individuals own newspapers now in Boston and Minneapolis and in LA. That doesn’t mean they’ll be great owners but at least they are local citizens owning a paper. I actually think that we should look at a public funding option but that’s hugely controversial.
Audience Question: I think it was yesterday an op-ed came out in the New York Times just talking about how that the New York Times, similar to Google and Facebook, is crowding out competition in journalism. And I think that’s really scary for me to have this conversation of certain news organizations being too big. Also, like with the Washington Post is owned by a billionaire Jeff Bezos, and so I think when it comes to just like the fundamentals of cannot really trust his information it’s really serious. Every time I see the Washington Post I think of Jeff Bezos and it bothers me.
Overholser: The column you’re talking about is a very interesting one because it’s by the new media writer for the Times, Ben Smith. And it’s a very interesting point. I didn’t know the Times now has more paying online subscribers than the Post, the Journal and all the Gannett papers together. I do think that that column overstated in saying that The Times is eating everything up. The Times is not a local paper except for us in New York… so an awful lot of what else is going on has nothing to do with that monopoly. I think the press now is so fractionalized that we should worry less about the monopolies than it used to be but newsrooms themselves need to be much more democratic. They need to be much more representative of their communities. They need to make decisions in more democratic ways by listening to the public.
Audience Question: We’re kind of on this Back to the Future theme here, but I noticed Geneva that in 1996 you were featured on Frontline for a discussion of why America hates the press so here we are now 25 years later and again we’re talking about why America hates the press. Are we being overly concerned or is this a whole different level of hatred. You know I’m just curious because I feel like that sentiment has been out there for a very long time.
Overholser: I have no idea what I said on that Frontline, but I think that in ‘96 I had just become ombudsman at the Washington Post and I was hearing a whole lot of why America hates us. I think that I would say the reasons are somewhat different now but your point is well-taken. If certainly there have always been people who are mad at the press, I think now we have added to it a deep distrust of the press. In ‘96 they were mad at the press partly for being so powerful. Now we have a distrust of the press. And actually one thing I think I wish people understood now is how much the press is struggling to survive. Not the New York Times, although lord knows five years ago it was struggling to survive. It’s really kind of a miracle that they have turned it around and I wouldn’t ever assume that it will last frankly. But I think now we have added this deep distrust and that what people need to realize is, yes, the press is imperfect but it it’s essential and it’s gonna go away if we don’t do something. I know I keep talking about newspapers and it’s because I’m a newspaper woman but it’s also because these really are the building blocks, the real diggers of everyday news.
I think one difference is now there’s a deeper distrust partly because the fans are being flamed by so many people who really don’t want you to trust the press.
Overby: Geneva, I mentioned when I introduced you what a star you were. You’ve done so many things of excellence in journalism. You know a lot more now than you knew when you were a student. For these students who would aspire to have the success that you had, what advice do you have for them knowing now what you did not know then?
Overholser: Stick with it. Journalism is absolutely essential and it’s a really interesting life. I would say the most important thing I wish I had known earlier was each of you is bringing something to journalism that you yourself can add to a field that really needs a diversity of voices and understandings — and knowledge and passion and experience. Newsrooms in the past have been so eager to just sort of hammer us into the same. You had to prove you understood the definition of news judgment and I think women and people of color and any of us who felt different in any way had to try to hew to one notion of what news judgment was. It was hard news that mattered more than soft news. These rules are silly and and it was one of the reasons we didn’t reach people and it’s certainly one of the reasons that newspapers don’t reflect their community. So I would say trust your gut and I don’t mean you should waltz in and say you know it’s my way or the highway or anything, but I would say know that you are bringing to journalism your strength.
Also, I think the times I’ve made more difference in journalism than any other times are times that I did something I was a little afraid of doing.
Overby: Geneva, we are honored that you’d come and spend time with us and all of us appreciate your being here. Thank you so much.
