Journalism That Matters for the 21st Century

Convener:      Dale Peskin

Participants

Jarah Euston

Stacy Lyech

Melinda Wttston

Ralph

Jan Schaffer

Discussion

I hate my company, it doesn’t listen to me

Who’s editing this? Hating what I read.

Us/them, I’m not in control of my own destiny.

There’s a disconnect between worry over the bottom line and the conversations about where journalism is going. Handwringing over what is happening and not enough looking at what we can do.

Social contract broken- no longer go to work for one company to do good work. Now have to worry about health insurance, job, always looking out for “me”.

Muroch- Melinda was a media correspondent in London told to be independent and let rip and she did and it was cool. Times circ began to overtake the independent. When it didn’t suit him she was promoted into a job she didn’t want. Business interest of the paper vs the editorial value of the paper. Lots of editorial turnover makes everyone on edge.

Some of the news that needs to be covered is not so appealing to some journalists. Tension of mission versus professional success.

Are mission statements genuine? All are the same, are they real or are they marketing tools? Few people running companies have had few experiences as journalists at all.

Internal narrative in newsroom in conflict. Very destablizing. Mythology of newsroom not what its cracked up to be. Causing people to say this is not what I’ve signed up for. Percentage of women in newspapers has not changed since 1982.

TV and radio have fared better for women. Men anchors have been pushed to the background.

What can journalism do? There’s a conundrum with reporters as perpetual bystanders. We don’t engage in solutions. Newsrooms need to rethink themselves as dispassionate observer- and you turn them into problem solvers?

You can try and change things form within or you can leave and start something new.

What’s going on in new media, where there is a clear conversation of what people stand for. Wear objectivity on your sleeve and people can spam it discuss it or support it. Traditional news organizations very disingenuous about that. PR agencies trying to spin the story. Edlmann PR and Walmart successfully planted stories about walmart- if only Walmart was FEMA.

Read the stories with a feeling of suspicion. Part of walmarts motivation was marketing but there was also social entrepreneurship. They gave $28m off the bat.

Why are people going into journalism. 80% of mass comm students are going into PR and advertising. Ratio of j school women/men is 2/3, ratio of newsrooms is 1/3

After three years do you really like it enough? Stacy- a lot of women are saying I can do other things. I don’t have to work nights and work 60 hours to make a difference.

Dale- young people in newsrooms 80% of under 30’s want out of the newsroom bc the companies don’t get it. Learning newsroom survey.

Stacy-young people say the rate of change is just too slow. People just get nailed and are scared to but new stuff out there. Have to have 50 meetings to try something new

Dale- have selective memory about the past of journalism. Most of it wasn’t all that great with sexists and tyrants.

How can you make these better places to work?

Ralph- is it fun anymore, how do we make it fun but not looking backward because it’s not the same anymore. People forget about all the shit we had to put up with. If you’re straight jacketing into rules and expectations it’s not fun

Melinda- how enlightened are managements? People do better work when they’re happy. Some managers are afraid to empower people.

Stacy- how much control to managers need? Administrative stuff sucks the fun out of the day. Need a new class of administrators.

Management by accounting. Detroit. 65% of all hours dedicated to administration, not reporting. Tack on administration to whoever’s job

Journalism needs to innovate but is stifling innovation.

Jane- are baby boomers the problem? Are they too controlling? New gen y very optimistic- they’re too jr and they aren’t listened too. Not given the authority to make the difference.

Melinda that’s why she went with a startup and she empowers her journalists. First two years didn’t have an office just cell phones and laptops. Now with an office no one has a set desk sit where there’s an open computer and it fosters a little team spirit. Teaching each other so other’s can fill in

J lab citizen’s initiative. Lots of anger, people feeling like they weren’t covered. Dissatisfaction.

Dale- trust is a big word

Low threshold now for technology. It’s cheap and easy.

Stacy- if we were staring a newsroom today are these the 450 ppl we would chose? No of course not.

Dale- maybe we don’t need 450 people. Talking to a vc don’t need all that, just need 2 servers.

Stacy- that’s crap!

Ralph- in terms of guiding people it starts at the top. World had a total culture shift

Need clarity and certainty, it starts at the top.

Jane- You’re a non union shop. You can say you’re either with us or against us.

What if you had a biz model with no reporters but just an editor, a magazine model.

Dale- not just newspapers, BBC has 38k employees in 25 yrs 25k.

Melinda- shrinking number of papers. People complain about one newspaper towns, lack of competition, who’s watching?

Jane- vintagesoup.com

Dale- I think people are better informed now than ever before. Moved to Washington and subscribed to the post and found that I didn’t need it.

Stacy- in smaller towns there is nothing- if there’s not one local outfit you don’t know what’s going on in that town. 60% of news in the world is inherently local. The info won’t fall from the sky

Dale I live in reston and I have more information than I can handle, 3 papers, 2 cj sites, blogs…

Stacy- where does news come from? What is the beginning? Conversation and the people reacting . what’s going on who’s here? What is the school calendar and what are their phone numbers?

Jane- added value is what does it mean to me?

Melinda- need to connect the dots, be an eyewitness,

What question do you personally care deeply about that if explored could make a difference to the future of journalism?

How can I inspire more curiosity and responsibility in my community through journalistic storytelling?

What are the stories that matter and how can they best be told to serve the good of individuals, communities and the whole of life?

Who is invisible?

How do we provide information to people so they can make thoughtful, informed decisions about their lives?

What will Silja be doing in 2015? (i.e. how will a healthy journalist be doing her job?)

How can we create more space for the public commons?

How can we inspire journalists to be what they want the world to be?

The media economic model is changing and will get worse, and that is scary to the personal livelihoods of journalists. What is the new economic model that will preserve the integrity of journalism that I grew up with?

Is journalism a dinosaur? Can we grow new legs quickly enough to walk on 21^st century terrain?

Can journalists facilitate safe public conversations that engage our likenesses and differences in service of building healthy communities?

What does it take to establish (or re-establish) enlightened ownership of media properties?

What is journalism?

How can you engage journalists in and render as journalists the story of America’s crumbling master narrative?

How can we reconcile what interests the public – with what’s in the public interest? Also: How can we inspire journalists to ask questions on behalf of those who cannot.

In a society and world where journalism based in faith is in the ascendance, how do we encourage more journalism based on facts – and help people understand the difference?

Why are journalists so afraid of change?

Are truth and objectivity marketable in today’s society?

Are we, as journalists, willing to do what it takes to restore the public’s faith in our work?

How do you hold on to the fundamental journalistic values such as fairness and balance while forging a new path for journalism and while giving journalism back to journalists and taking it from Mainstream media?

How can we overcome our tendency to demonize our partners in journalism whether in the same media or across different mediums – is collaboration possible and/or desirable?

As media workers in a democratic society how do we tell the stories in a way that leads audiences to feel empowered as citizens – and responsible as citizens?

Why isn’t journalism fun anymore?

How can we shake up journalistic paradigms, attitudes and traditions so we can stay relevant and aware? (Especially in reference to what we cover and pay attention to).

How can we support the editors, citizens and journalists who will create the journalism we want?

What is the balance between providing news we believe the public wants and will pay for with the news we feel serves the highest common good?

What interests the public vs. what is in the public interest…

By Matt Thompson

I wanted to come to this gathering, as I said, because the conversations I’ve been hearing and participating in about the changes happening in the media have seemed at times brilliant, at times superficial, but always familiar. I was curious what would happen when a group of people passionate about the industry got together for a lengthier, more open-ended, more abstract conversation.

So is it working? After Day One-and-a-half, I’ll say I can’t wait to see what happens tomorrow. While the conversations I’ve had today have treaded some familiar ground, some have gone just a bit beyond charted territory. It has been abstract, in a very fun and provocative way. I feel engaged.

It’s odd to see myself type that – engaged — at a moment when my Internet connectivity is fleeting and my cell phone is showing one bar, roaming. This from a fellow who usually feels lost after he’s been away from his RSS reader for more than an hour. But part of my engagement here is probably in direct proportion to my detachment from technology. I’m not blogging this. (Not at the moment, at least.) And yes, there’s something to be said for that. The biggest immediate difference between this confab and so many others is that 75% of the participants are not hunched over their laptops, always the reporters, never the sources.

Tomorrow I convene a conversation called “What is journalism?” The feeling of not knowing exactly what will happen during that discussion exhilarates me. It’s, as I’ve said, a big-ass question. It won’t be answered here. But that it has been started is something important.

By Silja J.A. Talvi

Listening is a powerful thing.

For the last day, I’ve spent the time really listening to the folks around me, really learning from the depth of experiences and the breadth of perspectives here. I do not agree with everything that I hear, but I the vast majority of what I hear resonates—at least on some level—with my own experiences and perspectives.

And then I listen, in turn, to what my own voice is telling me. It’s not a voice I necessarily articulate well, in person, but it’s something I’m able to share here.

That voice, if you will, is what keeps me doing this thing that I do.

It’s the fire that burns inside.

To be completely honest with you, this fire of mine doesn’t appreciate the sentiment that business is—or should-be the primary operator, the driver, if you will, of this occupation of ours.

But it’s not as though I haven’t heard it before.

A friend of mine, an editor of a large circulation newspaper, smiles at me every time he hears me say this in his presence. He laughs, cocks his head in my direction, gazes at me incredulously, and then gives me a kind of sympathetic pat on the back.

I laugh, in kind. I don’t mind; it’s deserved. I can’t even manage to work in the structure of the newsroom, much less contemplate the idea of managing a newspaper where revenue concerns are as much a part of the equation as the kinds of stories I feel compelled to tell. The kinds of stories I want to tell? They’re hard for even me to stomach. They keep me up at night, and they honestly break me down, from time to time. The prisoner who’s being raped in his cell for the hundredth time and being told by guards to just “fuck or fight;” the woman who has finally given into the power of her addiction and started to sell her body on the street for the sake of her next high; the lost livelihood of the African store owner and immigrant who’s been hauled off into a detention cell at two in the morning because most of his revenue is coming in from Somali Muslims using their food stamps to shop for hallal meat.

I remind him that this why the world needs people like me—the storytellers, the muckrakers. Mind you, I consider myself one among thousands in recent history; neither extraordinary nor legendary, just a woman doing the one, concrete thing that compels her to move forward in life. And I remind him, in turn, that that’s why the world needs people like him—the men (and women) who can traverse the fine line between journalism-as passion, and journalism-as-bottom-line.

I do realize that nothing in this capitalist economy of ours sustains itself, for any significant period of time, without a profit margin. I’d simply be a fool to think otherwise.

But here’s where I’m coming from: there’s no bottom to my line. The drive to do what I do stems from another place altogether: the power of the word. I think you all know this as well as I do: The power of the word has the ability to convey and contextualize the lessons of the past, the potential of the present, and the transformation of the future.

I came here primarily focused on something that I still think merits more conversation: the extent of the dissent, dissatisfaction and outright misery in the ranks. Those of us engaged in media work as the producers of news and information for magazines, newspapers, television and radio number now about 300,000, including 55,000 reporters and editors nationwide. That may seem like a huge number at first glance, but consider that this only adds up to 1/10^th of 1% of the number of people who live in the United States, and that this nation’s newsroom workforce has been cut by roughly 2,200 full-time positions in the last five years alone. It’s also worth pointing out, again and again, that ethnic diversity in newsrooms isn’t getting any better; in fact, it’s been on a steady decline over the past three years.

Not only are professional media workers facing job and pay cuts and less diversity in the ranks, we’re also facing the reality of declining numbers of pages for editorial content, and demands to make our own stories shorter and shorter.

“The vast majority of reporters will tell you that they entered journalism because they wanted to make a difference in the lives of ordinary people,” contributing author Linda Foley writes in The Future of Media: Resistance and Reform in the 21^st Century (Seven Stories Press, 2005). Yet, according to a survey conducted for that book, 83% of those surveyed believed that there was “too much emphasis on the bottom line … and a decrease in the overall quality of journalism.” (Another 65% of media workers believe news organizations do not give enough coverage to stories that are meaningful to average Americans.)

Speaking at the second annual Conference on Media Reform Conference in St. Louis in May, noted journalist and columnist Juan Gonzalez had this to say: “Most [journalists] are frustrated and angry … they wanted to do something better with their lives, but they don’t believe that they can do anything to change [the situation in media.]”

“But when those workers decide to [act],” he added, “they will revolutionize the entire industry.” I, for one, was gratified to hear Gonzalez say it. Journalism is changing. Of this there’s no question. I’ll embrace the change, but I won’t embrace a bottom line that asks me to sprinkle water on this fire of mine. And that fire, my dear colleagues, is something I’d ask of you, as well. If you’ve got it, folks, keep it burning.

Even when the bottom line would have you do otherwise.