Journalism that Matters co-participants:
Here are my notes from our opening session on Wednesday evening—not comprehensive—but perhaps helpful.
Why are we here?
Peggy Kuhr, professor, Univerisity of Kansas, wants to figure out how to get journalism beyond the newsroom.
Mike Van Buren, Kellogg Foundation, has 10 years experience with dailies and weeklies in Michigan before going into the foundation world.
Martin Reynolds, MediaNewsGroup/Oakland Tribune: “I’m tired of journalism as usual. Not that things have been so bad, but it is time to grow and change and evolve.”
Bill Densmore: Is interested in the question of sustaining watchdog journalism. Examples of ideas: The New Haven Independent, the Tyee in Vancouver, B.C., efforts to get something going in Philadelphia (“norgs.”) Talks about seeing a train-wreck for newspapers coming in 1994; started Clickshare Service Corp. to provide a platform for newspapers to be able to provide information from anywhere—information “home base” or valet for their readers. The Giraffe Project is finding and spotlighting people making innovative, sustainable use of media to foster participatory democracy and community. The idea is to understand what motivates giraffes, and how what they are doing can be used or replicated.
Dave Johnson, secretary, Atwater Sunfish Gazette (incorporated). A retired English teacher, wants to take away ideas for sustaining the non-profit weekly newspaper the have started.
Linda Ju, from the Independent Press Association, consists mostly of mission-driven magazines, recently they seem to be gravitating to retraining newspaper dropouts at investigative and cross-cultural reporting. She wants to learn how to streamline small newspapers and magazines so they can fullfill their mission better.
Chris Peck, editor, Memphis Commercial Appeal. “It’s a race, whether the old media is going to transform itself.” Have to ask the question, “If you were really going to do it differently, what would you do?”
Jim Shaffer, dean, Univ. of Southern Maine Business School, former career senior newspaper executive. He sees a crisis in the way society talks to itself, and journalism is part of the crisis. He wants to help with that.
Pam Johnson, director, Reynolds Institute at Univ. of Missouri: What is preventing good journalism from being absorbed by the public? Wants to find a wya to bring journalists and citizens closer together in ways which allow identification of key questions and ways to address them.
Christine Saed, librarian, West Oakland, Calif.: Access is a key issue. In West Oakland, some people can’t afford a phone, how can they be part of the Internet. There are two Internet connections in her library branch for 27,000 people.
ADDITIONAL GENERAL OBSERVATIONS FROM DENSMORE’S NOTES OF THURSDAY:
Chris Peck, the Memphis daily editor, asks: “Do we even need a newsroom anymore? Has journalism’s time come and gone?”
Richard Anderson: What may be needed is a new species, not a new newsroom. Perhaps the journalist of the future is as an “affinity group” organizer who’s common interest is a place called home.
As a result of these observations, and others, the consensus was to change the working title of the St. Louis gathering from: “The Next Newsroom” to “The Next News Ecology.”
There’s no shortage of people who want to express an opinion, says Peck, “and now everbody’s got a press.” But the journalist still finds a role providing an imprimatur of quality. Yet, “all it takes is a cellphone and your laptop and you can call yourself a journalist.” So, perhaps the notion of journalism has something to do with how much you have vetted the information.
THE NEW JOURNALIST
Peck also raised another question: What kind of people will be in journalism? “The next newsroom will be populated by a different mindset. It will not necessarily be Woodward and Bernstein.” It may be that the journalist will be thought of more as just another member of the community, rather than something detached and special. “You need a plumber, you need a good person to repair your car, you need a journalist.” The journalist is seen as a community facilitator, pollenator.
But citizen journalism is not free. “Evne if there is a low-cost model, there is a cost.” Peck and others wonder—what happens with citizen journalism when the initial enthusiasm wears off and people start wanting to get paid. Do they stick with it, or abandon it, or start working on ways to be paid? “That formula is not there yet,” says Peck.
“There are portions of journalism that nobody in their right mind wold ever be willing to do without getting paid,” observed Clyde Bentley, a University of Missouri journalism professor.
Christine Saed, the Oakland librarian, says online journalism is predicated on the assumption that people are wired. But if they don’t have internet access, how do then even know the information is out there. This points out the importance of universal access.
Jim Shaffer, the Maine business-school dean and ex-publishing executive, compares this to Andrew Carnegie’s endowment of the nation’s public libraries. Libraries are part of the “civic infrastructure” which helps participatory democracy work. Online information access will need to be part of that, too, Shaffer suggests.
Martin Reynolds, an Oakland Tribune editor, suggests new journalists will have to have a new mindset—but journalism schools are still teaching an old model.
Says Peck: Old media remains highly profitable. “So you have to ask, why would they change that. I think its because now they’re hearing footsteps. But they are still addicted to the old cash-flow model.”
Shaffer says this points up a key challenge: How to shift the thinking in mainstream media management ranks away from trying to do nothing. “We need more people who are not going to just hang on until they retire.” The old newsroom mentality was the “pour news around the ads.” The new-news ecology has to be based on serving humanity.
Peggy Kuhr, Univ. of Kansas journalism professor, says there is tremendous conservatism in what is taught in j-schools because the professors have been in academia and out of the business for so long. Most creative thoughts are coming today from outside newsrooms.
Azalea Blalock asks: “What is the newsroom?” Her point: That’s a concept that needs a new definition. it is no longer a physical space. It may even been an outmoded concept.
Clyde Bentley, University of Missouri professor: “The conservative people are the students.” There is no longer any technological reason to have a newsroom. Most of the effort can be dispersed.
GENERAL DISCUSSION: How does the public navigate the morass of information on the Internet?
Bill Densmore, Media Giraffe Project: The task there is to teach citizens—especially high-school students—how to be smart media consumers and creators. News organizations can perform an “information valet” function—referring users to the best information anywhere, serving at times merely as an expert guide, rather than a domain expert, a convener of ideas.
Scott Hall, Minnesota small-market public radio producer, worries that in all the talk about citizen journalism an important point is being lost. He values the fact that main stream media has been financially secure and powerful enough to question and challenge authority. “There needs to be some gravitas behind them.” He worries what will happen if powerful media organizations are replaced by many smaller, less secure organizations which are less able to be an independent challenge to authority.
Chris Peck, Memphis daily editor, adds to this point: Mainstream journalism needs to have the reosurces to counterbalance powerful newsmakers and sources. (Also a point made by Mike Skolar).
Clyde Bentley talks about the “plankton theory of journalism” in which small, community news gathers development the information which the large organizations are able to assemble and make larger sense of. What happens to the news ecology if the small plankton wither?
Chris Peck asks: What are the basic principles and standards of journalism?
(Densmore post-gathering observation: Need Tom Rosenstiel of the Project on Excellence in Journalism to answer that)