Thanks to Columbia University journalism professor Michael Schudson, who responded to my Monday post criticizing his report with Leonard Downie Jr., The Reconstruction of American Journalism. I responded separately to his comments:
A response to your thoughtful post:
First, this was no clip job. Unless there’s something that escaped my attention, every direct quote in our report came from in-person, phone, or in a few cases e-mail interviews done over the past 7 or 8 months — except for two quotes that came from interviews Len Downie conducted a few years ago.
You obviously follow these matters very closely and may have learned little or nothing from our reporting, but we are finding many readers who say they are learning quite a lot.
Second, our focus throughout has been on strengthening what we call “accountability journalism.” We were not discussing the circulation of news from one person to another except as it incidentally related to sustaining a capacity for accountability journalism. No social media? Yes, no social media. You are correct that I am not on Facebook. No doubt I would learn something about the new social media if I were on Facebook or on Twitter. However, this would not change what we wrote.
Social media offer opportunities for citizen journalism and certainly we saw in Iran how important they can be under repressive governments at a moment of mass protest. But although this is certainly important, I do not see that it is already or will become a basis for sustaining accountability journalism.
I am glad you agree that we describe a pretty robust world of online startups. Len Downie and I are enthusiastic about what we have seen in the startups. We in fact believe — I thought this was clear — that they offer great hope for the future of accountability journalism. But at this point, while they are growing, they remain small and fragile.
They are supported largely by individual philanthropists and various foundations — and philanthropists and foundations can and do change their minds about where to donate their money. We want to encourage them to keep serious journalism in mind and we see the report as an effort to do so. As you know, increasing foundation and philanthropic funding is one of our six recommendations. Encouraging universities to contribute more fully to journalism is another.
If all of our recommendations were to be adopted tomorrow, how much would the government be subsidizing the news? Would government provide 2% of all cash for the media? 5%? 10%? I don’t know but it is hard for me to imagine it would go higher than that. We picture government money as especially useful for infrastructure support for the new startups or for “old media” to develop new media capacities and collaborations over a period of years.
Any and every source of funding has the potential for corruption. Surely you are not suggesting that commercial media have been free from distorting the efforts of journalists? We think a mixed funding model offers the best hope for sustaining the quality journalism that the market is less and less able to accommodate. (If someone comes up with the perfect business model for commercial media tomorrow, we can put some of our recommendations on the shelf, and if that perfect model really will sustain accountability journalism, we would be the last to object. But we have not seen that model and we are not in a position, as those in leadership and development at commercial news organizations are, to speak with authority on which business-model suggestions are most likely to work.)
Our recommendations are extrapolations from what we heard and saw already happening. Foundations are showing interest and growing interest in supporting news. NPR leaders are interested to expand support of local news at their member stations. Journalism schools and other units at universities (the Yale School of Forestry, for instance) are doing reporting for the general public, not just for classroom assignments.
To say that Congress will stand aside and say “yes, we want to fund local news and, no, we will never seek to pressure news organizations through our funding” would be ridiculous. We do not presume it. We presume only that there are ways — ways already in existence — that help preserve the independence of government-supported knowledge production. Does NSF work perfectly in funding the sciences and social sciences? Of course not. Is the BBC perfectly insulated from government pressure? No. Does CPB serve as an iron-clad separation between Congress and NPR or PBS? No. But do each of these institutions work pretty well, on the whole? You and I may differ on this, but I think the answer is yes.
It is very important to acknowledge that government is not a monolith and government is not unchangeable and government can innovate, too. And there are mechanisms — we suggest some of them in the report — to help insure the independence of journalism funded by government just as there are mechanisms to help insure the independence of journalism from investors, owners, and advertisers in commercial media.
Our report does not imagine that the mainstream media will disappear. There are 1400 daily newspapers in the country and I would anticipate that many of them, probably most of them, will be with us for years to come. Some will invent business models that will sustain them well into the future. The people trying to make their old businesses work or trying to start up new for-profit news organizations (like the San Diego News Network that the report mentions or like the Arizona Guardian I just learned about last week) are working to invent business models and we’ll know if they succeed when they execute their plans and the result is profits.
Right now, however, the most widely employed model is for newspapers to buy out and lay off reporters — and that is no way to sustain the quality journalism our society needs.
You can also read my response to this post as well as another response from Schudson.
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Michael,
I’m going to try to refrain from getting really pissed at you right now, but you have to be kidding when you say, ” No social media? Yes, no social media. You are correct that I am not on Facebook. No doubt I would learn something about the new social media if I were on Facebook or on Twitter. However, this would not change what we wrote.
Social media offer opportunities for citizen journalism and certainly we saw in Iran how important they can be under repressive governments at a moment of mass protest. But although this is certainly important, I do not see that it is already or will become a basis for sustaining accountability journalism.”
You would understand social media a lot better if you actually used it. How can you write about something you have never used? How can you say that it can’t help accountability journalism?
More infuriating is that BeatBlogging.Org — a NYU grant-funded journalism project that studied the nexus of social media and journalism — has proven repeatedly that social media can help with substantial, real Journalism. Many of the best beatbloggers we chronicled were on hard news beats like courts, cops, education, covering big Pharma, etc.
The fact that you couldn’t even read up on a project done by a journalism school in the same city as you is unbelievable. Social media has and will continue to play a major role in journalism moving forward. The fact that you believe that social media can only help with citizen journalism just shows how much you don’t get it.
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