Michael Schudson accepted my invitation to continue our discussion about The Reconstruction of American Journalism. I blogged critically Monday about his report with former Washington Post Executive Editor Leonard Downie Jr. Schudson responded Thursday and I replied today . I recommend reading the other links, if you haven’t yet, before reading this. Schudson is a journalism professor at Columbia University. This is his most recent email to me:
I have a different picture of our journalism history than you do.
Yours is close to the conventional story that American journalists have long told themselves — it just happens not to be true. (Take a look at Paul Starr’s The Creation of the Media or an important work that Starr draws on, Richard John’s Spreading the News.)
The First Amendment is a somewhat mysterious document since the founders — including Jefferson — appeared to understand it to mean that the FEDERAL government should not interfere with freedom of the press but that STATE governments should feel free to prosecute newspapers for criticizing an incumbent administration. (See Jefferson’s famous 1803 letter to Pennsylvania Gov. Thomas McKean.) There were no significant uses of the First Amendment to uphold press freedom until after World War I. What encouraged the growth of newspapers more than the First Amendment was the Postal Act of 1792 that greatly encouraged the establishment of post offices and post roads connecting them at a time when many newspapers circulated through the mails — and the Act provided newspapers a PREFERENTIAL POSTAL RATE — per weight, newspapers were much cheaper than letters to mail. And newspapers mailed to other newspapers could be sent through the post free — effectively establishing a primitive Internet since essentially all newspapers in the 1790s and early 1800s were “aggregators,” reprinting news items from other newspapers. The government paid for the first working telegraph line in the United States. The government developed with taxpayer money the prototype Internet (ARPANet).
In my view, the government is not a funder of last resort. The First Amendment prohibits Congress from making laws “abridging” press freedom but does not prohibit Congress from making laws or appropriations “concerning” the press.
I think it is important to re-tell the tale of American journalism and to truly understand how valuable government interventions have been in constructing American journalism. It is important to think carefully about where government could be a positive factor in reconstructing American journalism at a time of substantial (but by no means total) market failure. With vital public information, as with health care, I think a “public option” should be on the table. It is not easy but it is possible to do this right — the devil’s in the details, not in the principle of the thing.
By the way, I would be happy to learn more about successful for-profit on-line community news sites that report on local government and other major local sites of power. I’ll be interested to take a look at The Batavian, I did not know of it. So I’m very grateful for this exchange.
I, too, am grateful for the exchange. I don’t feel a need to get the last word in, so I won’t respond to Schudson’s remarks about journalism history. In response to Shudson’s invitation to tell him more about successful for-profit online community news sites, I am aware of some but not knowledgeable enough to discuss them without research. I hope that someone does some thorough research of such community operations, their financial condition and their efforts in accountability journalism. That was a gaping hole in the Downie/Schudson report and would be a valuable contribution to this discussion. I do think that my Complete Community Connection, if fully implemented, would support a strong accountability journalism operation. I hope someday to prove that.
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Thanks to C.W. Anderson for pointing me to his dissertation, which examines new and old journalism operations in Philadelphia. I’ll take a look: http://journalismschool.wordpress.com/2009/04/24/dissertation-chapter-one-for-download/
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[…] You can also read my response to this post as well as another response from Schudson. […]
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