What is the value of news judgment as a job skill today?
That was the question that arrived by email from someone I have never met (I think; we might have crossed paths at a conference or seminar), but have interacted with on Twitter and in comments on my blog. The email is below, edited slightly. I have changed the name of a person he mentioned, out of respect for that person’s privacy. In place of the name of my correspondent’s friend, I have used Jimmy Larson, the longtime, legendary (and deceased) news editor of the Des Moines Register. I think my correspondent is asking whether editors like Jimmy would have value in the journalism that lies ahead.
Here is the email:
For most of my career (which dates to 1974 if you count my work on my college paper), newspaper reporters and editors were walled off from readers, other than publishing letters to the editor and trying to respond to folks who called the City Desk at midnight. This was exceedingly comfortable, and it allowed me to develop a sense that my colleagues and I were the best people to decide what to cover, how to cover it and (perhaps most tellingly) whose voices should be heard in our pages. In retrospect I can see the arrogance and plain foolishness in this. I’m trying to adapt.
At the same time, I think a guy like Jimmy Larson, one of the senior editors here who decides what goes on A1 most days, has skills that are extraordinarily important but are being devalued in the evolving new models of journalism. “News judgment” really does mean something, I think, and I see it every day when Jimmy asks me and other editors the tough questions that ensure that our stories – particularly the big, important ones – have been rigorously vetted. This is not a skill possessed by everyone with a broadband connection and some blogging software, yet the distinctions between the two are continually being blurred.
So how do we embrace engagement – a term that covers thoughtful comments on blogs like yours as well as the hateful drivel in the unmonitored comments posted to many of the stories on newspaper Websites – while retaining the best of the standards that were drilled into me in the first two decades of my career? Of course the decline of editing standards that I see every day is attributable in large part to the cutbacks forced by the collapse of the traditional newspaper business model. But it’s that business imperative, surely, that’s fueling the changes that are giving rise to my concerns, however ill-conceived they may be.
If this is coherent enough to elicit a response, that would be great. If not, just know that I appreciate what journalists like you are doing and I am sincerely trying to understand it and adapt it to my vision of what journalism should be.
Jimmy Larson taught me a lot about journalism, certainly more than anyone I encountered in the first couple decades of my career. I do believe that his lessons in news judgment, editing and headline writing continue to serve me well 30-plus later in a news business Jimmy would have difficulty recognizing.
But clearly news judgment is different today. We were a “newspaper of record” back then, unrivaled as the leading news source in Iowa. While much of the day’s news had already been on radio and television the day before, the play of a story in the Register said something about how important it was (or wasn’t) to Iowa and Des Moines. And we were frequently breaking enterprise news on our front page as well, dictating the agenda for much of Iowa. In many ways, Jimmy decided what Iowans would be talking about in coffee shops the next day. His calls on where and how to play a story and whether it was ready to publish carried weight that no newspaper editor has today.
I’m pretty sure the Register’s front page doesn’t reach even half the audience today that it had when Jimmy was in charge of it. So on that basis alone, news judgment isn’t worth what it used to be. People today in Iowa and everywhere set their own agendas. Their front pages are determined by Twitter lists, Facebook updates, RSS feeds and soon if not already Google+ Sparks.
But I think news judgment remains important, even if it has changed. We need editors who understand the best channels, times and ways to share stories on social platforms. We need strong home pages and we still need strong print front pages. We need strong editors to make sure that newspapers are not just recounting what readers already saw yesterday.
Jimmy had to approve every headline we published on the front page on the days he worked. I worked for him a few months before he approved one of my headlines. That was one of my greatest achievements of my career — writing a single headline that met Jimmy’s high standards, and eventually meeting them nearly every day. We needed headlines that accurately reflected the news of the story and that made readers want to read the story. And we often had to do so in one column, all in capital letters.
Writing headlines is no less important in digital journalism. We still need to invite readers into stories, but we also need to attract the attention of search engines. Just as news judgment in Jimmy’s day worked together with the ability to write for tight spaces, news judgment today combines with search-engine optimization for effective headline writing.
And the vetting of information has actually grown in importance. I might argue that Andy Carvin is the best news editor in the business today, sifting, vetting and sharing reports from Arab Spring revolutions. And at the community level, vetting of social media reports is an important exercise of news judgment today, as my former TBD colleagues Daniel Victor and Jeff Sonderman noted in blog posts this week.
Clearly, an old-school journalist with excellent news judgment has diminished value if he or she has not updated skills. But news judgment remains important in digital journalism.
I’m surprised that the email writer would describe reporters as “walled off” from readers. A good reporter should be out talking to the public — readers and non-readers — all the time, every day, even when they aren’t technically “working.” I’d like to think the best editors are folks who were engaged reporters, and now they are learning about new, digital ways to reach the public.
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Carrie, I know some reporters talk to the public, as you suggest. But I also know a lot who deal mostly with the same sources. I think my correspondent accurately described the lack of engagement by many journalists for much of my career.
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I agree that news judgment remains important, and would add another factor to this, namely exclusion: deciding what’s NOT news. These days it almost seems quixotic (and perhaps even misguided) to hope that any organization or individual can put breaking news back in its bottle or wall it off from “decent society”. Nevertheless, exclusion remains a critical function of news judgment in my opinion.
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Steve, I hereby out myself as the author of the email you discuss here. I’m glad you found my concerns interesting enough to rate a spot on your blog, though I might have written it a bit more carefully had I known it was destined for publication.
In reading your comments one phrase jumped out at me: “whether it was ready to publish.” This drilled down to the essence of what I was trying to convey. Is this question being asked often enough, with a tough enough standard enforced by seasoned, skeptical editors, on digital platforms where the practice so often amounts to “post it, then fix it?”
I appreciate all that you said, but I have to confess you lost me at “search-engine optimization.” Perhaps I am a hopeless case.
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Mike,
I hope digital content producers don’t go with “post it, then fix it” on purpose.
I used to hold a training course on reporting in the first instance (http://training.sourcemgnews.com/2011/02/reporting-in-the-first-instance-class-audio-and-slides/). Basically: Report what you know when you know it.
Don’t hold it for a printed medium, but report it the moment you know it.
Do mistakes happen? Sure. Fixing them when knowing of them is good and necessary. Mistakes happen in print, too.
Christoph
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Thanks for prompting this discussion, Mike. I don’t have any problem with writing for search engines, though. Jimmy insisted on a headline that would attract a reader’s attention honestly and persuade him or her to read the story. If the purpose of a headline is to attract attention, you need to attract the attention of the search engine.
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Whoops! I hit “reply to the wrong comment. That was a reply to Mike, not Christoph (but thanks for your contribution, too, Christoph).
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So true, Steve.
News judgement is the core of what gives value to curation, the latest form of publishing in the age of everyone able to access the complete wire services from the AP, UPI, Reuters, and so many more, to say nothing of an endless series of television news services as well.
You are so right that the value of the Register was not primarily access to wire services and their own reporting as much as it was the news sense that Jimmy Larson brought to readers.
We had a managing editor who did this very thing for the Herald-Palladium in St Joseph – Benton Harbor MI back in the (hey)day. He left the submarine service after WWII, was taken under the wing of the editor-publisher-owner of the paper and rose to be the Jimmy Larson for us here. Like Jimmy and all who fill the role, he was rooted deeply in the society to whom he shared his sense of social meaning. I had second thoughts about the ‘to whom’ phrase, and realize, while there was a degree of ‘with whom,’ it was truly offered ‘to whom,’ not limited by any caution that may be inhibiting by a sense of ‘with whom.’ He set the agenda for the community, wrote the headlines if you will for the local morning news radio programs, and often the agenda for the county commissioners or focused the thoughts of city managers–and the voters to whom they all reported in the end.
Well stated, Steve … and by your colleague …
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[…] Steve Buttry, who used to work where I work now, had an interesting post on news judgment over on his blog. […]
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Steve,
I like this: “But I think news judgment remains important, even if it has changed. We need editors who understand the best channels, times and ways to share stories on social platforms.”
I think it comes down to display. News judgment could be used when deciding where to display content. But to truly reach all audience members, all content probably needs to be displayed somewhere.
I do think news judgment remains important, but it’s different from years ago.
When I worked as a reporter, my news judgment (even before I ever talked to an editor) decided what saw print or online. If I (we) didn’t find it interesting to the audience as a whole, I probably wouldn’t even pitch it and so forth.
But, in those days, how would I really know what people cared about?
I know today that people care about much more than what I would have called traditional breaking news or newspaper articles that I personally pitched and wrote.
I tried to address this in a previous blog post here: http://www.christophsblog.com/2011/06/what-are-the-juicy-beats-here-are-mine/
Here’s an excerpt:
“When I spoke to my rotary club (Metro North Rotary) about changes in the media business a few weeks ago I asked the group to think of their lives as a newspaper. What would the lead story be and how does that match up with what traditional news outlets are actually reporting?”
The very personal news that people mentioned was very different than what’s covered.
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I would say as newsrooms shrink (and how many haven’t recently), good news judgement becomes more critical because you have less staff to send out on snipe hunts.
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I’d agree with Mr. Robert LaHue.
New media has placed greater demands on fewer resources. Editors and writers alike must utilize a strong news sense to determine whether to chase a story, continuing to develop it, or when to snuff it out all together.
Algorithms and “click” trackers might decide story placement online; but news judgment was at work in the background all along the story’s development phase.
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