Thanks to Tim McGuire for his recent “This I believe” blog post, spelling out his core values and views about journalism, newspapers and the future of media. I think it’s helpful, especially in turbulent times, for journalists (or people in any field) to reflect occasionally on what we believe — core values as well as our beliefs about where our profession and our industry are going. I promised earlier this month to blog a response.
This I believe about journalism and the future of media:
I believe journalism plays an essential role in our democracy.
I believe journalism plays an essential role in community life.
I believe technology and economics have fundamentally changed the delivery and practice of journalism but they have not changed the importance of these roles.
I believe continued and repeated disruption of journalism and the news business will continue for the rest of my career and beyond.
I believe we spend too much time discussing or lamenting whether the journalism that emerges from each wave of disruption is better or worse than what preceded it. Most times it will be a mix. Our responsibility as professional journalists is to improve journalism and continue serving our nation and our communities.
I believe nostalgia for journalism of the past interferes with practicing journalism in the present and with improving it for the future. While I am not immune to nostalgia, I refuse to wallow in it and have little patience or sympathy for those who do.
I believe journalism of the present and future is a blend of sources and types:
- Professional journalists working for news organizations, meeting professional standards of accuracy and ethics.
- Entrepreneurial journalists who may meet professional standards of accuracy and ethics, but also may combine news and business roles.
- Bloggers who may or may not follow professional standards of accuracy and ethics.
- Content creators affiliated with the organizations or industries they are covering, who produce journalism even if they don’t follow the traditional journalism standard of independence.
- Citizens who think of themselves as merely telling friends what is happening, but who are actually doing acts of journalism, sometimes but not always meeting professional standards of accuracy.
- Probably more types of sources that have not yet evolved.
I believe each of these sources and types of journalism has value.
I believe news organizations and professional journalists need to provide significant and distinct value to stand out in this crowded field and to build successful businesses and careers.
I believe trusted news organizations that strive for accuracy and verification have a great opportunity to provide value in this crowded marketplace.
I believe vetting and curating content from other sources will continue to be an important job and opportunity for news organizations and professional journalists.
I believe vigorous debate about the issues and directions of journalism and the news business is healthy.
I believe we can and should conduct this debate frankly, civilly and with thick skins.
I believe age and generation are irrelevant in selecting leaders for news organizations. Experience has value in leaders, but outlook is more important. I will take my chances on a leader with limited experience and an unlimited outlook over an experienced leader who spends too much time looking back.
We won’t always make the right call, but I believe the best leaders are those with the courage and insight to make decisions, not those waiting for someone to tell them what to do.
I believe leaders in journalism and the news business need to lead our newsrooms and our profession in multiple ways:
- By articulating a forward-looking vision.
- By sharing success stories and lessons learned through failure.
- By providing a positive example of action and results.
- By applauding progress, even progress by competitors.
- By understanding and encouraging when other leaders are making genuine efforts and progress but not moving as fast or following the same path.
- By calling bullshit when others present protection of the past as a path to the future.
- By leading and joining lively discussions about the search for the right path(s).
- By forming alliances on common ground even with those with whom they have genuine conflicts. I can work with you on Issue A and still respectfully disagree with you, even vigorously, on Issue B.
I believe journalists should constantly be learning and evaluating new tools. We should master the useful ones and use them to improve our journalism.
I believe my journalism toolbox will be dramatically different five years from now.
I believe new tools do not inherently improve or harm journalism. Good journalists using new tools responsibly and creatively will perform better journalism. Bad journalists using new tools thoughtlessly will perform worse journalism.
I believe journalists have an obligation to share lessons as we master new tools.
I believe storytelling is one of the most basic forms of communication. From the ancient epic poems and scriptures to today’s tweets and videos, storytelling has endured and evolved and it will continue to do so. I believe stories will remain an important journalism form, but not the only form.
I believe journalism professors and journalism schools have an obligation to keep current with the changing profession, so they can teach relevant skills, tools and standards to journalists of the future and to professional journalists seeking to advance their education.
I believe corporations involved in journalism:
- Have an obligation to serve their communities.
- Have a right to make a profit.
- Must be bold and aggressive in developing forward-looking business models.
- Must invest in training their employees in emerging tools and skills.
I believe the best chance for survival by corporations involved in journalism will be to develop revenue streams beyond subscriptions and advertising based on audience size.
I believe that the corporate and newsroom cultures of print and broadcast organizations are so entrenched that radical, forceful upheaval is needed to transform to a digital-first focus and culture. Leaders must not shrink from the responsibility to disrupt our newsrooms and our profession in pursuit of a prosperous future.
I believe news organizations and journalists must adapt, evolve and transform to thrive.
I believe journalists who adapt, evolve and transform will have exciting and rewarding careers.
That’s what I believe. I’m interested in your beliefs (or your disagreements with mine and/or Tim’s). If you respond on your own blog, please post a link in the comments here. I wish I could explain my beliefs as succinctly as Crash Davis did. But I do believe in lightening the mood after such a ponderous set of beliefs:
Steve,
Thank you for articulating this in such a thoughtful way. It reminds me Walter Williams 1906 “Journalists Creed” — albeit a bit longer and much more reflective of the complexity of the landscape in which we all now reside.
I believe … that your leadership and efforts to empower others to be bold and fearless in these uncertain times also will continue resonate with journalists for generations to come.
Robyn
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Thanks for the kind words, Robyn. That’s as flattering a comparison as I can recall.
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[…] Buttry does that in this piece, and it’s pretty compelling stuff. I highly recommend that you read […]
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Thanks for these Steve. Stuff to hang on the wall, check back with for inspiration and encouragement. Here’s a few of mine — none different from yours: I believe in our watchdog role, our commitment to our communities to inform, reflect and entertain, our need to make money to continue doing the above, and the reality and fun of disruptive innovation to move journalism forward. I believe in the right to make mistakes along with the obligation to learn from them. Basically, I believe in holding public officials accountable for how they spend our tax dollars, the creative process, having fun and the power of story-telling. Yours are more like Luther’s 95 Theses, which start “Out of love and concern for the truth…” Mine would be condensed from the Cliff Notes of Luther!
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Thanks, Paul! Some good additions.
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As always, a forward thinker who, whether he believes it or not, inspires a lot of people. I tell everyone I can to be excited by journalism. The industry is not dying. It’s changing and there’s plenty of room for people who want to be a part of that change. One thing you said in your class that I think back about often is that the Founding Fathers thought journalism was so important that they put our machine in the Constitution. If they were writing it now, they’d have to come up with a different delivery system–freedom of the multimedia, social communication platform?
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Steve, this is great. I never understood journalists who actively shunned emerging technologies or tools such as Twitter instead of thinking creatively about how they could be used to do better journalism. The future is exciting and the evolution of media needs the DNA of journalists.
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This is really good, Steve. We must look forward not back.
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I believe that if it were left for me to decide whether we should have government without journalism or journalism without government I should not for a moment hesitate to prefer the latter (with apologies to Mr. Jefferson). And it simply doesn’t matter how it is delivered.
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Professional journalists working for news organizations, meeting professional standards of accuracy and ethics.
Would Andrea Mitchell of NBC meet this standard with her precise editing?
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Nicely done. But, I can’t resist noting, if it’s not about a search for truth, then everything else is simply about making journalists feel good about themselves.
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Thanks for your comment, Mark. I’ve blogged here about the importance of searching for the truth. But your glib dismissal of everything else ignores the fact that the economic foundation that supports the search for the truth is being shaken.
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I believe in Digital First! Seriously, a ton of great stuff here.
I loved this: We won’t always make the right call, but I believe the best leaders are those with the courage and insight to make decisions, not those waiting for someone to tell them what to do.
It’s great to be part of an organization that empowers its people to do the best work of their lives. That’s what I believe:)
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Steve, I hope you don’t mind that I shared your blog with the Society of Professional Journalists on LinkedIn. There are so many marvelous things you raise that could each be an oasis of social discourse — and when you look at it carefully, isn’t that what journalism is all about?
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As a young journalist (college senior), I have to say Thank you!! It’s hard sometimes to keep up a positive attitude when all you hear is “journalism is dying,” and “we’ll see what you can do when you get out of college.” I believe in journalism and agree with your post. I’ll share this with my young journalism peers. Best
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[…] This I believe about journalism and the future of media, by Steve Buttry I believe continued and repeated disruption of journalism and the news business will continue for the rest of my career and beyond. […]
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Reblogged this on The Leiter side of life… and commented:
My boyfriend recently shared this blog post with me. I am now a big fan of Steve Buttry and his views on the journalism industry.
I think Steve Buttry is right on in his beliefs about journalism and the future of the industry.
It reminds me greatly of many things I agreed and disagreed with while studying journalism at Northeastern.
I really like these points:
“I believe we spend too much time discussing or lamenting whether the journalism that emerges from each wave of disruption is better or worse than what preceded it.”
I remember many journalism professors trying to pinpoint what was wrong with new methods of journalism, i.e. blogs and their beliefs that social media platforms were going to set journalism back.
Which brings me to Buttry’s next point which I really like, “I believe nostalgia for journalism of the past interferes with practicing journalism in the present and with improving it for the future.”
I am very grateful for my journalism education at Northeastern, however I do think my professors and most of my classes focused on the journalism of yesterday and focused on what was wrong with this new wave of journalism and why it would never be legit. We rarely had collaborative discussions on how we could improve and capitalize on the journalism of the future. It’s hard to teach the things which you do not understand and easy to criticize those things that you fear.
I also really like Buttry’s beliefs in what makes a good “leader” in journalism. I think in general, that idea of “climbing the ladder” is outdated and useless in a lot of industries, journalism being one of them.
As for my beliefs about journalism…well I think Steve pretty much covers them all. I would say similarly to Steve that journalism is, in its essence, story telling and the importance of that is invaluable. Story telling is how human history is passed on, it is how our generation will be remembered. I think it’s important to remain objective and not glorify our achievements and failures so that the truth may be told and recorded and that the next generation can learn from our successes and failures accurately.
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I really enjoyed reading your beliefs and find that they are very aligned with my own! I love being a part of this industry despite the many challenges I face in finding a future in it.
Please read more of my comments on your re-blogged post at: theleiterside.com.
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[…] A frank and thought-provoking piece from Tim McGuire at the Cronkite School of Journalism on the future of the trade. Refreshing not to hear the bad news scenario, and his thoughts on focussing on quality reporting, and on particular markets with a specific interest (eg regional news). (See also Steve Buttry’s response to McGuire.) […]
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[…] by Tim McGuire, who encouraged journalists to write their own reflections on the future of news. Steve Buttry also wrote a great response last […]
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[…] sort – check out some of his best material on a potential future for journalism (here & here), the lessons he has learned from his journalistic career and how journalists need to […]
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[…] Thanks to Tim McGuire for his recent “This I believe” blog post, spelling out his core values and views about journalism, newspapers and the future of media. I think it’s helpful,… […]
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[…] on stevebuttry.wordpress.com […]
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[…] a lot more on the Buttry Diary than I do here: a series about how journalists should use Twitter, a piece on my core beliefs about journalism, advice on showcasing your work for potential employers, advice for student media and newsroom […]
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[…] My tips on curation also got more than 3,000 views and aggregation tips got over 1,500. Several other posts advising journalists on dealing with changes in journalism topped 1,000 views: copy editing (a top-10 post that drew a response from John McIntyre), gatekeeping, linking and beatblogging. In the same vein, Tim McGuire’s post about what he believes about journalism prompted a post on my core beliefs. […]
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[…] https://stevebuttry.wordpress.com/2012/06/19/this-i-believe-about-journalism-and-the-future-of-media/ […]
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[…] What I believe about journalism and media […]
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[…] and journalism professors, and his statement of core beliefs about the news business prompted a similar statement from me. He’s also mentioned me several times in his blog, including a statement that made it into […]
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[…] I believe” post about journalism and the future of media (which mentioned me) prompted similar reflections here. When I was a keynote speaker for the Arizona Newspapers Association in 2012, Tim praised my call […]
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