I can hardly believe I’m ready to write a second blog post about a single paragraph in a 122-page report. But I question the notion that the quality of news coverage in the United States has been declining and will get worse before it gets better.
Here’s passage in question, from the Post-Industrial Journalism report by the Tow Center for Digital Media:
The effect of the current changes in the news ecosystem has already been a reduction in the quality of news in the United States. On present evidence, we are convinced that journalism in this country will get worse before it gets better, and, in some places (principally midsize and small cities with no daily paper) it will get markedly worse.
I blogged Monday about the community-size issue. Now I want to address the issue of whether news coverage has been declining and will get worse before it gets better.
I absolutely disagreed with the contention that community size is the primary factor affecting the quality of a community’s journalism. I’m less certain of the question of declining quality, past and present. I’m not going to say they’re wrong, but I can’t agree with their statement of the reduction in quality as a fact and with their conviction that journalism is going to get worse.
Without question, the quantity of newspaper journalism has declined with the loss of 26 percent newsroom jobs since 2007, according to the American Society of News Editors newsroom census of daily newspapers. Quantity of news is certainly related to quality, and lots of those cuts have been buyouts and firings of outstanding journalists whose loss has, without question, also harmed the quality of newspapers.
But at the same time, some newspapers have been aggressive in maintaining their commitment to investigative journalism and in improving their use of digital techniques such as liveblogging, curation, databases, social media, multimedia storytelling and data visualization. I believe the increase in fact-checking has improved political reporting, which has focused too much on horse-race journalism and day-to-day trivia. And Nate Silver’s analysis of polling has elevated the horse-race journalism.
So even among newspapers, I don’t think the story is simply a decline in the quality of journalism. The newspapers’ story is a complex mix of decline and improvement. However, just because the loss of some 15,000 journalists is too significant to overcome, I’ll concede a net loss of quality in newspaper journalism.
Broadcast newsrooms haven’t had as severe a loss in staffing, but let’s just say for the sake of argument that their journalism has declined, too.
I’m not going to concede, though, that we have a net decline in the news ecosystem in the quality of news coverage. Post-Industrial Journalism was about the full news ecosystem and the report gives considerable attention to several examples of the digital journalism startups that are improving the quality of journalism: ProPublica, Homicide Watch, Texas Tribune, SCOTUSblog, Voice of San Diego and others.
Local news startups are so plentiful now that they have their own association, Local Independent Online News (LION) Publishers.
I’m not going to say with confidence that the quality of news has actually improved, but I think it has. And I’m not going to contend that it won’t decline in the years ahead, but I’m optimistic.
I am tremendously impressed with the young journalists I have worked with at Digital First Media, TBD and the Cedar Rapids Gazette in recent years. My optimism soars as I meet with student journalists (I’ve visited more than two dozen journalism schools in the past few years).
I respect the views of the outstanding scholars who wrote Post-Industrial Journalism (C.W. Anderson, Emily Bell and Clay Shirky). I would be interested in why they believe journalism has declined and why they believe that decline will continue. (I’ve asked them directly and will add any response they send my way.)
Measuring the quality of journalism is difficult, but I would like to see an effort by some scholars to answer this question in greater detail. How do you measure? By big stories uncovered? By ethical problems such as this year’s plagiarism offenses? By introduction of new journalism techniques? By the prevalence of grammar and style errors? I don’t know.
But I don’t think journalism was riding high before the collapse of advertising revenue and the slashing of newsroom staffs. I sensed a complacency in journalism in the late 1990s and early this century. The greatest failing of journalism during my career, in my view, was the gullible reporting on weapons of mass destruction by every national news organization except Knight-Ridder. And that wasn’t an isolated instance. Journalism didn’t adequately warn of the subprime mortgage or Enron ripoffs. (Admittedly, we may not know for a few years where our watchdog reporting is failing us now.)
Journalism is in a period of great turmoil, without question. But when I look at where we were a decade ago, I believe the quality of journalism is actually improving, and I am optimistic that it will continue to improve.
Disclosure: Emily Bell interviewed me in her research for the report and I am cited as a source, though not on this question. (I can’t recall whether she asked me about it.)
I agree with this assessment: “The greatest failing of journalism during my career, in my view, was the gullible reporting on weapons of mass destruction by every national news organization except Knight-Ridder.”
There may have been greater failings, but the Knight-Ridder (now McClatchy) Washington bureau has been the most clear-eyed news operation in the nation’s capital.
LikeLike
[…] I can hardly believe I’m ready to write a second blog post about a single paragraph in a 122-page report. But I question the notion that the quality of news coverage in the United States has been declining and will get worse before it gets better. […]
LikeLike
I don’t think journalism as a whole is declining, but I will say that as the crunch to merge traditional and online journalism continue, reporters are being asked to do more in many newsrooms, and in some, that means they’ll pay less attention to the quality of what they produce. Editors, too. It’s not an excuse and it should not be the reason we cease moving toward digital. But many places use it as such. “It’s the web, we can fix it later,” is a sentiment I’ve heard over the past few years.
I cannot fathom, nor understand, why we think that digital, social media, tablets or what have you mean that we can be sloppier just because the streams of information move slower. However, it’s happened.
If there is a decline is the quality of what we produce, I’ll point my finger squarely at that phenomenon. However, Steve, you’re squarely right that there are places where the banner of quality, thought provoking, impact journalism has been taken up WITH the tools that digital gives you. But alas, I fear that is not the majority.
LikeLike
Excellent points, Kim. I wouldn’t contend that we haven’t gotten sloppier with constant deadlines and with cuts in our copy desks. I’m just not sure whether the improvements elsewhere offset that decline.
LikeLike
Steve, I agree with you in many respects. The losses I see are more subtle, and these are things that I am skeptical citizen volunteers can reliably replace. Journalists always will find ways to cover big stories. Comprehensive, everyday coverage is what is suffering. There is a lot more cherry-picking. If you have 14 school districts in your coverage area, maybe you used to regularly report on six or seven. Now maybe it is one or two, and you are dependent on tips for the rest. Many newspapers have abandoned trying to get, say, all the scores in minor sports events and writing up short blurbs on all the games. Many report only one item from the few meetings being covered. Few papers are consistently digesting or showing the status of relevant bills in their state Legislatures any longer. I think the biggest reduction is in the loss of the “second-day” story — the one that tells the “story behind the story” and brings the topic to life. This is hard to measure admittedly. Will affordable models emerge? Jury is out, but I think more time must be spent time talking about the coverage that isn’t sexy. The only people who like it are the readers ….
LikeLike
Thanks for your thoughtful reply, Dennis. I am not going to suggest that “citizen volunteers” are going to replace everything that newsrooms are cutting back. But I do think that entrepreneurial journalists (some of them the very professionals who have taken newsroom buyouts) are providing quality journalism (including often the “story behind the story”) in niches we either didn’t cover or covered inadequately.
For instance, local media provided some coverage of homicides in Washington before Homicide Watch came along, but no one provided that depth of coverage. ProPublica (and lots of local and state investigative startups) is providing lots of “story behind the story” coverage.
I admire the work that many citizen volunteers with no journalism training or experience are doing. Journalism is a profession that citizens can learn (I once recruited a former country music writer to be a stringer and he has since spent decades as a professional journalist). But let’s be clear that lots of the news startups are hiring experience professional journalists who are doing outstanding work.
LikeLike
[…] From The Buttry Diary, by Steve Buttry […]
LikeLike
[…] But I agreed a lot with PIJ. (I did blog about two disagreements with a particular passage, about whether journalism is in decline and whether smaller communities will feel this decline more […]
LikeLike
I must agree with Dennis Hetzel. At least in small-town newspapers, it sometimes appears the only things reported are what the reporters and editors want to write, not what the public wants to read.
LikeLike
[…] Emily Bell and Clay Shirky produced their Post-Industrial Journalism report, I blogged three different responses. When Clayton Christensen shared some advice with the newspaper industry, I noted that he […]
LikeLike
[…] I believe journalism is improving, not declining « The Buttry Diary December 19, 2012 […]
LikeLike
[…] speaking to one of Emily Bell’s Columbia classes and being interviewed by Emily for the Post-Industrial Journalism report; speaking to a faculty conference at the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism and attending an event […]
LikeLike