Nature of Journalism

What is journalism? What standards are well-established to guide the institution to widespread public trust? Who is responsible for this standard? And what is the current status of America’s journalism with respect to the standards?

This is a big issue. Big questions. Hard answers. Even more difficult to maintain journalistic standards. But when they are, the public trusts the product. That becomes the assessment then – does the public trust modern journalism? If not, why not? And how do we get back on track?

Understand that I am not a professional journalist.  I was a cofounder of a local newspaper and its managing editor. We covered a Chicago suburb with a population of 14,000. Later we added a second adjacent suburb with 9500 population. We dropped free copies to a third nearby suburb with a population of 26,000. Our print run was 12,500. The publication was free, self-sustaining, and almost intentionally a nonprofit. One person earned a small wage for laying out the publication and coordinating print logistics. Everyone else, about 31 people, donated their services.

Our effort ran over 7 years of news coverage. Our goal had been honest, transparent news gathering that helps define and maintain local community. In our primary city, the weekly paper was well-received. The next town was not covered by our own staff but a local team from that community; trouble was encountered when they pursued a narrow political agenda of which we were not in control. The third city had too small a distribution to gain traction in the community.

We learned a lot from our experience. The first lesson was: print journalism is barely on life support in an age of online social media. The competition is too much. The business model is not supported by paid advertisers. And we declined to kill readership by requiring paid subscriptions. We mailed every issue to every household and business in two of our three communities.

Second lesson: not controlling the product in unknown communities, destroys public trust and readership. Besides, the team of writers there lost the elections they sought!

Third lesson: local writers are effective, creative and committed to community identity. Quality journalism was the result.

Here are the standards we followed. Know that we only had two of 32 team members who had professional AP training and education. The rest of us followed common sense and shared values for honesty on current events in their home context. Much can be said about this, but here are the highlights:

1.      Facts are king

2.      Backstory is vital to understanding context of those facts

3.      What, where, when and who are the key starting points

4.      Defining result and potential effects establishes importance of the article

5.      Posing the ‘why’ question is important but difficult to answer; often not enough facts are known

6.      Pursuit of an unfolding issue in following articles is a gold standard

7.      Follow up, follow-up, follow-up. Don’t let the community forget the issue if it is important

When readers grow their understanding of a community issue, they can weigh its importance logically. At any given time hundreds of issues wrangle for public attention. Only a few can be attended to at a time. Everything is related to everything else in a community. Ignoring an item breaks the logic string. Misleading news articles can easily result. That is the basis for most propaganda and misdirection. Good journalism does not allow room for that to happen.

If a community struggles with key issues, I think it is imperative for the journalists to cover the issues fairly, balanced and with an eye to the options of how they can be properly managed. At least posing the questions and alternative views keeps the community active in solving its own problems in building positive futures.

Is this what we are getting from CNN, NBC, Fox News, CBS, ABC, MSNBC and others? What about the Chicago Tribune, New York Times, Miami Herald, LA Times and others?

I’m close to shutting down TV news and relying totally on electronic print sources for my own analysis and commonsense. What about you? Growing impatience with modern day journalism?

March 31, 2021