The combination of different mediums cohesively existing in the world of journalism come together to serve in their own individual respects. Neil Postman looks at different forms of communication and how they are integrated into different societies to serve in different ways.
He says “Each medium, like language itself, makes possible a unique mode of discourse by providing a new orientation for thought, for expression, for sensibility.”
This idea can be integrated into how the multimedia platform fits in with the already established and existing mediums of journalism. It can be seen that this is the case when looking at the “20 something’s” age group and their mode of obtaining news. There is not an across the board method that all these people use to get information. Some people may prefer to watch a 30 minute local and/or national newscast, some like to hear from others then go look up whatever it is that they are interested in on the internet, while others still enjoy reading a good old fashioned newspaper, or some combination of all the above.
This is perhaps the way this generation obtains news because as Postman states, “Each medium...providing a new orientation for thought, for expression for sensibility.” In other words, each medium serves its purpose to the person seeking it. If a person chooses to watch a TV broadcast, then there must be something individually about that medium that triggers an interest in that individual. The same thing can be said with internet news, the person seeking that usually prefers to control what news they get, how much of it and several other things. For those who prefer a newspaper, they too may like to select the news they read, but not to the extent where they would have to go searching for it. All in all these different mediums still exist at the same time. Sharing a somewhat symbiotic relationship by existing together, yet still having their individual purpose in the world of journalism.
In The Medium is the Metaphor, by Neil Postman; he says, “The decline of the Age of Typography and the ascendancy of the Age of Television. This change-over has dramatically and irreversibly shifted the content and meaning of public discourse, since two media so vastly different cannot accommodate the same ideas.”
This goes in contrast as to what I stated above. He is claiming that different media platforms are incapable of sharing the same ideas. This is in a sense true when looking at the idea that different mediums fulfill the needs and/or wants of different individuals. The different platforms of news do serve their audiences, but that does not mean that there cannot be a bleeding of ideas between the mediums.
Though Postman makes a point that could have held true at one point in time, it can be seen in this day in age that there are not really any rules as to what each platform stands for or really who their audience is, thus making the statements made by Postman relatively irrelevant in today’s world.
Monday, September 14, 2009
Synthesizing and Summing Up
“Reports, Inferences, Judgments” and “The Medium is the Metaphor” explain how different perspectives and mediums can alter a story and how to become more aware of when this happens. With such rapid changes underway in the media industry, diversities in readership and viewership, and popular criticisms of different media organizations being biased towards different ideologies, it is crucial we all become more attune to how our messages to the world are perceived and that we are providing sufficient information for the well-being of our democracy.
“Reports, Inferences, Judgments” educates its readers about subjectivity versus objectivity in relation to how people perceive the world, and offers ways to avoid subjectivity in writing.
Professor Gade advised his students to divorce themselves not only in their final product, but in each step of the process as well. Meaning, to look at the situation as a fly on the wall instead of through our own eyes, shaped by our own experiences. Most students in class agreed that to be completely void of biases is ideal, but unfortunately unrealistic. The text offers helpful ways to detect these biases and avoid them in reporting practices.
While many of us have been told a thousand times to keep opinionated words out of all stories except columns and opinion editorials, a few tips in the article proved my ignorance about how subtly opinion can creep in.
For instance, many of us know to steer clear of adjectives with positive or negative connotations, but what about nouns we never considered as words that pass judgment, but may in fact do so to others? The example that struck me by surprise was the article’s suggestion to use “candidates” instead of “politicians.” I look at both as job descriptions, but that is only because I was unaware of the inferred judgment in the word politician, not because the difference didn’t exist before.
“The Medium is the Metaphor” points out how the medium in which a message is delivered can alter the content and therefore, it’s culture. This is another way, besides people's own biases written into stories, that stories can change.
The author, Neil Postman, cites a lesson taught by his mentor that the clearest way to see through a culture is to attend to its tools for conversation.
I think this statement rings very true for our culture’s shift to infotainment. Many adults in older generations prefer to get their news from traditional newspapers. More students, however, prefer to get their news from TV and online.
This can be for many reasons. Students in class said cost and convenience are the two main ones. The news presented in these two mediums is much shorter, reflecting our culture’s shorter attention spans.
This shift in medium also gives way to a shift in content. Many information, fact-heavy stories that make the front page in newspapers are very difficult to make visually appealing on TV, especially if a station has limited resources. Much too often, important stories the public should know about are discarded because they are not very visually engaging. This should be a cause of concern if newspapers really do disappear or consolidate too much like many anticipate.
Another phenomenon that we should all be weary of is the shift in the way we all think when learning from different mediums, like the article describes.
“Each medium, like language itself, makes possible a unique mode of discourse by providing a new orientation for thought, for expression, for sensibility...Whether we are experiencing the world through the lens of speech or the printed word or the television camera, our media-metaphors classify the world for us, sequence it, frame it, enlarge it, reduce it, color it, argue a case for what the world is like.” (“The Medium Is the Metaphor”, pg. 10)
The more our society shifts towards certain mediums, like the TV and Internet, and excludes others, like print, the more we change our culture’s way of thinking. For example, when reading an article you can stop and reread the sentence as many times as you want to understand it. You cannot do the same on a broadcast. Not only does that leave room for misunderstood statements and thoughts, but it also excludes some information all together because it is too complicated.
I think the best lesson to take from the advice offered is to remain aware of what you may be unaware of in such a diverse, changing world.
Sunday, September 13, 2009
Understanding the Media
In today’s world the media is all around us. News content is at people’s fingertips twenty-four hours a day and from multiple outlets. It is our jobs as journalist to give the viewer the facts and information so that they can understand the story. However it seems all too often that when watching or reading anything media related there is a biased or slanting of the story because the writers or editors have personal feelings on the matter.
In the assigned readings “Reports, Inferences, Judgments” by S.I. Hayakawa and “The Medium is the Metaphor” by Neil Postman it touches on these issues and how we as journalist need to understand how the media is supposed to work and give the viewer the news without any preconceived notions. “Inferences may be carefully or carelessly made. They may be made on the basis of a broad background of previous experience with the subject matter or with no experience at all.” (Hayakawa, 37) This quote is exactly what we have talked about multiple times in class; we must separate ourselves from ourselves. In other words, as journalist we must check our emotions, beliefs and preconceived notions at the door and report the facts to a wide audience. If we bring our own personal beliefs to our writing or broadcasting we might imply something that can be taken out of context by our viewers. If this happens then our judgments on certain views can stop thoughts on the subject by our viewers and thus tainting the news we deliver. We must understand that we are the mediators; we have to give information on an issue or an event to a broad audience. We cannot infer or slant our media, we give the facts and information, and then we let the audience decipher the information as they see fit. Most likely the way a 50 year-old-man deciphers the information will certainly be different than a 20 year-old-man, however we did not persuade them to have these views they created them on their own, and that is the difference. Let the audience decide what they want to take away from the media, not the other way around (we the media, tell the audience to feel this way, or have these notions about someone or something.)
It also goes beyond writing or what we say during a broadcast. It is also the way we choose to portray and view the people in our stories, in “The Medium is the Metaphor” Postman talks about this in the first part of the chapter. “We may have reached the point where cosmetics have replaced ideology as the field of expertise over which a politician must have competent control.” (Postman, 42) When reading this quote I think back to the presidential election and can remember discussing in my Multimedia Journalism class about how the media was portraying Barack Obama in a more positive light than John McCain. The angles and lighting seemed to be more favorable towards the younger and thinner Obama and thus could have helped persuaded people to favor him. On Election Day the OU Daily’s front page was a large picture of Obama with McCain nowhere to be in sight. Without even reading the headline the Daily was in favor of Obama and showed their bias when reporting the event.
It is a very thin line to walk for the media; it could be one word or the way we phrase a statement or sentence that can have us leaning to one side to the spectrum or the other. It is a tool that we must craft and work at so that when it comes time to use our tools we are able to do so in the proper manner. We have discussed this topic in class as well. Being able to report unbiased and straight is what separates us from every blogger or so called “journalist” out there. This is our skill that most people do not posses and if we as young journalist can understand the correct way to portray media and begin to utilize this skill right now, we might be able to lead by example and hopefully many will follow.
In the assigned readings “Reports, Inferences, Judgments” by S.I. Hayakawa and “The Medium is the Metaphor” by Neil Postman it touches on these issues and how we as journalist need to understand how the media is supposed to work and give the viewer the news without any preconceived notions. “Inferences may be carefully or carelessly made. They may be made on the basis of a broad background of previous experience with the subject matter or with no experience at all.” (Hayakawa, 37) This quote is exactly what we have talked about multiple times in class; we must separate ourselves from ourselves. In other words, as journalist we must check our emotions, beliefs and preconceived notions at the door and report the facts to a wide audience. If we bring our own personal beliefs to our writing or broadcasting we might imply something that can be taken out of context by our viewers. If this happens then our judgments on certain views can stop thoughts on the subject by our viewers and thus tainting the news we deliver. We must understand that we are the mediators; we have to give information on an issue or an event to a broad audience. We cannot infer or slant our media, we give the facts and information, and then we let the audience decipher the information as they see fit. Most likely the way a 50 year-old-man deciphers the information will certainly be different than a 20 year-old-man, however we did not persuade them to have these views they created them on their own, and that is the difference. Let the audience decide what they want to take away from the media, not the other way around (we the media, tell the audience to feel this way, or have these notions about someone or something.)
It also goes beyond writing or what we say during a broadcast. It is also the way we choose to portray and view the people in our stories, in “The Medium is the Metaphor” Postman talks about this in the first part of the chapter. “We may have reached the point where cosmetics have replaced ideology as the field of expertise over which a politician must have competent control.” (Postman, 42) When reading this quote I think back to the presidential election and can remember discussing in my Multimedia Journalism class about how the media was portraying Barack Obama in a more positive light than John McCain. The angles and lighting seemed to be more favorable towards the younger and thinner Obama and thus could have helped persuaded people to favor him. On Election Day the OU Daily’s front page was a large picture of Obama with McCain nowhere to be in sight. Without even reading the headline the Daily was in favor of Obama and showed their bias when reporting the event.
It is a very thin line to walk for the media; it could be one word or the way we phrase a statement or sentence that can have us leaning to one side to the spectrum or the other. It is a tool that we must craft and work at so that when it comes time to use our tools we are able to do so in the proper manner. We have discussed this topic in class as well. Being able to report unbiased and straight is what separates us from every blogger or so called “journalist” out there. This is our skill that most people do not posses and if we as young journalist can understand the correct way to portray media and begin to utilize this skill right now, we might be able to lead by example and hopefully many will follow.
Understanding the Media
News is something that has been a part of peoples’ lives for quite some time now. Before multi media and television, people exchanged information orally by word of mouth. As years passed news was exchanged visually through words, photographs and newspapers. Later on radio was invented and people began to hear their news.
Now, today millions of people all around the world have the opportunity to read, hear and watch news of all different types, topics and subjects in whatever form they want, thanks to television and multimedia.
As our world continues to change and our news enters the age of multimedia, so does our outlook on the world. In the text, “The Medium Is A Metaphor,” the writer, Neil Postman says, “we do not see our nature or intelligence or human motivation or ideology as ‘it’ is but only as our languages are. And our languages are our media. Our media are our metaphors. Our metaphors create the content of our culture.”
Postman explains that a metaphor “suggests what a thing is like by comparing it to something else. This suggestion fixes a conception in our minds that we cannot imagine the one thing without the other.”
To understand how our media functions metaphorically we must understand the media’s information and how it is gathered, put together and presented. We must understand how the media works. Where did the information come from? Who did it come from? Is it typed in the newspaper? Is it captured in a picture? Is it posted on a blog? Is it broadcasted on television?
As journalists we have the power through our words and mediums to influence and even shape the way people think about issues, views and events in the world.
Postman says “our media-metaphors classify the world for us, sequence it, frame it, enlarge it, reduce it, color it, argue a case for what the world is like.”
We must be conscious of this and make sure we consistently practice good journalism.
As Professor Gade said in class “We must divorce ourselves from our biases and values, not the facts and the information. We must be a fly on the wall and step back from who we are to try to see our sources for who they are. We must identify their points as they mean them and be empathetic.”
In order for journalists to practice good journalism, we must understand the media and how it works. We must be aware of what we are reporting and how we are doing it. How do we do this?
On top of divorcing ourselves from ourselves, we have to learn to stay away from inferences, judgments and the use of loaded words, according to S.I. Hayakawa.
We need to be constantly checking ourselves to make sure what we are writing and reporting is unbiased and neutral. We need to present the facts to people and allow them the opportunity to make their own inferences and judgments.
Although I agree with Hayakawa in that we need to stay away from inferences, judgments, and loaded words, I can’t help, but ask myself one thing. How do I truly know I am reporting objective, neutral, and unbiased information? I personally think it is impossible right now for me to write objectively about an issue I feel strongly about. How do we overcome this and learn to step away from ourselves?
Professor Gade told us in class, “objectivity is a process and a professional skill”. I hope all of us will possess and mater the art of objectivity one day. Until then, we have a lot of learning to do.
Now, today millions of people all around the world have the opportunity to read, hear and watch news of all different types, topics and subjects in whatever form they want, thanks to television and multimedia.
As our world continues to change and our news enters the age of multimedia, so does our outlook on the world. In the text, “The Medium Is A Metaphor,” the writer, Neil Postman says, “we do not see our nature or intelligence or human motivation or ideology as ‘it’ is but only as our languages are. And our languages are our media. Our media are our metaphors. Our metaphors create the content of our culture.”
Postman explains that a metaphor “suggests what a thing is like by comparing it to something else. This suggestion fixes a conception in our minds that we cannot imagine the one thing without the other.”
To understand how our media functions metaphorically we must understand the media’s information and how it is gathered, put together and presented. We must understand how the media works. Where did the information come from? Who did it come from? Is it typed in the newspaper? Is it captured in a picture? Is it posted on a blog? Is it broadcasted on television?
As journalists we have the power through our words and mediums to influence and even shape the way people think about issues, views and events in the world.
Postman says “our media-metaphors classify the world for us, sequence it, frame it, enlarge it, reduce it, color it, argue a case for what the world is like.”
We must be conscious of this and make sure we consistently practice good journalism.
As Professor Gade said in class “We must divorce ourselves from our biases and values, not the facts and the information. We must be a fly on the wall and step back from who we are to try to see our sources for who they are. We must identify their points as they mean them and be empathetic.”
In order for journalists to practice good journalism, we must understand the media and how it works. We must be aware of what we are reporting and how we are doing it. How do we do this?
On top of divorcing ourselves from ourselves, we have to learn to stay away from inferences, judgments and the use of loaded words, according to S.I. Hayakawa.
We need to be constantly checking ourselves to make sure what we are writing and reporting is unbiased and neutral. We need to present the facts to people and allow them the opportunity to make their own inferences and judgments.
Although I agree with Hayakawa in that we need to stay away from inferences, judgments, and loaded words, I can’t help, but ask myself one thing. How do I truly know I am reporting objective, neutral, and unbiased information? I personally think it is impossible right now for me to write objectively about an issue I feel strongly about. How do we overcome this and learn to step away from ourselves?
Professor Gade told us in class, “objectivity is a process and a professional skill”. I hope all of us will possess and mater the art of objectivity one day. Until then, we have a lot of learning to do.
Tuesday, September 1, 2009
Media Evolution
The role of the Journalist is being reshaped daily, due to modern technology. As discussed in class, everyone serves as a journalist in a sense, having the capability to contribute online content without any sort of gate keeping.
According to the article written by Michael Schudson and Susan E. Tifft, “Journalists have often claimed to serve timeless longings, to be the storytellers of the world, the bards and troubadours of everyday life for everyday people.” In today’s society this is still implemented to an extent. It does seem that journalists are striving to be storytellers; they are storytellers of the world, in that they tell the stories of what is happening around the world, i.e. the news.
Though journalists may long to tell the “stories of the world” in today’s evolving whirl wind of media, it seems that this ability is slowly dwindling. The media have to function as a business while concurrently functioning to serve the public by supplying the information they need and want. This is where a complicated blur comes into effect. How can quality remain, if the media are allowing things such as pseudo-events to flood the pages?
Of course pseudo-events are important to the business aspect of the media. Pseudo-events often keep people happy, more than truly informing people of news. As said in the article From News Gathering to News Making: A Flood of Pseudo-Events by Daniel Boorstin “ ‘Pseudo’ comes from the Greek word meaning false,” this idea of falseness can be applied to the majority of pseudo-events which we see a rise in, in the media today. How often do you read about events that are upcoming? As pointed out by Boorstin, “what does it mean?” will often be the question when speaking about pseudo-events, where as with something more concrete the instinctive question is “What happened?”
The media as a business has encountered a whole new animal with the evolution of journalism today. It is known that online journalism is not a very solid means of profit for the media nor is it a necessarily reliable source for the consumer. How is the media to find a way to continue to work as the media, if online is not raking in enough money? If there was a “right” answer and I knew it, I am sure I would be a very wealthy girl right now.
For the time being, it is frustrating to think about all the community journalists there is out on the world wide web contributing free content without any sort of gate keeping. Though the content created by these free journalists will more than likely not be on par with trained journalists, there is also a lack of editor in the mix. The idea of the lacking editor in this type of scenario seems to be what is keeping the new and old journalists hope hanging on. In reality it seems there is no option but to charge to view credible sites, which would require all media communicating and agreeing on doing so. This seems like a pretty far-fetched idea in reality because all it takes is one person to say they will do it for free and the rest are in the hole.
So we have no real conclusion as to where we will be taken as journalists in the years to come or how it will function as a business in years to come. Looking at years past its not like there is much hindsight, which can be gained and implemented in the future.
So for now… good luck.
The State of the News Media: Have the lambs stopped screaming?
Perusing the Pew Project's report on the state of affairs in the current media climate afforded a comprehensive view into the quagmire that we, as students, have been made very aware of within the walls of the Gaylord College. The report, as stated by the practitioners themselves, is bleak. This dreary outlook can be found not only in the subject matter, but is projected loud and clear through many media outlets scrambling, convoluted attempts to get back to the way it was before things were flipped upside down.
But, wait. Why aim to go back there? For one, it was comfy before all hell broke loose. There's nothing comfortable about now. Today, you embrace change or go home, and many are already on their sofa begrudgingly watching the bookends of the political cable spectrum: Hannity or Olberman.
What surprises more than anything is the reliance these bastions of journalism and stalwarts of the First Amendment had/have upon the dollar. It is common knowledge that media entities make profits. After all, they need to pay their staffs and cover production costs. Yet, the scramble occurring to recover some of the lost revenue that the current technological changes have brought about provides clear insight into an eye opening altruism: making money is more important to many of these organizations than dispensing truth when you get right down to it.
It is an even more startling revelation that many of the current developments that have made life so hard on the long standing institutions of the journalism landscape could have been avoided with a little foresight:
"In newspapers, roughly half of all classified advertising revenue has vanished, a good deal of that to operations that newspapers could have developed for themselves."
One simple word comes to mind: complacency. And what does that say for organizations that turn out a brand spanking new product every single day of the week? Arrogance? Or maybe a head in the sand approach to the looming changes that inevitably face all organizations at some point in their existence? The inability to perceive and adapt to change has placed many news organizations in a hole dug by themselves, and the economic woes multiplied by the recession could very well provide the dirt to bury them alive.
With the layoffs and economic woes mentioned above, reporters are changing their professional tactics, as well. Some individuals are setting out on their own, and, like photographers have long championed, living a freelance lifestyle (though this is only a small number, it is still fascinating). The report states:
"The movement offers the possibility of more skilled reporting from the field. Yet it would also require consumers to be discriminating and raises questions about how news organizations would ensure quality and reliability."
This trend holds much to be afraid of in the brave new world of journalism. The so called movement requires the reader to be more discerning regarding what they consume, but who has that much faith in the everyday joe surfing the net? One main concern with the current trend of fractured/niche media outlets is that they are offering a skewed and opinionated view of the truth, but not clearly stating so on the front end. A reader of a less discriminating mind, or even one without the time or want to seek out other potential sources, gets, if not misinformed, led in a particular direction. This is the nature of this new beast, but so many are simply not aware. Whereas before, there were entities at legacy news organizations in place for quality control, there are no such filters in the blogosphere.
Final thought: negligence within the industry has led to this point, and the only thing that will see it through is vigilance and a commitment to the truth. Doing so in new and experimental ways is a must to compete with lone wolves lurking out in the vast expanse of the internet. Yet, the search for truth can never be compromised. Even for timeliness, our new favorite friend. Anchoring ourselves to this idiom will do more heading forward than running around spending fleeting dollars on dead end ideas executed from knee jerk positions.
But, wait. Why aim to go back there? For one, it was comfy before all hell broke loose. There's nothing comfortable about now. Today, you embrace change or go home, and many are already on their sofa begrudgingly watching the bookends of the political cable spectrum: Hannity or Olberman.
What surprises more than anything is the reliance these bastions of journalism and stalwarts of the First Amendment had/have upon the dollar. It is common knowledge that media entities make profits. After all, they need to pay their staffs and cover production costs. Yet, the scramble occurring to recover some of the lost revenue that the current technological changes have brought about provides clear insight into an eye opening altruism: making money is more important to many of these organizations than dispensing truth when you get right down to it.
It is an even more startling revelation that many of the current developments that have made life so hard on the long standing institutions of the journalism landscape could have been avoided with a little foresight:
"In newspapers, roughly half of all classified advertising revenue has vanished, a good deal of that to operations that newspapers could have developed for themselves."
One simple word comes to mind: complacency. And what does that say for organizations that turn out a brand spanking new product every single day of the week? Arrogance? Or maybe a head in the sand approach to the looming changes that inevitably face all organizations at some point in their existence? The inability to perceive and adapt to change has placed many news organizations in a hole dug by themselves, and the economic woes multiplied by the recession could very well provide the dirt to bury them alive.
With the layoffs and economic woes mentioned above, reporters are changing their professional tactics, as well. Some individuals are setting out on their own, and, like photographers have long championed, living a freelance lifestyle (though this is only a small number, it is still fascinating). The report states:
"The movement offers the possibility of more skilled reporting from the field. Yet it would also require consumers to be discriminating and raises questions about how news organizations would ensure quality and reliability."
This trend holds much to be afraid of in the brave new world of journalism. The so called movement requires the reader to be more discerning regarding what they consume, but who has that much faith in the everyday joe surfing the net? One main concern with the current trend of fractured/niche media outlets is that they are offering a skewed and opinionated view of the truth, but not clearly stating so on the front end. A reader of a less discriminating mind, or even one without the time or want to seek out other potential sources, gets, if not misinformed, led in a particular direction. This is the nature of this new beast, but so many are simply not aware. Whereas before, there were entities at legacy news organizations in place for quality control, there are no such filters in the blogosphere.
Final thought: negligence within the industry has led to this point, and the only thing that will see it through is vigilance and a commitment to the truth. Doing so in new and experimental ways is a must to compete with lone wolves lurking out in the vast expanse of the internet. Yet, the search for truth can never be compromised. Even for timeliness, our new favorite friend. Anchoring ourselves to this idiom will do more heading forward than running around spending fleeting dollars on dead end ideas executed from knee jerk positions.
How Newspapers Can Make Money Again
People are running. Papers are flying. Phones are ringing off the hook. I try to make sense of the chaotic environment in the newsroom.
“What’s going on?” I ask Randy, a veteran reporter.
“Oh, the ad people are having a big marketing blitz,” he said. “They are calling companies to try to convince them to buy ads in our paper. We’re really hurting financially, you know.”
While I admit newspapers receive most of their money from advertising, there is no possible reason why they should be engaged in a marketing campaign. If such an action has to occur, then the journalists are not doing their job. Good journalism should be the first priority of any news organization, not advertising.
Good journalism has been defined in the last blog as journalism that does not merely present the news, but interpret the news so citizens would know how it impacts their lives. If a newspaper vows to make citizens its “first loyalty,” as Kovach and Rosenstiel explain, then that mindset will leak into the newspaper’s stories; citizens will realize this and circulation would likely increase.
But many news organizations are reluctant to enact this kind of journalism. But why? Because they believe that being positive toward businesses would make businesses more willing to place ads in the newspaper. This has lead to these “pseudo-events” we have been talking about in class. These pre-planned events really have no news value and are usually set up to promote a certain business or organization. The problem with covering these events is that it is counter productive. A news organization wants to make money, but by offering to promote certain businesses over others, it is compromising the organization’s journalistic integrity. The citizens will realize this and circulation will fall, along with the amount of advertisers.
Another misconception news organizations have regarding increasing profits is this notion that if you cut jobs, you will increase revenue. Schudson and Tifft state that “because cost-cutting was an easy way to boost profits, some newsrooms lacked adequate resources to pursue complex stories.” I have seen this first hand when I wrote stories from the State Capitol. The Tulsa World and Daily Oklahoman used to have a total of eight reporters working at the Capitol. Now, they only have three. They do not just work separately either. Because they have lost resources, they work together on stories. So it is like they are one newspaper instead of two. This leads to less compelling stories that affect people, and more stories that simply implement quick quotes and barely scratch the surface. Sure, the organization will get some upfront money from cutting jobs, but it will hurt them financially in the long-term. If an organization can have more employees providing good journalism, then their profits will flourish in the long-term because they will have more readers.
Schudson and Tifft will both agree that the Internet had a huge impact on the journalism industry. "Traditional news organizations launched Web editions that allowed news not only to be interactive, but updated continuously throughout the day." This is great for journalism, but news organizations have not combined good journalism with a good business model. This has led to less circulation and more online readers. Why pay to read something you can read online for free? Ideally, the solution would be to charge for online content, but this is impossible without collaberation between all media organizations. In other words, this will never happen. Media organizations should strip their online stories and allocate only multimedia for the Internet, like videos or slideshows. If viewers want a more in-depth look at a story, tell them to refer to the newspaper. If citizens are interested, they will have to pick up a newspaper because the in-depth content is not available anywhere else.
Lastly, a good-journalism-first business model works not only in the land of theory, but in the real world. A great example of this is the McClatchy Papers. This newspaper company avoided layoffs in 2005. President and CEO Gary Pruitt said in a speech to shareholders that good journalism was the backbone to all of the company’s success.
“Our focus on journalistic quality and continuous improvement certainly supports our strong performance in circulation,” Pruitt said.
And strong circulation means no more marketing campaigns for newspapers. If good journalism equals more readers, then companies would realize this and would come to you instead of you marketing to them. And more advertisers mean when an editor is asked what is black, white and red all over, he or she could confidently answer “our newspaper” instead of “our balance sheets.”
“What’s going on?” I ask Randy, a veteran reporter.
“Oh, the ad people are having a big marketing blitz,” he said. “They are calling companies to try to convince them to buy ads in our paper. We’re really hurting financially, you know.”
While I admit newspapers receive most of their money from advertising, there is no possible reason why they should be engaged in a marketing campaign. If such an action has to occur, then the journalists are not doing their job. Good journalism should be the first priority of any news organization, not advertising.
Good journalism has been defined in the last blog as journalism that does not merely present the news, but interpret the news so citizens would know how it impacts their lives. If a newspaper vows to make citizens its “first loyalty,” as Kovach and Rosenstiel explain, then that mindset will leak into the newspaper’s stories; citizens will realize this and circulation would likely increase.
But many news organizations are reluctant to enact this kind of journalism. But why? Because they believe that being positive toward businesses would make businesses more willing to place ads in the newspaper. This has lead to these “pseudo-events” we have been talking about in class. These pre-planned events really have no news value and are usually set up to promote a certain business or organization. The problem with covering these events is that it is counter productive. A news organization wants to make money, but by offering to promote certain businesses over others, it is compromising the organization’s journalistic integrity. The citizens will realize this and circulation will fall, along with the amount of advertisers.
Another misconception news organizations have regarding increasing profits is this notion that if you cut jobs, you will increase revenue. Schudson and Tifft state that “because cost-cutting was an easy way to boost profits, some newsrooms lacked adequate resources to pursue complex stories.” I have seen this first hand when I wrote stories from the State Capitol. The Tulsa World and Daily Oklahoman used to have a total of eight reporters working at the Capitol. Now, they only have three. They do not just work separately either. Because they have lost resources, they work together on stories. So it is like they are one newspaper instead of two. This leads to less compelling stories that affect people, and more stories that simply implement quick quotes and barely scratch the surface. Sure, the organization will get some upfront money from cutting jobs, but it will hurt them financially in the long-term. If an organization can have more employees providing good journalism, then their profits will flourish in the long-term because they will have more readers.
Schudson and Tifft will both agree that the Internet had a huge impact on the journalism industry. "Traditional news organizations launched Web editions that allowed news not only to be interactive, but updated continuously throughout the day." This is great for journalism, but news organizations have not combined good journalism with a good business model. This has led to less circulation and more online readers. Why pay to read something you can read online for free? Ideally, the solution would be to charge for online content, but this is impossible without collaberation between all media organizations. In other words, this will never happen. Media organizations should strip their online stories and allocate only multimedia for the Internet, like videos or slideshows. If viewers want a more in-depth look at a story, tell them to refer to the newspaper. If citizens are interested, they will have to pick up a newspaper because the in-depth content is not available anywhere else.
Lastly, a good-journalism-first business model works not only in the land of theory, but in the real world. A great example of this is the McClatchy Papers. This newspaper company avoided layoffs in 2005. President and CEO Gary Pruitt said in a speech to shareholders that good journalism was the backbone to all of the company’s success.
“Our focus on journalistic quality and continuous improvement certainly supports our strong performance in circulation,” Pruitt said.
And strong circulation means no more marketing campaigns for newspapers. If good journalism equals more readers, then companies would realize this and would come to you instead of you marketing to them. And more advertisers mean when an editor is asked what is black, white and red all over, he or she could confidently answer “our newspaper” instead of “our balance sheets.”
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