The new news competition...
On Friday, Minnesota Public Radio's Midday program will air a discussion about the changes in journalism. Average people who just consume news sat with people in the press who are dedicated to reforming the way it's done.
As the moderator of this forum - I sometimes played devil's advocate.
One woman had just complained that reporters, in their rush to get the story first, sometimes botch it or missed the broader details.
To keep the conversation moving, I said something about how competition has long been a hallmark of the profession. And if you have reporters competing, that forces information out there quicker.
"Isn't that what people want?" I said, playing that contrary role.
Another woman, her name is Elizabeth, said in a baffled tone - "You're not competing against each other. You're competiting for us."
Got it. Oh my, how we've gotten it. People's trust in the press is low. And there are challenges in keeping readers, viewers and listeners in a much more fractured media universe.
Let's get back to that notion of compeition for a second. Understand that journalists have always loved to get the story first, to beat the others in town and strut for the next day. Conversely, you would stew and mutter when a reporter from a competing outlet beat you on a story. You'd vow to get them back.
That competition sizzled the juices. And we truly believed that this competitve environment meant more news getting out to the public. Then came consolidation of broadcast outlets ... and towns that lost all but one newspaper. How our profession lamented the loss of that competition. We'll be sleepy, we thought, we won't be as tenacious.
Then came the Internet and the currency of "the scoop" became devalued. Now you measured you're ability to get things first in hours or minutes rather than days.
And the explosion of media meant news programming had to compete with other forms of content. And there was much more of it out there. The competition didn't go away... but it morphed.
But more importantly, there was the idea that people had felt estranged from their news sources. A colleague of mine, Michael Skoler, likes to talk about a recent Zogby poll that showed roughly two-thirds of the people valued news that helped them with their civic life... but that about the same amount felt they weren't getting that kind of information.
Competition for its own sake wasn't enough. What were we telling people? How did that information enlighten them? Were we helping people to make sense of things?
Maybe these were the new challenges.
What I like about the people in my profession is their tenacity. Oh, yes... we grumble with the best of them. And we can whine. But I'm telling you that the best journalists rise up to challenges. And I'm convinced we are ready to compete for, as Elizabeth put it, you.
The truth is, however, that people in the profession will take different routes to compete.
Some will embrace a philosophy or ideology and champion it.
Some will go for the sizzle of gossip and celebrity coverage.
And some will try to become indispensible civic tools - providing information for an informed community and convening those people by any means at their disposal.
Tim McGuire, a former Star-Tribune editor who now if faculty at the Cronkite School of Journalism, puts it best. He talked about newspapers - but it goes for all forms of the press: "One of the greatest threats to democracy is that our long-tailed world might destroy all sense of community. It should be newspapers that save us from that fracture..."
How about we give that one a try Elizabeth.
