Views Expressed Are Those of the Cambridge Ma 02142

Home , Alex Jones (journalist), Anderson Cooper, Brian Stelter, Charlie Savage, Jerrold Meinwald, Ken Auletta

Cover_Sp2010 3/17/2010 11:30 AM Page 1 Dædalus coming up in Dædalus:

the challenges of Bruce Western, Glenn Loury, Lawrence D. Bobo, Marie Gottschalk, Dædalus mass incarceration Jonathan Simon, Robert J. Sampson, Robert Weisberg, Joan Petersilia, Nicola Lacey, Candace Kruttschnitt, Loïc Wacquant, Mark Kleiman, Jeffrey Fagan, and others Journal of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences Spring 2010 the economy Robert M. Solow, Benjamin M. Friedman, Lucian A. Bebchuk, Luigi

Zingales, Edward Glaeser, Charles Goodhart, Barry Eichengreen, Spring 2010: on the future of news Thomas Romer, Peter Temin, Jeremy Stein, Robert E. Hall, and others on the Loren Ghiglione Introduction 5 future Herbert J. Gans News & the news media in the digital age: the meaning of Gerald Early, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Glenda R. Carpio, David A. of news implications for democracy 8 minority/majority Hollinger, Jeffrey B. Ferguson, Hua Hsu, Daniel Geary, Lawrence Kathleen Hall Jamieson Are there lessons for the future of news from Jackson, Farah Grif½n, Korina Jocson, Eric Sundquist, Waldo Martin, & Jeffrey A. Gottfried the 2008 presidential campaign? 18 Werner Sollors, James Alan McPherson, Robert O’Meally, Jeffrey B. Robert H. Giles New economic models for U.S. journalism 26 Perry, Clarence Walker, Wilson Jeremiah Moses, Tommie Shelby, and others Jill Abramson Sustaining quality journalism 39 Brant Houston The future of investigative journalism 45 Donald Kennedy The future of science news 57 race, inequality Lawrence D. Bobo, William Julius Wilson, Michael Klarman, Rogers Ethan Zuckerman International reporting in the age of & culture Smith, Douglas Massey, Jennifer Hochschild, Bruce Western, Martha participatory media 66 Biondi, Roland Fryer, Cathy Cohen, James Heckman, Taeku Lee, Pap Ndiaye, Marcyliena Morgan, Richard Nisbett, Jennifer Richeson, Mitchell Stephens The case for wisdom journalism–and for journalists surrendering the pursuit Daniel Sabbagh, Alford Young, Roger Waldinger, and others of news 76 Jane B. Singer Journalism ethics amid structural change 89 plus on the military &c. Michael Schudson Political observatories, databases & news in the emerging ecology of public information 100 Jack Fuller What is happening to news? 110 Paul Sagan The Internet & the future of news 119 & Tom Leighton Susan King Improving how journalists are educated & how their audiences are informed 126 Loren Ghiglione Does science ½ction suggest futures for news? 138

poetry Greg Delanty In a Diner Above the Lamoille River 151

U.S. $13; www.amacad.org Cherishing Knowledge · Shaping the Future Cover_Sp2010 3/17/2010 11:31 AM Page 2 Book_Sp2010:Shinner.qxd 3/17/2010 11:16 AM Page 1

Inside front cover: Front page of the ½nal print edition of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer in Seattle, Wash- ington, March 17, 2009. The Hearst Corporation, which failed to ½nd a buyer for the venerable daily, planned to move some of the newspaper’s workers to the new, free online business, while offering others severance packages. The fate of the Seattle Post- Intelligencer, which Hearst said is the largest daily newspaper to evolve entirely into an online version, highlights the impact of a digital-age revolution that has news readers and advertisers increasingly moving from print to online products. Photograph © reuters/Marcus R. Donner. Book_Sp2010:Shinner.qxd 3/17/2010 11:16 AM Page 2

Loren Ghiglione, Guest Editor Phyllis S. Bendell, Managing Editor and Director of Publications Micah J. Buis, Associate Editor

Board of advisers

Steven Marcus, Editor of the Academy

Rosanna Warren, Poetry Adviser

Committee on Publications Jerome Kagan, Chair, Jesse H. Choper, Denis Donoghue, Linda Greenhouse, Jerrold Meinwald; ex of½cio: Leslie Berlowitz

Dædalus is designed by Alvin Eisenman. Book_Sp2010:Shinner.qxd 3/17/2010 11:16 AM Page 3

Dædalus

Journal of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences

Design for the hedge maze is by Johan Vredeman de Vries, from Hortorum viridariorumque elegantes & multiplices formae: ad architectonicae artis normam affabre delineatae (Cologne, 1615).

Dædalus was founded in 1955 and established as a quarterly in 1958. The journal’s namesake was renowned in ancient Greece as an inventor, scientist, and unriddler of riddles. Its emblem, a maze seen from above, symbol- izes the aspiration of its founders to “lift each of us above his cell in the lab- yrinth of learning in order that he may see the entire structure as if from above, where each separate part loses its comfortable separateness.” The American Academy of Arts & Sciences, like its journal, brings together distinguished individuals from every ½eld of human endeavor. It was chartered in 1780 as a forum “to cultivate every art and science which may tend to advance the interest, honour, dignity, and happiness of a free, independent, and virtuous people.” Now in its third century, the Academy, with its nearly ½ve thousand elected members, continues to provide intellectual leadership to meet the critical challenges facing our world. Book_Sp2010:Shinner.qxd 3/17/2010 11:16 AM Page 4

Dædalus Spring 2010 Subscription rates: Electronic only for non- Issued as Volume 139, Number 2 member individuals–$41; institutions–$108. Canadians add 5% gst. Print and electronic © 2010 by the American Academy for nonmember individuals–$46; institu- of Arts & Sciences tions–$120. Canadians add 5% gst. Outside Introduction: the future ofnews the United States and Canada add $23 for © 2010 by Loren Ghiglione postage and handling. Prices subject to change News & the news media in the digital age: without notice. implications for democracy © 2010 by Herbert J. Gans Institutional subscriptions are on a volume- What is happening to news? year basis. All other subscriptions begin with © 2010 by Jack Fuller the next available issue. Does science ½ction–yes, science ½ction– Single issues: current issue–$13; back issues suggest futures for news? for individuals–$16; back issues for institu- © 2010 by Loren Ghiglione tions–$32. Outside the United States and In a Diner Above the Lamoille River Canada add $6 per issue for postage and han- © 2010 by Greg Delanty dling. Prices subject to change without notice. Editorial of½ces: Dædalus, Norton’s Woods, Claims for missing issues will be honored free 136 Irving Street, Cambridge ma 02138. of charge if made within three months of the Phone: 617 491 2600. Fax: 617 576 5088. publication date of the issue. Claims may be Email: [email protected]. submitted to [email protected]. Mem- Library of Congress Catalog No. 12-30299 bers of the American Academy please direct all questions and claims to [email protected]. isbn 978-0-262-75109-4 Advertising and mailing-list inquiries may be Dædalus publishes by invitation only and as- addressed to Marketing Department, mit sumes no responsibility for unsolicited manu- Press Journals, 238 Main Street, Suite 500, scripts. The views expressed are those of the Cambridge ma 02142. Phone: 617 253 2866. author of each article, and not necessarily of Fax: 617 258 5028. Email: journals-info@ the American Academy of Arts & Sciences. mit.edu. Dædalus (issn 0011-5266; e-issn 1548-6192) Permission to photocopy articles for internal is published quarterly (winter, spring, summer, or personal use is granted by the copyright fall) by The mit Press, Cambridge ma 02142, owner for users registered with the Copyright for the American Academy of Arts & Sciences. Clearance Center (ccc) Transactional Report- An electronic full-text version of Dædalus is ing Service, provided that the per-copy fee of available from The mit Press. Subscription $12 per article is paid directly to the ccc, and address changes should be addressed to 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers ma 01923. The mit Press Journals, 238 Main Street, Suite 500, fee code for users of the Transactional Report- Cambridge ma 02142. Phone: 617 253 2889; ing Service is 0011-5266/10. Address all other u.s./Canada 800 207 8354. Fax: 617 577 1545. inquiries to the Subsidiary Rights Manager, Printed in the United States of America by mit Press Journals, 238 Main Street, Suite 500, Cadmus Professional Communications, Cambridge ma 02142. Phone: 617 253 2864. Science Press Division, 300 West Chestnut Fax: 617 258 5028. Email: journals-rights@ Street, Ephrata pa 17522. mit.edu. Newsstand distribution by Ingram Periodicals The typeface is Cycles, designed by Sumner Inc., 18 Ingram Blvd., La Vergne tn 37086, and Stone at the Stone Type Foundry of Guinda Source Interlink Distribution, 27500 Riverview ca. Each size of Cycles has been separately Center Blvd., Bonita Springs fl 34134. designed in the tradition of metal types. Postmaster: Send address changes to Dædalus, 238 Main Street, Suite 500, Cambridge ma 02142. Periodicals postage paid at Boston ma and at additional mailing of½ces. Book_Sp2010:Shinner.qxd 3/17/2010 11:22 AM Page 5

Loren Ghiglione

Introduction: the future ofnews

Abc News vows to cut its news ly casts a skeptical eye on the power- staff by three hundred to four hun- ful and provides original, reliable re- dred, about 25 percent. More than porting. one-quarter of the public now gets This issue’s ½rst article–by Herbert J. news from cell phones. Bankruptcies, Gans, the Robert S. Lynd Professor Emer- buyouts, and bolting advertisers send itus of Sociology at Columbia Universi- one message: The sky, ½lled with pink ty–calls for rethinking the theory of the slips for reporters, is falling on main- press as a bulwark of democracy. Kath- stream news media. leen Hall Jamieson, Director of the An- Three magazines displayed next to nenberg Public Policy Center at the Uni- each other at a bookstore blame differ- versity of Pennsylvania, and Jeffrey A. ent culprits for the mainstream news Gottfried, senior researcher at the Cen- media’s plight. A New Yorker Nostrada- ter, follow with an article that credits mus describes an entertain-or-die me- news media with traditionally educating dia world of nonstop news on the Web citizens about national issues. But the and high-decibel argument on cable tv.1 article questions whether, based on cov- An Atlantic column points to the shift erage of the 2008 presidential campaign, in readership from lengthy newspaper the media “still sift fact from fabrica- articles to Internet articles that “get to tion.” the point.”2 An Utne Reader article cites Those who see informed citizens as plummeting international coverage by key to a democracy worry, often apoc- U.S. media, down by about 40 percent alyptically, about the advertising-sup- in 2008.3 ported U.S. media that traditionally The authors of all three magazine have provided news and credible jour- pieces, whatever their differences, nalism. Print newspapers are closing, probably agree with the assumption commercial radio news is disappear- that drives this issue of Dædalus about ing, and television news operations the future of news: A democracy de- are slashing staff to survive. What busi- pends on a citizenry informed by the ness models will provide the income free flow of serious news and an inde- for news organizations to do the am- pendent journalism that continuous- bitious, expensive journalism that covers wars abroad and investigates © 2010 by Loren Ghiglione corruption at home?

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Loren Is there a role for foundation grants challenge of building interest in inter- Ghiglione and government subsidies? (Advocates national news when interactive media on the future say government help is nothing new, cit- permit people to focus on only news ofnews ing bargain postal rates and other feder- that already excites them. He recalls al practices and policies.) If, as Joseph with a sense of hope what happened Pulitzer maintained, “Our Republic in Iran when almost a half-million and its press will rise or fall together,” users of Twitter commented on the should we be establishing nonpro½t ½rst two weeks of protests following or endowed newspapers, whether on the disputed 2009 presidential elec- paper or online? In his article for this tion in that country. Users became ac- issue, Robert H. Giles, Curator of the tive producers, not merely passive con- Nieman Foundation for Journalism at sumers, of news. Harvard University, explores new economic models for U.S. journalism. Jill The revolution occurring in the news Abramson, Managing Editor of The New media provides an opportunity for four York Times, looks at the preservation of authors to reconsider the practice of quality journalism from the inside of a journalism, regardless of what technol- prestigious news organization that is ogies and platforms are used by the embracing online as well as print prod- news providers and aggregators of the ucts and is exploring payment by online future. Mitchell Stephens, Professor readers who want to receive all Times of Journalism at New York University, content. calls on journalism to aim higher than Three articles focus on key aspects of telling what just happened–to provide accountability journalism that histori- “a wise take,” based on expertise, judg- cally have de½ned U.S. news media at ment, and insight, on what happened. their best. Brant Houston, the John S. Jane B. Singer, Associate Professor in and James L. Knight Foundation Chair the School of Journalism and Mass in Investigative and Enterprise Report- Communication at the University of ing at the University of Illinois, exam- Iowa, addresses what the structural ines the potential for investigative jour- changes in the journalism of today and nalism in the rise of nonpro½t news- tomorrow mean for the ethics of jour- rooms; the expanding use of comput- nalism. ers, Web software, social media tools, Michael Schudson, Professor at the and data analysis; and the growth of Columbia University Graduate School reporting networks that rely on ama- of Journalism, suggests journalism in- teurs and collaboration. creasingly take advantage of databases Donald Kennedy, former Editor-in- (“databases ‘r’ us”) and nonpartisan Chief of Science and President Emeritus academic research, nonpro½t advocacy of Stanford University, worries aloud groups, and other expert “political ob- about coverage of science and technol- servatories” that monitor governmen- ogy. He explains that “more so than at tal activity to enhance the reporting any other time within memory,” poli- capacity of streamlined news organiza- cy decisions in Washington have “deep tions. Jack Fuller, former President of science and technology content.” And Tribune Publishing Company, recom- Ethan Zuckerman, senior researcher at mends that journalism call on the les- the Berkman Center for Internet & Soci- sons of neuroscience. Driven by deep ety at Harvard University, describes the reasons, for example, emotional pre-

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sentations of information are being used Absent any silver-bullet scenario, Intro- more often and working better with au- the future of news is likely to be a duction diences; serious journalists need to come messy mélange of multimedia exper- to grips with this reality to win the battle iments. The successful business mo- for attention. dels for those experiments may not The ½nal three authors submit that yet be on the horizon. The salaries the pace of change, like the pace of news, for journalists, especially in the free- is likely to accelerate for the media and lance online world, may rival the not- journalism. Paul Sagan, President and so-living wages of actors and poets. Chief Executive Of½cer of Akamai Tech- The range of narrative and non-narra- nologies, and Tom Leighton, Chief Sci- tive tools–maps, graphics, charts, pho- entist at Akamai and a Professor of Ap- tos, videos–may grow. And Dædalus plied Mathematics at mit, anticipate readers and other people who used to the transformative impact on news be called journalism’s audience may be and society of real-time, interactive, asked to partner and participate with tv-quality video. Susan King, Vice professional journalists to provide the President and Director of the Journal- judgment, knowledge, context, interac- ism Initiative at Carnegie Corporation tivity, and depth that characterize the of New York, discusses innovation in quality journalism essential to a democ- the education of the next generation racy. But emerging from the chaos of of journalists, a multimedia generation change will be a wonderfully exciting, as attuned to Facebook as to traditional if nerve-racking and brain-bending, news media. And I examine potential future for news. futures for news suggested by speculative ½ction.

endnotes 1 Ken Auletta, “Annals of Communications: Non-stop News,” The New Yorker, January 25, 2010, 38–47. 2 Michael Kinsley, “Cut This Story!” The Atlantic, January/February 2010, 35. 3 Deborah Campbell, “The Most Trusted Name in News?” Utne Reader, January–February 2010, 64–69.

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Herbert J. Gans

News & the news media in the digital age: implications for democracy

Modern American journalism con- To be sure, some ordinary citizens siders itself a “bulwark of democracy.” talk to their elected representatives, Journalists argue that they report the write letters to the editor, and email, news so that the citizenry can inform blog, text, and tweet in political cyber- itself and participate in the “conversa- space. Nonetheless, the public opinion tion” that journalists believe is crucial polls continue to be the most visible to a democracy. According to what example of that citizen conversation, might be called bulwark theory, being even if it is only one way and even if informed also enables citizens to par- those willing to be polled are merely ticipate in politics, choose their politi- answering the pollsters’ questions. cal representatives, and instruct them Citizen participation has always on how they want to be represented. been limited to a few, motivated main- The theory expresses journalism’s ly by self-interest or membership in noblest democratic ideals, but it could a social movement. Consequently, it stand some rethinking. Being informed often generates protest or hard-to- is neither a motive nor a requirement satisfy demands. Politicians are there- for talking about or participating in fore not always eager to have citizens politics. How well most citizens are in- participate, except at election time. formed is a debatable question, and Working journalists are practition- since politics is a divisive conversation- ers, not theorists, and do not concern al topic, precious few participate in the themselves unduly with the shortcom- democratic conversation. Some citizens ings of bulwark theory. They see their do, but some of them shout and scream. job as supplying the news, leaving oth- In reality, most political conversing, in- ers to worry whether the citizenry is cluding that which is heard by elected properly informed and performs its of½cials, comes from journalists, com- democratic duties. mentators, panel talk shows, and journalist bloggers. And it is the news me- Because the future of news is uncer- dia themselves that offer up the pub- tain, it is necessary to go beyond bul- lic outlet for this continuing conver- wark theory to ask what exactly the sation. news media and journalists do for democracy, and what will happen if the © 2010 by Herbert J. Gans current mainstays–newspapers, mag-

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azines, and tv news–undergo drastic Reporting the Actions and Decisions of News & change and are replaced by websites Elected Of½cials. The news media are the news media in and other digital media. However, I also also messengers for the political lead- the digital want to ask what more the news media, ership so that it can tell the citizenry age old and new, could and should do for de- what it will do and has done for them mocracy, and what is beyond their pow- and the country. Journalists serve as er to do. My answers will deal mainly messengers for only a few: the White with the national news media although House and congressional leadership, they would not differ signi½cantly for as well as a handful of cabinet agencies, regional and local news media. including State, Defense, and since the Monitoring the Political Environment start of the Great Recession, the Treas- and Assuring the Country that the Polity ury and the Federal Reserve. Most oth- Will Survive. Most members of the er government agencies and activities news audience are monitors; they use become newsworthy only rarely, gen- the news to keep up with the parts of erally when they are malfunctioning. society they cannot monitor person- When journalists function as mes- ally. (The rest of the audience can be sengers, they are essentially passive re- divided into “news buffs” and occu- porters, and media critics accuse them pational users, that is, professionals of being stenographers for the political and others–including many readers leadership. Of course, the leadership, of this journal–who need the news to like most other news sources, wants the do their work.) Monitors use the news messengers to be stenographers; that is primarily to learn what is going wrong why a number of the Bush administra- in the country’s political and other in- tion’s unsavory domestic and foreign stitutions and the world beyond, and policies that journalists did not report to assure themselves thereby that the are only now being brought to light. rest of society is still functioning nor- All journalists prefer to do active re- mally. porting, identifying details of political Journalists demonstrate political and and governmental actions–including other societal normalities by reporting those details politicians would prefer to regularly that the president, his major be left out of news stories. When news colleagues, and others exercising lead- organizations are economically healthy ership are doing their jobs. Even when and news staffs are at full strength, ac- they report bad news about corrupt pol- tive reporting complements and some- iticians, failed leaders, and unexpected times corrects the stories of colleagues crises, their news stories almost always who must function as stenographers. end with what is being done to restore Airing Political Disagreements and Con- political and social order. flicts. Most active reporting is devoted Demonstrating normality may seem to describing the political leadership’s trivial and perhaps unnecessary, but disagreements and conflicts. Moreover, imagine the irregularities that would when politicians argue and ½ght, they develop, the rumors that would circu- are believed to attract the attention of late, and the panics that would be sure audience members who are “grabbed” to follow if people were not told regu- by dramatic stories. larly that the societal sun continues to The news media as well as much of rise and set every day as predictably as the audience usually have patience for the sun that brings us day and night. no more than “both sides” of every argu-

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Herbert J. ment–a convenient number in a coun- ing. When journalists are able to be ac- Gans try with a two-party polity. Two-sided- tive reporters, they try to ask at least a on the future ness also enables the news media to re- few questions to remind elected of½cials ofnews strict its ideological spectrum. Stephen that their everyday watchdogging never Colbert once pointed out that reality stops. As a result, journalists drive some has a liberal bias, and the news media’s activities underground, but that gives reluctance to lean left seeks, among oth- them a chance to expose these through er things, to pacify conservatives who investigative reporting. in effect complain about the news me- Investigative reporting is the most active dia’s preoccupation with reality. form of journalism, and when it is suc- Defending Democratic Values. Perhaps cessful in exposing criminal behavior journalists’ proudest activity is to up- and the villains involved end up in jail, hold a particular set of norms and values investigative journalists become eligible of a democratic polity, most dramatical- for the Pulitzer, DuPont, and other pres- ly by exposing theft, dishonesty, hypoc- tigious professional awards. Investiga- risy, and other forms of corruption, as tive reporting contributes to democra- well as inef½ciency, “waste,” incompe- cy mainly by helping identify public of- tence, and other kinds of malfeasance. ½cials who act illegally to bene½t them- Although they are not always aware selves and their friends at the expense of it, journalists as a profession are ad- of their constituents. vocates of good government or “goo- Although these lawbreakers may not goos,” a business and civic movement do as much damage to their constituents that arose concurrently with modern as the law-abiding leaders who exercise journalism at the start of the twentieth economic or political power over them, century. Here is the profession’s most journalists mainly guard good govern- consistent bias! ment, not economic and political fair- In the process, journalists move be- ness. The news audience is not always yond their strictly professional role to as excited about good government and act as the polity’s moral guardians and altruistic democracy as journalists, but transform themselves from reporters to investigative reporting is thought to sell watchdogs. Elsewhere, I have described papers and increase ratings. More im- them as guarding altruistic democracy, portant, it reinforces–and enforces– which expects elected of½cials to devote the political standards set by everyday themselves to a selfless pursuit of the watchdogging. public interest. Watchdogging takes several forms. Journalists working in the tradition- Everyday watchdogging goes with journal- al print and electronic news media are ists’ very presence at important events. very worried about the future of the When they are around, even if equipped news. They are upset by the arrival of only with notepads and pencils, politi- new and competing communication cians have to speak respectfully about technologies, the decline of the news the political process, watch what they audience and of advertising revenue, say about other subjects, and refrain and the resulting closure of several from scandalous acts. Corrupt politi- newspapers and a serious downsiz- cians take their hands out of the till, ing of news staffs in many others. and the military is careful not to shoot Consequently, many journalists, me- at civilians if the news media are watch- dia critics, and political observers are

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concerned that citizens will encoun- that supplied the news only at presched- News & ter dif½culties in keeping themselves uled and frequently inconvenient times. the news media in informed and that representative de- Meanwhile, the Web news media may the digital mocracy will suffer as a result. How- be evolving, whether as summaries of age ever, investigative reporting, which the traditional news media, or as new is very expensive, is expected to suf- outlets invented for the Web, such as fer even more, resulting in the coarsen- Salon, The Daily Beast, The Huf½ngton ing of American politics. The most pes- Post, and Talking Points Memo (tpm). simistic observers fear that the country They are Web versions of the old print might return toward a level of political media, but streaming websites as well corruption, incompetent policy-making, as YouTube and its peers are primitive and governmental mismanagement that forms of future visual news media. True, occurred not only between 2000 and none are making money, and for the mo- 2008, but also in earlier periods of ment they are being kept alive by hope- American history. ful venture capitalists and by mostly Although journalists’ pessimism young and enthusiastic but underpaid is justi½ed, particularly in the short journalists. run, from a long-term perspective, the No one can now predict which of changes must also be viewed and ana- today’s news websites will survive and lyzed as a process: an ongoing techno- grow into news media with news orga- logical shift in the country’s news me- nizations that can meet the news needs dia, which is perhaps still in its early of a democratic society. If the past offers phases. At the moment, the tradition- any precedent, in the long run, most of al news media are still supplying most the news audience will click on a hand- of the news but losing the audience and ful of major news websites owned by the income to pay for it all. Meanwhile, giant corporations, perhaps even the news websites and websites that offer ones that own today’s surviving news- news on their home pages are gaining paper chains and television networks. audiences, but their income from ad- But ½rst someone has to ½gure out vertising is too small for them to afford “how to monetize the Web.” their own news organizations. Current- Local news media face an even more ly, they are parasites feeding off the eco- uncertain future. News about state and nomically sick traditional news media. local governments and politics never at- Nonetheless, the Web is slowly becom- tracted much audience interest, and pro- ing the main home for the consumption fessionally staffed digital news media of news. The home is still being built may be viable only in larger localities. and no one knows now what it will look Neighborhood websites may look for- like when ½nished, but someday people ward to a more promising future when will probably be viewing and reading and where people are interested in their the news solely on digital or post-digi- neighbors and are willing to trust ama- tal screens, including perhaps late-stage teur journalists to supply sought-after Kindles and now yet unimagined de- news about them. vices. Eventually, historians will try to ½gure out why their ancestors tolerated Other changes are taking place that obtaining their news from large pieces may have more positive effects for the of folded paper that had to be delivered supply of news, even if they do not con- to their doors and from electric boxes tribute to the economic health of the

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Herbert J. traditional news media or to the em- sional journalists then turned into major Gans ployment prospects of professional stories. Remember, however, that nearly on the future journalists. forty years ago, two young police report- ofnews For example, while the paying news ers in Washington, D.C., discovered a audience is declining, the actual audi- story that felled a president. ence may be growing. If that audience The most drastic change so far has tak- is counted, not as the number buying en place in the amount of opinion avail- or tuned into the various news media, able, as new bloggers continue to appear. but as the number exposed to the day’s In addition, many news websites supply major news stories, the arrival of digital a good deal of opinion, in part because it news may have enlarged this news audi- is considerably cheaper to produce than ence. True, the total audience is spread news. Most of the opiners and their com- across many more news outlets than menting accompanists, though, are not a daily paper, a tv network news pro- journalists, and they appear on personal gram, and a handful of cable channels and other small blogs that attract tiny and radio stations. Now that the news audiences. cycle is 24/7 and even search engines Nonetheless, in sum, these new opin- carry news stories, the total amount ions contribute to the total amount of of news programming available to democratic conversation. Since many the audience has risen considerably. bloggers offer opinions that do not ap- Similarly, the reduction in the num- pear on journalist-supervised news me- ber of employed journalists has been dia, either for ideological reasons or be- counteracted at least partially by the cause they lack a proper factual base, appearance of citizen journalists. In they add, for better or worse, to the di- reality, and despite their name, they versity of the democratic conversation. are amateur journalists resembling the Of course, a public appearance on stringers that have reported news, and the Web still lacks the visibility of be- still do, from places to which news or- ing on television. Consequently, the ganizations cannot afford to send pro- digital democratic conversation does fessionals. If the amateurs are proper- not appear so far to have had a signi½- ly supervised or edited by trained jour- cant impact on the output of profes- nalists, they could increase the total sional columnists and other opinion- supply of news. To be sure, they are makers who attract large audiences. also free or very cheap labor who may With some notable but individual ex- further shrink the full-time labor force, ceptions, the amateur commentators a process now occurring all over Amer- have not yet influenced the publicly ica, including in the academy. stated opinions and decisions of the The new stringers have appeared country’s major elected of½cials. both in traditional news media and Perhaps the arrival of news and blog- on the Web, in part because, equipped ging websites contributed to the larg- with cell phones and similar technol- er number of young people who voted ogies, they are sometimes in the right in the 2008 presidential election. Even places at the right time, just as news- so, their post-election impact, if any, is worthy events are beginning to hap- small compared to that of the major po- pen. A handful have already supplied litical parties or, more important, the otherwise unavailable news, as from array of lobbies that play such a signi½- Iran, and unearthed scoops that profes- cant role in national political decision-

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making. Although organizations like to the democratic conversation in ways News & MoveOn that raise money on the Web that were considered neither democratic the news media in and use it to lobby elected of½cials have nor conversation by their better-off fel- the digital had some effect on some political de- low citizens. age cisions, they are not connected to the news media but are the Web succes- Currently, the major challenge for the sors to the political organizations that news media, for journalists, and, thus, once raised money via snail mail. for American democracy is how to deal In addition, the Web’s various ama- with the possibility that advertising may teur editorialists are perpetuating two never again be able to ½nance the com- historic shortcomings of the demo- mercial news media as much as it once cratic conversation. One, they main- did. Perhaps that is all to the good: the tain what Richard Hofstadter long ago democratic cause may bene½t if the called the paranoid style of American news is no longer supplied mainly by politics, spreading conspiracy theories ½rms that seek a pro½t by assembling and angry or hateful messages, often audiences for advertisers. Why, after about imaginary enemies. all, should informing the citizenry be Such opinions have long been part dependent on whether shareholders, of the oral repertoire of American poli- Wall Street ½nanciers, and venture tics, particularly at the local level, and capitalists can pro½t from it? they have been diffused through what- Although the ½nancial overseers of ever communication media were avail- the news media do not influence the able at the moment. Indeed, they con- news as much as is commonly believed, tribute considerably to the general pub- journalists cannot easily distance them- lic’s low opinion of politics. Cable tele- selves or what they report from the cor- vision news, radio talk shows, and even porate capitalist system in which they the network news programs too often (the public news media, too) are em- turn the paranoid conversation into na- bedded. A new business model may tional news; one must hope that they, be desirable as well as necessary. and the hateful blogs they help to in- Such a model should be diversi½ed, spire, do not infect the body of the somewhat like the public news media, democratic conversation. which are supported by a combination A second, less obvious shortcoming of of commercial, nonpro½t, governmen- the public democratic conversation is its tal, and audience funds. For the moment, class bias, for all the media that engage all possible and even some currently im- in it are more accessible to the better off, possible alternatives should be explored. the more highly educated, and the more If elected of½cials are eager for steno- articulate parts of the population. What graphic reporting, they could fund a I call “upscale democracy” pervades the modern version of the party press. If polity, and while low-income people the news media are as essential to the without even a high school diploma may perpetuation of society and the polity add to the oral conversation, they do not as I have suggested, perhaps they should often blog or tweet. However, they did be organized as limited pro½t utilities. not send out mimeographed flyers ei- If the European licensing fee system ther, and probably rarely contacted their still cannot be imported to America, a elected representatives. They have fre- case can be made for user fees, at least quently contributed their viewpoints for the more detailed and specialized

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Herbert J. news sought by news buffs and those they are also the citizens most actively Gans using the news media in and for their concerned about the state of the coun- on the future work. Today, many people pay hun- try’s democratic institutions. I suggest ofnews dreds of dollars a year in newspaper seven changes. and newsmagazine subscriptions, and First, conduct more active reporting. Pas- they should be able to afford such fees sive stenography has its place, and pool- for the digital news media they need. ing it, for example in reporting the talks And if news is vital to representative and actions of the political leadership, democracy, then government can play would save some money. As a result, a role, not only by turning access to the other journalists would be free to delve Web into a free public good, but by of- into the details of the talks and actions fering ½nancial support for news that that make the news and also into the does not attract other funding sources. socio-political-economic contexts in Thirty years ago I proposed an Endow- which they take place. ment for News, modeled on the federal Concurrently, journalists ought to pay arts and humanities endowments, and more attention to the now almost total- I continue to think it is a good idea. ly ignored cabinet agencies and other Investigative reporting is most in need executive, legislative, and judicial agen- of a new business model, and ideally, it cies that play important roles in a dem- should be free both of government and ocratic society and in the everyday life private enterprise, the targets of most of of the news audience. Local and state its investigations. Some news websites, reporters should follow the same path. like the traditional news media, are al- Second, increase and broaden economic ready conducting such reporting with reporting. American journalism could funds from a variety of supporters. be characterized fairly as capitalism’s The current hope is that foundations attempt to keep an eye on and regulate will step in the breach if and when ex- government for the bene½t of capitalist tra funds are needed, although even institutions, for except in economic cri- the largest foundations are vulnerable ses, most national news is about govern- to self-censorship and to pressure from ment. Economic news is normally rele- the powerful, especially those on whom gated to the business pages, but these they depend for support themselves. Di- pages are written mostly for investors. versity of funding may again be the best However, because the country’s–and solution, for if all funders of the news American democracy’s–well-being de- media contribute, preferably indirectly, pends on its economy and because eco- to the cost of investigative reporting, it nomic power holders can exert so much may be dif½cult to ask individual ones political power, the economy ought to to halt threatening investigations. be covered as closely as government. Wall Street, the large corporations and Even as a new business model is being their lobbies, large investors, unions, developed, journalists, media critics, and and others speaking and acting for em- others should be thinking about how the ployees all need to be in the news more news can contribute further to democ- often. Indeed, the news ought to be re- racy. Most of the proposals for changes porting on the political economy. in the news, including mine that follow, Third, cover citizen news. If journalists will likely attract news buffs and occupa- want to do more for democracy, they tional users rather than monitors, but must report on the role that citizens play

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–and do not play–in it. Citizens are cur- economic centrism that is too narrow News & rently not newsworthy very often, but to encompass the country’s diversity. the news media in citizen leaders, citizen lobbies, protes- Consequently, newsworthiness must be the digital tors, and other activists do make news broadened to include facts, viewpoints, age when they are active, when they are pre- and opinions–not to mention solutions vented from being active, and indirectly for the country’s problems–advanced even when they are inactive. How elect- by people outside the mainstream. ed and appointed representatives–fed- Fifth, increase watchdogging. As noted eral, state, and local–serve, service, ig- above, journalists and others are particu- nore, and reject citizens is another story larly fearful that the news media’s tech- told too rarely. nological changes and economic dif½- Moreover, citizens become newswor- culties threaten investigative reporting thy if they participate in the democratic that results in exposés. Efforts to ½nd conversation, both as regular and irregu- new ½nancial and institutional support lar contributors. Summarizing the over- for it are already under way. whelming number of blogs and other The major need may be for more of forms of political texting is probably im- what I have called everyday investigative possible, but a regular overview of those reporting: the daily routine of keeping an seen by elected representatives would be eye on elected and appointed of½cials, desirable. Polls asking additional and dif- economic decision-makers, and other ferent questions than those chosen by influentials. Keeping them honest, and commercial and mainstream pollsters reporting their often petty but continu- should be included in the news as well. ing corruption or malfeasance, is as im- Still, the biggest need is for news from portant as uncovering dramatic mis- or about unrepresented citizens, the peo- deeds that result in prize-winning ex- ple who never vote and are almost never posés. In fact, extending the sweep of heard from publicly in any way. everyday investigative reporting might Fourth, report additional perspectives on be the most productive policy for the America. The unrepresented citizenry is never-covered and thus never-watched necessary to the news for another rea- elected or appointed of½cials who are son: their perspective on the country di- most likely to ignore or evade the sev- verges in many respects from the main- eral public interests they are supposed stream ones. National news, coming as to serve. it does from the political and economic Everyday investigative reporters who leadership and being reported by mostly are always on the scene may also notice upper-middle-class professionals, often continuing systemic deviations from looks at the country top down. The news- democratic and other norms and can makers and journalists, too, are partici- thereby underscore the need for system- pants in upscale democracy. ic reform. Catching villains without car- Needless to say, newsworthiness is de- rying out systemic reform only produces ½ned also by what journalists perceive to new villains once exposés are forgotten. be of interest to their audience, but since So-called citizen journalists can some- that audience is ideologically and other- times be helpful in this role. Properly wise heterogeneous, journalists work trained stringers who are in or can get hard to report the news with what they to the right places at the right times consider to be detachment, fairness, and should be able to conduct simpler forms objectivity. The result is a political and of everyday investigative reporting, es-

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Herbert J. pecially in parts of society that are nor- active reporters should therefore be Gans mally not covered by or are otherwise actively encouraged to offer their opin- on the future inaccessible to the news media. ions on subjects which they have report- ofnews Yet one other kind of watchdogging ed intensively. may be even more necessary: analytic Seventh, enlarge the news audience. Al- investigative reporting, which goes be- though the actual news audience may be yond the descriptive reporting of daily larger than the counted one, the news journalism and its emphasis on individ- media could make greater efforts to ex- ual actors. Knowing the various social pand it further. Such efforts may need to forces, structures, and agents that influ- include some structural changes in the ence what people in important public news. For example, people who believe positions do and say helps us understand that they need to monitor the news only why the country functions as it does. every few days should be able to ½nd ap- Learning why existing structures mal- propriate news media–perhaps even function and new initiatives go wrong electronic and digital versions of the is required to determine the policies weekly newsmagazine. and politics needed to correct them. Also, some less educated and older This kind of watchdogging is usually audience members comprehend only reported in journalists’ books years after a part of what they read, hear, and view, the fact, but by then it is dramatic histo- and may require more simply present- ry rather than useful news. Journalism ed stories. Novel forms of news presen- should be devoted to understanding so- tation may attract some of the people ciety and informing its audiences rather who now make do without the news. than producing ½rst drafts of history. Even so, many people will not seek Many journalists believe that analy- out more news unless and until they sis should be left to social scientists need it almost as badly as groceries. and other academics, but they too rare- That is unlikely to happen until peo- ly march to topical drummers. More ple become directly aware that govern- journalists must be trained to be analyt- ment, the economy, and other major ic, even though their analysis will often news sources play as central a role in be instant. Academics can then still fol- their lives as those groceries. In the low with their kinds of analyses. meantime, teaching young people Sixth, make room for informed opinion. about politics and economics begin- Journalists are probably the last logical ning in the higher grades of elemen- positivists left in the modern world; they tary school might help as well. will report only what they perceive to be Moreover, if the news is to play so facts. Worse yet, they are complemented central a role, the news media need to by commentators who too often supply reinvent national news. If this is even opinions with insuf½cient attention to possible in a country the size of a conti- the relevant facts. nent, the national news media cannot Limiting the news to perceived facts all be located in the Northeast, as they may enable journalists to practice the are now, and they must ½gure out how detachment needed to serve their ideo- to focus regular national attention on logically diverse audience, but it also datelines other than Washington, D.C., deprives that audience of help in draw- on people other than political elites, ing conclusions about important issues and on stories other than theirs. and problems. Investigative and other

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Many of the above proposals require If journalists agree that these issues are News & larger news organizations and are cur- relevant to the democratic conversation, the news media in rently too expensive even to be tried. they should develop ways of reporting the digital However, they deserve to be tried, if on them. In the process, they would also age only to determine whether and when be building a more powerful bulwark for the news can have a continuing impact democracy. on democratic politics. At present, the news media are clearly necessary for the maintenance of existing forms of democratic politics, but they are insuf½cient to affect it signi½cantly. For one, news stories are too brief and super½cial to supply detailed information about policy and political decision-making processes. Conse- quently, the news is also inadequate for serious citizen political activity, other than perhaps voting in elections. Knowledge is said to lead to power, but the knowledge we call news cannot do so. Nor can it bring about the greater participation in power essential to a properly representative democracy. Turning America into such a democracy requires action on a variety of political and policy issues. Among other things, citizens must somehow obtain enough power to eliminate unrepresen- tative institutions beginning with the Electoral College; to reform the Senate so as to reduce the excessive decision- making power of senators from the small states; to redraw the boundaries of unfairly drawn congressional dis- tricts; and to prevent the presidency from turning into a unitary executive. Above all, economic power must be disconnected as much as possible from political power. As long as the lobbies and monies of the economically powerful can exert undue influence on elections as well as on elected of½cials once in of½ce, the citizenry cannot be properly represented. Ultimately, truly representative democracy requires a politi- cally and economically more equal America.

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Kathleen Hall Jamieson & Jeffrey A. Gottfried

Are there lessons for the future ofnews from the 2008 presidential campaign?

When news does its job, attentive citi- ronment, presidential debates hold up zens are better able to understand both as one of the only venues, if not the sole the challenges facing the country and source, that heightens citizens’ campaign the competing visions of those seeking knowledge. These conclusions arise from to lead it. Indeed, some argue that “the our study of how newspapers, national purpose of journalism is to provide peo- and local broadcast and cable news, In- ple with the information they need to be ternet, talk radio, and debate audiences free and self-governing.”1 In years past, responded to questions about the cen- those studying media have reliably found tral deceptions advanced by the major that consumers of traditional news were party candidates. better informed about issues of national concern.2 However, the growth of a new In the general presidential election of media culture in which partisans are able 2008, viewers in battleground states to envelop themselves in like-minded were assaulted by deceptive claims, content raises a question: in the world among them that Arizona Senator and of ideologically tinged cable news, opin- Republican Party nominee John McCain ion-talk radio, and viral email, does news wanted to cut Social Security and stay in any of its various incarnations still sift in Iraq for one hundred years and that fact from fabrication and, in the process, Illinois Senator and Democratic Party heighten a voter’s knowledge about those nominee Barack Obama did not take aspiring to lead? Iran seriously and had a close relation- Our study of the presidential general ship with former Weather Underground election campaign of 2008 suggests that leader William Ayers.3 The two most traditional news sources are not the cus- prevalent distortions, each backed by todians of fact that they once were. At multimillion dollar ad buys, involved the same time, sources that blend discus- taxation. Speci½cally, the Democrats sion of news with what we call opinion- alleged that McCain would impose a talk are at least occasional purveyors of net tax on health care bene½ts, and unbalanced issue coverage and misinfor- the Republicans insisted that Obama mation. In this transformed media envi- would raise taxes on working families including “yours.” Where the Obama © 2010 by the American Academy of Arts campaign spent $43 million on broad- & Sciences cast ads asserting the ½rst claim, the

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McCain campaign devoted $53 million the correct answer, including 15 percent Are there to spots alleging the second.4 of the sample that believed that bene½ts lessons from the The Democratic nominee’s rhetoric would be taxed without the offsetting 2008 pres- failed the truth test by suggesting that credit.7 idential the Republican would tax employer-pro- The questions we address here are: how campaign? vided health bene½ts, a statement that effectively did the candidates, news me- sins by omission because the tax would dia, and debates blunt these central de- have been offset with a credit of $2,500 ceptions and increase audiences’ knowl- per individual or $5,000 per family. “It edge? And did embracing either of the could all unravel,” said one of the Oba- false beliefs affect the way people voted? ma ads. “Your health care under John McCain. McCain would tax health ben- Our ½rst ½nding is straightforward. e½ts for the ½rst time ever, meaning Exposure to ads increased the impact higher income taxes for millions.” On of the deception, but only when it was the other side, McCain traf½cked in the not rebutted. By counter-advertising, false conclusion that Obama planned Obama negated the effect of McCain’s on raising middle-class taxes. “Times attack. When his campaign decided not are tough. Obama voted to raise taxes to do the same, McCain left audiences on people making just $42,000,” noted vulnerable to the false inference invited one McCain ad. “He promises more by Obama’s ads. taxes on small businesses, seniors, your Because candidates most often reach life savings, your family.” Obama had voters with ads in slots surrounding lo- forecast raising taxes, but only on those cal news, news-viewing is a rough indi- households making over $250,000.5 cator of ad exposure. Further, because Each side rebutted the false charges: local news focuses not on presidential Obama in counter-advertising, de- campaigns but, rather, on crime, sports, bates, and speeches; McCain in the and weather,8 unless the other side re- latter two. In a moment, we will argue buts an attack, higher local news con- that McCain’s decision not to rebut sumption should predict embracing the using advertising was consequential. rhetoric in the ads. Unsurprisingly then, An Annenberg Public Policy Cen- we ½nd that the more that people relied ter post-election survey found wide- on local news, the more they believed spread public ignorance about the facts that McCain would tax health bene½ts underlying the nominees’ exchanges on without the offsetting credit, but the taxes.6 When respondents were asked less likely they were to hold that Oba- which candidate(s) they thought would ma would raise middle-class taxes.9 raise middle-class taxes, one in ½ve (22 Speci½cally, those who watched local percent) answered correctly that neither news every day were one-and-a-half planned on doing so; four in ½ve (78 per- times more prone to believe the decep- cent) either did not know the answer or tion about McCain than those who answered incorrectly, including one in watched no local news, but were 1.7 six (17 percent) who embraced the decep- times less likely to believe the deception that Obama would raise taxes. When tion about Obama. asked about McCain’s health care plan, When covering politics, broadcast four in ten (42 percent) knew that his tax and cable media tend to engage in tacti- on health care bene½ts would be offset, cal assessments and “he said/she said” while six in ten (58 percent) did not know reporting, failing in the process to cor-

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Kathleen rect the deceptions offered by either or Although we ½nd no evidence that Hall both sides.10 Consistent with this sup- watching broadcast network news in- Jamieson & Jeffrey A. position, broadcast and cable news more creased the likelihood of embracing ei- Gottfried often than not restated the suspect alle- ther deception, neither did we ½nd that on the gations without challenging the misin- those news viewers were more likely to future ofnews formation they contained. This excerpt know the candidates’ position on either from nbc Nightly News is illustrative: issue. In other words, we cannot say that network news did any harm, but it also Brian Williams: I mentioned we have did not do any good. more new poll numbers tonight, and our nbc News political director Chuck ecause partisans seek reinforcement Todd is here with those. B from like-minded media outlets, the rise Chuck Todd: [. . . ] [L]ook at [his] advan- of partisan media has increased the like- tages on the issues, Brian. This sort of lihood that those of one ideological bent underscores the 10-point lead for Oba- will be protected from information that ma. He leads by 39 on handling health might challenge their presuppositions. care. He leads by 21 points on handling The ideological dispositions of the au- the economy, by far and away the biggest diences of cable news channels differ. issue in [the] poll. Fourteen points on Those calling themselves moderates taxes. This is happening because Obama and liberals are more likely to watch has been pounding McCain on the air- cnn, and those wearing the conserva- waves on health care and taxes, saying tive label are more likely to tune to fox he’s going to tax your health care bene- News. In our sample, liberals and mod- ½ts. And that’s why he’s got a lead now erates were two-and-a-half times more on that. All that’s left for McCain is Iraq.11 prone to watch cnn as their primary From this segment’s focus on tactics, cable news channel, and conservatives audiences could learn that Obama was were over three-and-a-half times more likely to watch fox News. Our survey advantaged by his assault on McCain’s msnbc plan. Because the Democratic nominee’s contained too few viewers to allegation was presented without correc- permit reliable estimates for that net- tion, the deception was reinforced. Still, work. as the following excerpt from cbs Eve- Research conducted in 2004 found ning News suggests, broadcast journalists that cable news networks debunk false occasionally debunked the fabricated claims about the candidate closer to claims: their ideology and embrace falsehoods being floated about the other candi- Wyatt Andrews: John McCain wants a mul- date. By so doing, conservative media titrillion-dollar tax on the middle class? (for example, fox News and Rush Lim- Here are the facts. Obama has the tax part baugh) “create a self-protective enclave correct, but the impact on the middle class hospitable to conservative beliefs . . . is exaggerated. Most people will see tax [and enwrap audiences] in a world in cuts. McCain does want to tax the health which facts supportive of Democratic insurance bene½ts that 60 million Ameri- claims are contested and those consis- cans now buy through their employers tax tent with conservative ones are cham- free. However, McCain also proposes to pioned.”13 Some research has found give the money back as a tax credit, $2,500 that this pattern is characteristic of for individuals, $5,000 for families.12 both conservative and liberal media:

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“Conservative assumptions are more for this economy if you’re levying higher Are there likely to go unchallenged on fox’s talk taxes on the small businesses that create lessons 16 from the shows than on cnn’s, and liberals are 80 percent of those new jobs? 2008 pres- more likely to be required to defend idential Consistent with this analysis, watching their premises. The opposite is true on campaign? fox News increased the belief that Oba- cnn.”14 ma would raise middle-class taxes; view- Contrary to the ½nding from the 2004 ers reliant on that outlet were roughly presidential election, in 2008 we do not three times more likely to believe the de- ½nd a pro-Obama effect for cnn. cnn ception and 1.4 times less likely to know neither increased belief in the deception that neither candidate proposed raising nor increased the accuracy of respon- such taxes. dents’ answer to either issue. Similar to Similarly, regular listeners of conser- network news, cnn neither did harm vative talk radio host Rush Limbaugh nor good. were 1.7 times more likely to believe the However, we do ½nd a pro-McCain deception about Obama. Like fox News, effect for fox. Speci½cally, that chan- Limbaugh reinforced deceptions about nel forti½ed the deception that Obama Obama’s plans. Unlike fox, though, lis- would raise middle-class taxes. On fox, teners to Rush Limbaugh were more like- both pundits and invited guests alleged ly–indeed, one-and-a-half times more that the middle class had much to fear likely–to know the correct answer about from the Democrat at tax time. McCain’s health care plan. Scott Rasmusen: But Sean, what’s happening is Barack Obama is running a great ad Neither the newest medium on the campaign in battleground states. He keeps scene, the Internet, nor the oldest, the talking about cutting taxes for 95% of newspaper, enabled those who relied Americans. I know you’d argue about that. on them to make sense of either claim. Sean Hannity: It’s not true.15 Knowledge of the facts behind the fab- rications wasn’t increased by using the In another fox piece, an invited guest Internet for information about the pres- uncritically repeats the deceptive claim: idential election or by reading major Martha MacCallum: I know that you men- city or national newspapers. Important- tioned you are fearful about an Obama ly, however, neither medium increased presidency because you think that this audiences’ embrace of the deceptions. tax–raising taxes on so many people in Put simply, these two outlets also nei- this country would sort of throw a cold ther helped voters nor harmed them. blanket over this–or a wet blanket, I Our ½ndings up to this point are dis- should say–onto any recovery that we appointing. The news media did not might have. serve as effective custodians of fact in 2008; instead, some outlets performed Stephen Moore: [ . . . ] It’s those small busi- a function one would expect of cam- nessmen who may be hiring ½ve or 10 or paign surrogates. However, the citizen 20 workers, that are going to be facing a seeking political substance did have a higher income tax burden under this plan. recourse. For almost ½ve decades, stud- And this is the one question, by the way, ies have con½rmed the power of presi- that Barack Obama has never been able dential debates to increase voter knowl- to answer: How do you create more jobs edge,17 and 2008 was no exception.

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Kathleen The debates’ two-sided clash of com- yourselves no longer having employer- Hall peting ideas, unmediated by interpreta- based health insurance [with Senator Mc- Jamieson & Jeffrey A. tion from reporters, spiked voter knowl- Cain’s plan]. . . . And once you’re out on Gottfried edge. In these often disparaged encoun- your own with this $5,000 credit, Senator on the ters, the presidential and vice presiden- McCain, for the ½rst time, is going to be future ofnews tial nominees took on the deceptions taxing the health care bene½ts that you perpetrated by the other side, including have from your employer. And this is those on health care and taxing propos- your plan, John. For the ½rst time in his- als. On no fewer than ten occasions tory, you will be taxing people’s health across three debates, Barack Obama care bene½ts. insisted either that he would not raise John McCain: [ . . . ] Now, 95 percent of taxes on households making less than the people in America will receive more $250,000 a year or that 95 percent of money under my plan because they will Americans would get a tax cut. When receive not only their present bene½ts, McCain made the charge, Obama re- which may be taxed, which will be taxed, sponded: but then you add $5,000 onto it.19 John McCain: Senator Obama’s secret that As this Obama example illustrates, you don’t know is that his tax increases the candidates were occasionally more will increase taxes on 50 percent of small accurate in characterizing their oppo- business revenue. . . . I’ve got some news, nents’ plans in the debates than they Senator Obama, the news is bad. So let’s were in ads. Still, the Arizona senator not raise anybody’s taxes, my friends, and regularly suggested that the Democrat- make it be very clear that I am not in favor ic nominee would raise taxes, especial- of tax cuts for the wealthy. I am in favor of ly on small businesses while he sup- leaving the tax rates alone and reducing ported “reducing the tax burden” of the tax burden of middle-income Ameri- the middle class. At the same time, his cans. Illinois counterpart repeatedly implied Barack Obama: [ . . . ] [L]et’s be clear about that McCain’s health care plan would my tax plan and Senator McCain’s. . . . I raise taxes on many. want to provide a tax cut for 95 percent of However, because each side had the op- Americans, 95 percent. If you make less portunity to correct the other’s misstate- than a quarter of a million dollars a year, ments, watching the debates increased you will not see a single dime of your tax- knowledge. In the presence of a robust es go up. If you make $200,000 a year or list of controls, including political ideol- less, your taxes will go down. Now, Sena- ogy, party identi½cation, political knowl- tor McCain talks about small businesses. edge, and news consumption, those who Only a few percent of small businesses tuned into all four debates were one-and- make more than $250,000 a year. So the a-half times less likely than non-view- vast majority of small businesses would ers to believe the deception that Obama get a tax cut under my plan.18 would raise middle-class taxes, and were one-and-a-half times more likely to know The debates afforded McCain the same that neither candidate had proposed up- opportunity. So, for example, the third ping them on the middle-class. Those debate included this exchange: who watched all four debates were not Barack Obama: Here’s the problem–that only not more likely to believe Obama’s for about 20 million people, you may ½nd deception about McCain, but were 3.8

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times more likely than non-viewers to able for their assertions. Similarly, The Are there know that a credit would offset the tax. Washington Post’s Michael Dobbs regu- lessons from the All of this matters because, even in larly unmasked the deceptions in candi- 2008 pres- the presence of a robust list of controls, date ads. And FactCheck.org (run by the idential being misled about these issues affect- Annenberg Public Policy Center) contin- campaign? ed vote choice.20 Voters who were con- ued to play the role it introduced in the vinced that McCain would impose a net 2004 election.22 tax on health care bene½ts were 2.8 times All three sites devoted space to chal- more likely to cast their ballot for Oba- lenging distortions in broadcast and ma. Similarly, those who believed that cable advertising and suspect content Obama would raise middle-class taxes in cyberspace. Of course, the disposi- were 7.8 times more likely to vote for tion of news outlets to replicate the ef- McCain. To calibrate the importance fort of these sites is dampened by a of these ½ndings, note that embracing commercial environment in which one- deception is almost as strong a predic- newspaper towns are giving way to no- tor of vote as party identi½cation.21 newspaper towns; surviving news out- When they reinforced deceptions, lets are laying off staff; and audiences news outlets had the same distorting for traditional news are scattering to effect on voting behavior. a wide range of alternative sources.23 In short, with the exception of Rush Although we assume that exposure to Limbaugh’s correction of distortions sites debunking fabrication will increase of McCain’s health care plan, other me- knowledge, our survey contained too dia we studied failed to increase citizens’ few respondents to test that hypothesis. understanding of the facts underlying the charges and counter-charges from In his 1805 inaugural address, Thom- the campaigns. In some cases, news ex- as Jefferson expressed con½dence that posure actually magni½ed belief in a de- “[t]he public judgment will correct ception: viewers of fox and listeners false reasoning and opinions on a full to Rush Limbaugh were more likely to hearing of all parties.”24 In 2008, news endorse McCain’s contortion of Oba- failed to help the public perform the role ma’s position. Candidate advertising Jefferson envisioned for it, and citizens was successful in correcting misstate- did not live up to the expectations Jeffer- ments by the other side. However, the son set for them either. Still, the debates hero in our story is not a traditional served the public well. news outlet, a partisan news source, or As the audience for traditional news paid advertising. It was not reliance on erodes, as cable and websites proliferate, any of these sources, but rather viewing and as audiences increasingly gravitate presidential debates that increased vot- to sources that reinforce their beliefs, er knowledge and undercut the power the concerns that Jefferson’s statement of the deceptions from both sides. invites raise at least three questions. To what sources can the public turn in or- Still, the new media environment car- der to gain a “full hearing of all parties”? ries with it an increased capacity to lo- How does a democracy motivate citizens cate accurate campaign information. to select such sources? And, ½nally, are In 2008, the St. Petersburg Times added there alternative ways in which “public PolitiFact to a menu of existing sources judgment” can be adequately informed? dedicated to making politicians account-

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Kathleen ENDNOTES Hall 1 Jamieson & Bill Kovach and Tom Rosensteil, The Elements of Journalism: What Newspeople Should Know Jeffrey A. and the Public Should Expect (New York: Crown, 2001), 17. Gottfried 2 For example, see Steven H. Chaffee, Xinshu Zhau, and Glenn Leshner, “Political Knowl- on the edge and the Campaign Media of 1992,” Communication Research 21 (1994). future ofnews 3 For a more in-depth look at the major deceptions throughout the 2008 presidential election, see Joe Miller, “The Whoppers of 2008,” September 25, 2008, http://www.factcheck .org/elections-2008/the_whoppers_of_ 2008.html; Viveca Novak, “The Whoppers of 2008–the Sequel,” October 31, 2008, http://www.factcheck.org/elections-2008/the _whoppers_of_2008_—_the_sequel.html. 4 The two deceptions of focus in this paper were chosen because they had the most advertising expenditure of all the deceptive claims during the election; all advertising spot counts, estimated expenditures, and ad transcripts were provided by Campaign Media Analysis Group (cmag). 5 For a more in-depth look at both deceptions, see Lori Robertson, “Health Care Spin,” October 14, 2008, http://www.factcheck.org/elections-2008/health_care_spin.html; Brooks Jackson, “More Tax Deceptions,” August 8, 2008, http://www.factcheck.org/ elections-2008/more_tax_deceptions.html. 6 The 2008 Annenberg Claims/Deception Survey was conducted by Princeton Survey Re- search Associates International for the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania. A total of 3,008 adults 18 years and older were surveyed by phone between November 5 and November 18, 2008. The survey has a margin of error equal to 2.3 percent for results based on a full sample. 7 Wording of the question regarding middle-class taxes is “Which candidate or candidates would have raised taxes on middle-class households?”; for the question regarding McCain’s health care plan the wording is “As best you know, if a family has health insurance provided by an employer . . . would Senator McCain’s plan have taxed those health bene½ts but given the family $5,000 that would have covered the tax, or would Senator’s McCain’s plan have taxed those health bene½ts and given the family no help to pay the taxes, or would Senator McCain’s plan NOT have taxed those health bene- ½ts at all?” 8 See Martin Kaplan, Ken Goldstein, and Matthew Hale, “Local News Coverage of the 2004 Campaigns: An Analysis of Nightly Broadcasts in 11 Markets,” February 15, 2008, https://www.policyarchive.org/bitstream/handle/10207/6408/LCLNAFinal2004 .pdf?sequence=1. This focus on local crime, sports, and weather instead of presidential campaign coverage and analysis of the accuracy of presidential ads is consistent with the public’s expectations of local news as a “good neighbor” instead of a watchdog; see Don Heider, Maxwell McCombs, and Paula M. Poindexter, “What the Public Expects of Local News: Views of Public and Traditional Journalism,” Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly 82 (2005). 9 The analysis consists of two logistic regression models each for both issues; one predicts knowing the correct answer and the other predicts believing the deception. Each model controls for age, gender, race, education, income, religion, living in the South, party identi½cation, political ideology, general political knowledge, and whether the person voted in the election. 10 For a more in-depth look at “he said/she said” reporting, see Kathleen Hall Jamieson and Paul Waldman, The Press Effect: Politicians, Journalists, and the Stories that Shape the Political World (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003); Kathleen Hall Jamieson and Bruce W. Hardy, “Unmasking Deception: The Capacity, Disposition, and Challenges Fac- ing the Press,” in The Politics of News: The News of Politics, 2nd ed., ed. Doris A. Graber, Dennis McQuail, and Pippa Norris (Washington, D.C.: cq Press, 2007), 117–138.

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11 “Obama Leads in Polls,” nbc Nightly News, nbc, October 21, 2008, http://www.lexis Are there -nexis.com/. lessons from the 12 “Reality Check; Truth about McCain and Obama on Who Will Raise Your Taxes,” 2008 pres- cbs Evening News, cbs, September 15, 2008, http://www.lexis-nexis.com/. idential campaign? 13 Kathleen Hall Jamieson and Joseph N. Cappella, Echo Chamber: Rush Limbaugh and the Conservative Media Establishment (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), x. 14 Ibid., 49. 15 “Pollster Discusses Shift in Polls,” Hannity & Colmes, fox News, October 20, 2008, http://www.lexis-nexis.com/. 16 “Obama Warns Dems on Overcon½dence; Campaign Continues,” America’s Election Headquarters, fox News, October 17, 2008, http://www.lexis-nexis.com/. 17 For example, see Alan I. Abromowitz, “The Impact of a Presidential Debate on Vot- er Rationality,” American Journal of Political Science 22 (1978); Lee B. Becker, Idowu A. Sobowale, Robin E. Cobbey, and Chaim H. Eyal, “Debates’ Effects on Voters’ Under- standing of Candidates and Issues,” in The Presidential Debates: Media, Electoral, and Pol- icy Perspectives, ed. George F. Bishop, Robert G. Meadow, and Marilyn Jackson-Beeck (New York: Praeger Special Studies, 1978), 126–139; Dan Drew and David Weaver, “Voter Learning in the 1988 Presidential Election: Did the Debates and Media Matter?” Journalism Quarterly 68 (1991); Kathleen Hall Jamieson and Chris Adasiewicz, “What Can Voters Learn from Election Debates?” in Televised Election Debates: International Per- spectives, ed. Stephen Coleman (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2000); Kate Kenski and Kathleen Hall Jamieson, “Issue Knowledge and Perceptions of Agreement in the 2004 Presidential General Election,” Presidential Studies Quarterly 36 (2006). 18 “The Second Presidential Debate,” nytimes.com, October 8, 2008, http://elections .nytimes.com/2008/president/debates/transcripts/second-presidential-debate.html. 19 “The Third Presidential Debate,” nytimes.com, October 15, 2008, http://elections .nytimes.com/2008/president/debates/transcripts/third-presidential-debate.html. 20 The basis of the vote choice analysis is a logistic regression. The dependent variable is a dichotomous item indicating whether the respondent voted for Barack Obama or John McCain. The independent variables of theoretical interest are two dichotomous items indicating whether an individual believed either of the deceptions. The model controls for age, gender, race, education, income, religion, living in the South, party identi½cation, political knowledge, political ideology, news consumption (newspaper, local news, national nightly news, cable news, talk radio, Internet), and debate viewership. 21 It should be noted that in our sample, Democrats were 7.2 times more likely to vote for Obama and Republicans were 9.2 times more likely to vote for McCain. Within the previous analyses that predict belief in either deception, Republicans were 1.7 times less likely to believe the deception against McCain and 1.6 times more likely to believe the deception against Obama; being a Democrat did not predict belief in either deception. 22 Kathleen Hall Jamieson is director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center. 23 “Key News Audiences Now Blend Online and Traditional Sources: Audience Segments in a Changing News Environment,” The Pew Research Center for the People & the Press, August 17, 2008, http://people-press.org/report/444/news-media. 24 Thomas Jefferson, “Inaugural Address,” March 4, 1805, from The American Presidency Project, http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=25804.

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Robert H. Giles

New economic models for U.S. journalism

One morning last summer, over cof- tojournalist whose work has appeared fee in the northern Michigan town of in major magazines and newspapers and Lake Leelanau, a young journalist on television and radio networks. As the named J. Carl Ganter was describing early-morning sun warmed us, Ganter his news organization, Circle of Blue spoke of the impact of Circle of Blue’s (www.circleofblue.org), which reports journalism. “We understand what drives on the global freshwater crisis. Its online public opinion,” he said. “We want our publication, WaterNews, is produced stories to be personal and relevant as a out of an of½ce in nearby Traverse City way of raising awareness around water.” by an international network of journal- Ganter and his colleagues are often on ists, scientists, and communications stage in places where policy-makers design specialists. WaterNews is pub- and opinion leaders gather, such as the lished in three editions–World, Sci- World Economic Forum in Davos and ence+Tech, and Business–that can be forums sponsored by the Aspen Insti- translated at the click of a mouse into tute. The organization’s reporting has one of eleven languages. The site is up- been quoted by National Geographic, The dated weekly with posts of long-form Christian Science Monitor, and Vanity Fair. stories, news items, the results of scien- The Council on Foreign Relations calls ti½c exploration and ½eld data, and the Circle of Blue a “must read.” A global trends the site monitors, all present- public opinion survey commissioned ed in a compelling and colorful pack- by Circle of Blue was released at World age, including video reports with high Water Week in Stockholm last August, production values. The breadth of the reporting a series of ½ndings that placed coverage embraces other signi½cant water issues as the planet’s top environ- issues, from infectious disease to cli- mental problem–greater than air pollu- mate change, that the site’s editors tion, depletion of natural resources, loss deem relevant to the freshwater crisis. of habitat, and climate change. Ganter is a prototype of the new en- Ganter’s organization is one of many trepreneurial journalist: an award-win- news-gathering experiments that are ning broadcast reporter, writer, and pho- changing the face of journalism. As journalism quickens the pace of its move to © 2010 by the American Academy of Arts the Web, Circle of Blue is ½lling a niche & Sciences by providing specialized content that is

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considered essential by an audience of Circle of Blue is among several non- New shared interests but that can’t be found pro½t news organizations testing one economic models in such detail anywhere else. In many of the industry’s most-discussed ideas: for U.S. ways, it is reflective of a shift in how we that serious journalism can be supported journalism de½ne journalism, or at the very least, with funding from a variety of sources in how we go about producing and shar- behind carefully constructed ½rewalls ing it. built on traditional standards of journal- Some of these new ventures will fail, istic ethics. It is a prototype of a business some will succeed. But the vitality of the model that supports specialized cover- start-up culture suggests that if the twi- age, but it in fact embraces characteris- light of newspaper journalism is upon tics common among other start-ups and us, a fresh capacity to sustain journal- experiments that hold promise as a new ism is charging forward. The murkier way of paying for serious journalism. question, the question underlying the The organization seeks to provide au- seismic disruption roiling the news in- thoritative, in-depth coverage of a major dustry, is whether there are suf½cient global problem–the freshwater supply– resources to pay for journalism over that few, if any, mainstream news orga- the long term. At the moment, journal- nizations can match. Indeed, as newspa- ism is trying to ½gure out its worth in pers, television news, and weekly news- a new delivery system that may or may magazines shrink their staffs and sharp- not allow that worth to be tangibly rec- ly reduce, if not eliminate, foreign cov- ognized. erage, a news organization focused on a single issue can ½ll a critical void in Tracking this hunt-and-peck search public understanding. Circle of Blue’s for workable business models was the authoritative reporting and research are impetus behind the decision of the Nie- relevant to an audience of international man Foundation for Journalism at Har- organizations concerned with water is- vard University to launch the Nieman sues, and out of that relevance comes Journalism Lab (www.niemanlab.org) the potential to make a difference. It is in October 2008. From the start, the providing a form of public-service jour- Lab has tapped into a deep well of in- nalism that evokes comparison to the terest in learning about the latest ideas influence of newspaper investigations in and experiments in how high-quality shaping local and national conversations journalism can survive and thrive in and actions. It invites public engage- the Internet age. By its ½rst anniversa- ment, recognizing value in the collective ry, the Lab’s website had passed one wisdom of diverse voices. It offers one million page views and had well over possible form for the newspaper of the twenty thousand followers on Twitter. future: an online publication narrowly It now ranks as one of the top journal- focused on a speci½c topic, with content ism sites. “The beautiful thing about that includes interpretation, analysis, this time in journalism is that there investigative reporting, and interactive are so many experiments, so many engagement and that utilizes all of the new models being tried,” says Joshua tools of multimedia storytelling. In its Benton, creator of the Lab and its di- singular focus, it may ful½ll on a global rector. “The sad thing is that it’s taken scale an important mission of the local a disruption this threatening to get all daily newspaper–that is, community this creativity flowing.” influence.

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Robert H. Circle of Blue is building partnerships papers are losing readers and advertisers Giles and obtaining ½nancial support in ways and are shrinking their news staffs, leav- on the future that are challenging conventional thinking critical gaps in news coverage. ofnews ing about how to pay for serious jour- ProPublica is one such enterprise, an nalism. To a considerable extent, its independent, nonpro½t newsroom with economic model is an example of how a mission of producing investigative sto- new journalism outlets are making in- ries with “moral force.” It was launched novative connections while striving to in January 2008 with major, multiyear maintain the independence essential funding from the Sandler Foundation, to practicing journalism free from the whose philanthropic mission was estab- influence of supporting individuals and lished by Herbert Sandler, founder of institutions. Circle of Blue is a nonpro½t Golden West Financial Corporation, af½liate of the Paci½c Institute, which and his wife, Marion. Foundations are is described as a “nonpartisan research supporting other investigative report- institute that works to advance environ- ing ventures, including the Center for mental protection, economic develop- Public Integrity, established as an inde- ment, and social equity.” Funding for pendent news organization in the time Circle of Blue comes from foundations, before the Internet; the Center for Inves- government grants, individual dona- tigative Journalism, based in northern tions, and corporate contributions. California; and New England’s Center Ganter emphasizes the rigor of Circle for Investigative Journalism, which is of Blue’s “church and state” ethic: do- built on a partnership with Boston Uni- nors that choose to fund particular re- versity. The Center for Public Integrity porting projects understand that their has survived since its inception in 1990 funding will not influence content. Its through foundation grants and the de- website states that Circle of Blue ad- manding task of raising operating funds heres to the codes of ethics of both Na- year after year through campaigns that tional Public Radio and the Society of offer individual donors a menu of giv- Professional Journalists, considered to ing opportunities. These initiatives are be standards for professional behavior emerging in response to the widely held in broadcast and print journalism. fear that investigative journalism is at risk. More and more, local newspaper Specialized publications have a long newsrooms lack the resources to commit history in the United States as a busi- reporter time and the money required ness model designed to siphon readers to dig deeply into topics of interest to from daily newspapers and weekly mag- their communities; indeed, at many azines. During the 1960s, for example, newspapers, investigative reporting is general-interest magazines such as Look increasingly seen as a luxury that re- and The Saturday Evening Post began to die porters are asked to do in addition to off as reader interest shifted to new pub- covering their regular beats. lications like Sports Illustrated and People, Across the country, nonpro½t on- which gained a large audience among line journalism enterprises are being those interested in sports and celebrities. launched, in part to offset declining cov- Start-up online news organizations are erage in local daily newspapers and in making similar bets that they can be- part to home in on essential communi- come essential sources of serious news ty issues. In Minnesota, MinnPost.com at a time when general-interest news- recruited a staff of journalists with years

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of experience at the Minneapolis Star nization or an idea for several years, with New Tribune and the St. Paul Pioneer Press to the expectation that independent re- economic models report in-depth on critical issues in the sources will be found to sustain it for the for U.S. Twin Cities and across the state, with the long term. So, a critical question looms: journalism caveat that it doesn’t try to “be all things what will sustain promising news orga- or serve all people.” The MinnPost.com nizations launched with foundation mo- business model draws support from cor- ney once initial grants expire or as foun- porate sponsors, advertisers, and mem- dations lose interest and turn their at- bers who make annual donations, along tention to other causes? the lines of individual gifts sought from Alex Jones, director of the Shoren- listeners of public broadcasting. stein Center on Press, Politics and Pub- Individual funders are coming forward lic Policy at Harvard University, tells in to enable regional journalism start-ups a new book, Losing the News, of his “per- to take hold. Texas Tribune was found- sonal fantasy,” which he sees as one pos- ed by John Thornton, a venture capital- sible answer to the uncertainty of long- ist based in Texas, and launched last term nonpro½t funding. He writes that November with a mission of covering he dreams of a $2 billion endowment Texas political and policy news. Thorn- that would turn The NewsHour with Jim ton put up $1 million of his own money Lehrer (now pbs NewsHour) “from an and raised another $2.5 million from in- hour-long television program of talking dividuals and foundations. A partner- heads and analysis into the nation’s best ship between kqed and the University television news program, the product of California, Berkeley, has been funded of a new news organization dedicated with a start-up gift of $5 million from ½- to being the leader at television news.” nancier Warren Hellman to create an The income from such an endowment, open dialogue about civic and commu- Jones writes, “would provide $100 mil- nity news in the Bay Area through orig- lion a year for reporters and editors, and inal journalism. other professionals who could mount a For now, foundation grants are mak- worldwide effort at television news that ing an impact in supporting news-gath- would inspire viewers and embarrass ering enterprises that provide special- every other television news operation.”1 ized news content or alternate voices to Independent-minded journalism in ½ll the void created by shrinking news- search of ½nancial support struggles paper coverage. The John S. and James with the ethical concerns that are raised L. Knight Foundation is investing $25 when a potential funder is perceived to million over ½ve years to fund digital in- have an agenda. It may be a well-inten- novations that will serve communities tioned agenda, such as human rights or and provide new outlets for serious jour- health care, but the idea of being allied nalism, and has pledged an additional with an advocacy group gives pause. $15 million to help develop new econom- Online news organizations and founda- ic models for investigative reporting on tions are experimenting with ½rewalls digital platforms. In spite of the current built on traditional journalistic ethics evidence of philanthropic commitment standards designed to shield the news- to helping save journalism, foundations gathering from sacred cows and other are not constituted to provide long-term forms of inappropriate influence. The funding. Their missions typically focus struggle to ½nd an ethical comfort zone on start-up grants that will carry an orga- will test the willingness of online news

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Robert H. ventures to resist compromises in work- The thought that the digital revolution Giles ing with potential funders. in journalism may take decades to play on the future GlobalPost is a commercial online out is reinforced by the American his- ofnews enterprise launched in early 2009 from torian Elizabeth Eisenstein in her book Boston with the ambition to become The Printing Press as an Agent of Change. a major global news organization. Phil She tells the story of how typography, Balboni, who built New England Cable as a result of Gutenberg’s invention of News into a regional television news movable type in the 1500s, became “in- powerhouse, raised more than $8 mil- dispensable to the transmission of the lion to start GlobalPost. He and his exec- most sophisticated technological skills.” utive editor, Charlie Sennott, an experi- It enabled the general public to access enced correspondent with The Boston books and knowledge that previous- Globe, hired an international reporting ly had been available only in the most staff of more than seventy journalists, limited way to elite audiences through most with impressive pedigrees built on handwritten manuscripts. The long tran- years of reporting from foreign lands. sition to movable type invites compar- The journalists who signed on as found- isons to the sweep and consequences ing correspondents saw an opportunity of the Internet revolution. Eisenstein’s to reach a global audience while contin- 1979 book is now experiencing some- uing to write freelance pieces and carry thing of a rebirth, providing a fresh un- out reporting assignments for other news derstanding of the nature of the revolu- organizations. They accepted a Global- tionary change that the Internet is forc- Post compensation package that in- ing on journalism and traditional news cludes an equity stake in the company organizations.2 One doubts, however, and a monthly fee of $1,000. The exper- that access to books gave people in the ience and reputation behind most of sixteenth century any sense of loss such the bylines gave GlobalPost dispatches as that being widely shared today over an immediate cachet. This economic the decline of newspapers in the tech- model is built on tight expense control nological revolution. and three sources of income: advertis- In his widely quoted piece, “Newspa- ing; syndication agreements with news pers and Thinking the Unthinkable,” organizations worldwide that use Glob- Clay Shirky, a professor at New York alPost content; and Passport, an inter- University’s Interactive Telecommuni- active service that invites members to cations Program who has been writing offer story ideas and engage in weekly about the Internet since 1996, described calls with correspondents in the ½eld. the uncertainty of the Internet revolu- By its ½rst anniversary in January 2010, tion this way: “That is what real revo- GlobalPost had exceeded its goals for lutions are like. The old stuff gets brok- building an audience, recording 3.9 mil- en faster than the new stuff is put in lion visitors from 232 countries includ- its place. The importance of any exper- ing a high of 758,000 unique users in iment isn’t apparent at the moment it November 2009. It has forged editorial appears; big changes stall, small changes partnerships with an impressive array spread. Even the revolutionaries can’t of news organizations, including cbs predict what will happen.”3 News, Reuters, and the pbs NewsHour, The search for new economic mod- but much remains to be done to reach els for U.S. journalism is, in large part, its goal of pro½tability in 2012. a search to save or replace newspaper-

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style journalism. Newspaper journalism been content to piggyback on new in- New is generally considered to be an indis- novations as they come along, skillfully economic models pensable monitor of public and civic adapting new methods and new tech- for U.S. behavior, and understood to have a nologies invented by others. During the journalism duty to hold people in powerful posi- last quarter of the twentieth century, tions accountable. Without this kind newspapers invested in computer-driv- of journalism, it is thought, our democ- en news and ad production and digital- racy will suffer. Without newspapers based typesetting, leading to substantial to serve as watchdogs for the public, it reductions in operating expenses that is feared, those who would steal public went mostly to the bottom line. These funds and mismanage public responsi- reductions resulted in a period of robust bilities will go unchecked. Without ade- pro½ts even as circulation and advertis- quately funded news organizations to ing lineage declined. underwrite the legal battles for access In the 1970s, an entrepreneur named to public of½ces and public records, George Valassis started a company in more of the public’s business will be Oak Park, Michigan, that offered adver- carried out unobserved. tisers colorful freestanding inserts of No one knows whether the endgame advertisements and coupons printed on is near for an economic model built on slick paper at rates signi½cantly lower advertisers paying the bill for news-gath- than newspapers charged. Valassis was ering, a model that has supported news- relentless in marketing his new service, papers since the early days of Benjamin which eventually displaced many forms Franklin’s Pennsylvania Gazette. But as of traditional in-paper advertising. News- Clay Shirky has noted, “[W]e had a very papers were not prepared to compete, unusual circumstance . . . where we had either in printing quality or in price, commercial entities producing critical and have lost billions in revenue over public goods. We had ad-supported the years since Valassis bought his ½rst newspapers producing accountability printing press. journalism.” It was a “historic circum- The rise of the newspaper insert mar- stance, and it lasted for decades. But it ket is but one example of how innova- was an accident. . . . The commercial suc- tive disruption is breaking down the cess of newspapers and their linking newspaper economic model. The term that to accountability journalism wasn’t was coined by Clayton Christensen, a a deep truth about reality. Best Buy was Harvard Business School professor and not willing to support the Baghdad bu- consultant to the American Press Insti- reau because Best Buy cared about news tute (api) on its 2006 project, Newspa- from Baghdad. They just didn’t have per Next, to test new business models any other good choices.”4 for the newspaper industry.5 During the While this model gave general-interest early 1990s, newspapers tried to respond newspapers an extraordinarily pro½table to the coming of the Internet by forming run, newspaper executives should have partnerships with companies like Prodi- recognized the long, slow slide in circu- gy and America Online. Publishers were lation was an early indicator that public surprised by how quickly the Internet appetite for general-interest publications took hold and by the swift and nimble was beginning to wane. The newspaper way innovators and start-ups moved to industry invests little in research and de- claim a growing place in emerging sec- velopment and, as a consequence, has tors of the cybersphere. In this revolu-

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Robert H. tionary atmosphere, newspapers scram- concept of a paid content wall that would Giles bled to ½nd ways to survive. Their initial establish a principle of “fair use” by com- on the future responses centered on preserving old pelling Google and other aggregators to ofnews forms of newspaper organization. “The pay for original reporting that newspa- details differed,” Clay Shirky wrote, “but pers have been giving away.8 A united the core assumption behind all imagined Internet strategy among newspaper pub- outcomes . . . was that the organizational lishers would be hard to achieve, to be form of the newspaper, as a general-pur- sure, but doing so would establish, as the pose vehicle for publishing a variety of api plan suggests, true value for news news and opinion, was basically sound, content online. api also urges newspa- and only needed a digital facelift.”6 pers to “invest” in technologies, plat- api’s Newspaper Next project, de- forms, and systems that provide con- scribed as a “Blueprint for Transfor- tent-based e-commerce and data-shar- mation,” concluded that if newspa- ing solutions and to shift their focus pers are to survive, they would do so from advertisers to consumers and as niche products delivering content in users. both print and electronic forms to tar- The conversation continues. In Sep- geted audiences of people and business- tember 2009, Google submitted a memo es that need information, including ad- to the Newspaper Association of Amer- vertising. In a follow-up report, entitled ica offering a service run by Google that “Making the Leap Beyond Newspaper would handle billing and subscription Companies,” api introduced the idea services of premium content creators, that newspapers must become local such as newspapers. The newspaper exec- “information and connection utilities” utives also heard from Steve Brill about with a mission of recognizing “impor- his well-publicized venture to charge for tant jobs to be done” across their mar- online content, known as Journalism kets and ½guring out how to get those Online. Brill’s idea is that once you get “jobs” done.7 past the news everyone is covering, most newspapers publish enterprise stories While the newspaper industry is that are distinctive and may be exclu- working to prevent the endgame from sive or of exceptional quality. As a result, being played out, it is poorly organized some readers will pay for these stories. to agree on and institute fundamental Brill says, “Companies representing or change. As part of its effort to craft new owning over 1,200 publications have all economic strategies that will sustain signed letters of intent” with Journalism the life of the printed daily and Sunday Online. It is a high-pro½le start-up, in papers, newspaper executives met pri- part because its founders, Steve Brill and vately in Chicago last May for a summit L. Gordon Crovitz, are media celebrities. to consider a revenue strategy based on (Brill founded The American Lawyer maga- paid content and “fair use.” In a white zine and launched Court tv; Crovitz is paper prepared by the api, the execu- former publisher of The Wall Street Jour- tives were told that “newspapers can nal and executive vice president of Dow make the leap from an advertising-cen- Jones.) Their business model is based on tered to an audience-centered enter- the idea that serious journalism should prise,” and that they must get on with be paid for. Journalism Online offers con- it immediately. Called “The Newspaper sumers a password-enabled payment sys- Economic Action Plan,” it is built on the tem to purchase annual or monthly sub-

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scriptions, day passes, and single arti- some industry leaders apparently do, New cles from multiple publishers. Publish- that the industry’s problems will be economic 10 models ers have the discretion to decide which solved when the economy improves. for U.S. content to charge for and how much to journalism One strategy has the newspaper in- charge. dustry looking for ways to tap into the Newspapers gave away news content billions Google, Yahoo, The Huf½ngton online for years in the belief that this Post, and other aggregators are making would attract mass audiences and jus- by selling advertising based on the high tify high advertising rates. Newspapers volume of visitors to these sites who are expected online advertising to begin then following links to original newspa- to make up for the loss of classi½ed per content. The Associated Press (ap), and retail ad revenue in the print edi- the world’s largest news-gathering orga- tions. After a few years of encouraging nization, is moving aggressively, on its growth, online ad revenue has stalled. own behalf as well as in the name of the According to Ryan Chittum, writing for member news organizations, to force the Columbia Journalism Review, newspa- Google News and others to pay news pers earned “just $3.1 billion from on- organizations for their original work. line ads last year, a number that is on In a speech at a recent meeting of the pace to decline signi½cantly in 2009.”9 Newspaper Association of America, These returns compare to daily newspa- Dean Singleton, ceo of MediaNews per ad revenue in 2008 of $37.8 billion. and chairman of ap’s board of direc- The new reality that revenue from on- tors, said, “We can no longer stand by line ads won’t come close to covering and watch others walk off with our the cost of serious news coverage any- work under misguided legal theories.” time soon is driving the newspaper in- ap plans to rethink what it means to dustry to pursue a new strategy of get- be a wire service on the Internet. Nie- ting the public to pay for news online. man Lab reported that ap recently dis- The urgency of the quest for a new strat- tributed to ap executives, board mem- egy is reinforced by the stark reality of bers, and member organizations a con- the decline of newspaper advertising ½dential document entitled “Protect, sales. Based on results of the ½rst three Point, Pay–An Associated Press Plan quarters of 2009, newspapers will re- for Reclaiming News Content Online,” cord the lowest advertising sales since which opens with the statement, “The 1986 and a 43 percent drop from their evidence is everywhere: original news all-time peak in 2005. In other words, content is being scraped, syndicated Alan Mutter writes: and monetized without fair compensa- Newspapers appear to have gotten mighty tion to those who produce, report and close to losing almost half of their revenue verify it.” ap contends that it is dif½cult base in a mere four years–a decline that to overstate the importance of taking began well before the economy began to action at this moment. It continues: unravel. . . . The collapse of the newspaper With its traditional media customers business most assuredly was aggravated under unprecedented ½nancial pressures, by the downturn of the economy. But it ap simply can’t continue to provide the is important to note that the sales decline same quality of global news coverage un- was well underway before the economy der the current rules, where secondhand cratered. It is a grave mistake to think, as news gets most of the eyeballs. Embold-

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Robert H. ened by the uncertain state of the law Osnos writes, is how to pay for stories Giles around content use online, third parties on the free access sites that newspapers on the future are moving quickly to fortify their own and magazines offer. “Based on my own ofnews positions. ap has both business and le- reporting, the answer could be in some gal imperatives to assert its intellectual combination of individual payments or property rights, make af½rmative efforts cable and telephone fees,” he suggests. to protect them and create a structured The online subscription model is a way to enforce them. strategy that has been around for several years and remains in practice or under The core of ap’s plan is to identify consideration in thinking about the fu- and protect its news assets through the ture of newspapers. FT.com, the online ap News Registry, which identi½es, re- outlet of Financial Times, experienced cords, and tracks every piece of content slow growth after becoming a paid site ap makes available to its members and in 2002, but now has 117,000 subscrib- other paying customers. ap would “lev- ers. The Wall Street Journal is best known erage its news content and information among the subscription news sites, with management tools to harness online traf- more than one million subscribers, ac- ½c in ways that reduce misappropriation, cording to Crain’s New York Business expand audience and deepen engage- (www.crainsnewyork.com).12 The New ment.” The ½nal piece of the strategy York Times experimented with this mod- –maximizing revenue–would be ac- el, charging for online access to its col- complished by aligning the commer- umnists and archives through TimesSe- cial terms under which ap’s products lect, but the paper abandoned it in 2007. and services are available on its many usa Today now has a daily e-Edition platforms. that replicates the print edition with additional interactive features. It is free Peter Osnos, founder of Public Affairs to subscribers of the print edition and Books and a senior fellow for media at is offered at 25 cents a day to those who the Century Foundation, argues in the want to access it only online. Another Columbia Journalism Review that ways version of this model is found in Little must be found to make the public pay Rock, where the Arkansas Democrat- for original reporting, especially inves- Gazette charges $59 a year for access to tigative reporting, which is so expen- 11 local news online, a service that is free sive and so essential to our democracy. to subscribers who also pay $59 a year Osnos offers a framework of three prin- to have the paper home delivered. The ciples–fair conduct, fair use, and fair owner, Walter Hussman, believes this compensation–as the underpinning strategy has protected the circulation of of a new system of monetizing original the print edition, which has increased news content. Osnos believes that “the over the past ten years. The Democrat- rules of the road for distributing traf½c Gazette’s success is shared by many small- on the Internet need to include recog- er community papers that have followed nition, in simple terms, of who got the Hussman’s strategy of not giving away story.” Fair use is a more complex issue local news coverage and strengthening to sort out in setting standards for the the paper’s deep roots in the communi- use of copyrighted material under rules ty. Other newspaper experiments with that ostensibly protect original news- pay models include offering premium paper content. And fair compensation, digital content for sports and other high-

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interest, high-volume topics. The Jour- many visitors as usa Today. The Times is New nal Sentinel in Milwaukee is an example working toward narrowing the gap be- economic models of this hybrid approach, mixing paid tween the time spent reading the print for U.S. and free online content. The paper puts version and the online version. The journalism some of its coverage of the Green Bay newspaper reports that readers spend Packers behind a pay wall. It charges $7 an average of forty-six minutes a day a month or $45 a year for Packer Insider. with the paper but only seventeen min- It draws readership and generates rev- utes reading the Times online each day. enue but still represents a challenge as In January, the Times announced that, a means of growing a subscription base. starting in January 2011, it would charge In a much-discussed cover story in some frequent readers for access to its Time last February, Walter Isaacson, for- website. Visitors will be allowed to view mer managing editor of the magazine a certain number of articles free each and now president and ceo of the As- month; to read more, the reader must pen Institute, laid out a plan for a micro- pay a flat fee for unlimited access. In its payment system, in which “a newspaper own story, the newspaper described the might charge a nickel for an article or a reaction from media analysts and con- dime for that day’s full edition or $2 a sumers as ranging from “enthusiastic month for a month’s worth of Web ac- to withering.” cess. Some surfers would balk, but I sus- Martin Langeveld, blogging for the pect most would merrily click through Nieman Lab, reports that more than 96 if it were cheap and easy enough.”13 In percent of newspaper reading is still a study by Boston Consulting Group, 48 done in the print editions, and the on- percent of Americans said they would be line share of the newspaper audience willing to pay for news online, including attention is only a bit more than 3 per- on mobile devices. That number is sub- cent. In the context Langeveld pro- stantially lower than several Western Eu- vides, these ½gures are not as good as ropean countries, where more than 60 the newspaper industry would like percent said they would pay.14 them to appear. In March 2009, each of One of the most-watched evolving eco- the top three news destinations on the nomic models is The New York Times, with Web (msnbc, cnn, and Yahoo!News) a popular website (www.nytimes.com) individually drew more than half the and a relatively stable print readership unique visitors to the websites of the that is both local and national. Times ed- entire newspaper industry. Newspaper itors say the most encouraging sign of sites get the attention of the U.S. online stability about the future of the printed audience just 1.2 percent of the time. paper is found in the eight hundred thousand subscribers that have bought the At the City University of New York paper for more than two years; that’s Graduate School of Journalism, in a proj- eight hundred thousand willing to pay ect funded by the John S. and James L. between $608 a year locally and $769 Knight Foundation and the McCormick a year in national markets to read the Foundation, four online business mod- Times. Moreover, Nielsen NetRatings els are being explored. The project be- reports that nytimes.com had an aver- gins with the assumption that local dai- age of 17.9 million monthly visitors dur- ly newspapers will have ceased publi- ing 2009, making it the best-read news- cation, that there will be a market de- paper news site, with nearly twice as mand for high-quality journalism to

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Robert H. serve as watchdogs of those in power, would be administered in open com- Giles and that the market will ½nd a way to petition through state Fund for Local on the future meet this demand. The four models are: News Councils. The federal government ofnews town or neighborhood sites that can be already provides assistance to the arts, supported by local advertisers; a succes- humanities, and sciences through in- sor news organization to the local news- dependent agencies that include the paper, built around traditional journalis- National Endowment for the Arts, the tic roles and supported by local and na- National Endowment for the Humani- tional ads in a traditional way; journal- ties, the National Science Foundation, ism supported by individuals, founda- and the National Institutes of Health.16 tions, and perhaps companies that can Moreover, the argument goes, the gov- play a role in the mix of local news out- ernment spends well over $1 billion a lets; and a framework to support the year to support commercial news pub- community’s new news economy by lishers through tax breaks, postal subsi- bringing together all the independent dies, and the printing of public notices.17 players to form advertising networks, Jim Barnett, who left a twenty-year support mutual promotion, and facil- career as a newspaper reporter to start itate other collaborative projects. covering nonpro½t news organizations Other projects and discussions and is now blogging for the Nieman abound. The Aspen Institute devoted Journalism Lab, says the start-ups that a recent conference to the theme “Of are being recognized are the ones that the Press: Models for Preserving Amer- “have developed a deeper relationship ican Journalism.”15 Among the presen- with their readers and have succeeded tations was “New Business Models for in converting readers into donors. They News,” based on the work of Steve Shep- see it as a two-way conversation, and ard of the City University of New York they like to host events for their readers. and Jeff Jarvis, whose blog Buzz Machine They interact with their readers, which has been a platform for outspoken com- is not something that comes naturally mentary on how the news industry was to newspapers.”18 lagging in its response to the challenges Michael Shapiro, writing in the Colum- and opportunities of the Web. bia Journalism Review, argues that “jour- In October, Columbia University nalism’s crisis offers an opportunity to School of Journalism released a report transform the everyday work of journal- by Leonard Downie, Jr., former execu- ism from a reactive and money-losing tive editor of The Washington Post, and proposition into a more selective enter- Michael Schudson, a professor at the prise of reporting things that no one else school, with ideas addressing what the knows. And choosing quite deliberative- authors see as the reality that current ly to ignore much of what can be found advertising models won’t continue elsewhere.”19 to support accountability journalism. Among the recommendations is a na- The quest for an economic model tional Fund for Local News created for journalism, whether commercial with money the Federal Communica- or nonpro½t, remains elusive. A new tions Commission now collects from day in which newspaper executives or could impose on telecom users, tele- would act boldly and in concert to save vision and radio broadcast licensees, their industry is hard to imagine; they or Internet service providers and that are risk averse and, by nature, too inde-

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pendent. Yet the power of the institu- ined, researched, discussed, and debat- New tions they represent, institutions that ed; some will surely be tested in real economic models can provide accountability journalism, time. While nothing before us or on the for U.S. is profoundly important. Journalism horizon promises to replicate precisely journalism will thrive on many new platforms, but the depth and sweep of the daily news- neither singularly nor collectively are paper, the search must continue. The the online news outlets likely to replace absence of a de½nitive answer means fully the institutional heft behind a well- the reality for now is that serious jour- crafted newspaper investigation. Many nalism will survive, with much uncer- of the economic models being tried are tainty, both on the pages of the strug- promising but do not have a track rec- gling local newspaper and in an online ord suf½cient to demonstrate that fund- world of many economic models and ing can be found to sustain them for the experimentation. long term. Other ideas are being imag-

ENDNOTES 1 Alex Jones, Losing the News: The Future of the News that Feeds Democracy (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), 217. 2 Elizabeth L. Eisenstein, The Printing Press as an Agent of Change: Communications and Cultur- al Transformations in Early-Modern Europe, vols. I and II (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1979), 7–8, 17, 25, 33, 683. 3 Clay Shirky, “Newspapers and Thinking the Unthinkable,” March 16, 2009, http://www .shirky.com/weblog/2009/03. 4 Clay Shirky, from a talk at the Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy, Harvard University, September 22, 2009. 5 “Newspaper Next” (American Press Institute, September 28, 2006). 6 Shirky, “Newspapers and Thinking the Unthinkable.” 7 “Making the Leap Beyond Newspaper Companies” (American Press Institute, February 19, 2008). 8 “The Newspaper Economic Action Plan” (American Press Institute, June 3, 2009). 9 Ryan Chittum, “Newspaper Industry Ad Revenue at 1965 Levels,” Columbia Journalism Review, August 19, 2009. 10 Alan Mutter, “The Daunting Reality Facing Newspapers,” December 9, 2009; from his blog, Reflections of a Newsosaur. 11 Peter Osnos, “What’s a Fair Share in the Age of Google?” Columbia Journalism Review, July/August 2009. 12 Matthew Flamm, “Pay Up or the Newspaper Gets It,” August 9, 2009, www.crainsnewyork.com. 13 Walter Isaacson, “How to Save Your Newspaper,” Time, February 16, 2009. 14 Richard Perez-Pena, “About Half in U.S. Would Pay for Online News, Study Finds,” The New York Times, September 16, 2009. 15 The Aspen Institute, focas 2009, “Of the Press: Models for Preserving American Journalism,” August 16–19, 2009.

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Robert H. 16 Leonard Downie and Michael Schudson, “The Reconstruction of American Journalism” Giles (Columbia School of Journalism, October 2009). on the future 17 Geoffrey Cowan and David Westphal, “American Government: It’s Always Subsidized ofnews Commercial Media,” ojr: The Online Journalism Review (Annenberg School of Commu- nications, University of Southern California, November 30, 2009). 18 Jim Barnett, “The Road to Ruin,” interview with Bob Gar½eld, On the Media, National Public Radio, August 21, 2009. 19 Michael Shapiro, “Open for Business: If You Want Readers to Buy News, What, Exactly, Will You Sell: The Case for a Free/Paid Hybrid,” Columbia Journalism Review, July/August 2009.

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Jill Abramson

Sustaining quality journalism

It is well past time to reject the arti½cial argue that the supply of quality news divide between the guardians of print is running low, but it is. The most expen- journalism and the boosters of blogs, In- sive forms of news-gathering, especial- ternet news aggregators, and other new ly international coverage and investiga- media. Rather than battling over wheth- tive reporting, are suffering deep cuts er bloggers are real journalists or wheth- in many of the country’s newsrooms– er newspapers need to be preserved, the which are themselves dwindling in num- ½ght should focus more on championing ber. While many promising, Internet- serious, quality journalism, no matter based news sites have sprung up over who produces it or where it is published. the past few years to help ½ll the gap, Rigorous news-gathering plays a vital they have not kept pace with what has role in our society, especially in holding been lost. the largest and most important institu- Meanwhile, during a dif½cult digital tions accountable. It is easy to forget how transition, the business model for sup- afraid of centralized power the founders plying quality journalism has come un- of this country were, and how the press der severe stress, and an industry-wide was envisioned by them as a bulwark pro- rethinking is under way. Until now, the tecting the free flow of critical informa- idea that news on the Web should be tion about the powerful. No single form free has prevailed, and during years of of news-gathering, single platform, or expansive advertising, this ethos saw single news organization can by itself up- the flowering of thousands of different hold this mission or supply all the intelli- news sites and a healthy democratiza- gence, energy, and muscle needed to dig tion of voices of authority. Journalism behind the most complex stories and became more participatory and collabo- cover them with the kind of depth that rative. “Content, like wild horses, want- has elevated journalism’s civic role over ed to be free,” wrote Richard Perez-Pena the last century. in The New York Times in December 2009, There is a human need and desire for and consumers grew accustomed to a quality journalism. In the Age of Too huge assortment of free news, photos, Much Information, it seems absurd to and videos. But the severe economic downturn, ac- © 2010 by the American Academy of Arts companied by steep advertising cutbacks, & Sciences has meant that new revenue sources are

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Jill needed to sustain quality journalism. tic news bureaus. As testament to the Abramson It takes millions of dollars annually, to rough times, he cites his own inbox on the future cite but one example, for the Times and crammed with email messages from ofnews the few other news organizations able newspaper journalists who have lost and willing to commit the necessary re- their jobs. In a particularly chilling ex- sources to maintain fully staffed bureaus ample, Jones describes the excellent in Baghdad and Kabul for coverage of reporting done by The San Diego Union- two international wars. Most major news Tribune, which won a Pulitzer for its in- organizations are now weighing wheth- vestigation into allegations of corrup- er to ask their online readers to pay for tion surrounding former California at least some of their content, as some Representative Randal “Duke” Cun- newspapers already have. The Times re- ningham. The paper’s Washington bu- cently announced it would institute a reau, which did most of the reporting paid metered model on its website and on that story, was closed during a round some other digital platforms in 2011. of cost-cutting, along with the Washing- Many different versions of pay walls ton bureaus of many other newspapers.1 have been proposed, as well as partner- Given that the news media were crit- ships among the major news-gatherers. icized for being too compliant during While this may limit consumer choice the Bush administration, it would seem and reduce the audiences for some paid a dangerous and inopportune moment sites, media companies that once as- to be cutting the collective investigative sumed that advertising on the Web muscle of journalism in the nation’s cap- would continue to expand exponential- ital. Indeed, without robust investiga- ly are faced with the cold reality that tive reporting by The Washington Post on without shifting some of the cost bur- secret cia prisons or The New York Times’ den to consumers, they may be forced revelations about warrantless eavesdrop- into ever more drastic cuts or even face ping by the nsa, readers might still be the prospect of shutting down. These ignorant about such secret counterter- challenges have been especially acute rorism policies. Given the keen nation- for the newspaper business. al interest in the Obama administration and in the administration’s approach to Indeed, just as newspaper executives governing, news organizations should were trying to hang on and adapt to be bee½ng up, not diminishing, their cov- new realities, the economic crisis of late erage. Without aggressive, profession- 2008 hit. For newspapers, disappoint- al reporting, the public might not have ing third quarters were followed by known about the special deals buried murderous fourth quarters, with huge within the health care reform legislation drops in advertising revenue as many or how Wall Street is currently lobbying sectors–especially help wanted, ½nan- to water down new ½nancial regulations. cial, and real estate–severely cut their The few cities that still had competing ad budgets. newspapers have seen the weaker ones Alex S. Jones, a Pulitzer Prize-winning fail: for example, the closing of the print journalist, provides a cogent history of editions of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer and these stormy times in his recently pub- the Rocky Mountain News. Two major met- lished book, Losing the News. He notes the ropolitan newspapers, the San Francisco constant drumbeat of bad news, includ- Chronicle and the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, ing the shuttering of foreign and domes- have been teetering on the brink and

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have endured extremely deep staff cuts. tion.” Although Buffett reiterated his be- Sustaining Other storied names, like the Tribune lief in the centrality of a free and vigor- quality journalism Company and Knight-Ridder, have ½led ous press, even he conceded that if the for bankruptcy or gone out of business. news became an irreversible cash drain International reporting has also taken on his company, he might be forced to a terrible hit. In 2003, there were more sell his beloved Buffalo News.2 than a thousand foreign journalists covering the war in Iraq. Today that number At The New York Times there is a ½erce has dwindled to fewer than one hundred. determination to protect the core of our Even in major and news-intense cities news-gathering, including the most ro- like Moscow, there are few U.S. journal- bust international and investigative cov- ists left, with the recent retreats of The erage. As part of a business strategy de- Baltimore Sun, Chicago Tribune, and The veloped years ago, we have integrated Philadelphia Inquirer. The Boston Globe, a our Web and print operations, overcom- member of the Times family and a news- ing a once ingrained internal culture that paper with a distinguished tradition of sprouted from the world of print. We international reporting, was forced to have avoided some of the destructive close all of its foreign bureaus and elimi- rivalries between different platforms nate the job of foreign editor. The Times’ that have erupted at other news organi- bureau chief in Cairo, Michael Slack- zations. While the Web has added to the man, said that when he was assigned workload of many in our newsroom, it there less than ½ve years ago he had an has also excited and broadened our staff, array of print and broadcast competi- who have learned to tell stories in new tors. Now he has just a single full-time ways. For our journalists based abroad, American newspaper competitor: the the Web has given an immediacy and Los Angeles Times. Full-time American greater impact to their work that goes correspondents are seldom seen in beyond the satisfaction of seeing their many other international capitals. articles in print. Large layoffs in newsrooms have be- For example, when the Times pub- come a daily reality. It was sobering to lished a recent investigative series on read the recent assessment offered by Putin’s Russia, the articles were trans- one of journalism’s cheerleaders, War- lated into Russian simultaneously so ren Buffett, who in his 2007 report to that readers there could dissect the sto- shareholders wrote: “When an indus- ries and post their comments, which try’s underlying economics are crum- were translated back into English on bling, talented management may slow the Times’ site. So the Web does, quite the rate of decline. Eventually, though, literally, democratize the news. eroding fundamentals will overwhelm Quality journalism is produced on managerial brilliance.” Buffett took lit- many platforms. I applaud the announce- tle comfort in the Internet as a remedy ment that The Huf½ngton Post will be unfor the decline, noting, “The economic derwriting original investigative report- potential of a newspaper Internet site ing, perhaps giving work to journalists –given the many alternative sources of who have lost their jobs. ProPublica, information and entertainment that are a nonpro½t established to produce the free and only a click away–is at best a highest quality investigative journalism, small fraction of that existing in the past is also doing important work. (I am a for a print newspaper facing no competi- member of ProPublica’s outside Board

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Jill of Advisors.) In the international are- notes, “It is estimated that a newspaper Abramson na, GlobalPost is supplying quality con- has to attract two or three dozen online on the future tent by professional journalists, some readers to make up for, in terms of lost ofnews of whom were laid off from tradition- advertising revenue, the defection of a al news companies, and is partnering single hard-copy reader.”3 with several of these same news orga- While some media analysts have nizations, including cbs News. argued that newspapers should ditch However, when millions of voices their expensive printing presses and boom on the Web, there is also space elaborate distribution chains and go for rumor, incorrect facts, and just plain Web-only, it is hard to envision, espe- nonsense. Amateur citizen-journalists cially in the current economy, how sometimes do not have the skills and enough revenue would be generated background to produce the most accu- to support a paper’s large and highly rate journalism. Newspapers, with pro- experienced news-gathering staff. fessional reporters and editors, still account for breaking the vast majority of Everywhere, the self-assured prophets important news stories, and some web- of journalism are spouting their procla- sites and bloggers are mainly drawing mations: readers will never pay for news from news already published by news- on the Web; readers must pay for news papers. On some stories, especially on the Web. Journalism must ½nd a way those dealing with intelligence matters to generate more pro½ts; journalism or complex business deals, it can take must become a nonpro½t. months for experienced reporters to Anyone who claims to have a silver- convince sources to talk and for the re- bullet solution isn’t playing straight. porters to obtain sensitive documents. There isn’t one answer that will save They win the con½dence of their sourc- every news organization. The differ- es because of their knowledge, the ences within the news industry, from depth of their reporting, their courage, small, hyperlocal newspapers and web- and their reputation. The work of Times sites to national publications like The correspondent and author Dexter Fil- Wall Street Journal and The New York kin in Iraq and Afghanistan, for exam- Times, are too vast. Not every news- ple, required years of training and ex- paper is going to make the transition perience. across the digital divide. Our challenge, then, is to ½nd a busi- There have been some serious pro- ness model that suits Web-based jour- posals put forth that bear considera- nalism while sustaining quality jour- tion, but almost all carry risks. As The nalism. Advertising on the Web, even Economist noted in August 2009: in more robust times, is still less pro½t- able than advertising in print. Readers It will not be easy. For ten years readers spend less time with the Times online have been enjoying free news online, and the bbc, public-radio stations and com- than in print: on average, a visitor to cnn the website spends about thirty-six mercial television news outlets like minutes per month, just a little more will continue to supply it. A newspaper than the typical print Times reader that tries to charge will jeopardize online advertising, which often accounts for would spend per day. As a 2007 report 4 by Harvard’s Joan Shorenstein Center 10–15% of revenues. on the Press, Politics and Public Policy

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One approach is to erect a pay wall skepticism, context, and a presentation Sustaining around stories on the Web, while mak- that honors their intelligence. They want quality journalism ing an exception for print subscribers. stories that are elegantly told and com- With its business news focus, The Wall pelling, with quality pictures and videos. Street Journal has charged for online sub- And they want to be part of the conver- scriptions for years, but its formula may sation. not necessarily apply to other general- In print, the Times has developed a interest newspapers. Some publications loyal audience of highly educated and have charged for a digital simulacrum of informed readers who are passionate their print editions, which certain read- about their relationship with the news- ers ½nd easier to navigate than a newspa- paper and who have proved willing per website. (The New York Times offers to pay handsomely for it. While Web the Times Reader.) The Financial Times news browsing and the habits of Inter- keeps readers on a meter, charging those net readers are different, the digital who look at more than a certain number audience also turns to trusted brands of stories a month. Some, including for- and reliable news ½lters. During the mer Time magazine editor Walter Isaac- months leading to the 2008 election, son, have proposed micropayments for for example, nytimes.com had an au- individual articles or a menu of cover- dience of more than 20 million unique age. Smartphones, with customized visitors per month. These readers, of news applications, are another possi- course, were also likely supplementing ble source of paid revenue. their journalism diet with other sources The best minds in journalism are map- of political news. The process of creat- ping out new strategies to adjust their ing an engaged and informed citizenry business models for producing quality takes a variety of forms, none necessar- journalism in the digital age. I am con½- ily more perfect than the other. dent that in the next few years we will Quality journalism plays an irreplace- see experimentation and adjustments able role in our society. It is time to move along the way. past all the shouting over which platform or which business model is best and to Decades from now, the quality news- join in an urgent and collective effort to papers that remain may not be literally protect what matters most: quality jour- on paper. They may be on portable tab- nalism and the journalists who create it. lets or some other device we haven’t yet envisioned. But journalism will continue to thrive. My optimism is based on the fact that there is a human craving for trustworthy information about the world we live in–information that is tested, investigated, sorted, checked again, analyzed, and presented in a cogent form. Yet people don’t crave just information. They seek judgment from someone they can trust, who can ferret out information, dig behind it, and make sense of it. They want analytic depth,

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Jill endnotes Abramson 1 on the Alex S. Jones, Losing the News: The Future of the News That Feeds Democracy (New York: future Oxford University Press, 2009), xviii. ofnews 2 Ibid., 164. 3 Creative Destruction: An Exploratory Look at News on the Internet (Cambridge, Mass.: Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, 2007), 13. 4 The Economist, August 29, 2009, 56.

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Brant Houston

The future of investigative journalism

When I was working at the Hartford servative, probing waste, fraud, and Courant in Connecticut in the early 1990s, abuse in government agencies. It is ad- an editor came up with the theory of con- versarial and populist, challenging the stant mass in a newsroom. He said that powers that be. It brings with it moral if you watched closely you would see judgments. that when one journalist went on a diet In From Yahweh to Yahoo! author Doug- another one gained weight. But no mat- las Underwood tracks the origins of inter the losses and gains, he said, the gen- vestigative reporting back to sixteenth- eral mass of the newsroom stayed the century England and its religious reform- same. ers, who traced their zeal to the New Tes- A similar theory might be applied to tament. “Many elements of the prophet- investigative journalism in the twenty- ic tradition–the spirit of righteousness, ½rst century. While investigative report- the indignant moralism, the effort to ing has drastically diminished in tradi- maintain the purity of values, the call for tional and mainstream newsrooms, it spiritual and ethical renewal, the ½erce has rapidly expanded into different forms sense of corruption abounding every- and combinations in Web ventures and where–are as typically found in today’s at universities throughout the world. best investigative reporters or crusading There is little dispute about whether editors.”1 In fact, in 1975, The Christian there should be a future for investiga- Church, Disciples of Christ, was closely tive reporting. The issues are how will involved in the formation of ire (Inves- it be de½ned, how will it maintain high tigative Reporters and Editors) and the standards and quality, in what forms choice of its apt acronym.2 The work and with what methods will it thrive, thus brings with it heavy ethical bur- and how will it be ½nanced. dens that underlie the standards–fairness, accuracy, thoroughness, and trans- The de½nition of investigative journal- parency–for the investigative journalism is multifaceted. It is original report- ism of the future. ing full of rigorous documentation and Because of its adversarial qualities, in- numerous interviews. It is ½scally con- vestigative journalism is always under threat or attack–physically, legally, or © 2010 by the American Academy of Arts ½nancially. Now, with enormous losses & Sciences in advertising revenue and ensuing lay-

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Brant offs at news organizations, the worries What that means is that on every level Houston about the future are constant. “Hardly a there’s less information, less government on the future week goes by without someone lament- being covered, from the community to ofnews ing the death of investigative reporting,” the state to the region. And part of what’s wrote veteran reporters Donald Barlett happening is the investigative reporting and James Steele in Nieman Reports. “It’s is something that’s being shoved aside in a familiar litany: The media are cutting newsrooms that really have to feed the back; crucial stories aren’t being cov- beast. I think the negative impact on all ered; democracy will suffer.” (They add- of us is drastic.4 ed that the support given to investigative The decline in print newsrooms ac- reporting by publishers in the twentieth tually began in the very late 1980s. For century had often resembled the enthu- example, at the Hartford Courant the in- siasm of drunken sailors at a prayer vestigative team was reduced from nine meeting.)3 to none by 1993, with reporters reas- Each year that I served as executive signed to beat or specialty reporting. director of ire, from 1997 to 2007, jour- Those kinds of reassignments have nalists interviewed me (as they had my been repeated at other newspapers. predecessors) about the pending death The loss of a team of designated inves- of investigative journalism. But the on- tigators meant many long-term probes going deterioration of the mainstream were not produced, and the overall cuts media, particularly in the United States, in newsroom staffs meant reporters on and the sometimes overly partisan and town and regional beats had less chance amateurish practice of journalism on to pursue public-service stories. the Internet have raised the concerns Longtime investigative reporter Laura to a much higher level. Frank, in a 2009 piece for Exposé, a pbs Publishers and editors have countered program on investigative journalism, that watchdog reporting is “the fran- wrote: chise” of the industry, and, to be sure, many investigative stories continue to The story line has been repeated time after be published and posted if one looks time: The Internet is killing mainstream at daily blogs such as The Muckraker media, sending the Fourth Estate into (http://www.centerforinvestigative record-breaking revenue declines. Online reporting.org/blogs) or Extra!Extra! ads garner only a fraction of the dropping (http://www.ire.org/extraextra). But print revenue. When faced with cuts, in- even those with the best intentions vestigative reporting is often the ½rst tar- have been unable to maintain investi- get. Investigative journalism takes more gative reporting at previous levels as time and more experienced journalists to newspapers have closed, declared bank- produce, and it often involves legal bat- ruptcy, or slashed staffs to stay in busi- tles. It’s generally the most expensive ness. work the news media undertakes. Robert Rosenthal, a former top news- But Frank found a different story in her paper editor and now the executive di- investigation. She discovered that the rector of the Center for Investigative push by newspapers for high pro½t mar- Reporting, has said some mainstream gins that began in the 1990s led to cost- newsrooms are “toast,” with some hav- cutting–like that at the Hartford Cour- ing been “eviscerated.” He explained: ant–that severely limited the quantity

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and the quality of newspapers and, spe- that have depended on this information The future ci½cally, investigative reporting long be- for the substance of their own broad- of investi- 5 9 gative re- fore the advertising crisis hit. In 2006, casts.” The losses, in turn, undercut porting a survey of one hundred newspapers the content of news aggregators such by Arizona State University students as Google and Yahoo, which rely on reported, “Newspapers care about in- other media to provide their stories. vestigative stories, but they frequently don’t back that up with resources that Investigative journalists, because of the reporters say they need to do in-depth dedication and the zealotry they bring to work.”6 their work, persist in the worst of times; By 2009, plunging advertising reve- sometimes they seemingly flourish when nues were added to the mix, and more the challenges are greatest. “The people than twenty-½ve thousand journalists who are drawn to it and perform it are so had left the ½eld over a two-year period dogged they are not going away,” said in the United States alone, with many Tom Casciato, the executive producer of investigative journalists among them.7 the pbs series Exposé, which has pro½led At the same time, the elimination or re- investigative reports and the journalists duction of investigative teams accelerat- doing them since 2006. “They got into it ed and the termination of investigative because they think it’s important. They reporters increased. Interviews in 2007 can’t not do it.”10 The result is that re- with staff at twenty medium-sized and porters and editors themselves have pro- large newspapers revealed that inves- vided the models for how investigative tigative reporters and teams had been journalism can proceed into the future. eliminated or sharply cut at more than One model for the future is that of the half the papers. By 2008, two of the pa- lone practitioner, as exempli½ed by I. F. pers that had maintained a strong com- Stone, who self-published an investiga- mitment the previous year–Rocky Moun- tive newsletter in the twentieth century tain News and the Post-Intelligencer in Seat- that relied on his copious and meticu- tle–had closed. (The Post-Intelligencer re- lous review of government documents. tained a small portion of its staff to op- Other examples of this type include Sey- erate an online version.)8 mour Hersh, who has done many inde- Even though newspapers are where pendent investigations with little initial most investigations happen, the dam- support from mainstream media, and age from cuts to staff and resources Loretta Tofani, who recently did award- has rippled outward throughout the winning reporting on abuses in Chinese entire media system. “The most exten- factories although no mainstream media sive, substantive public-service journal- ½nanced her work. ism in America in the past century has “Back 40 or 50 years ago, some of us been started, supported, and published did it for nothing,” said Lowell Bergman, by the nation’s newspapers,” wrote a longtime and internationally recog- Charles Lewis, a founder of the Center nized investigative journalist. “Remem- for Public Integrity, which does state, ber that when Sy Hersh did the My Lai national, and international investiga- story, which is a Pulitzer Prize-winning tions. He and his coauthor, Bruce Siev- story about massacres in Vietnam, he er, noted that the losses affect “not only had to go to the only existing nonpro½t the newspapers themselves but also the organization at the time, the Fund for multitude of radio and television outlets Investigative Journalism, and get a grant

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Brant to cover his expenses. It’s the same place throughout the United States, includ- Houston I went to in those days.”11 ing Wisconsin, Massachusetts, Colo- on the future Following the recent layoffs there are rado, California, New Jersey, North Car- ofnews more investigative journalists looking olina, Missouri, Texas, Illinois, and the for ½nancial support from nonpro½t state of Washington. Similar centers groups and foundations. But there also have been established in other coun- are more nonpro½t organizations and tries. These efforts, most of which be- donors to fund them. In addition to the gan as ideas without ½nancial backing, Fund for Investigative Journalism are the bear out a statement from The Elements Nation Institute, which has given grants of Journalism: “History promises that a to many notable progressive investiga- market economy has the capacity to tions, and the Pulitzer Center for Crisis renew itself from the grassroots.”12 Reporting, which supports international These groups are meeting the need reporting and provided the ½nancing for that Edward Wasserman, a Knight Tofani’s work. Among foundations sup- Chair in Journalism at Washington porting individuals’ work are the Alicia and Lee University, identi½ed when Patterson Foundation, which has given he commented: investigative fellowships since the early What’s important is recognizing that in- 1960s, and the Open Society Institute. vestigative work doesn’t solely mean na- Some new Web ventures and individual tional stories. Fundamental to the civic journalists are asking the public to sug- role of small and midmarket news orga- gest speci½c investigations and to send nizations has been their work on zoning money to support them, although such scams, courthouse favoritism, environ- practice risks raising ethical questions. mental degradation, political cronyism, Playing the more prominent role in and all manner of wrongdoing that may creating a future for investigative jour- not register on a scale of national signi½- nalism are three phenomena: the rise of cance but that shapes municipal life in nonpro½ts, the rise of machines (com- powerful ways.13 puters and their software), and the rise of networks. These factors mean more The centers and networks are based focus to the investigative journalism it- largely on principles developed by ire. self, more citizen involvement in shap- Reporters and editors began ire as a way ing stories, and more collaboration rath- of trading story ideas, facilitating cross- er than competition. In fact, the past few training, and collating training tips and years have seen remarkable growth in guides to improve the quality of inves- nonpro½t newsrooms and greater use tigative journalism. ire also headquar- of data analysis and Web software by tered itself at a university, where it could groups composed of journalists, com- receive support and work with students. puter scientists, and citizens. These ini- The ire association model (and its Ari- tiatives then use new technology to cre- zona Project, discussed below) was an ate networks of newsrooms to share inspiration for investigative journalists information, to improve the quality of in other countries who have consciously their investigations, and to create cost- copied and adapted the ire model. This ef½ciencies. trend started in Sweden and Western Since 2007, investigative reporters Europe and then spread to Eastern Eu- who left mainstream news began creat- rope and Latin America. ing local and regional reporting centers

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Because it has been such a role mod- usually incorporated themselves as inde- The future el, ire’s history is worth recounting in pendent nonpro½ts, such as is the case of investigative re- a bit more detail. Started by a handful with the Wisconsin Center for Investiga- porting of journalists from different organiza- tive Journalism at the University of Wis- tions across the United States and with consin. At private universities, the cen- only a small amount of foundation fund- ters often become a part of the universi- ing, ire began in 1975 and held an annu- ty, as with the New England Center for al conference of three hundred journal- Investigative Reporting, a part of the ists within its second year. With little in- College of Communications at Boston dustry support, its membership grew to University, or the Investigative Report- more than four thousand as it steadily ing Workshop at American University. increased the number of seminars and In both forms, the universities and conferences it offered and published ed- centers realize that the collaboration af- ucational materials. fords mutual bene½ts. “I hold the view ire engaged in its only investigative that universities with journalism pro- project when a founding member was grams are ideally suited–and perhaps killed by a car bomb in Phoenix, Ari- even obligated–to help replace the loss zona, in 1976. The six-month investi- of investigative reporting that had long gation involved about forty journalists been left to the for-pro½t news media,” from twenty-eight different news orga- says Tom Fiedler, the dean of the Col- nizations across the United States and lege of Communications at Boston Uni- expanded on the murdered reporter’s versity. He lists several assets that a uni- work on organized crime and public versity offers to support journalism: corruption. The investigation resulted • Motivated students who can be trained in a high-pro½le twenty-three-part series to carry out much of the legwork that known as the Arizona Project. The proj- characterizes investigative reporting, ect also set off years of unsuccessful, but especially the extensive culling of rec- costly, lawsuits against ire. As a result, ords or reports; ire revised its mission to focus on education, so that its resources might spawn • A faculty that more often than not in- many more stories than just one a year. cludes former investigative reporters ire also showed the strengths of asso- who can supervise these students; ciating with a journalism school when, • Access to resources from other parts in 1979, it moved to the University of of the university that can assist inves- Missouri School of Journalism. At Mis- tigations, including trained library re- souri, ire received free of½ce space and searchers, extensive databases, law stu- ½nancial and administrative support in dents eager to ½le Freedom of Informa- return for teaching and working with tion Act requests and other documents students and helping those students get to aid in record searches, and experts jobs. in virtually every ½eld (for example, Most new centers are entering into business-school students and faculty some kind of arrangement with a uni- to help student reporters understand versity journalism program in which corporate ½lings); the centers receive administrative and faculty support in return for providing • Access to funding from foundations education and internships for students. and from an alumni base of potential At public universities, the centers have contributors;

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Brant • An infrastructure to support the inves- in Washington, D.C., begun in 1989. Houston tigative teams’ needs related to per- These two centers are dedicated to on the future sonnel, legal liability, insurance, of½ce doing long-term investigative stories ofnews space, and more; and independently or in collaboration with broadcast or other print newsrooms. • The ability to use the university’s rep- They depend mostly on foundations utation and goodwill to attract media and individual donors for ongoing ½- partners and gain credibility with nancial support. sources. “Of course the university also bene½ts As other nonpro½t centers have prolif- by enabling its journalism students to erated, their founders predictably have work alongside experienced investiga- embraced data analysis, the Web, and tive reporters on meaningful projects,” social media tools to do more with less. Fiedler points out.14 Investigative journalism has long been Even some universities without cen- the research and development arm of ters are offering opportunities for inves- the industry, and it took the lead in un- tigative journalism. At these schools, typ- derstanding and promoting computer- ically one or two faculty members work assisted reporting (that is, data analysis) with students to produce investigative in the 1990s. stories that are published or broadcast Investigative reporters have constant- through traditional media. In the 1980s, ly sought new techniques to employ in Northwestern University professor and their work, and most reporters starting investigative journalist David Protess re- the new centers were already using the ceived much recognition for the work he new Web tools and data analysis when and his students did on wrongful prose- they left their newsrooms. While still at cution cases. He has continued that work newspapers or tv stations in the 1990s, with students since then–work that has they had already integrated social sci- resulted in the release of those impris- ence methods and data analysis into tra- oned through wrongful prosecution. ditional methods of on-site observation, As investigative journalists have left face-to-face interviews, and Freedom of their corporate newsrooms they have Information requests. taken jobs as instructors or professors They were responding to a decades- and followed in Protess’s footsteps. At long call by journalist and futurist Philip Northeastern University, former Boston Meyer for journalists to prepare them- Globe investigative editor Walter Rob- selves for the new journalism environ- inson and his students produced near- ment. In his book Precision Journalism, ly a dozen stories that appeared on the Meyer said, “[T]hey are raising the ante Globe’s front page. New York Times award- of what it takes to be a journalist,” point- winning investigative reporter Walt Bog- ing out that at one time a successful jour- danich has his students aid him in his nalist needed only dedication, energy, work that appears in the Times. and talent for writing. From the time The new centers that have formed in- his book ½rst appeared in 1978, Meyer dependently of universities have also recognized the need for new skills for integrated the model of two other long- journalists: “The world has become so time nonpro½t organizations: the Cen- complicated, the growth of available inter for Investigative Reporting, begun in formation so explosive, that the journal- 1977, and the Center for Public Integrity ist needs to be a ½lter, as well as a trans-

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mitter; an organizer and interpreter, nearly forty nonpro½t investigative cen- The future as well as one who gathers and delivers ters from thirty countries and holds con- of investi- 18 gative re- facts. . . . In short a journalist has to be a ferences biannually. porting database manager, a data processor, and Meanwhile, a longtime nonpro½t net- a data analyst.”15 work, the Associated Press (ap), is it- More recently, academic computer self trying to adjust to the new ½nancial scientists have upped the ante yet again, landscape for journalism. The investiga- calling for the creation of a new ½eld: tive editor for the ap, Richard T. Pienci- “computational journalism.” They fore- ak, said that the ap has begun placing see the development of algorithms that four sets of investigative teams in re- can automatically do much of the data gions around the country. The teams analysis and pattern recognition now come up with months-long reports or being done manually.16 breaking news stories, some of nation- These predictions and new realities al interest and others more regionally are beginning to shape a part of the focused.19 In 2009, ap entered into a future of investigative journalism into trial run to distribute the work of the “mash-ups”: journalists, computer sci- four investigative nonpro½t centers. entists, and developers working together to seek large government data sets The advent of the nonpro½ts has led in order to detect favoritism, incompe- newspapers to embrace collaboration, tence, and corruption through the visu- especially with nonpro½ts, as one way alization of data. Sunlight Foundation to counter the decline of staff and re- is one of the prominent groups engaged sources. Leonard Downie, who is a for- in this cross-disciplinary initiative, and mer editor of The Washington Post and it has targeted congressional data sets. writes about changes in journalism, A mash-up of old and new journalism said collaboration is growing quickly nonpro½t groups also is occurring. In among newspapers, broadcasters, and the summer of 2009, twenty nonpro½t nonpro½ts as they combine resources groups gathered to confront the changes for stories.20 in investigative journalism. In atten- He and others observed that in the dance were the new state centers and past, newspapers have been reluctant longtime nonpro½ts like National Pub- to collaborate because media compe- lic Radio and the Public Broadcasting tition encouraged one organization to Service. From that meeting attendees publish a story exclusively. Being ½rst issued a declaration of purpose and cre- with a story meant being at the top. But ated the Investigative News Network, now that any citizen with a camera or a network that would share administra- the ability to post to Twitter (“tweet”) tive and journalistic resources and be- can be ½rst with the news, a newsroom come a distributor of local, national, gains credibility through its ability to and international content produced explain, interpret, or investigate, often by the members.17 in a collaborative way. That effort actually mirrored an ear- Stimulated by the ease of using Web lier international meeting of nonpro½t software, the new model of investigative groups. In 2003, a small group of jour- journalism includes citizens who pro- nalists gathered in Copenhagen to cre- vide expertise or bloggers who contrib- ate the Global Investigative Journalism ute analysis or review of documents– Network, which is now composed of what is commonly called “crowd-sourc-

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Brant ing.” “Online is about connections and “Good journalism does not come Houston collaboration,” says Jeff Jarvis. “Bloggers cheap. The most powerful journalism– on the future rely on the resource that mainstream me- breakthrough journalism–can be shock- ofnews dia puts into this [the news], but they ingly expensive,” said Marty Baron, ed- also can collaborate. They can help push itor of The Boston Globe, in 2008. “The the story, they can help add facts to the ½rst story in the Globe’s Pulitzer-win- story.”21 ning investigation of sexual abuse in the The for-pro½t website Talking Points Catholic Church, and a 40-year cover- Memo, which has won investigative up, was published in January 2002, but it awards, also acknowledges the site’s in- required eight months of reporting and terdependence with reporting by oth- major litigation before a single word ap- er news outlets. But the site’s primary peared in print.” Baron said a second strength is in seeking the public’s help year of reporting on the issue by a team in analyzing government documents to of eight staff members resulted in the ferret out wrongdoing, abuses, or mal- publication of one thousand stories, but feasance. “the overall cost of this effort was probably more than $1 million in staff salaries, While the nuances of collaboration and tens of thousands of dollars in legal and networking are being worked out, costs.”23 the question of how investigative jour- A more recent example shows how nalism is paid for remains to be solved. costly a single in-depth project can be. “If, like an endangered species, there Reporter Sheri Fink did a long investiga- will be fewer sightings of serious, inde- tive article on a New Orleans hospital pendent, high-impact ‘truth-to-power’ where patients were euthanized after national reporting, will this kind of vital, Hurricane Katrina struck the city. It ap- no-holds-barred truth-telling become peared in The New York Times Magazine a thing of the past, like the dodo bird?” after she spent nearly two years work- asked Charles Lewis. “No, but what is ing on the piece while a fellow at a jour- needed are new, sustainable economic nalism program and then at ProPublica. models for in-depth news and a new, Estimates of the overall cost for the sto- much greater ownership and manage- ry, including the fellowship, salaries, ment commitment to publishing it photographs, review by lawyers, travel, ‘without fear or favor.’”22 The same and editing went as high as $400,000.24 question and need for a new business Currently, the bulk of the money for model apply to local and regional re- existing and new nonpro½t centers orig- porting as well as the new investiga- inates mostly from a handful of nation- tive centers. al media foundations. A recent study re- The expense of a single investigation ported that since 2005 foundations have can range from a few thousand dollars contributed $56 million to investigative to hundreds of thousands of dollars, de- centers and projects.25 The amount of pending on the salary costs and the trav- money has surprised some journalists el expenses. The maintenance of an in- and also raised the specter of partisan investigative staff can be $1 million or high- fluence. The Open Society Institute has er. For example, the newest, largest non- supported both progressive, left-leaning pro½t center, ProPublica, has a staff of coalitions and nonpartisan centers. The twenty and a budget of $10 million a Sam Adams Foundation and related en- year. tities, whose leadership is conservative

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and libertarian, is opening statehouse in- Some new strategies are already being The future vestigative operations under the Frank- tried. The online Voice of San Diego is a of investigative re- lin Center for Government & Public In- nonpro½t and relies on large gifts from porting tegrity. Its stated mission is: individual donors, grants from philanthropic organizations, and reader pledge To promote social welfare and civil better- drives, but is working on increasing its ment by undertaking programs that pro- online ads to achieve sustainability. Oth- mote journalism and the education of er centers are considering memberships, the public about corruption, incompe- subscriptions, data analysis for other tence, fraud, or taxpayer abuse by elect- newsrooms, and online ads to supple- ed of½cials at all levels of government. ment donations. The Franklin Center will accomplish But media critics Robert McChesney these goals by networking and training and John Nichols believe nonpro½ts will independent investigative reporters, as fail without new government policies well as journalists from state based news and subsidies. In The Nation magazine, organizations, public-policy institutions they wrote: and watchdog groups.26 The fatal flaw in so many sincere but Mainstream journalists at centers sup- doomed responses to the current crisis is ported by the Open Society or by the that they try to do the impossible, to cre- Franklin Center say they will have edito- ate a system using varying doses of foun- rial control over what they do. They as- dation grants, do-gooder capitalism, citi- sert that their organizations will be trans- zen donations, volunteer labor, the antici- parent in their funding and that centers pation of a miraculous increase in adver- with different sources of funding likely tising manna and/or a sudden–and in our will be watchdogs of each other. view unimaginable–reversal on the part In any case, many centers and journal- of Americans who have thus far shown no ists do not see foundation donations as a inclination to pay for online content. At sustainable model. Edward Wasserman best, these are piecemeal proposals when has suggested a series of strategies of pos- we are in dire need of building an entire sible donor and in-kind revenue sources edi½ce. The money from these sources is –what he calls “the more promising di- insuf½cient to address the crisis in jour- mensions of the emerging regime under nalism.28 which investigative reporting can survive and flourish.” He has outlined strat- One example they suggest “eliminate[s] egies that call for enlisting the public’s postal rates for periodicals that garner help to supplement reporting on speci½c less than 20 percent of their revenues investigations. His strategies entail using from advertising. This keeps alive all part-time non-journalism professionals, sorts of magazines and journals of opin- such as lawyers and accountants; per- ion that are being devastated by distribu- suading donors to endow an investigation costs. It is these publications that tive position in a newsroom; using city- often do investigative, cutting-edge, po- wide foundations to make grants for in- litically provocative journalism.” dividual projects or to assist ongoing U.S. journalists have resisted direct newsroom operations; and creating spe- government support while internation- cialized commercial newsletters whose al journalists, particularly in Europe, are revenue would support investigative more comfortable with it. But media ob- efforts.27 servers note that the U.S. government

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Brant has supported or influenced the oper- Feldstein said this explanation of why Houston ations of the media for years through investigative reporting thrives seems on the future broadcast regulation, postal rates, and to offer a larger, overarching analysis ofnews other policies. for the twentieth century’s two prime eras of investigative reporting, which Whatever the funding strategies, the for him are the eras of the so-called future of valuable investigative journal- muckrakers at the turn of the twenti- ism appears to rest in the paradoxical eth century and of the investigative ability to do hyper-local reporting and/ reporters in the 1970s.30 or international reporting, sometimes in When considering investigative jour- the same story. For example, a detailed nalism’s future, Feldstein’s view of the investigation into soybean production interplay of new technologies and public in central Illinois could easily include demand bodes well for a third era, wheth- information and reporting from Brazil er it is now attaining critical mass or since soybean production can affect maintaining its constant mass through prices in Illinois. migration. David Boardman, who strad- Charles Lewis, who has chronicled dles the worlds of old and new as execu- the rise of investigative nonpro½ts, has tive editor of The Seattle Times and as an envisioned a future in which reporting advisory board member for the Center networks he calls wire use the latest for Investigative Reporting and ProPub- technology to do investigations around lica, puts it thus: “We may be entering the world and quickly distribute them. a period of renaissance as the struggles “[T]hese vast networks became both crystallize in the public mind about the specialized markets for the work of essential service of investigative journal- wire’s international cadre of report- ism and create an awakening and con- ers . . . and pathways to new informa- cern of what democracy would be with- tion resources, crowd-source experts, out it.”31 and potential citizen muckrakers.”29 Mark Feldstein of George Washing- ton University subscribes to a theory of a cyclical pattern of investigative journalism. He has described an environment in which such a vision might flourish: Investigative reporting reaches a critical mass when both its supply (stimulated by new technologies and media competition) and its demand (by an aroused public hungry for exposés in times of turmoil) is high. This explanation includes political, social, and cultural causes, since such foment increases demand for exposé journalism; and it includes economic, technological, and legal causes as well, since new media outlets with greater reach and lati- tude boost the supply of muckraking.

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ENDNOTES The future 1 of investi- Doug Underwood, From Yahweh to Yahoo! The Religious Roots of the Secular Press (Urbana gative re- and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2002). porting 2 James Aucoin, The Evolution of American Investigative Journalism (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2005). 3 Donald L. Barlett and James B. Steele, “Reporting Is Only Part of the Investigative Story,” Nieman Reports (Spring 2008), http://www.nieman.harvard.edu/reportsitem .aspx?id=100077. 4 Interview with Robert Rosenthal, “Investigative Reporting Hit Hard by Media Cutbacks,” Online NewsHour, pbs, April 20, 2009, http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/media/jan -june09/reporting_04-20.html. 5 Laura Frank, “The Withering Watchdog: What Really Happened to American Investiga- tive Reporting,” Exposé, pbs, http://www.pbs.org/wnet/expose/2009/06/the-withering -watchdog.html. 6 Ibid. 7 Chelsea Ide and Kanupriya Vashish, “Today’s Investigative Reporters Lack Resources” (Arizona State University, May 28, 2006), http://www.azcentral.com/specials/special01/ 0528bolles-stateofreporting.html. 8 Survey and interviews with newspaper staffs conducted by Brant Houston in 2008 and 2009. 9 Charles Lewis and Bruce Sievers, “All The News That’s Fit to Finance,” Chronicle of Phi- lanthropy, March 12, 2009, http://philanthropy.com/free/articles/v21/i10/10007201.htm (accessed August 15, 2009). 10 Interview with Tom Casciato, September 2, 2009. 11 Interview with Lowell Bergman, “Shining a Light,” On the Media, npr, August 15, 2008; transcript at http://www.onthemedia.org/transcripts/2008/08/15/01 (accessed August 1, 2009). 12 Bill Kovach and Tom Rosenstiel, The Elements of Journalism: What Newspeople Should Know and the Public Should Expect (New York: Three Rivers Press, 2007), 144–150. 13 Edward Wasserman, “Investigative Reporting: Strategies for Its Survival,” Nieman Reports (Fall 2008), http://www.nieman.harvard.edu/reportsitem.aspx?id=100417. 14 Email interview with Tom Fiedler, September 13, 2009. 15 Philip Meyer, Precision Journalism: A Reporter’s Introduction to Social Science Methods (New York: Rowman and Little½eld Publishers, 2002). 16 Interview with James Hamilton, Duke Magazine, March/April 2009, http://www .dukemagazine.duke.edu/dukemag/issues/030409/depqa.html. 17 Watchdogs at Pocantico, www.watchdogsatpocantico.com. 18 David E. Kaplan, “Global Investigative Journalism, Strategies for Support” (The Center For International Media Assistance, December 5, 2007), http://www.ned.org/cima/ CIMA-Investigative_Journalism_Report.pdf. 19 Kathleen Cullinan, “Watchdogs Don’t Come Cheap,” The News Media and The Law (Winter 2009), http://www.rcfp.org/news/mag/33-1/watchdogs_dont_come_cheap_16.html. 20 Interview with Leonard Downie, September 1, 2009. 21 Interview with Jeff Jarvis, “Shining a Light,” On the Media, npr, August 15, 2008; transcript at http://www.onthemedia.org/transcripts/2008/08/15/01 (accessed August 1, 2009).

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Brant 22 Charles Lewis, “Seeking New Ways to Nurture the Capacity to Report,” Nieman Reports Houston (Summer 2008), http://www.nieman.harvard.edu/reportsitem.aspx?id=100060. on the future 23 Marty Baron, from The Ruhl Lecture at the School of Journalism and Communication, ofnews University of Oregon, April 2, 2009, http://jcomm.uoregon.edu/articles/full-text-audio -of-2009-ruhl-lecture/view (accessed August 24, 2009). 24 Clara Jeffrey, “Cost of nyt Magazine nola Story Broken Down,” Mother Jones, August 28, 2009, http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2009/08/cost-nyt-magazine-nola-story -broken-down. 25 Jan Schaffer, A Toolkit for Innovators in Community Media and Grant Making (New Media Makers, May 2009), 5. 26 Franklin Center for Government & Public Integrity, http://www.franklincenterhq.org/ about/mission/. 27 Wasserman, “Investigative Reporting: Strategies for Its Survival.” 28 John Nichols and Robert W. McChesney, “The Death and Life of Great American News- papers,” The Nation, March 2009. 29 Charles Lewis, “A Social Network Solution: How Investigative Reporting Got Back on Its Feet,” Columbia Journalism Review, March/April 2009, 27–29. 30 Mark Feldstein, “A Muckraking Model: Investigative Reporting Cycles in American His- tory,” The Harvard International Journal of Press/Politics (2006), http://hij.sagepub.com/ cgi/content/abstract/11/2/105 (accessed August 24, 2009). 31 Interview with David Boardman, August 27, 2009.

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Donald Kennedy

The future of science news

At a recent lunch, I asked Phil Taub- National Public Radio. I advised the man, an old friend who has had a dis- science unit of the NewsHour with Jim tinguished career at The New York Times, Lehrer from time to time, and watch what he would say about the future of the program almost nightly if I can. For respected daily papers like his that are eight years (2000–2008) I was editor- made by printing with ink on newsprint. in-chief of Science, the weekly journal Phil suggested that he wasn’t sure they of the American Association for the had a future. Neither am I. Advancement of Science. It regularly I am particularly concerned with the supplies science news to mainstream news crisis because it has the potential media outlets and has an active news to undermine the public understanding section itself. of science. Why is that so important? The reader may conclude that I am At this moment, more so than at any hopelessly addicted to “trusted sources.” other time within memory, more of the I am; that’s why I am in mourning about policy decisions facing Congress and this discouraging prognosis. We hear the administrative agencies of govern- everywhere that the news business is ment have deep science and technolo- experiencing a growing economic mal- gy content. The nexus between science aise. Regional distress and national at- and policy is so vitally important that tention followed the demise of the Rocky major efforts are under way to shape Mountain News and the flight to an elec- the proper relationship between sci- tronic version by the Seattle Post-Intel- ence and its outcomes in regulatory ligencer, one that conferred an unanti- policies or allocation decisions. cipated bene½t on its rival, the Times. Before we go further, I should dis- The near-death experience of The Bos- close my own personal relationship ton Globe came about despite its owner- with news, and particularly the portion ship by The New York Times Company of it that deals with science and tech- –doubtless a threatening sign to outlets nology. It consists of regular breakfast such as the Los Angeles Times and the encounters with The New York Times Chicago Tribune that were amid bank- and frequent auditory contact with ruptcy proceedings. Cities that were two-paper towns got joint operating © 2010 by the American Academy of Arts agreements in the 1980s; some of them & Sciences are now no-paper towns.

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Donald All that is bad enough. But it is worse background, the reporter writes a story Kennedy still that a large number of metropoli- in which A’s view is paired with criti- on the future tan daily newspapers have done away cism from a denier of global warming. ofnews with special science pages as well as Understandably, the public wonders those reporters who had developed spe- whether this really represents two cial talents for explaining dif½cult sci- equal sides of a scienti½c controversy, ence to the public. In any given year, while A is left to ponder this case of our democracy has to decide on a host “barnyard equity.” of issues that have important scienti½c The traditional news sources rely on and technological content: what to do a cadre of professionals: reporters who about climate change, how to organize cover events like congressional hearings human or robotic exploration of space, about climate change, natural disasters, how to develop a sustainable national or the spread of disease caused by infec- energy policy, how to treat the health tious pathogens. Reporting on such top- potential offered by embryonic stem ics requires an experienced familiarity cells, and the like. To vote intelligently, with science and technology, especially citizens will increasingly require a level when these event stories are followed by of scienti½c literacy. Of course, we also background pieces. Sometimes called need to develop a layer of committed “the news behind the news,” these pieces scientists who will lead the march of allow deeper analyses of the background discovery, providing the basic research of events. Working science journalists ½ndings that will serve as seed corn for receive assignments from editors, who the next generation of new develop- apply experienced judgments about what ments. In making that kind of commit- to cover. Editors also organize and prior- ment, young people are often inspired itize the pieces by their placement with- by the dramatic research accomplish- in an individual issue. Editors must take ments being made by scientists and in- some responsibility for the reliability of terpreted by those who write about the what is reported; therefore, if a central work. issue is scienti½c, it will be important for Those are the elements that support an editor to be at least science-literate. science in our culture, and they all de- In the end, an editor’s attention is what pend on the singularly important rela- makes the paper accountable to the pub- tionship between scientists and science lic for the validity of its reporting. That journalists. There are a number of re- is the journalism of veri½cation. spects in which that relationship is in Before deciding whether newspapers good health: the best reporters have are becoming extinct and, if so, what learned a lot of science and the best sci- might replace them, it should be noted entists have forged productive relation- that this crisis is arising just as the de½- ships with journalists. Nevertheless, nition of “writing” is expanding, and as complaints are being heard from both the relationship between writers and sides–enough to encourage a kind of speakers, on the one hand, and their au- caricature of misunderstanding. Sci- diences, on the other, is being changed entist A complains that the reporter and even intermixed. These analyses hasn’t troubled himself to get some portend something that has already be- background on climate change science, come visible: the role played by “citi- and instead has to be educated from zen journalists,” who are beginning scratch; after a certain amount of that to make news by blogging, by sending

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their videos to television stations for the takeover capacity. Also, advertisers are The future nightly news, or by developing Internet deserting the traditional press in favor of science news sites that function as regular sources of of online sources or the rampantly grow- news. ing number of local no-cost journals. In my hometown of Palo Alto, California, Those commentators predicting a where my ever-thinning copy of The New cloudy future for print newspapers add York Times is delivered daily to my house to the crisis all by themselves, and too for $700 each year, there is a serious, often the reaction of journalists is to ½rst-class local paper, the Palo Alto Week- consider moving on. Because I was in- ly, linked to a daily e-version. Interested volved with the editorship of Science, in local news, I gladly read it. But it now I’ve had a special interest in the fate coexists in the same space with two daily of good science coverage in the media. print throwaways, called the Daily News Alas, I have watched as one metropoli- and the Daily Post, each with smatterings tan daily after another, out of econom- of mostly local crime or sports news and ic necessity, has dropped its serious sci- endless pages of real estate ads. In these ence page, and as the weekly Science papers there is little or no attention paid section of The New York Times has gone to science and technology, even in the steadily toward greater emphasis on is- midst of Silicon Valley. sues of medicine and health rather than Such alternatives will account for some basic science. One explanation for the of the loss of product advertising experi- general apprehension holds that some- enced by mainstream papers. Perhaps a thing autocatalytic is happening here. more signi½cant loss has been in the do- The loss has been selective for science main of classi½ed advertising–both for journalists, and the climate of despair people and for services. This has had an about news, especially science news, interesting impact on the scienti½c job reminds me of the way Alfred Kahn, market, having damaged the tradition- one of President Jimmy Carter’s lead- ally reliable sites where professional op- ing economists, treated the much-dis- portunities have been offered. Craigslist cussed growth of inflation in the late and other Internet sites offer as much or 1970s. Kahn said that the continuous even more exposure than the back-of- talk about the phenomenon was itself the-paper sheets that used to be part of scaring readers and encouraging more your average metropolitan daily or pro- of the same! His solution was to refer fessional scienti½c journals like Science to inflation in his writings as “banana,” or Nature. As a result, job seekers and as in “double-digit banana.”1 hiring companies are happy to make Thoughtful observers have pointed use of these newer outlets. to a number of plausible explanations for the demise of newspapers. One is The changes that are driving news to the increasing control of news organi- online outlets have had important ef- zations by larger organizations–hold- fects on science news; but to under- ing companies with other missions that stand them it is necessary to look at sometimes have little to do with news. what has been happening to the struc- Another contributor is the growing inci- ture of the “old news” as it is morph- dence of mergers and assimilations, in ing into the “new news.” Naturally, which distinguished outlets merge with the traditional outlets began to ½ght others whose larger markets give them back as soon as the downward trends

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Donald for conventional newspapers became servative Drudge Report and its liberal Kennedy clear. At ½rst, major newspapers exper- competitor, The Huf½ngton Post, not to on the future imented with e-versions that initially mention the social networking sites like ofnews looked quite a lot like pages of news- Facebook and MySpace. The most inter- print, but these quickly evolved into esting transition between the traditional much more navigable sites in which and “new news” universes has been the the reader can preselect the kinds of growth of the Huf½ngton blog into The content he or she wants to access. But Huf½ngton Post, an Internet source that is there is a diminished sense of how and sometimes cited in mainstream media. where the priorities lie; try to get a clue There is a new entrant in e-space that is from the Times online about what is hoping to take advantage of dwindling “above the fold” and what isn’t! In a coverage of international news in the more recent development, your daily major metropolitan dailies in the Unit- newspaper can increasingly be seen as ed States. GlobalPost has added report- pages displayed on a screen, like Ama- ers from a number of major print media zon’s Kindle or Sony’s e-reader. You who will be based in other countries and can subscribe to The New York Times living there.3 It should be watched in the on Kindle for only about $14 per month, future: an American audience may want a quarter of what I pay for the one that a daily diet of the kind many now get lands on my porch. Now Plastic Logic weekly from The Economist, and owing has a much larger screen on which regu- to the distribution of GlobalPost report- larly updated news from any outlet can ers, readers may get more science than be displayed. The Hearst Corporation, they get from other outlets. owner of ½fteen newspapers, is a major An interesting aspect of this transition investor in e-Ink, the company respon- is the change in political impact of the sible for the Kindle and other products “new news” compared with tradition- still in the experimental phase. Some al media. In a thoughtful article in The are predicting that moving images and New York Times Magazine, Michael Soko- clickable advertising will be features of love reports revisiting his hometown of the new “pages on a screen” world; we’ll Philadelphia to watch the threatened have to see whether that happens and, if Inquirer (long a solid source of good sci- so, whether the customers like it.2 ence, especially relevant to environmen- The economic plight of the tradition- tal issues) and the Daily News (his old al news outlets has been noticed by paper) struggle to stay afloat. He points fringe alternatives. Their growth has out that a major metropolitan newspa- been widely hailed as a triumph of citi- per, unlike most Internet sites, has an zen journalism. In discussing the con- additional local focus that is important temporary state of “the news” it is im- to it and its readers. That feature adds possible to ignore the omnipresence of signi½cant value, but Sokolove concedes news, including some very well-report- that it also makes the Inquirer vulnerable ed science news, that is available exclu- in a way that The New York Times, The sively online (Slate, Seed, for example). Washington Post, and usa Today are not. The cable channels for television “news” These papers have brands, and if they can now be counted on to have a reliable survive and even prosper, it will be in political slant (The O’Reilly Factor on fox part because of the strength of those News; Countdown with Keith Olbermann brands. A few other news outlets will on msnbc). Among blogs are the con- survive by being really good at local

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news. Finally, stellar investigative report- competitive challenge, then, will be The future ing, especially on issues entailing science which among the multiplicity of new of science news and policy, will still weigh positively, both outlets earn more trust than others. for metropolitan newspapers and for major national outlets that can command The disruptive reorienting of the news increasing reputational bene½ts. terrain has raised other questions, including some about whether good sci- Although some insist that a number of ence journalism can survive the transi- traditional outlets may hold on based on tion. In the old geography, news people special kinds of value, most observers were generally regarded as respected point to the likelihood that we are expe- professionals. Bloggers and other citi- riencing a major transition, one in which zen journalists now have ambitions that citizen journalists and bloggers are using go well beyond second-class citizenship. the Internet to dispense news, opinion, They would hope for–and they very and anything else that seems important well may achieve–a status that entails or interesting. One feature of this transi- professionalism of a recognized sort. tion is that the roles of deliverer and au- Indeed, some of the best-known blog- dience (source and sink) become inter- gers are cited as news sources by tradi- meshed: news is captured by volunteer tional tv or newspaper people. Matt videographers, and new insights or hy- Drudge, whose outlet is best described potheses about science and its possible as an Internet news aggregator, assem- influence on public policy may spread bles information primarily designed to widely on the Internet. Because the tra- please conservatives. He received atten- ditional media are on average more dedi- tion for revealing the name of Monica cated to fact-checking and editorial cau- Lewinski and for introducing the main- tion, some view this transition as unfor- stream press to the Swift Boat campaign tunate. In a recent program on National against John Kerry. Now the liberal Huf- Public Radio, Terry Gross quoted Alex ½ngton Post has developed a more suc- S. Jones, the director of the Joan Shoren- cessful Internet formula, with a greater stein Center on the Press, Politics and circulation than all but a few newspaper Public Policy at Harvard, as describing sites. Its modus operandi is quite different the transition as one from “the journal- from Drudge’s; it has developed a com- ism of veri½cation to the journalism of munity through Huf½ngton’s personal expression.”4 connections to a network of writers, pol- Some observers have noted that the iticians, and celebrity bloggers who con- economic template has changed radical- tribute news and commentary. In a fasci- ly in the news universe. From a system nating New Yorker piece, “Out of Print,” in which the major outlets functioned Eric Alterman explores how one of the in an oligopolistic fashion, we have en- Huf½ngton Post’s organizers describes its tered an environment closer to perfect strategy. He calls it “business up front, competition. What has changed is that party in the back.” Distrustful of most the supply of news and information is user-generated commentary, the site widely distributed and has become a puts most of that at the end, reserving public good, without signi½cant barri- the front page for news material that ers to entry. Most news outlets can get gets careful editing for quality control. a lot for nearly nothing, and there will Thus the site wins loyalty from spon- be free competition among them.5 The sors and mainstream news outlets;

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Donald meanwhile, its fans are posting and car- ability. When a major blog or a newspa- Kennedy rying on arguments in the back. per’s site contains a number of stories, on the future The migration of interested and often their individual fates can be followed as ofnews knowledgeable members of the public readers move to other sources. The suc- into the news space has naturally gener- cess of a news posting thus can be esti- ated debate about veri½cation and cer- mated not only by the number of read- ti½cation. What is “journalistic credi- ers who accessed it directly, but also by bility” in this context? Just as the First the destinations they visit next. This Amendment mentions freedom of the traceability has potential value for edi- press without de½ning what makes up tors, but one can expect that individu- “the press,” laws that confer limited al readers may eventually be linked to protection on journalists do not gen- particular product purchases they have erally say what a journalist is. In fed- made–a potential source of value for eral law, the narrow constitutional pro- publishers, too! tection afforded journalists has rarely The Obama campaign has been hailed been used or tested. But thirty-three as a triumph for citizen journalism, in- states have “Shield Laws,” and in most cluding the roles played by email and of the applicable cases, judges have social networking sites, both of which sought to balance the relevance and im- were important elements in securing portance of the information the journal- Obama’s election success. It is true that ists are being asked to provide, against contact through “new media” can affect the damage to the journalist and his or democratic outcomes by broadening the her sources. There has been some dis- opportunity for political positions and cussion of a strengthened privilege in commitments to be communicated to federal law for journalists. Some blog- voters. Since Obama’s election victory, gers have insisted that they should be- those same networks have been deployed long to that protected category. At this in support of the new administration’s writing, however, the matter remains interests in securing legislative objec- undecided, and may well be settled on tives–in particular, its hopes for signi½- a state-by-state basis. cant revisions in health care policy. The speed and facility with which peo- Insofar as science and technology con- ple who are subjected to repression or verge with public policy, the conversion danger can get their messages out is an- of news to information is critical. In this other important development. Follow- transaction, traditional sources of sci- ing the 2009 election in Iran, for exam- ence–universities and government lab- ple, American and other sympathetic au- oratories, for example–produce data diences became fascinated by the news and experiments that will be noted and emerging via the Internet from Iranian analyzed by science journalists. Eventu- citizens themselves, many of whom were ally, if the news treatment is convincing unhappy about the election results and and the ½ndings are con½rmed by later were suspicious of fraud. These commu- studies, the news becomes information, nications were reminiscent of ones fol- available for use by other scientists or lowing the Tiananmen Square event in by those who make public policy. 1989 in China, where activist students In this context, news on the Internet managed to get the word, even spectac- has some values that news as ink on pa- ular videos, out to the world. per cannot claim. One of these is trace-

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What are the various forms and for- the shrinking press are more dif½cult to The future mats in which we will be reading the characterize and predict. To annoyed of science news news of the future–and will the new critics of the blogosphere, it is an in- arrangements be good or bad for the tellectual flea market; to its admirers, public understanding of science? Nat- it may portend the triumph of citizen urally, I am rooting for some good news journalism in an emerging news de- on the ink-and-paper front. Thoughtful mocracy. Some smart, creative blog- people in the news business put favor- gers have earned loyal cadres of follow- able odds on the survival of the classic ers, including some reporters from the brands in print: The New York Times, The mainstream media who read and cite Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, them. That’s fair enough, since many and a few others. There will probably blogs recycle mainstream news. One even continue to be a high-end consum- blog author who has developed strong er population that will pay the higher stories by good sleuthing is Joshua Mar- price for the print versions–not mere- shall, founder of a group of sites that ly because those consumers are wealthy originated from his Talking Points Memo. or old-fashioned, but because e-news de- Marshall, who is given credit for break- signers have not yet ½gured out a way to ing the story of the ½ring of U.S. attor- make those sites navigable in the way a neys that ultimately cost Alberto Gon- physical newspaper is. Those concerned zales his job, was the ½rst blogger to win with the science education of the Amer- a major news award that had previously ican public hope that better navigation been restricted to mainstream journal- will make good science pieces more easi- ism. He is unlikely to be the last. ly accessible. In any event, e-versions are But the blog universe has also become likely to have far more readers then their a supermarket for the propagation of print equivalents, and this gap presum- all kinds of nonsense, including, alas, ably will grow as boomers are succeeded the organized promotion of some of by their children. the political untruths that led to angry There will also be room for local news shouting at recent “town hall” discus- and creative editors who have learned to sions about health care reform. The tap into their communities’ values. Most “journalism of announcement” also is really newsworthy events have a strong capable of providing an abundance of local sign–and they are trailed by stories. scienti½c nonsense, which can quick- The local university is a prime source for ly become rei½ed into “information”: such events involving science and tech- that vaccination can lead to autism, for nology. Who did the breakthrough re- example. Will society come to pro½t search? Who supported it and why? more from the thoughtful and infor- How will the discovery aid the nation- mative blogs like Marshall’s, or will al interest? Will it resolve a major con- it instead risk a damaging reconstruc- troversy? Such an event may go nation- tion of democratic politics by scienti½c al quickly, but the secondary effects are untruths and conspiracy theories mar- apt to stay local as well as last longer. keted by others? Furthermore, local papers often devel- Will the world of citizen journalism op investigative reports that work well eventually take over the news business? in print but not on the screen. I would venture a guess that the outcome The new media that have developed to will depend not only on the public’s pa- ½ll the economic and news space left by tience with reading news on a screen,

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Donald but also on how the controversy over doing the damage took some comfort Kennedy “Internet freedom” is resolved. An abun- from their anonymity online. But my on the future dance of ethical passion now clouds that Stanford Law School colleague Mark ofnews issue because we exist in a world in which Lemley, a pro bono attorney for the anything that can be said, will be said. two Yale women, points out that “such The Electronic Freedom Foundation vig- behavior in the future may have to be orously defends the view that any limita- accompanied by an understanding that tion on freedom of Internet speech–by you are not as private as you think!”7 government or private entities–amounts Can the barrier to legal action in cases to censorship. The debate has led to seri- like these be breached? It took some time ous contests over intellectual property, before the freedom of speech issue had particularly in terms of the swapping to be dealt with directly in the case of of music ½les, which the music indus- incitement. For some time, the canoni- try views as theft. One enthusiastic ac- cal exceptions were pretty much limit- tivist on behalf of openness describes ed to crying “½re” in a crowded theater. the struggle as follows: But the Supreme Court, in Brandenberg v. Ohio,8 broadened the exemption, ½x- The movement to keep the Internet free ing on incitement in two ways: ½rst, to will be the de½ning ½ght in the informa- include speech that is directed at incit- tion age, just as the environmental move- ing or producing imminent lawless ac- ment is the de½ning ½ght of the industrial tion, a clause including intent; and sec- age. As our physical make-up is reduced to ond, to include speech likely to incite a string of ones and zeros, and knowledge or produce such action, irrespective of replaces property and labor as the means intent. of production, democratic access to infor- The perils of citizen journalism, and mation becomes a basic civil right. the capacity of modern search engines That is quite an extravagant claim, like Google to recycle endlessly any as- but it is not an unusual one from the sertion about anyone, are coming to be advocates for electronic freedom. The understood by persons anxious about copyright battle may be central in this their careers. Many shun the permanent war, but concerns about Internet free- exposure guaranteed by social network- dom may come from quite a different ing sites, and an ambitious politician source. In several well-publicized cases, would have to be crazy to post his or her sites such as Facebook have been used latest idea in a place where it would be by bloggers with personal vendettas discoverable later by political enemies. who employed Internet power to humil- College admissions of½cers are giving iate victims to the point of suicide, or informal advice to new students to set in another case, to destroy the legal ca- their security settings carefully because reers of applicants to Yale Law School.6 much of what they post online can end In such cases, no legal remedy has been up publicly accessible. available to the victims–although had Of course, it is premature to predict the same damaging assertions made the onset of a regulatory regime for the against them been published in a news- Internet. But there are serious questions paper or by a television station, those out there, and much about the future of news outlets likely would have been vul- news will depend on the answers socie- nerable to a lawsuit based on a claim of ty gives. This much is clear: the terrain slander or libel. No doubt the parties of news and information is being recon-

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½gured by new information technolo- on the surviving sources of news–those The future gies; but it is also being recon½gured that practice the journalism of veri½ca- of science news by consumer convictions, loyalties, tion–to provide science coverage that and preferences that are changing be- is careful, cautious, and responsible. So fore our eyes. far, the “new news” has given us scant From my perspective, public under- encouragement that reliable science cov- standing of science may well be the erage will be as strong after this transi- most important social value at stake tion as it was in the past. in this transformation. We must count

endnotes 1 Historians differ about Kahn’s penchant for substituting fruit names for worrisome economic trends. Time magazine said it was about inflation, others say recession. There is a suspicion that the White House required Kahn to make the substitution. 2 See, for example, Eric Taub, “New E-Newspaper Reader Echoes Look of the Paper,” nytimes.com, September 7, 2008. 3 See also Ethan Zuckerman’s essay in this issue on the future of international reporting. 4 Alex Jones’s new book, Losing the News: The Future of the News that Feeds Democracy (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), is a richer source of his argument that we are in danger of eroding our national faith in news that feeds democratic institutions. 5 A lively and highly readable exploration of this and other issues discussed here is Eric Alterman, “Out of Print–The Death and Life of the American Newspaper,” The New Yorker, March 31, 2008. 6 See, for example, Christian Nolan, The Connecticut Law Tribune, March 6, 2008. 7 A recent op-ed by Maureen Dowd (The New York Times, August 25, 2009) calls further attention to the kind of personal mischief that can be caused by these efforts of blog vigilantism. 8 http://laws.½ndlaw.com/us/395/444.html.

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Ethan Zuckerman

International reporting in the age of participatory media

In the wake of Iran’s disputed 2009 The New York Times focused the Times presidential election, millions of protest- news blog, The Lede, on the protests, ers took to the streets of Tehran, some excerpting at length from Iran-focused attempting to start a “green revolution” blogs. Newsweek offered a “Twitter to oust President Ahmedinejad and oth- Timeline,” with key events in the pro- er authority ½gures. The Iranian govern- tests illustrated by 140-character posts ment attempted to quell the protests by (“tweets”). arresting the instigators, and to render The embrace of citizen media in the them invisible by tightly controlling me- Iran coverage by professional journalism dia coverage of events. On June 16, a day organizations represents a small, but after an estimated three million protest- dramatic, shift in the structure of inter- ers marched on Azadi Street, Iran’s Min- national news, a quiet revolution trans- istry of Culture issued a partial ban tar- forming how we understand events in geting international reporters. Report- other countries. But as the Tehran street ers could remain within Iran, but were protests were a result not just of a dis- banned from leaving their of½ces or ho- puted election but of deeper factors, tel rooms and were explicitly prohibit- professional journalism’s embrace of ed from covering the protests. the amateur reflects a series of shifts With strong audience interest in sto- beyond a press ban in Iran. ries from Iran, news organizations faced a challenge: how do you report a story A wealth of analysis has focused on you have been banned from covering? “the crisis in journalism,” the sharp de- Protesters in Iran and their supporters cline in revenues for many U.S. newspa- abroad quickly proffered one answer: pers that correlates with layoffs of expe- cover Iran via citizen media. cnn re- rienced journalists, and the closure of lied heavily on its iReport site, which influential newspapers like Denver’s invites amateurs to submit videos of Rocky Mountain News. There is no doubt breaking news; the network aired 180 that ½scal pressures on news organiza- of the roughly 5,200 Iran-related vid- tions are affecting international news eos they received.1 Robert Mackey of coverage. Only four U.S. newspapers maintain signi½cant overseas bureaus, © 2010 by the American Academy of Arts while the television network abc has & Sciences moved toward covering countries via

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single “digital reporters,” who are less the United States. Iranian authorities Interna- costly than fully staffed bureaus. Alisa block access to many online publishing tional reporting in Miller, president of Public Radio Inter- platforms, and it requires signi½cant the age of national, argues that ½nancial pressures efforts to circumvent these attempts at participa- are moving television networks away censorship. When protests broke out in tory media from international stories and toward the streets of Tehran, a large population celebrity journalism because “covering of Iranians was experienced in using the Britney [Spears] is cheaper.” Internet to communicate political infor- But ½scal pressures alone are insuf½- mation to a global audience. cient to explain the embrace of citizen The decreasing cost of consumer elec- media in reporting on Iran, or related tronics made it possible, to an unprece- shifts in the structure of international dented degree, to arm human rights ac- reporting. Technological progress has tivists in Iran with cameras. Shahram steadily reduced the cost of overseas Homayoun, the president of Channel news production, a process that began One, a Los Angeles-based satellite tele- with cost savings through the comput- vision channel that broadcasts to Iran, erization of wire services in the 1980s sent more than ten thousand small vid- and that has been accelerated through eo cameras to Iran prior to the 2009 the near-global adoption of the Inter- election. He reports that his network net. The decrease in price and increase has been flooded with thousands of in quality of consumer video cameras, images and videos delivered by email. and the integration of cameras into mo- Faced with a population knowledge- bile phones, have greatly expanded the able about the Internet and armed with set of people who can create audiovi- inexpensive cameras, Iranian authori- sual content, while the rise of publish- ties followed in the footsteps of Burma ing platforms like Blogger and YouTube and Cambodia and briefly shut off ac- makes it at least theoretically possible cess to the Internet, reconnecting the that amateur media authors could reach country at reduced levels of bandwidth, a global audience. a strategy that may have been designed The green revolutionaries in Iran to discourage the emailing and posting were well positioned to take advantage of videos or to make ½ltering of online of these reduced production costs and content more manageable for censors. new distribution channels. A crack- The persistence and creativity shown down on independent newspapers–a by Iranian activists in reporting the counter-reaction to the reformist presi- electoral protests is an illustration of dency of Mohammed Khatami by hard- a second trend influencing internation- liners in the Iranian courts–led many al news: the demand of people to influ- independent journalists to look for dig- ence how they are represented in media. ital means of distribution. When blogs Again, this is an old phenomenon whose reached Iran in 2001, they were quickly pace has been accelerating through tech- adopted by independent journalists and nological change. As Edward Said noted, political activists. The Open Net Initia- part of the postcolonial struggle is the tive estimates that there are 60,000 ac- move to control mediated narratives of tively updated blogs in Iran. This sug- a people’s experiences.2 gests a large population of technically The borderlessness engendered by the sophisticated users, as it is more dif½- Internet and satellite television means it cult to maintain a blog in Iran than in is now possible for Chinese citizens to

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Ethan monitor how their local issues are portion, seeing ampli½cation of the protest- Zuckerman trayed in European and American me- ers’ views as evidence that the United on the future dia. Frustrated by Western coverage of States and the United Kingdom were con- ofnews the March 2008 Lhasa riots, thousands spiring to overthrow the government.4 of young Chinese began talking back While the Internet has made it increas- to Western media, posting nationalist ingly possible to influence international videos on YouTube asserting Tibet as narratives, it has done little to bridge lin- an eternal part of the Chinese nation. guistic barriers. The limited influence Jin Rao, a twenty-three-year-old Inter- conservative authors were able to exer- net entrepreneur, set up anti-cnn.com to cise may have reflected Western media examine and debunk media coverage of biases, or may simply have been a by- Chinese issues. Participants on the site product of linguistic barriers. identi½ed a number of images of police beating protesters that ran in American If Western news networks had easy and German newspapers with captions access to Farsi translators, it is possible about China’s crackdown; they demon- that they would have covered conserva- strated that the photos were taken in tive voices from Iran more closely. How- Nepal and that the of½cers in question ever, a third trend shaping international were Nepali. Chinese students rallied news coverage–the rise of the 24-hour in European and North American cities news cycle–suggests that news outlets to protest perceived media bias. may not have been willing to wait for In this context, the response of Iranian careful translations. When street pro- activists to the government’s swift dec- tests erupted in Tehran on June 13, cnn laration of victory for Ahmedinejad was was late to the game, running its ½rst predictable. Increasingly accustomed to Web story about the elections late that pushing back against media representa- night. Thousands of Twitter users criti- tions, activists fought their representa- cized cnn for missing the story, point- tion in government-controlled domes- ing to breaking news coverage on other tic media via international media. The networks and cnn’s history of on-the- skill activists displayed in promoting scene reporting from the Middle East. their message and the receptivity of in- Users began marking their posts with ternational media to a narrative of pop- “#cnnfail,” a “hashtag” used to make ular uprising may have led to reporting related posts easier to ½nd via search that underrepresented popular support engines.5 for the reelected government, as bbc In an earlier time, cnn’s delay in Global News Director Richard Sam- covering news that broke on a Satur- brook observed, reflecting on the chal- day might have been forgiven. But pat- lenges his and other networks faced in terns of news consumption are shift- interpreting citizen media reports.3 ing, led by 24-hour cable news and the Global Voices, the citizen media aggre- Internet. An ethnography of U.S., Indi- gator I helped found and run, attempted an, and U.K. news consumption com- to balance coverage by translating blog missioned by the Associated Press in posts from Ahmedinejad supporters as 2008 concluded that young adult read- well as from protesters. The conserva- ers engage in “constant checking,” a tive bloggers, who wrote in Persian rath- relentless process of reloading news er than English, wrote of their dismay at pages, looking for developments and international media coverage of the elec- resolution to news stories.6 As news

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outlets attempt to ½ll these needs, de- These factors–the accelerated pace Interna- mand is increasing for news that is not of the news cycle, the ability for ordi- tional reporting in just fast-breaking, but continually up- nary Internet users to create and pub- the age of dated. lish digital media, and the willingness participa- While older Internet users expect of individuals to challenge media nar- tory media communication to be episodic, using ratives–are combining with the break- email as a primary medium, younger down of ½nancial models that histori- Internet users expect continuous com- cally ½nanced professional internation- munication, using instant messaging al media to produce seismic shifts in tools.7 This constant communication the structure of international news re- became a form of community publish- porting. As Clay Shirky notes in his es- ing with Facebook, where frequent say “Newspapers and Thinking the Un- “status updates” are communicated to thinkable,” “That is what real revolu- a user’s friends. The trend reached new tions are like. The old stuff gets brok- extremes with Twitter, which encour- en faster than the new stuff is put in ages users to post pithy updates many its place.”11 times a day. In the wake of the June 13 At this moment of uncertainty and protests in Tehran, Twitter was ½lled confusion, different groups are experi- with commentary on the events in Iran. menting with a wealth of new models Some users offered eyewitness reports designed to produce international news, from the ground, others analyzed and adapting to one or more of the changes ampli½ed information–and disinfor- outlined above. Some of the projects mation–they had heard on Twitter discussed below are less than a year and elsewhere. At the peak of interest old, and the older ones have often in the protests, tweets about Iran exchanged direction, focus, or method ceeded 15,000 per hour8 representing in recent years. It is possible that one as much as 3 percent of the total traf½c of these models will emerge as the new on the service.9 modus operandi for international report- cnn, still stinging from criticism that ing. However, it is much more likely it was missing the Iran story, followed that aspects of each model will succeed the lead of other networks and began on- while others fail, and that new and old air reading of tweets from Iranians both players will chart their paths forward in the country and the diaspora. News based on these outcomes. I offer a rough anchors found themselves offering awk- taxonomy of some participants in this ward disclaimers before reading posts, new ecosystem, clustered by news-gath- saying, “We have no way of verifying ering methods and underlying ½nancial any of these reports.” Brian Stelter of structures. The New York Times noted that the em- The New Professionals. This group brace of citizen media signi½ed a will- promises to deliver high-quality jour- ingness to bend rules on veri½ability nalistic reporting through new means, and attribution that have generally operating outside the usual newspaper been central to news reporting. Stelter and television structures but adhering observed that we are seeing an inver- to traditional news-gathering methods, sion of fact-checking models, leading standards, and ethics. ProPublica, an newspapers to “publish ½rst, ask ques- endowment-funded newsroom, em- tions later. If you still don’t know the ploys thirty-two investigative journal- answer, ask your readers.”10 ists focused on U.S. domestic issues.

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Ethan ProPublica reporters are generally expe- New England Cable News, introduced Zuckerman rienced, often celebrated professionals, GlobalPost in early 2009, creating an in- on the future and the organization’s investigations ternational news bureau using the “new ofnews have run in The New York Times, The Wash- professional” model. To address the dis- ington Post, and on cnn and cnbc. appearance of foreign correspondents, The Pulitzer Center on Crisis Report- GlobalPost supports sixty-½ve corre- ing serves a similar function within the spondents in ½fty countries. The corre- international news community: experi- spondents are primarily professional enced journalists pitch stories and are journalists from the United States, writ- awarded travel grants to support their ing for a U.S.-centered, English-speak- work, with the understanding that a ½n- ing audience. GlobalPost provides far ished piece will be distributed through less ½scal support than a newspaper influential media outlets. While the Pu- bureau chief would receive; instead, litzer Center’s grant program began by GlobalPost offers a monthly salary of sponsoring reporting that appeared in $1,000 in exchange for a set of stories newspapers and television newsmaga- and “reporter diaries.” The theory is zines, the grants now favor multimedia that GlobalPost’s support allows a re- reporting, and some participating reporter to maintain a presence in Kenya porters produce blogs and others pro- or Korea, but that she will freelance for cess updates on the website while in multiple news organizations to earn a the ½eld covering stories. The Johns livable salary. Hopkins International Reporting Proj- While GlobalPost is heavily commit- ect and the Alicia Patterson Founda- ted to a traditional foreign correspon- tion support reporting through simi- dent model–and has opted not to em- lar models. ploy local journalists in the countries it Spot.us, a start-up founded by David covers–it is working with a network of Cohn to provide community funding local bloggers to complement its profes- for news stories in the San Francisco sional reporting. (In this sense, Global- Bay Area, may provide a decentralized Post works in part as a citizen media ag- alternative to Pulitzer funding for some gregator, a model explored below.) But journalists. The Spot.us site accepts the core mission of GlobalPost is to pro- pitches from journalists, who propose vide high-quality journalism that can a story they would like to cover and the be syndicated along traditional journal- costs they expect to incur. Site visitors istic platforms, using different produc- then can contribute money toward the tion methods and cost structures. The story. If the story is fully funded, the re- site counts the New York Daily News, porter is obligated to complete and ½le bbc’s The World, and The Huf½ngton Post on the site and in other media. While among its syndication partners. Unlike most pitches have sought funding for Pulitzer or ProPublica, GlobalPost is Bay Area stories, freelance journalist for-pro½t and seeks sustainability via Lindsey Hoshaw raised $6,000 of the advertising and syndication revenue. $10,000 she needed to cover a story Citizen newsrooms. Not everyone is con- on garbage floating in the Paci½c.12 vinced that the future of international Pitch-based approaches like Pulitzer news reporting should be in the hands or ProPublica do not promise compre- of professional journalists. The past de- hensive world coverage. Seeking broad- cade has seen the rise of “citizen news- er coverage, Philip Balboni, founder of rooms,” where amateurs work alone or

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together to report breaking news stories. ries that survive the “neutral point of Interna- The phenomenon may have started with view” test. Because anyone can edit a tional reporting in Indymedia, whose decentralized region- story on Wikipedia, highly partisan in- the age of al groups began reporting local, national, terpretations of events are likely to be participa- and international news stories as an alter- quickly modi½ed by someone with a dif- tory media native to what they saw as a corrupt and ferent political opinion. Adopting a neu- unreliable corporate-controlled press. tral viewpoint encourages authors to The result is a highly idiosyncratic news agree on a noncontroversial set of facts. service whose coverage varies based on This sounds unwieldy, perhaps impossi- the quality of the local team, their pas- ble, but Wikipedia’s structural features, sions, and their interests.13 notably discussion pages, which are the While Indymedia was born out of designated forum for working through anti-globalization protests and retains disputes about each article, and commu- a strong left-wing political stance, it nity norms have allowed the site to be- is harder to characterize the political come the world’s sixth most visited leanings of the Internet’s most success- website. ful collective reporting project, Wiki- Most citizen newsroom sites do not pedia. While Wikipedia is intended attempt to blur individual contributions as a free, user-produced encyclopedia, into a neutral whole. Nowpublic, a par- it has emerged as one of the leading ticipatory media site based in Vancou- sources for breaking news coverage. ver, invites members to submit stories When news stories break, hundreds that include original reporting, com- of contributors around the world race mentary on published media reports, or to contribute to the article on the top- opinion pieces. Members are awarded ic: for example, more than a hundred “points” based on the popularity of the authors contributed 423 edits to Wiki- content they have submitted. Demotix, pedia’s article on the July 7, 2005, Lon- based in London, offers more tangible don bombings in the ½rst two hours rewards for contributors: a 50 percent after the explosions. The desire to shape share of the revenue generated from li- an article rapidly is understandable be- censing photos and videos submitted cause Wikipedia is one of the Internet’s by users. Both Demotix and Nowpublic most popular websites; a Wikipedia arti- combine a philosophical commitment cle on a news event often emerges as the to user-generated content with for- most “authoritative” resource on the In- pro½t business models. ternet on a given topic. The passion of Aggregators. Realizing that hundreds Wikipedians for working on breaking of millions of people are creating con- news stories has had the ironic effect of tent online, aggregation sites report in- crippling the growth of Wikinews, a sis- ternational news by collecting content ter project intended to serve as a global, already published on citizen media plat- nonpartisan newswire. forms. Aggregation has been common Wikipedians are not reporting from in the blog community from its incep- the scene of an event. Indeed, that sort tion, and hundreds of topic- and geo- of ½rsthand reporting–“original re- graphic-focused aggregators summarize search,” in Wikipedia parlance–is for- discussions in different blog communi- bidden on the site. The job of Wikipe- ties. When stories like the Iran protests dia contributors is to synthesize other break on Twitter, it is common for one reports into coherent, authoritative sto- or more users to aggregate some or all

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Ethan topical tweets into a single feed for easy neighboring countries often reported Zuckerman following. The site Breaking Tweets on their neighbors in great detail. The on the future works to make this process of aggrega- Arabic Media Internet Network (amin) ofnews tion more readable, accompanying rep- simply posted online stories about Jor- resentative tweets with a short summa- danian politics from Syrian newspapers ry of the event being discussed and iden- or on Egyptian corruption from Jordan- tifying “trusted Twitter users” who edi- ian papers, giving readers a pan-Arab tors believe are authoritative. view of media coverage. AllAfrica.com As Breaking Tweets illustrates, aggre- publishes stories from national and re- gators often provide more value than gional African newspapers online, un- simply assembling all mentions of a locking content to a diaspora audience speci½c topic. Global Voices attempts and other Africa-watchers. to make blogs, tweets, and other forms Ushahidi, a two-year-old project based of citizen media more useful to a global in Kenya, extends citizen media aggrega- audience by ½ltering, contextualizing, tion into the text messaging space. Cre- and translating these contributions. A ated as a way to allow Kenyans to report team of professional and volunteer ed- on violence in the wake of disputed 2007 itors takes responsibility for identify- presidential elections, Ushahidi collects ing the topics most important to people text messages, mobile phone photos, vid- in a given country and selecting a subset eos, and other reports to provide time- of posts that represents a range of views lines and maps of ethnic violence, elec- on those topics. They translate posts tion rigging, or natural disasters. The from local languages into English and reports are accessible on Ushahidi’s site write topical summaries, which quote and shared with media partners, includ- extensively from these translations and ing Al Jazeera, which used Ushahidi’s contextualize them, referencing main- software to enable citizens to report on stream news stories and online ency- Israel’s incursions into Gaza earlier this clopedias to offer background on the year. The model is a form of “crowd- issues discussed. sourcing,” a technique that is becoming The process of ½ltering, translating, increasingly popular in U.S. journalism and contextualizing is a time-consum- as a way to harness the efforts of hun- ing and expensive one. Other aggre- dreds or thousands to report jointly on gators focus on ½ltering and transla- complex stories. tion, assuming that interested readers will bring common context to the ta- The projects introduced above vary ble. Linktv produces Mosaic, a daily widely in terms of their scope of cov- news program that aggregates televi- erage, their use of professionals and sion news from the Middle East, trans- amateurs, and their operating meth- lating segments from Arabic, Persian, ods. However, they share a set of com- and Hebrew into English to provide mon challenges. an overview of perspectives aired in Any project that embraces contribu- regional media. tions from amateurs is subject to ques- Aggregators do not always need to tions about the accuracy and veri½abil- translate to be useful. In 1995, Palestin- ity of news reports. Citizen newsrooms ian journalist Daoud Kuttab realized generally do not have the resources to that, while many Arab governments verify stories posted. AllVoices, a Cali- censored stories about local politics, fornia-based citizen newsroom with lo-

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cal and global focus, ½lters out spam but through syndication and advertising rev- Interna- otherwise publishes all submissions, ar- enue. Aggregation and citizen reporting tional reporting in guing that this process is “democratic” sites face lower costs, as they generally the age of and starts conversations. Systems like do not pay contributors. But costs for participa- NowPublic track the popularity of sub- editing, ½ltering, community manage- tory media mitting authors, giving readers a clue ment, and translation are substantial, as to whether an author has submitted and recouping those costs through syn- once or has a long track record. Wikipe- dication or advertising may require rev- dia’s neutral point of view policy sug- enue sharing with the original content’s gests that opposing sides can argue authors. Virtually the only model that their way toward truth. This is like- has had no sustainability issues is Wiki- ly more true for popular, highly traf- pedia, which has had little trouble rais- ½cked articles than for obscure ones. ing the money needed for server space Aggregators have an easier time with and staff from its readers and contribu- veri½cation issues, as they generally as- tors. That said, Wikipedia does not actu- sert that their job is to provide a selec- ally report news; it triangulates reports tion of citizen reporting and opinion, from mainstream media in a way that not to validate those reports. However, could be considered derivative or para- aggregators select and amplify these sitic, in ½nancial terms. voices, suggesting some degree of re- Many of the experiments in interna- sponsibility for ½ltering out irresponsi- tional reporting are being launched with ble or inaccurate voices. The profession- substantial foundation support. This ½- al newsrooms can offer the reassurance nancial backing raises the potential for that their authors are trained journalists conflicts of interest. While foundations following a rigorous ethics code. But the have long supported high-quality jour- special circumstances of international nalism through grants, we are beginning news seem especially vulnerable to Jay- to see reporting that is even more close- son Blairism. The stories covered by ly linked to donors. The Kaiser Family networks like GlobalPost are often ex- Foundation has founded an “editorially clusives that cannot be corroborated independent” multimedia news network with newswire reports or fact-checked that exclusively covers health policy is- against accounts in competing media sues, the Foundation’s chief focus. outlets. We rely on the professionalism While there is no direct parallel in in- of the reporters and editors, not on sys- ternational news, relief and advocacy or- temic checks available on more widely ganizations are already important play- covered stories. ers in the media ecosystem. Humanitar- Nearly all projects experimenting ian and un groups often control access with international journalism in the new to stories: it is virtually impossible to re- media age face serious sustainability is- port on Central African conflicts with- sues. ProPublica’s newsroom is extreme- out cooperation from the Red Cross or ly expensive, made possible by an annu- relief agencies, for example. Advocacy al commitment of $10 million in fund- organizations often have knowledge of ing from Herbert and Marion Sadler. It stories that would otherwise elude an is unclear whether the market for high- intrepid freelancer. A recent GlobalPost quality international news will support story focused on deforestation in Cam- the cost of producing content on Global- bodia due to the harvest of safrole oil, Post and other new professional sites used to make the recreational drug Ec-

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Ethan stasy. All photos for the story were pro- impacted the United States, and the re- Zuckerman vided by Flora and Fauna International, maining story was the Beijing Olympics, on the future an advocacy group that coordinated a in which U.S. athletes broke numerous ofnews raid on the harvesting operations and records.15 The ability to build interest in that, apparently, coordinated the jour- important international stories may be nalist’s story as well.14 waning, as interactive media make it in- Many emerging projects hope to creasingly easy for readers to select the generate a subscriber or member base stories they are most interested in. And willing to pay for quality coverage inde- the rise of participatory media, an Inter- pendent of undue corporate or founda- net where writing is becoming as com- tion influence. Generating this revenue mon as reading, means the battle for at- stream, or revenues from online or off- tention takes place in an increasingly line advertising, requires building an crowded market. audience. This challenge may prove If building an audience interested in the steepest for this new generation international news is a core challenge for of international news projects. fledgling newsrooms to overcome, the events in Iran may represent another rev- While the spread of the Internet has olutionary change. More than 480,000 made it possible for people to access users of Twitter commented on events more international news more direct- in Iran during the ½rst two weeks of ly–whether through the projects ex- the protests;16 more than 160,000 have plored here or by directly reading and used a popular tool to turn their Twitter watching nondomestic news sources– icons green in support of protesters.17 it is unclear if people’s interests have These users were not just interested in become more cosmopolitan. The Pew the story–they felt they were part of Research Center for the People and the story, actively helping to amplify the Press surveys U.S. households on reports from the ground rather than a weekly basis to track what news sto- passively consuming news. Reporting ries they are following most closely. international news by letting users be- In 2008, twelve of the ½fteen stories come part of the reporting and ampli½- Americans reported being most inter- cation process might represent a chance ested in were purely domestic. Two of to bridge interest gaps that otherwise the others were about hurricanes that threaten to encourage parochialism.

endnotes 1 http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/29/business/media/29coverage.html. 2 Edward Said, Covering Islam (1981; New York: Vintage Books, 1997). 3 http://sambrook.typepad.com/sacredfacts/2009/06/twittering-the-uprising.html. 4 http://globalvoicesonline.org/2009/06/17/iran-islamist-bloggers-react-to-protest -movement/. 5 http://news.cnet.com/8301-17939_109-10264398-2.html. 6 ap and Context-Based Research Group, “A New Model for News.” 7 Danah Boyd, “Identity Production in a Networked Culture: Why Youth Heart MySpace,” (Washington, D.C.: American Association for the Advancement of Science, February 19, 2006).

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8 Web Ecology Project, http://www.webecologyproject.org/2009/06/iran-election-on Interna- -twitter/. tional reporting in 9 I developed a simple tool to monitor the popularity of terms on Twitter in real time, the age of measuring the number of total posts on the system that occur during the ½rst and hun- participa- dredth mention of a term on Twitter’s search engine. More information on the tool is tory media available at http://www.ethanzuckerman.com/blog/2009/06/25/flock-part-two-twitter -and-the-news-cycle-perfect-together/. Using the tool in the days immediately after the Iranian protests, tweets containing the word “Iran” represented up to 3 percent of total post volume. 10 http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/29/business/media/29coverage.html. 11 Clay Shirky, “Newspapers and Thinking the Unthinkable” (2009), published online at http://www.shirky.com/weblog/2009/03/newspapers-and-thinking-the-unthinkable/. 12 http://www.poynter.org/column.asp?id=131&aid=167048. 13 At this point, the most active Indymedia community is the one based in Athens, producing content in Greek; http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/indymedia.org. 14 http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/asia/090812/drugs-ecstasy-cambodia. 15 http://people-press.org/report/479/. 16 Web Ecology Project, http://www.webecologyproject.org/2009/06/iran-election-on -twitter/. 17 http://helpiranelection.com/.

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Mitchell Stephens

The case for wisdom journalism–and for journalists surrendering the pursuit ofnews

When journalists and those who value to cataloging the many egregious blind them compose their apocalyptic screeds, spots of newspapers and newscasts– when they repair to conferences to rend with their sometimes narrow-minded their clothes, wail their wails, and curse “gatekeepers.” The Web’s weak points, the Fates, they are wont to declare news at ½rst glance, appear to be in coverage itself to be in crisis.1 In this, however, of news that grew up together with they are wrong. News, for the most part, newspaper beat systems: varieties of is in ½ne shape. local news in particular. The recent arrival of the most power- However, the growing numbers of ful information technology in human us fortunate enough to have an Internet history has been, on balance, a great connection now have access to a remark- blessing for news. The Web remains ably generous supply of news. The gates very young, but already it gathers ac- have flung open. And the flow of news counts of an extraordinarily wide va- on the Web seems, if anything, likely to riety of events from an extraordinarily continue to broaden, deepen, and accel- wide variety of sources. It disseminates erate. Entrepreneurs and nonpro½ts are these accounts in a wide variety of for- even beginning to address some of those mats, fast and far. Never before have blind spots. The future of news, in other we seen a news medium like it. words, appears reasonably secure. This does not mean news on the Web It is the future of journalism that is is always edifying, constructive, or re- looking grim. Journalists have made liable. News in print or on tv, after their living for approximately the last all, has often enough failed to display century-and-a-half either by selling those qualities. And the Web’s mani- news or by selling ads next to news. fold strengths as a news medium do However, the flood of information on not mean all news will be equally well current events that is sloshing around served by it. We have to be alert, as we the Internet right now can be had, most- must be with any medium, for blind ly, for free, and the supply of news-rich spots. Once, it should be remembered, pages on the Internet is now so large journalism reviews devoted themselves that it is hard to charge much for ads on those pages. Understandably, this © 2010 by the American Academy of Arts new reality has strained pro½t margins & Sciences and flummoxed business models. There

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is not much of a living in hawking that standings of a ½eld, as reasonable The case which is given away free. as they may sound, sometimes must for wisdom journalism The end of the era when it was possi- change. Consider–to jump ½elds and ble to make a good business out of the centuries for a moment–the case of gathering and dissemination of news is Ernest Meissonier.3 causing large numbers of talented, hard- Meissonier, who died in 1891, was working journalists to lose their jobs. long the most respected painter in Par- This is a tragedy. This is the crisis. It is is and, therefore, the world. His pains- a crisis not for news but for journalism. takingly accurate re-creations of great But, without making light of this hu- events dominated the most important man tragedy and this professional crisis, expositions and commanded the high- an opportunity can be discerned here– est prices. But in the late nineteenth for journalism. The Web allows our best and early twentieth centuries this no- journalists to surrender the prosaic task tion that quality in art was dependent of telling everyone what just happened. upon precision and verisimilitude fad- It allows them to leave some coverage of ed. Meissonier’s reputation tumbled speeches and press conferences to the after his death to the point where one cable networks and YouTube; to leave major two-volume history of French some interviews with investigators and art in the nineteenth century did not survivors to diligent wire-service report- mention his name. The Louvre even- ers; to fob off some surveillance of vari- tually exiled a marble statue of Meis- ous backwaters on the gadflies and ob- sonier from its halls. sessives who replenish their blogs every This change in understandings of couple of hours. The Web allows our what painting should be can be attrib- best journalists–it requires them, I will uted in part to a new technology: pho- argue–to return to an older and higher tography. It made producing painstak- view of their calling: not as reporters of ingly accurate re-creations of just about what’s going on but as individuals capa- anything easy and, thus, cheap. Have ble of providing a wise take on what’s technologies today, particularly tech- going on. nologies introduced in the past couple of decades, done the same with the Most Americans today think of jour- painstaking gathering of information nalists as most journalists think of them- on current events? Have they outdated selves: as reporters of news. An under- the view of quality in journalism cham- standing like this can become deeply en- pioned by Bill Keller and most other tra- trenched over the course of a century- ditional journalists: this veneration of and-a-half. Indeed, it would be dif½cult witnessing, digging, ½nding sources, to ½nd many American journalists today and checking? Keller moans that “there who would disagree with the de½nition is a diminishing supply” of his version of quality in their ½eld supplied (in an of “quality journalism.” Given the abil- online discussion with readers) by Bill ity the Web grants us all to witness, dig, Keller, executive editor of The New York ½nd sources, and check–to search–is Times: “By quality journalism I mean the it possible the supply of this kind of jour- kind that involves experienced reporters nalism should diminish? going places, bearing witness, digging Journalists will, of course, still have to into records, developing sources, check- go places, interview, uncover, and check ing and double-checking.”2 But under- facts. But doing that will no longer be

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Mitchell enough. Exclusives and investigations hood that our ancestors’ genes might Stephens will still have value. But my argument is make it to the next generation. The news on the future that, for the most part, journalists must for which we most thirst has usually been ofnews learn to conceive of quality in journal- news of what is going on near us. But lo- ism as wisdom–expertise, judgment, in- cal news still was monopolized in the sight–in interpreting the news. This ½rst years of the United States by the may sound like a new idea. It is actually oldest news medium: word of mouth. an old one. It was exchanged in taverns and coffee houses, on front porches and on the Bill Keller insists that his version of streets of towns like Boston, New York, “quality journalism” provides “the in- and Philadelphia–for free. No printer formation you need to be an engaged and no weekly could scoop neighbor- citizen.” The founders of this country hood busybodies on an intriguing local certainly did agree that the citizenry political development or crime. requires a free press. Writing in the Opinions–in newspapers and pam- National Gazette a couple of years after phlets–rallied the American colonies he helped draft the First Amendment, against the British. Opinions then James Madison stated how important helped shape the new democracy. It “a circulation of newspapers through is hard to imagine anyone at the time the entire body of the people” is “to lib- having anything glorious to say about erty.”4 However, Keller’s understanding the mere dissemination of news. of the function of newspapers would have been unintelligible to the found- The word news, in its current usage, ers. For not only were there no report- is very old. However, in Madison’s ers witnessing or digging in America day, journalism referred only to the keep- in 1791, there were no reporters. ing of a private journal. Its meaning Newspapers then were the products morphed somewhat earlier in French, of individual printers, who culled out- but, according to the Oxford English Dic- of-town papers for interesting or impor- tionary, journalism was ½rst applied in tant items; reprinted letters, speeches, English to work on newspapers in 1833.6 and transcripts; and then added disqui- It was de½ned that year in the Westmin- sitions of their own or of their acquain- ster Review as “the intercommunication tances. They rarely undertook excur- of opinion and intelligence.”7 Intelligence sions beyond their print shops. Why is an interesting term for news here, but did Madison consider “a circulation a term for news nonetheless. So, by 1833, of newspapers” so crucial? Because, newspapers were beginning to be seen he wrote, it “facilitates a general inter- in part as organs for the dissemination course of sentiments”–not news of of news. politics, in other words, but opinions In London at that time (more than in on politics. France or anywhere else), increased en- This does not mean that people in ergy was being applied to the gathering Madison’s time, or any other, lacked of “intelligence.” Many papers had be- an interest in news. We humans were gun employing reporters, a word that was born, as I have argued elsewhere,5 with itself making a transition: from teller or a basic thirst for news, undoubtedly be- transcriber of an event (perhaps using cause knowledge of potential threats shorthand8) to gatherer of news. Lon- and opportunities improved the likeli- don newspapers, which had long been

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publishing daily, had become a place to tion, “essential” as it may be, as “almost The case look not just for clippings and opinion purely mercantile and clerical.”9 In 1881, for wisdom journalism but for the information, the news, those the English essayist Leslie Stephen (Vir- reporters gathered. Newspapers on the ginia Woolf’s father) characterized the outskirts of the English-speaking world, “reporter of ordinary events and speech- in North America, eventually followed es” as “a bit of mechanism instead of a suit. man.”10 And it was at about this time that two Only in the second half of the twen- inventions arrived that would begin to tieth century did reporting news–not tip the balance in “journalism”–this just “the discussion and explanation” “intercommunication of opinion and of it–begin to gain real cachet.11 Ivy intelligence”–further toward the latter. leaguers (enamored with the excite- First came the steam press, which en- ment and Hemingway) replaced high abled “journalists” to distribute their school graduates (enamored with the newspapers quickly and widely. Then excitement and the regular paycheck) the telegraph was invented, giving “jour- on the White House beat, at city hall, nalists” quick access to news from afar. and, soon, even on the police beat. By Amateurs on the street began to have “bearing witness, digging into records, dif½culty competing with these daily, developing sources” they brought down steam-powered, wired, news behe- a president, exposed a massacre in Viet- moths. If you could obtain it quickly nam, and shined a light on a wide vari- enough, if you could distribute it fast ety of miseries and corruptions. Fact- and far enough, you could make a busi- obsessed reporters became heroes in a ness out of selling what humans had fact-obsessed age. (Indeed, “naive real- always exchanged for free. ism,” as the postmodernists call it, pre- It took the better part of the nine- served its hold on journalism long after teenth century in the United States; it art and literature had moved on.12) Jour- took the desperate hunger for “intel- nalism had become the painstaking gath- ligence” occasioned by an unbeliev- ering of information on current events. ably bloody war; it took the spread, Journalists in Europe often maintained in many endeavors, of a mindset that a more pointed perspective on events– emphasized unvarnished facts, but the Telegraph and Le Figaro from the right, journalism increasingly became syn- for instance, the Guardian and Le Monde onymous with the gathering and dis- from the left. But in the United States, semination of news. “intelligence” was generally revered It wasn’t necessarily the most distin- to the point where it was considered guished of undertakings. An 1869 maga- sinful to sully it by any “intercommu- zine article on journalism by the Ameri- nication” with opinion. The standard can essayist Richard Grant White gives of “quality journalism” before which an idea of the status of the mere reporter Bill Keller and his cohort genuflect had of news: “Of the two branches of jour- been raised. All hailed the reporter. nalism, which are the gathering and the publication of news and the discussion But then that period during which and explanation of the events thus made it was possible to make a business out public, the former is the more essential, of selling news ended. It feels as if it the latter the more important.” White has been sudden. It has not been that ends up dismissing the former occupa- sudden.

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Mitchell Radio began disseminating news be- has to tell us is familiar. As we spread Stephens fore the papers, even with their extras, cream cheese on a fresh bagel, much of on the future could hit the streets. And radio arrived what we are reading on the front page of ofnews free. Per capita newspaper circulation The New York Times is stale. As we drive began its descent in the United States. to work, even much of what some sol- Television news, too, was fast and free emn-voiced reporter is recounting on and awfully pleasing to the eye. Cable npr’s Morning Edition is no longer news made it available around the clock. to us. In the news game the race is to the That descent accelerated. Extras and swiftest. afternoon papers disappeared. News- News habits are strong. Those current- papers achieved their greatest respect- ly over ½fty may continue to peruse with ability in the last third of the twenti- pleasure yesterday’s headlines with their eth century as–and isn’t this the way morning coffee. But for their younger it goes–they were beginning to lose siblings and their children it is probably their audiences.13 game over. Newspapers and even many Then something rather sudden did newscasts cannot regularly compete happen: with the Web the whole world with the Internet for news. rapidly started becoming one big tav- Ah, you say, but the front page of The ern, coffee house, front porch, or street New York Times can do a better job with through which news races–mostly for a story than did an Associated Press ac- free. Soon it seemed anything news- count on Yahoo. Yes, but do those quotes papers could do with news, websites, from a couple of sagacious sources neg- some of them subsidized by newspa- lected by the ap, those three extra par- pers, could do better–for free. Web- agraphs putting the event in context, sites are currently beginning to dem- make up for the fact that you’ve already onstrate the ability to outdo radio known this “news” for twenty hours? and television newscasts, too. Hold on, you say, a version of this story Now when a major event happens was up on the Times website not long –a well-known person dies, votes are after Drudge, Huf½ngton, and the others cast, bullets fly, bombs explode–that had it, and it was more measured and event ½rst happens for most of us on thorough. Yes, but is that all The New the Internet. Maybe some of us initial- York Times is to be: The Huf½ngton Post ly learn the news on washingtonpost or the Associated Press but a little slow- .com or cnn.com, but we also might er and somewhat better? ½rst encounter it on The Huf½ngton Post, Our best journalists need to ½nd a the Drudge Report, the remarkably com- new game to play. Instead of remain- prehensive Google News, or any of ten ing also-rans in the race for increasingly thousand other news sites–profession- hard-to-peddle news, they have to ½nd al or amateur, general or specialized. something else with which to compete. Or maybe we come upon the news un- They have to begin selling something der the count of how many unread mes- less common, less cheap than news. sages we have in our Yahoo mailbox. Exclusives are one possibility. Upon Therefore, by the time Brian Williams occasion a reporter manages to secure comes on at six thirty, most of us with a vantage point webcams and other re- any facility with a computer already know. porters have not achieved–at the scene As we lie in bed and ½ddle with the re- of some atrocity somewhere, perhaps. mote, much of what Anderson Cooper In such circumstances “going places,

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bearing witness” certainly has journal- training, to leave the teaching and guid- The case istic value, even moral value. Upon oc- ing to expert sources. So we get a Har- for wisdom journalism casion a source passes on something vard professor here, someone from the eye-opening to just one trusted report- Brookings Institution there, Norman er. Or an exclusive may, in fact, be the re- Ornstein everywhere. Smart commen- sult of “digging into records, developing tators, no doubt, but they are presum- sources” and exposing some wrong or ably being asked–as is usually the case injustice. Such investigative reporting, in interviews for newspapers–to expati- too, has nobility. This is news that truly ate on complex subjects extemporane- quali½es as “intelligence.” It certainly ously. And their unpolished comments, offers our journalists a way to compete. often part of extended arguments, are News organizations cannot, however, then sliced by the reporter into short depend solely on such exclusives. There quotations. These standard and accept- aren’t enough of them. Even with their ed journalistic practices hardly encour- battalions of veteran reporters, even age coherent and thorough interpreta- with their reputations as destinations of tions. Why shouldn’t the journalists choice for leaks, The New York Times and writing the stories themselves be smart The Washington Post can’t come close to commentators? ½lling their front pages each day with ma- “When my young friends consult me jor scoops. But interpretative articles, if as to the conditions of successful jour- they’re smart and interesting enough, nalism,” Leslie Stephen wrote in 1881, are also exclusive; wire-service report- “my ½rst bit of advice comes to this: ers are unlikely to be peddling the same know something really; at any rate, try perspective all over the Web. Our best to know something; be the slaves of journalists should be contributing some- some genuine idea, or you will be the thing of signi½cant civic and commer- slaves of a newspaper.”16 Is there not cial value: new understandings. need for journalists who themselves “really” know a lot? Might readers Writing before American journalists searching for some extra value not ap- had entirely given themselves over to the preciate the more frequent flickering pursuit of news,14 Richard Grant White of a “genuine idea”? Aren’t journalists insisted that a journalist who “has any who fail to pursue ideas enslaving them- other purpose in life than to make mo- selves to an increasingly unremunera- ney” should aspire to the role of “teach- tive, unrewarding view of what journal- er and guide.”15 It is in this role, White ism might be? stated, that the journalist “deserves re- One reason mainstream reporters spect.” White assumed that this judg- hide behind sources is to protect them- ment was shared. It is not widely shared selves against the accusations of bias by mainstream American journalists that pepper American news organiza- today. Teachers and guides marshal tions. As long as journalists are seen pri- accumulated learning and good sense marily as collectors of news, as mere in order to help us better comprehend witnesses, they will be judged by the something. We have come to expect evenhandedness with which they col- less than that today from our most re- lect, by the faithfulness and dispassion spected journalists. of their witness. Opinion will have to Contemporary American journalists be suppressed, and journalists will end instead are disposed, by instinct and up putting considerable energy into dis-

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Mitchell guising whatever point of view they may traditional just-the-facts, “½ve Ws” lead Stephens have achieved. However, if the goal of paragraph. All were important stories: on the future journalism is seen, instead, as imparting about a then sinking economy and plans ofnews understanding of events, then accuracy to improve it (four of them), about Rush and fairness still, of course, are crucial, Limbaugh and Republican politics, about but they are not all. Doesn’t insightful- hunger in North Korea. But instead of ness often bene½t from a point of view just reporting what happened yesterday –from a fair, well founded but pointed –though there was a fair amount of that, perspective? too–they considered; they character- An opinion, if it is held without reflec- ized; they investigated; they measured tion, can interfere with learning. But an effects and looked behind scenes. They opinion can also provide an impetus and were doing quite a bit, that day, of what a framework for learning. If we use opin- this essay argues they should do a whole ions to sort out to whom we will deign to lot, every day. listen, they can narrow our perspectives. The ½rst lesson of this front page is But turning to someone with a like mind that the route out of journalism’s cri- can be useful in adapting old principles sis being promoted here is not as radi- to new situations.17 Why must most cal (or, alas, as revelatory) as it may mainstream journalists work so hard to sound. More and more interpretation disguise the fact that they have weighed is already appearing in newspapers and the arguments and reached a conclusion? on newscasts: not just in editorials– And it is not just a question of opinion. remnants of the pre-reporting era; not Ideas about current events, insights into just in columns and op-ed pieces–care- current events, interpretations of current fully walled off from the news stories events don’t have to array themselves on that contemporary journalists consider the political spectrum to be stimulating. their main business; interpretation is Indeed, the less they ½t traditional no- appearing on the news pages themselves. tions of partisanship the more thought Analysis is the journalist’s preferred provoking they often are. All that is re- word for such efforts to go beyond mere quired is that they be important and in- reportage–probably because it sounds teresting. clinical and, therefore, objective. Some Provocative, insightful interpretations stories in some papers are given a spe- are beginning to sprout here and there in cial designation: “news analysis.” One, our new, vaster, wilder journalistic ecol- by Sheryl Gay Stolberg, even turned up ogy. But they remain rare on what are in the lead position on the front page still the most valuable parcels of journal- of The New York Times during the health istic real estate: tradition continues to care debate.18 But the “news analysis” dictate that newspaper front pages or slug is not required. For reporters have network evening newscasts be devoted been granted increased leeway to char- primarily not to teaching or guiding but acterize, not just transcribe, in stan- to retelling by-now old news. dard-issue stories themselves. One quick, limited historical survey What happened one day when there may help demonstrate that shift: an was an exception to this rule is instruc- analysis of the main New York Times tive. On March 6, 2009, The Washington story reporting on the ½rst speech giv- Post displayed a front page upon which en before a joint session of Congress none of the six stories opened with a by each of our last twelve presidents.

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For Presidents Truman through Carter, nect policy to style. Sometimes they ex- The case at least 18 percent, and sometimes more plain, predict, or conclude. The most for wisdom journalism than twice that, of the words in the story partisan celebrate or, more commonly, were quoted directly from the speech.19 bemoan. In those same stories on Presidents Rea- Interpretation–coming up with a gan through Obama, fewer than 18 per- “meaning,” an “explanation,” or a “sig- cent, and sometimes less than half that, ni½cance”–seems better able to encom- of the words were taken by the Times pass the broad repertoire of tunes such reporter directly from the speech. This commentators sing. But interpretation rough measure con½rms what careful apparently sounds more subjective. newspaper readers may already have It makes some traditional journalists noticed: news stories are somewhat uncomfortable. Indeed, this whole less stenographic than they used to business of moving beyond the mere be. Wordings that imply some sort of telling of news makes traditional jour- reportorial judgment, such as “thinly nalists uncomfortable–even if they veiled swipe,” are now used more; di- are indubitably, if half-heartedly, do- rect verbs of attribution–declared, for ing more of it. example–used less. And that is the second lesson of The What is called “analysis” has also Washington Post’s front page on March 6, burgeoned on television news. On the 2009. A blog sponsored by Washingtonian evening newscasts of the three tradition- magazine quickly attacked the paper for al networks, presumably nonpartisan carrying “no news.”20 “Welcome to the commentators are regularly asked to new age of daily newspapering,” writer step back for larger meanings or step Harry Jaffe protested on that blog, “where up with inside dope; the late Tim Rus- the actual news of the day has migrated sert established the type. But the big to the Internet or tv or radio or the in- change has come on cable. After a ma- side pages of the paper. Bye-bye to the jor news story has been introduced on old ‘who-what-when-where-why.’” cnn, it does not take long before an The Post’s relatively new executive ed- anchor turns to “our panel” for some itor, Marcus Brauchli, felt called upon perspective upon it–often partisan to respond to the charge that he lacked perspective. And on fox, now msnbc, proper devotion to news. Brauchli did and a cnn show or two, as on talk ra- profess a commitment to “tell our read- dio, the anchors themselves are often ers . . . why it’s happening, how it might quite prepared to supply the partisan affect them and what’s likely to happen perspective. next.” He acknowledged–in other words, Analysis may not, in fact, be the best mine not his–that interpretation should term for this phenomenon, since the be part of the paper’s mission, its front- word’s primary meaning is to break page mission. But before he said that, down into component parts in search Brauchli had to establish his bona ½des of understanding. Our “analysts” may as a “newsman.” He had to pay obei- have a weakness for tearing things apart, sance to the mission that had dominat- but they hardly limit themselves to that. ed the old, and romanticized, “age of Sometimes they synthesize. Sometimes daily newspapering.” “We tell our read- they offer context, background, or a peek ers what’s happening,” Brauchli insist- behind scenes. Sometimes, unembar- ed–just as his predecessors would have rassed by the ad hominem, they con- insisted. No matter, apparently, that

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Mitchell most of those readers often already know And the appearance in newspapers of Stephens what is happening. these more interpretive articles remains on the future The discomfort traditional journal- sporadic and unpredictable–even, so ofnews ists continue to feel with providing in- far, at Brauchli’s Washington Post. Some- terpretations also helps explain why times a more “analytic” piece illumi- they don’t always do such a good job nates the major news event of the day of it. “Analyses” in newspapers and (actually, in print, the major news event on network newscasts can seem a lit- of yesterday), sometimes readers must tle hesitant, predictable, or flat. That make do with only the traditional ac- “news analysis” by Sheryl Gay Stol- count. There’s no guarantee in a news- berg, which led The New York Times, paper that a columnist, an op-ed con- had a real point to make: that a health tributor, or an editorial will bother to care plan along the lines President Oba- take up the subject on that day; these ma favored had a better likelihood of personages and pages operate by their passage than “conventional wisdom,” own more leisurely schedules, their as reported in recent news accounts, own whims. made it seem. Often, however, these The efforts of mainstream American news analyses don’t seem all that journalism to explore the territory be- much more analytic than the news yond plain reporting of news have, in stories that run next to them.21 other words, been tentative, spotty, and In part that’s because such pieces are unreliable. So bloggers have stepped into limited by the traditional journalist’s the gap. Indeed, that is surely among the almost inescapable reluctance to ex- explanations for the sudden success of press a strong point of view. Stolberg, bloggers–opinionated, snarky, smart– well versed on health care politics, was like Andrew Sullivan, Markos Moulitsas, willing to make an assertion on her own Josh Marshall, Mickey Kaus, Ana Marie authority: “The conventional wisdom Cox, and others. They are not restricted might be wrong,” she wrote. Even mut- by “walls” between news and opinion, ed by the “might,” that statement quali- and other vestigial remnants of an ear- ½es as an unusually powerful assertion lier journalism. They have a relatively for a New York Times reporter. A source clear view of where quality in journal- was not quoted in her story until the ism now lies: in exclusives, when avail- eighth paragraph. Frequently, however, able; but more often in intelligent, well- “news analysis” pieces lean, like most reasoned interpretation–in attempts at mainstream journalism, on the quotes of wisdom. experts, with the point of view of those questioning conventional wisdom duti- Many American journalists, it should fully offset by the point of view of those be noted, believe that a move from “shoe- supporting it. Too often these articles leather” reporting to what they dismiss emit, consequently, the squishy, method- as “thumb sucking” would be a disaster. ical sound of toothless rumination. They have a point. We don’t want “in- The “analysis” on cable tv has its own telligence” overwhelmed by “opinion” problems. The talking heads22 can seem, –as it can be on some of our more im- shall we say, a bit shrill. The word wisdom passioned radio talk shows, cable news does not always come to mind when con- programs, and websites. We do not gain sidering current efforts to chew over the from unsupported interpretations or dis- news–with or without fangs. tortions in service of a cause. Much con-

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tinues to depend, therefore, on the to be fair, its hair-trigger feedback mech- The case marshaling of what might (naively) anisms have made this medium extraor- for wisdom journalism be called cold, hard facts, the raw ma- dinarily responsive to criticism and cor- terials out of which persuasive inter- rection.) And if reporting of events ends pretations might be constructed. up in part in the hands of the sponsors of In many ways the raw materials those events, then we will have to work on current events are more easily ob- hard to correct for lacunae, tilts, and ex- tained now than ever before, thanks to cesses of cheeriness. the expansive, information-rich Web. But many aspects of society are al- Still, for unpublicized facts on uncom- ready being better reported today. And fortable subjects; for an outsider’s per- not all forms of reporting seem likely to spective and an outsider’s follow-up retain their value tomorrow. With the questions; for accounts that extract volume of available information ever the newsworthy from the run-of-the- increasing, digesting, indexing, order- mill, a certain amount of shoe-leather ing, and highlighting newsworthiness reporting remains, as Richard Grant are gaining importance; transcribing, White put it, “essential.” Journalism’s collecting, and witnessing–the pains- teachers and guides will continue to rely taking gathering of information on upon it. Who will supply this reporting? current events–are losing importance. Some newspaper journalists and The greatest value, as I have been argu- their cheerleaders have been chant- ing, will lie in bringing wisdom to that ing, “If we don’t do it, nobody can.”23 huge pile of information–which brings I suspect they are wrong. Various wire us back to the role of our best journal- services, or their online equivalents, ists and to a consideration of who can continue to provide accounts of might qualify as our best journalists. the day’s events. And the fact that Web journalism, in the initial decades of its At most American news organizations existence, may not yet have come up the career ladder is as encrusted with tra- with a way to uncover much of what dition as are the stories. You work your is now uncovered by the accomplished way up through a series of beats–from fact chasers of the Times and the Post covering a suburban town, say, to city doesn’t mean that it won’t. It took the politics to Washington. Such a résumé, purveyors of newspapers a couple of or a stint at a wire service, might still centuries to develop reporting systems. be appropriate for the portion of wis- Bloggers are already pretty skilled at dom journalists who specialize in ex- noting, kibitzing, questioning, dissect- clusives or investigations. However, it ing, deconstructing, and kvetching. is not clear that the talents nurtured They work the Web. We can allow allotting the “allegedly”s on the police them a few more years before we con- beat or developing sources at city hall clude that it will never occur to them necessarily translate into an ability to to put on a pair of pants and also work pen front-page news analyses or a col- the hallways. umn. Indeed, it is a demonstration of Until Internet journalism matures, or sorts of the “Peter Principle” that a po- if it remains in part in the hands of am- sition in which a point of view is of use ateurs, we will have to remain alert for should be the reward for a career of sup- lapses in accuracy, accountability, fair- pressing evidence of such a point of ness, or ethical standards. (Although, view.

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Mitchell If you were to construct from scratch eralists who are dependent upon expert Stephens an organization capable of discussing sources, the idea would be to hire idea- on the future the major events of the day, wouldn’t oriented specialists who know as much ofnews you want to hire individuals who, to as the expert sources. use Leslie Stephen’s wording, “know Then you would make sure one of something really”–who have earned these commentators was assigned the right to interpret? Yes, of course, each day to shed some light on each they would have to be able to write– of the major stories of the day. Editors to write fast, to write well. (The value and producers now go to great trouble of engaging prose, or engaging video, to include accounts of those stories– has not been well enough exploited although much of their audience no by newsrooms consumed by a fever longer depends on them for such ac- for facts.) And, of course, they would counts. The argument here is that our have to be attuned to the contempo- top journalistic organizations should rary world–ready to go out and ob- instead be working, with similar dili- serve, ask, listen, and test their ideas; gence, to make sure they include an ready to talk to sources (though not to interesting interpretation of each of depend entirely on sources). Nothing those stories–perhaps with a brief said here is meant to imply that these recap of the news a few paragraphs new wisdom journalists have leave to down in the article, for those who retreat to ivory towers while producing haven’t been keeping up. their deeper understandings. News is It is almost impossible to speak of still best understood in the places where journalism today without using the it is made and where its impact is felt. word news. Our journalists work in But wouldn’t it be useful if, instead of “newsrooms,” for “newspapers,” a background sparring with mayors and “newscasts,” or other “news organiza- police chiefs, four or ½ve of these hires tions.” We lack alternative terms for brought an expertise on macroeconom- these locales or enterprises. A “jour- ics, for instance, and another four or ½ve nalism room”? A “journalism-cast”? were well versed on the Middle East? A “journalism organization”? Maybe I don’t pretend such individuals would we need some new terms. The day be easy to ½nd. I do believe they could when journalists could support them- be found. Academics who can write– selves by reporting the news is ending. some of whom are already maintaining They must aim higher. They must be respected blogs–certainly might be re- wiser. cruited for these distinguished and influential positions. If journalism programs insist, as some are now doing,24 that their students master a subject matter and not just techniques, they could supply candidates. But the requisite expertise would not have to be certi½ed by a degree. It might come instead from private study or life experiences. Some years having reported on business or in the Mideast certainly wouldn’t hurt. However, instead of fact-oriented gen-

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endnotes The case 1 for wisdom This article is based on work completed at the Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Poli- journalism tics and Public Policy at Harvard University. 2 “Talk to the Newsroom: Executive Editor,” nytimes.com, January 30, 2009. 3 This account is based on that in Ross King, The Judgment of Paris: The Revolutionary Decade that Gave the World Impressionism (New York: Holtzbrinck, 2006). 4 James Madison, “Public Opinion,” National Gazette, December 19, 1791, in The Writings of James Madison, vol. VI, ed. Gaillard Hunt (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1906). 5 See Mitchell Stephens, A History of News, 3rd ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007). 6 The word journalist, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, made the transition earlier. Voltaire, for example, used journalist in 1737 to mean “contemporary historian.” Voltaire, “On History: Advice to a Journalist,” in The Varieties of History: From Voltaire to the Present, ed. Fritz Stern (New York: Meridian, 1956). 7 This article itself was translated from the French; Westminster Review XVIII (January–April 1833). “Du Journalism,” Revue Encyclopédique (September 1832). 8 Isaac Pitman’s book is entitled The Reporter: Or, Phonography Adapted to Verbatim Reporting (Bath, U.K.: n.p., 1846). 9 Thanks to Brooke Kroeger for bringing this article to my attention. Richard Grant White, “The Morals and Manners of Journalism,” The Galaxy VIII (December 1869): 6; American Periodicals Series, 840. 10 Leslie Stephen, “The Duties of Authors,” in Leslie Stephen, Social Rights and Duties, vol. II (London: n.p., 1896), 154–156. 11 War reporting gained cachet earlier, with dashing reporters like William Howard Russell, Richard Harding Davis, and Stephen Crane. However, they were known for their literary and interpretive abilities, and their courage, more than for their adeptness with facts. 12 See Mitchell Stephens, “Deconstruction and the Get-Real Press,” Columbia Journalism Review, September/October 1991. 13 Newspapers’ increased respectability came, in part, because the audiences they were left to serve–after television–tended to be better educated audiences. 14 See David Mindich, Just the Facts: How “Objectivity” Came to De½ne American Journalism (New York: New York University Press, 2000). 15 White, “The Morals and Manners of Journalism.” 16 Stephen, “The Duties of Authors.” 17 I owe this point to Thomas Patterson. 18 Sheryl Gay Stolberg, “After Recess, Health Talk Steps Lively,” The New York Times, Sep- tember 9, 2009. The jaunty headline on this piece is not reflective of its content. 19 For a different reading of historical coverage of presidential messages to Congress, see Michael Schudson, “The Politics of Narrative Form: The Emergence of News Conven- tions in Print and Television,” Dædalus 111 (4) (Fall 1982): 97–112. 20 Thanks to Maralee Schwartz for directing me to this story. Harry Jaffe, “Flash: Front Page of Washington Newspaper Contains No News,” Capital Comment Blog, Washingtonian .com, March 6, 2009. Jaffe, to be fair, has interesting, nuanced views of the Post’s situation. 21 For an example, see Helene Cooper, “On the World Stage, Obama Issues an Overture,” The New York Times, April 3, 2009.

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Mitchell 22 It is also unfortunate that edited video and the other visual tools that can elevate television Stephens over radio tend to disappear when the “analysts” come on. We are left, instead, with shots on the of the moving mouth of a Bill O’Reilly, Rachel Maddow, or George Stephanopoulos. future ofnews 23 Here’s John S. Carroll, a former editor of the Los Angeles Times, from a speech to the Amer- ican Society of Newspaper Editors on April 26, 2006: “Newspapers dig up the news. Oth- ers repackage it.” 24 To pick my own program as an example, New York University’s Carter Institute of Jour- nalism now offers specialized master’s programs in, among other subjects, science, health, and environmental journalism; cultural reporting; and business and economic journalism. All undergraduate journalism majors are also required to complete another major in the liberal arts.

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Jane B. Singer

Journalism ethics amid structural change

Journalism–as a practice, a product, narrative style. Traditional ethical and a profession–is undergoing rapid guidelines for “making news” are and dramatic structural change. There being reconsidered. are four key aspects of this change, each • Relationship structure is changing. with its own ethical implications. Relationships between journalists • Economic structure is changing. For and “the people formerly known as many practitioners, the collapse of the audience”1 are evolving to accom- previously reliable business models modate the increasingly open and is the most pressing, and distressing, fluid construction of meaning just of the changes. Tactics to develop described. Practitioners are revisit- alternative revenue streams and to ing ethical principles predicated on shore up old ones create new or new- maintaining professional distance ly intensi½ed ethical pressure points. and difference.

• Organizational structure is changing. These four aspects of occupational Newsrooms are being dramatically change are interconnected, and so are resized and recon½gured, and roles the ways in which they affect the ethi- within them rethought. New respon- cal beliefs and behaviors of journalists. sibilities and working conditions gen- However, by ½rst exploring each on its erate ethical issues for journalists. own, we can then attempt to weave the strands together and look to the future. • Narrative structure is changing. As journalists have adapted to the Inter- net, their stories have taken on a more As the ½rst decade of the twenty- postmodern form. The construction ½rst century ended, media organiza- of meaning is more fluid than in the tions faced a double economic wham- past, and the process of that construc- my. One aspect is cyclical. The wide- tion is more open and transparent. In spread economic downturn has been addition, new formats have encour- very bad news for the industry. Among aged and facilitated a more personal other effects, virtually none of them positive, stock prices have plummet- ed, advertising revenue has evaporat- © 2010 by the American Academy of Arts ed, and many readers have decided & Sciences that the pennies spent on a newspa-

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Jane B. per are among the easiest to pinch. The away what is extremely expensive to Singer combination means less–much less– produce–call it journalism–and get- on the future money available to do journalism. ting next to nothing in return. In the ofnews But recessions come and go. Digital process, they also are building audi- media seem here to stay, making their ence expectations that this is the way economic impact more signi½cant. For a the world of information should work. decade and more, news outlets gambled The ethical implications are of the that an advertising model that had paid sort that ½nancial pressures typically most of the bills for 150 years–a model create, many of them relating to issues in which the cost to an advertiser was of editorial independence. The Washing- based largely on how many people were ton Post’s aborted plan to sell seats at the likely to see the ad–would migrate more table to sponsors of “salons”–bringing or less intact to the Internet. While they together journalists, lawmakers, admin- waited for that to happen, publishers istration of½cials, business leaders, and concentrated on building the reader- others for off-the-record discussion of ship of their af½liated websites, mainly public policy issues, at a cost of up to by offering most or all of their content $25,000 per sponsor–is only one of the online for free. more egregious examples.2 In fact, it Particularly among the print media, was one of the easier ones to deal with, these efforts have been successful. Most and the Post abandoned the idea well newspaper and magazine websites have before the ½rst cocktail was poured. far more visitors than their correspond- The proper ethical response to other ing hard copies have readers. Nearly an issues of journalistic independence that entire generation of news consumers are emerging as revenues sink can be has grown up with readily available in- more open to debate: formation at their ½ngertips–and the • To what extent should user interest in a expectation that all of it is, and always particular story or type of story (which, will be, free. of course, can be precisely identi½ed Many publishers are now thinking and tracked through website “hit logs”) they should have been more careful affect journalists’ news decisions? Does what they wished for. Although on- more coverage or better play of high- line advertising revenue has seen sig- interest items constitute serving the ni½cant growth over the past ½fteen public, or is it merely what some in the years, it has not grown nearly enough newsroom deride as “traf½c whoring”? to make up for the deep revenue losses of traditional media products. Internet • One attractive and potentially lucrative advertising is ubiquitous, but it is also alternative to traditional advertising is very, very cheap. Moreover, both classi- commercial sponsorship of parts of a ½ed and display advertisers have many website. Sponsors want to be associat- more ways to reach audiences than be- ed with content targeted to the people fore; they need not, and increasingly likely to be interested in their goods or do not, rely on a media outlet to deliv- services. But what message do readers er their message to potential custom- get when a travel agency sponsors a ers (or, if you prefer, to bring poten- newspaper’s online travel section, a tial customers to their message). With local medical center its health section, something like horror, publishers have or an investment company its ½nan- belatedly realized that they are giving cial section?

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• Niche blogs, such as the “mommy freelancers for much of the website’s Journalism blogs” offered by Gannett newspa- information, a riskier proposition. The ethics amid structural per websites, have become very pop- viability of the whole enterprise could change ular–with local mothers and with easily be destroyed by a single lawsuit.4 people eager to sell them niche products. Site guidelines typically forbid The growth of journalistic “work for posting commercial messages, but it hire,” with its accompanying risks, is can be tough to tell the difference be- one of a host of issues raised by ongo- tween a blog post that is actually an ing changes to newsroom organization- unpaid ad and one that expresses the al structures. These changes stem in honest enthusiasm of a young mother large part from the economic pressures for a new brand of baby formula. described above; they are also an adap- Those are just examples of the sorts tation to the need to maintain a journal- of problems stemming from dif½culties istic website along with a traditional with traditional economic approaches. news product. In addition, news enterprises are taking Throughout the 1990s and well into tentative steps toward wholly different the 2000s, most media organizations models, as Robert Giles explores else- maintained separate and unequal Web where in this issue. New ventures in- operations. Typically staffed by relative- clude ongoing experiments with non- ly few, relatively inexperienced journal- pro½t journalism such as the ProPub- ists, these staffs often were segregated lica investigative journalism enterprise, from reporters and editors in the main backed primarily by foundation fund- newsroom, many of whom regarded ing, or the local Voice of San Diego, their online colleagues with disdain, if backed largely by individual donors. they regarded them at all. Online jour- Traditional media organizations also nalists spent much of their time “repur- are exploring new ownership models; posing” material created for the legacy an example is the partial Employee product, for instance by adding links Stock Ownership Plan (esop) that ac- or visual enhancements. companied the 2009 sale of a group of Changes began in the mid-2000s. Maine newspapers to a new publisher. “Convergence” became an industry man- But new models also raise ethical is- tra, with managers pushing newsroom sues, including questions about where staffs to develop a version of their sto- loyalties lie. For example, MinnPost.com, ries for the website or at least to work a nonpro½t journalism enterprise cover- more closely with those who could. Some ing issues in Minnesota, is funded large- journalists did incorporate the Internet ly by “member-donors” who contribute in their thinking, though mostly in the from $10 to $10,000 to the site. Some, as context of special projects rather than site reporter and blogger David Blauer routine news-gathering and news-writ- admits, are people he covers. And what ing. Many others continued to ignore happens to his journalistic credibility if the Web as long and as thoroughly as a public relations ½rm decides to steer possible. dozens of sponsors his way?3 Moreover, That is less and less likely to be an dependence on donors generally means option. By the late 2000s, growing there is not enough money for a large numbers of newsrooms were moving staff; that in turn means reliance on toward true multiplatform news production. The trend has been driven

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Jane B. both by the burgeoning online audience perfection” must be balanced with Singer and its expectation that the media web- the reality of having to let things go, on the future site will offer timely (and free) news, especially when editing for the Web. ofnews and by the brutal reality that staff cut- The Boston Globe’s Jim Franklin said backs mean fewer–perhaps far fewer, material may be published unedited with some newspapers losing half their online, then checked for problems lat- journalists–people available to handle er; in addition, he noted that “every- all the tasks necessary to sustain multi- one does everything,” editing content ple news products. across a range of topics whether or not Stories are increasingly likely to ap- they know anything about them. The pear online as soon as viable informa- same is true at The Dallas Morning News, tion is available, sometimes direct from where staff reductions have left a single a reporter’s laptop, mobile phone, or editor with just three hours at the end other transmission device; many news- of the night dedicated to the Web, ac- papers, for instance, are developing cording to business desk editor Chris “early teams” of journalists who begin Weinandt. work at dawn and work through the In short, newsroom staff sizes have early afternoon to prepare content shrunk at precisely the same time as for the website,5 which gets most of the website has become a more inte- its traf½c during the business day. Be- gral part of the news product, and the cause the Internet is a visual and audi- skills of remaining journalists have tory medium, the same reporters may been stretched in unfamiliar directions be expected to upload sound bites from to meet the expanding content require- interviews and to capture still and/or ments. The result is that online journal- video images; these rarely are formats ism is no longer separate, but it is, per- with which they have much expertise. haps ironically, increasingly unequal. Back in the newsroom, editors prepare When the website contained primarily content for both the website and the content repurposed from the tradition- legacy product–if they see it at all be- al medium, whatever ethical standards fore a reporter publishes it directly on- went into the latter were replicated online. Both reporters and editors also line. The shift to multiplatform produc- may double as bloggers or contribute tion is leading to different standards for to various social media offerings, as different media: With fewer people but discussed below. The news organiza- more work, the care taken with the on- tion may or may not maintain a dis- line product–which generally has the tinct online staff, but if it does, those larger audience–is likely to be inferior journalists are likely to work much to the care taken with the legacy one, more closely with the rest of the news- still seen as the “news of record” as room than was the case a decade, or well as the larger revenue generator. even a few years, ago. One copy editor describes the news- At the 2009 meeting of the Associa- paper as the broadsheet, while the tion for Education in Journalism and website is the tabloid. Mass Communication, newspaper copy Organizational restructuring also editors discussed the ethical implica- may give the journalist a greater role tions of these changes on the accuracy in marketing and promotion. Jill Van of what is published. Mike Richard of Wyke of Drake University points out The New York Times said the “desire for that with the advent of social media,

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editors have become instrumental not A newspaper reporter can use only words Journalism just in disseminating the news itself on paper, maybe accompanied by a pho- ethics amid structural but also in getting out news about the tograph or two; a television journalist re- change news. They are providing Twitter feeds, lies on pictures and sounds. Other con- publicizing stories through sites such as straints are created by space limitations. Facebook, and serving as online pitch- A newspaper has so many pages and no men in other ways as well. In addition, more; a radio newscast is over when its newsroom blogs have made editors and minutes are up. Still others derive from reporters more visible commentators the nature of publication or broadcast both on the news itself and on what deadlines. A story is ½nished when the goes into producing it, raising other presses run or the cameras roll, what- ethical issues in relation to changing ever the ongoing reality that any story narrative structures. can only partially describe. All these narrative strictures are jetti- Writing a news story is, traditionally, soned when journalism moves online, a somewhat formulaic process. Particu- with ethical implications for journalists. larly in American journalism, the “in- Along with the pressures created by a verted pyramid” structure, in which the move to a multimedia environment, we facts a journalist deems most crucial are already have seen how changes in orga- clustered at the top followed by details nizational structure affect the process of of decreasing importance the further checking the accuracy of information be- down one reads, is the most common. fore it is published. Accuracy is a compo- Alternative narrative structures may nent of, or more properly a route to, the be used, particularly in feature or other paramount journalistic norm of truth- “soft news” stories, but they tend to be telling. The Internet, a medium whose relatively underutilized and nearly as core narrative attributes involve inter- narrowly proscribed in form. activity and speed, accommodates an Moreover, with the exception of some understanding of truth that is far more columnists, most journalists are expect- open and more fluid than the one ened to write in a style that implicitly dis- closed by traditional journalistic struc- tances the writer from both subject and tures. audience. Journalists are trained to make It is more open because there is un- themselves as nearly invisible as possible limited space to tell the story, because to the reader. The reporter is idealized as the story can be connected with any an observer of events but not a partici- other bit of information through hyper- pant in or a commentator on them. This links, and, most important, because an detached professional stance is a core as- unlimited number of people are avail- pect of the journalistic ethic of objectiv- able to help with the telling. As stories ity, which combines ideas of indepen- are linked up to other websites, opened dence, neutrality, and a rough sort of to comments, replicated on blogs, and evenhandedness among the diverse views passed along viral information chains, of those involved in or affected by some- the journalist no longer controls either thing the journalist deems newsworthy. the content that is included or the sourc- There are other structural constraints es of that content; anyone who sees the on the traditional journalistic narrative story can add to it, challenge it, com- as well. Some stem from the limitations ment on it. Not all of those comments of the medium in which the story is told. are cogent, and not all of the challenges

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Jane B. stand up to scrutiny. But some are and newscasts not only because they are so Singer do, and the end result likely will be a dif- much less expensive to produce but also on the future ferent, more multifaceted version of the because any actual news has appeared ofnews “truth” of a story than the one the lone online hours before the scheduled news journalist started with. In short, the jour- show. Quality print newspapers are fore- nalist no longer is alone in carrying out grounding “news analysis” and other the process of determining what is true narrative structures that offer context and meaningful–or in disseminating the to help readers understand what they results of that process. The construction already know took place. Both of these of meaning is more widely shared in a narrative forms are giant steps away network that encompasses many seekers from a detached, neutral, facts-centered of truth and incorporates many voices in approach to reporting and writing. reporting and relaying it. But neither does the Internet necessar- In addition to being more open, the In- ily encourage the detachment inherent ternet is a more fluid news environment in the ethic of objectivity. On the con- because there also is unlimited time for trary, a network is about connections; it a story to be told. Especially for “break- bridges distances and erases boundaries ing news,” or news of an event as it is of all kinds, including those between happening, online audiences seem to journalists and readers. Before turning understand that details will be revised to the changes in relationship structures as events unfold and more or different that result, there is one more important information becomes available. If jour- change in narrative structure to touch nalism has always offered a snapshot on: the rise of the “j-blog.” of history, the camera now clicks off As journalist blogs have gained popu- frames at near-instantaneous speeds. larity, journalists warned all their work- A newspaper story must wait a whole ing lives to keep their personal view and day to be updated or amended; an on- voice out of their writing are now being line one can change many times an urged to showcase both. Indeed, j-blogs hour. Although news organizations are nearly the complete opposite in nar- continue to fret about how to signal rative structure from the traditional “ob- corrections, both journalists and audi- jective” news story. In tone, the best are ences are increasingly seeing stories as conversational, candid, even cheeky. works in progress, covering news as it They talk about “I” and “you,” not that unfolds rather than declaring it over be- other, more distant “third person” who cause a deadline is approaching. “The ½lls the paragraphs of most newspaper web,” says The New York Times’ Mike stories. They convey what the journalist Richard, “is a canvas that never dries.” thinks–both reflection on the world and Which brings us back to objectivity. self-reflection on the process of turning If news is being turned into stories on- parts of that world into a news product. line as it happens, and as people outside They invite responses from outside the the newsroom are shaping those stories newsroom, and j-bloggers then respond in myriad ways, what is left for the tra- to the responses. ditional media outlet to contribute? While some journalists say they feel The answer seems to be: interpretation. liberated, j-blogs make other reporters Across the television landscape, com- and editors ethically uncomfortable. The mentary formats have ½lled many of issue, as we’ll see below, comes down to the hours formerly devoted to formal an understanding of what constitutes

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journalistic credibility and trustworthi- to remain free from outside pressures Journalism ness. For some, it rests on open com- to shape information toward ends that ethics amid structural munication with the public, for which serve vested, rather than public, inter- change a blog offers a splendid new vehicle. ests. That said, journalists are either For others, credibility stems precise- naive or just plain wrong to think that ly from the preservation of a neutral protestations of independence and stance, which can be jeopardized by high-minded impartiality will suf½ce posting to a blog. when every word they write (or fail to write) is open to scrutiny and specula- The structural change in the relation- tion in the rowdiest, most rapid-½re, ships between practitioners and the and least restricted marketplace of public is having a profound effect on ideas ever created. newsroom culture. In the past, virtual- Instead, the ethical buzzword of the ly all of a journalist’s working relation- Internet is “transparency,” and it ad- ships were with sources and colleagues; dresses a wide range of real and imag- the newsroom walls (and at larger pa- ined journalistic sins. It is most close- pers, the security guard in the lobby) ly connected with the traditional jour- meant control over who entered the nalistic norm of accountability. Aside physical workspace, and ownership of from a few dictatorships, most nations the printing press or broadcast trans- around the world have at least one code mitter ensured even ½rmer control over of press ethics that delineates the na- who or what entered the news space. ture of accountability to peers, sources, Aside from the occasional phone call subjects, and audience members; the to the news desk or letter to the editor, U.S. Society of Professional Journalists’ which might or might not be edited Code of Ethics, for example, urges jour- and then published, actual readers or nalists to “clarify and explain news cov- viewers rarely touched the working erage and invite dialogue with the pub- lives of most journalists, particularly lic over journalistic conduct.”7 The In- at larger news organizations. ternet, with its unlimited space and in- In a networked environment, inter- herently interactive structure, offers the action with audience members has be- ideal platform for both explanation and come integral to the journalistic pro- conversation. cess. Consider again that notion of ob- In a traditional environment, jour- jectivity. One of the most hotly debat- nalists tend simply to ask audiences to ed issues in the industry today is wheth- trust them: to trust that they are being er objectivity remains valuable (or even truthful, that they have been diligent plausible) or whether it is being super- and open-minded in gathering informa- seded by an ethical zeitgeist better suited tion, that they have captured the most to the rise of a relativistic medium. An important details of a story in the ten emerging consensus seems to suggest inches or two minutes allocated to it. It that journalistic credibility in an unfet- is a lot to ask. Perhaps, as the declining tered information environment remains reputation of the news media suggests, crucial and rests to a signi½cant extent it is too much.8 The online environment, on independence from partisan or fac- though, offers the opportunity to active- tional interests.6 The ethical value in ly foster trust, not just demand it. both objectivity and independence lies Transparency can take various forms. in underscoring the need for journalists Using links to back up story references,

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Jane B. for example, is essentially an aspect of fession–and most journalists either be- Singer the new narrative structure already de- lieve themselves to be professionals or on the future scribed; a story is no longer self-con- aspire to be, depending on whom you ofnews tained but can be extended outward to ask–is the right to devise and enforce connect to other material anywhere on their own ethical standards.9 But on- the Internet. Although linking decisions line, oversight of journalists’ behavior require judgment about the appropriate- has become a team sport, and here, too, ness of what’s at the other end of a click, the newsroom no longer controls who most raise few ethical alarms for journal- gets to play. ists, who see them as offering readers rel- Many have been startled by the in- atively straightforward options to obtain tensity of the scrutiny–and by the more information about a story topic. fact that so few seem to think journal- Offering more information about one- ists are as ethical as they believe (or self, another crucial aspect of transpar- hope) themselves to be. The criticism ency, is a thornier issue for journalists is valuable for a variety of reasons, not steeped in a culture that prizes the main- least because it provides an impetus for tenance of professional distance. Many attention to ethical issues and efforts to harbor a not-irrational fear that such in- make changes where they are needed. formation could provide ammunition Perhaps less predictably, new relation- for those looking for bias behind every ship structures also are encouraging byline. However, other members of the journalists to think about what, exact- vast Internet community, including many ly, it is that they do and why (or if) it bloggers, have given precisely this ele- retains any value in a world in which ment of transparency a central place in anyone can be a publisher. their idea of how life in a network should A couple of my recent studies in Brit- function. As discussed above, journalists ain suggest that new relationships with themselves are ½nding blogs an optimal audiences are prompting journalists format for this sort of disclosure. to see their own ethical standards as More broadly, the Internet encour- a more de½nitive distinguishing char- ages the construction of closer relation- acteristic and a greater source of ongo- ships with news audiences than in the ing value than, say, the ability to write past. For journalists, serving the pub- well (an ability many outside the news- lic becomes about more than telling room share) or to gain access to sources people what information exists; it is (who can be found readily enough on- also about sharing in its discovery, ver- line). I asked journalists working for i½cation, and interpretation, as well as local newspapers in Britain what they providing help with its synthesis into thought about “user-generated con- meaningful knowledge–the interpre- tent”–all the things that people out- tive function described above. As jour- side the newsroom now contribute to nalists’ control over the flow of infor- a website, from comments on stories mation is signi½cantly loosened, and to their own news items and photos. as the process of “making news” be- One of the most striking ½ndings was comes more openly iterative, the enter- that journalists saw their own ethics as prise becomes necessarily collaborative. setting them apart from outside contrib- Sometimes the closeness is uncom- utors, too many of whom they viewed as fortable. Sociologists have long recog- abusive, partisan, or ill-informed (or all nized that one of the hallmarks of a pro- three).10 Their colleagues at a national

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newspaper similarly tended to see user changes in organizational structure fos- Journalism contributions as less credible, less civil, ter processes that make it dif½cult, if not ethics amid structural and just generally less cogent than their impossible, to establish the accuracy or change own. “With citizen journalists, it’s all veracity of what is published online. The rights and no responsibilities,” as one glut of digital information increases the journalist put it.11 value of information that is credible and Media ethicists have been arguing for trustworthy, but the Internet’s narrative a long time that ethical journalism rests structures undermine the detached neu- on ½nding the right balance between trality that journalists have relied on as freedom and responsibility,12 indepen- both a badge and a safeguard of trust- dence and accountability,13 liberty and worthiness. And journalists who are justice for all. The closer proximity be- tempted to use ethical guidelines to dis- tween those who work in a newsroom tance and differentiate themselves from and those who do not is throwing new readers are at the same time drawn into light on why achieving that balance relationships that are more personal, matters. They also demonstrate that more open, and more collaborative. each group has much to teach the oth- The future of journalism ethics may er, and much to learn. Journalists are rest on ½nding optimal ways to retain being told, in no uncertain terms, to the underlying principles–the profes- curb their arrogance; to open up their sional commitments to truth-telling, to practices to observation and, yes, cri- freedom from faction, to public service tique; and to loosen their control over and accountability–while affording information in order to provide a fuller, journalists and media organizations the fairer version of the truth. Audiences flexibility to remain relevant in rapidly are, as an entity, more amorphous and and radically changing circumstances. heterogeneous, but they also are learn- A focus on the increasingly prominent ing that relationships work best when ethic of transparency would be a good they abide by some restraints, when place to start. they try to get things right, and when Many of the criticisms of journalism they treat each other civilly. As web- can be traced to a failure of those hold- sites increasingly adapt and adopt rec- ing power over information to explain ommendation systems enabling users their decisions in wielding it–and to to highlight useful contributions and admit when they have failed to do so downgrade the less so, we may begin wisely. That power is now mitigated by to see a de½nable structure of “audi- the fact that journalists have much less ence ethics” emerge. It will be inter- control over the flow of information esting to see how closely it resembles than in the past. The change creates an the ethics of journalism. economic as well as an ethical opportunity to bolster the value of what jour- Journalists are pulled in conflicting nalists do and how they do it. Engaging ethical directions by the new structures with people outside the newsroom both described here. They cannot continue to reactively–that is, by responding sub- do their job without economic resources, stantively to criticism and concerns– yet some attractive options for bolster- and proactively–by taking advantage of ing those resources jeopardize their in- the new narrative structures described dependence. They retain a fundamental above to open a window on what hap- ethical commitment to truth-telling, but pens inside the newsroom–can go a

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Jane B. long way toward enhancing understand- need not only the integrity of individual Singer ing, strengthening relationships, and journalists but also the power of strong on the future fostering opportunities for greater trust media institutions to hold in check those ofnews in the news media. Without that public in society who would abandon their own trust, and the loyalty it commands, it is integrity and abuse their own power. No hard to see a way to reverse the down- democracy exists without a viable free ward spiral of an enterprise that risks press; it is hard to see how one could. losing its social as well as its economic But democracy is an inherently collabo- value. rative public undertaking. So, too, should I believe that journalism has enormous be the journalism that serves it.14 social value. You probably do, too. We

endnotes 1 Jay Rosen, “The People Formerly Known as the Audience,” PressThink, June 27, 2006, http://journalism.nyu.edu/pubzone/weblogs/pressthink/2006/06/27/ppl_frmr.html (accessed August 23, 2009). 2 Andrew Alexander, “A Sponsorship Scandal at the Post,” The Washington Post, July 12, 2009, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/07/11/ AR2009071100290.html (accessed August 24, 2009). 3 MinnPost.com, “About Us,” http://www.minnpost.com/about/ (accessed August 30, 2009); Zachary M. Seward, “MinnPost Seeks ‘Micro-Sponsors’ for Blog at $10 and $25 a Pop,” Nieman Journalism Lab, March 17, 2009, http://www.niemanlab.org/2009/03/ minnpost-seeks-micro-sponsors-for-blog-at-10-and-25-a-pop/ (accessed August 30, 2009). 4 Paul Starr, “Goodbye to the Age of Newspapers (Hello to a New Era of Corruption),” The New Republic, March 4, 2009, http://www.tnr.com/article/goodbye-the-age-newspapers -hello-new-era-corruption (via Centro de Estudios de Medios, http://www.medios.org .ar/?p=316) (accessed August 30, 2009). 5 Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism, “The Changing Newsroom: The Influence of the Web,” July 21, 2008, http://www.journalism.org/node/11966 (accessed August 30, 2009). 6 Bill Kovach and Tom Rosenstiel, The Elements of Journalism: What Newspeople Should Know and the Public Should Expect (New York: Crown, 2001). 7 Society of Professional Journalists, “Code of Ethics,” 1996, http://www.spj.org/ ethicscode.asp (accessed August 31, 2009). See also Claude-Jean Bertrand, Media Ethics and Accountability Systems (New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Publishers, 2000). 8 Arthur S. Hayes, Jane B. Singer, and Jerry Ceppos, “Shifting Roles, Enduring Values: The Credible Journalist in a Digital Age,” Journal of Mass Media Ethics 22 (4) (2007): 262–279. 9 Margali Sarfetti Larson, The Rise of Professionalism: A Sociological Analysis (Berkeley: Uni- versity of California Press, 1977). 10 Jane B. Singer, “Quality Control: Perceived Effects of User-Generated Content on News- room Norms, Values, and Routines,” Journalism Practice 4 (2) (2010): 127–142. 11 Jane B. Singer and Ian Ashman, “‘Comment Is Free, but Facts Are Sacred’: User-Generat- ed Content and Ethical Constructs at the Guardian,” Journal of Mass Media Ethics 24 (1) (2009): 3–21. 12 John C. Merrill, The Dialectic in Journalism: Toward a Responsible Use of Press Freedom (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1989).

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13 Jay Black, Bob Steele, and Ralph Barney, Doing Ethics in Journalism: A Handbook with Case Journalism Studies, 3rd ed. (Needham Heights, Mass.: Allyn and Bacon, 1999). ethics amid structural 14 Many people both inside and outside the profession of journalism are wrestling with change how ethical guidelines translate in a digital environment. Excellent further reading on the topic can be found on the Poynter Institute website at http://www.poynter.org/ content/content_view.asp?id=117350.

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Michael Schudson

Political observatories, databases & news in the emerging ecology of public information

The database is to the digital age what which the ideal of objective testimony the narrative was to the modern era of is cardinal.”3 By deepening the curricu- the novel and the cinema, according to lar riches of journalism schools (the few the oversimpli½ed but brilliant and pro- that then existed) and making them in- vocative formulation of Lev Manovich.1 tellectually more ambitious, each crop of This idea implies quite a lot, I believe, new recruits to journalism could, over about the future of news. time, raise the standards of the news. But the implications of the database Second, the world had simply be- for news do not begin with the Internet come far too complex to be adequately or with Google, but with the prolifera- reported by the conventional tools of tion of data-gathering and data-assem- journalism. The news from which the bling institutions in the 1970s. Even ear- reporter “must pick and choose has long lier, the role that data could, and should, since become too complicated even for play in journalism was considered by the most highly trained reporter,” Lipp- Walter Lippmann, a journalist and free- mann wrote. The problem was not sim- lance intellectual. In 1920, in Liberty and ply the inadequacies of individual re- the News, Lippmann complained (as he porters or newspapers, but “the intri- would do with even greater fervor in cacy and unwieldiness of the subject- Public Opinion two years later) that Amer- matter.”4 Lippmann, thinking only of ican journalism was failing to serve the government and not of the rest of soci- needs of modern democracy–and that ety, observed that administration had it would continue to fail without help become more important than legislation from forces beyond itself. but much harder to follow. The work of Why? Lippmann cited two reasons. administration spreads out across time, First, journalism was in the hands of and its impact is not visible in a way that “untrained amateurs,” and though the reporters are able to measure. Journal- amateur “may mean well . . . he knows ism could report the complexity of the not how to do well.”2 Lippmann ex- modern world only by making use of pressed some hope for expanding “a other agencies where “a more or less ex- professional training in journalism in pert political intelligence” provides the journalist reliable maps of the world.5 © 2010 by the American Academy of Arts Lippmann referred to these agencies as & Sciences “political observatories” to imply that

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they examine human affairs with sci- stupid, and corrupt (presumably except- Political ob- enti½c instruments, methods, and out- ing his own Baltimore Sun). “They all servatories, 6 databases & looks. He called for independent, non- played politics for what there was in it, news partisan, scienti½c organizations that and leaped obscenely every time an ad- would be committed to an agenda of vertiser blew his nose,” Mencken wrote. research about the political and social “Every other American city of that era world and that would be able to pro- was full of such papers–dreadful little duce it in a form accessible to the com- rags, venal, vulnerable and vile.”8 petent journalist. Lippmann was perhaps demanding In Public Opinion, Lippmann suggest- too intellectually astringent a model ed, along the same lines, that journal- of journalism, and Mencken, not for ism provides the services democracy the ½rst time, was indulging in exag- requires only when an adequate “ma- geration for its shock value. But it still chinery of record” already exists by seems clear that U.S. journalism was which the social world can be accu- far from serving self-government in rately described. He cited the stock the way theorists of an informed public market report and baseball scores as opinion wished. Today, in contemplat- two machineries of record of the sort ing the restructuring of American jour- that made journalism a reliable repre- nalism in the digital era, Lippmann’s sentation of the world.7 In Liberty and writings caution us not to be misled by the News, he held that growth in the a nostalgic belief in past glories: they number and quality of political obser- were ever the exception. vatories both in and out of the govern- A second lesson from dipping back ment (one might ½nd observatories into Lippmann is that we can see that within government bureaus, on uni- the main solution he offered to the prob- versity campuses, and in independent lem of journalism is a solution that in nonpro½t institutions) could provide fact has come to pass. And much as he the material that would allow newspa- imagined, it has made journalism bet- pers to offer a more thorough, complete, ter. There are political observatories objective, and reliable portrait of rele- aplenty now. They began in Lippmann’s vant public life for the citizen to digest. day: the Brookings Institution, found- In 1920, when the media industries ed in 1921, was among the ½rst, and the were far less concentrated than today General Accounting Of½ce (today the and when all major American cities Government Accountability Of½ce) supported multiple daily newspapers was also created in 1921. Both provid- –sometimes four, ½ve, or more–the ed the sort of accounting and accounta- journalistic sum was nonetheless inad- bility that Lippmann had in mind, from equate to the needs of informed opin- viewpoints inside and outside govern- ion in a self-governing society. And ment. Since the 1970s, the proliferation Lippmann believed that the situation of information-generating agencies that was not about to improve without out- are outside journalism has been spectac- side help. Lippmann’s complaint was ular. And while this poses a challenge to mild and polite compared to some oth- journalists–how does the reporter know ers. H. L. Mencken, just a few years lat- which of the many agencies can be relied er, recalled that when he began writing upon?–the political observatories have for the press in Baltimore, four of the greatly enriched our best journalism. city’s ½ve dailies were cheap, trashy,

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Michael The reliance of the media on political of the 1960s. Long after “the sixties” Schudson observatories is visible every day. For seemed to have spent itself, it returns on the future example, The New York Times from De- as aftermath, or aftershock, in the digi- ofnews cember 16, 2008, the day I ½rst began tal age. And, boring as this might seem, taking notes for this essay, contains the that aftershock also has something to story “Colonoscopies Miss Many Can- do with databases, just as Manovich cers, Study Finds,” by science reporter suggests. Gina Kolata and based on a study pub- There is reason to be suspicious of lished that same day in Annals of Intern- the notion of technological revolutions. al Medicine. (Obviously, Kolata was pro- The printing press did not usher in de- vided an advance copy of the journal.) mocracy–or, if it did, it took its good- On the same page as Kolata’s story is natured time! There was no such thing Charlie Savage’s “Report Finds Inter- as a democracy anywhere in the world ference In Interior Dept. Actions,” an for three centuries after Gutenberg. article based entirely on the report of And printing, as Elizabeth Eisenstein Interior Department Inspector Gener- has shown very well, assisted but did al Earl E. Devaney that found serious not in itself produce a scienti½c revolu- flaws in government decision-making tion.9 Most early books produced on on policies affecting endangered spe- the printing press were about religion cies. Also in the December 16 issue is and not a few were handbooks of magic. Campbell Robertson’s story “Report The printing press was largely indiffer- Says Due Process Is Ill Served In Iraq ent to whether it produced works of Court,” which relays to readers a new wisdom or of folly. analysis from Human Rights Watch, Later, the telegraph was said to have an independent nonpro½t organiza- been the center of a communications tion. So in one day’s newspaper are sto- revolution. But at ½rst the telegraph– ries prompted by–stories that would that is, the electronic telegraph as we not have existed without–three very know it–was a relatively minor advance different kinds of expert sources: aca- on the “optical telegraph,” versions of demic research, an internal government which had existed for two thousand audit, and a nonpro½t advocacy group. years. A much-improved optical tele- Journalists cannot replace or substitute graph was developed in France in the for these; they can and do rely on them. 1790s and greatly impressed a young At the same time, these other sources– American artist visiting there, Samuel political observatories, if you will–to F.B. Morse, who conceived the idea of a large degree need journalists, to bring developing it further when he returned their specialized work into the public to the United States.10 After that, you domain and onto the public agenda. know what God wrought. Even when The future of news begins here–not Morse’s telegraph became technically so much with the Internet, although it feasible, it took a government subsidy would be foolish to deny the central role to establish the ½rst telegraph line. And of technology in the transformation of it required the spirit of entrepreneur- news today. But the Internet itself, and ship at the new penny papers–cheap, the ways in which its possibilities have news-centered, pro½t-oriented urban been engaged, has developed as it has papers that in the 1830s began to change in part thanks to the democratic, par- the face of American journalism–to ticipatory, and rights-oriented ethos take advantage of the telegraph for news

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transmission. The older, established rural and small-town citizens. Politico Political ob- newspapers had as much access to the .com began in 2007, both online and as a servatories, databases & telegraph as anyone, but they did not thrice-weekly print publication; it broke news get the point, and they let the initiative the story about the Republican National slip entirely into the hands of the pen- Committee’s $150,000 in expenditures ny papers. One needs not only technol- for Governor Sarah Palin’s clothes. ogies for a revolution, but also people At the 2008 Democratic National who can recognize their worth.11 Convention, Google sponsored a “Big Tent” for some ½ve hundred bloggers The news business is in the throes of and other nontraditional media. The such a moment, and it is happening Huf½ngton Post had twenty people in very fast. The New York Times ½rst pub- Denver; Talking Points Memo, nine; lished on the Web in 1996, but this was Daily Kos, ten; Slate, seven; and Salon, basically newspaper text available on- nine. At a Huf½ngton Post-sponsored line rather than a form of news-writing panel during the Convention, Illinois with demands and possibilities of its Representative Rahm Emanuel said own. The Times did not update its web- that the big media ½sh still count, but site round-the-clock until 2000. that media coverage overall will be a Wikipedia began in 2000. Craigslist “collective, intuitive consciousness” was a San Francisco website already in –something like a school of ½sh. “You existence, but not until 2000 did it be- won’t hear anything; you’ll just see the come a site for placing ads beyond San air bubbles and then the whole group Francisco, cutting into classi½ed adver- will suddenly decide to turn at the same tising revenue that had long been a reli- time.” Josh Marshall of Talking Points able resource for daily newspapers. Memo also reached for a metaphor, see- Blogging began in the mid-1990s, but ing an emerging distributed conscious- bloggers had little public presence. They ness as a kind of ecosystem “with lots were not a recognized force in the politi- of different sorts of news orgs playing cal world until 2002, when several blog- different and sometimes complemen- gers led the informational campaign that tary roles.”12 ultimately forced Senator Trent Lott to Did new technologies produce all of resign as majority leader in the U.S. Sen- this? Not by themselves. It is hard to ate. Most of these bloggers had worked imagine this history without the civil for the conventional press; soon blog- rights movement, the women’s move- gers with nothing but competence to rec- ment, Students for a Democratic Soci- ommend them were making names for ety and the ideology of participatory themselves and coming into their own democracy, the emergence of hundreds as sources for conventional journalists. of new nonpro½ts and advocacy organi- There was no YouTube until 2005. zations in Washington, aggregations of There was no such thing as a social net- countercultural enthusiasts around the working site until Friendster in 2002, My- Whole Earth Catalog, and early experi- Space in 2003, and Facebook in 2004. ments with electronic networking in the The Huf½ngton Post began in 2005 and San Francisco Bay Area and what would brought on board scores of “citizen jour- soon be known as Silicon Valley.13 It is nalists” for the 2008 campaign, one of not only that the techies see themselves whom (Mayhill Fowler) broke the story as part of a movement; it is that they see of Senator Obama’s remarks on “bitter” the technology they love as essentially

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Michael and almost by nature democratic (but in porations. Think of the importance of Schudson this I think they are mistaken). environmental impact statements and on the future In the world of public information the public airing of them required by ofnews that is emerging, journalism can no law–a law (the National Environmen- longer take for granted its lofty preem- tal Policy Act) that went into effect in inence. There is no Walter Cronkite 1970. Think of the public disclosure of at the national hearth. Indeed, there is campaign ½nance contributions and ex- no national hearth (and it is an exagger- penditures mandated by laws passed in ation to imagine that there ever truly 1971 and 1974. Think of the important was); there is only a set of national por- government reports critical of the ac- tals and a set of mysterious algorithms tions of federal agencies, from the fbi based on some kind of a democratic cal- to the Corporation for Public Broadcast- culus of the popularity of different web- ing, including the one mentioned above sites that generates a list of sites to ex- from the Interior Department Inspector amine when you type a set of words in General that criticized the Department’s a search engine. decision-making process on endangered species. These reports are normally all Today, professional journalists have a available for journalists, advocacy orga- lot of company on the stage of public nizations, and any member of the gener- information. The ensemble includes al public motivated enough to download bloggers and citizen journalists and them from government websites. None much more. Prominent, but relative- of them was available before the Inspec- ly unheralded, in the new cast are the tor General Act of 1978. institutions Walter Lippmann longed All cabinet-level agencies and most for in 1920–the political observatories other major government agencies have both inside and outside government. In an Inspector General (ig) who is re- 1920, political observatories were few; sponsible for submitting semiannual they did not begin to mushroom until reports to Congress that cannot be al- the 1970s with the rise of many Wash- tered by the agencies. In the ½scal year ington-based nonpro½ts. These organi- 2008, the igs collectively made audit zations sponsor research, monitor gov- recommendations to save $14.2 billion ernmental activity, and, as nonpartisan and conducted investigations that iden- or as advocacy organizations, make in- ti½ed $4.4 billion in savings from recov- formation about the political world eries and receivables. Actions by the available to journalists and directly to igs led to more than 6,600 indictments, citizens. Human Rights Watch, men- nearly 6,900 successful prosecutions, tioned above, is just one such product and close to 5,000 suspensions and de- of the 1970s. Founded in 1978, its re- barments.14 searchers are quoted and its reports In September 2008, the Justice Depart- are cited dozens of times in leading ment ig issued “a blistering critique” of newspapers every year. the political motives in the ½ring of U.S. Inside the government, too, reform attorneys but “stopped short” of urging legislation of the 1970s and 1980s has criminal indictments of former Attorney provided large new capacities for mon- General Alberto Gonzales or his aides.15 itoring government through govern- Also in September, the ig at the De- ment agencies themselves, and even partment of Health and Human Services some public monitoring of private cor- reported that more than 90 percent of

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nursing homes had been cited for vio- self-surveillance as constituted in 1978 Political ob- lation of federal health and safety stan- provides an automatic trigger to Con- servatories, databases & dards in 2007, and 17 percent of them gress to keep its eyes trained on execu- news had de½ciencies that caused “actual tive accountability, too. The ig reports harm or immediate jeopardy.” The are public and thereby invite media at- problems were greater in for-pro½t tention and the attention of various non- homes than in not-for-pro½t homes.16 pro½t, advocacy, and political groups Interior Department ig Devaney’s as well. December 2008 report found that agency of½cials often interfered with scien- Such developments scarcely make the ti½c work in order to limit protections professional journalist obsolete. The for endangered species. Devaney found matters of professional training, exper- “serious flaws” in decision-making on ience, and judgment are as or more im- ½fteen decisions. In most of them, Julie portant than ever. But the organizations MacDonald, deputy assistant secretary at the institutional heart of providing for ½sh and wildlife and parks, had that training and honing that judgment played a role. MacDonald resigned in –metropolitan daily newspapers and 2007 in the wake of an earlier ig report the wire services–are in serious trouble that concluded she had run roughshod with no general solutions in sight. The over agency scientists and violated fed- very survival of the best of the “main- eral rules by providing internal docu- stream media,” especially print, is in ments to industry lobbyists. question. Also in December, the special ig for Why? This is not the place to explore the Reconstruction of Iraq, a Bush ap- the question in depth, but a basic answer pointee, made available a 513-page his- looks like this: ½rst, young people do not tory of the reconstruction that The New read print newspapers as much as older York Times, in its top story of December people–or as much as younger people 13, reported “depicts an effort crippled in times past. Even older people do not before the invasion by Pentagon plan- read newspapers as much as they used ners who were hostile to the idea of re- to. Among those over 65, the decline has building a foreign country, and then been from 72 percent to 65 percent in the molded into a $100 billion failure by bu- period 1999–2008. For those between 55 reaucratic turf wars, spiraling violence and 64, print readership is down from 69 and ignorance of the basic elements of percent to 57 percent. It is drifting down Iraqi society and infrastructure.”17 in every age category, but most severely The igs serve a function we might in the 18–24 and 24–34 groups: down call self-surveillance; they work within from 42 percent to 31 percent and 44 per- the executive branch of government cent to 32 percent, respectively, during and report on the executive branch. the 1999–2008 period.18 Some of this This sounds like the dumbest mode is surely a drift away from news altogeth- of accountability conceivable–a foxes er. Some of it is a shift to news online. guarding the hen house model. It is pos- Some of it is the greater availability of sible, but not easy, to so pervert the job; news through quasi-news outlets–The however, the integrity of the igs is sup- Daily Show with Jon Stewart, Jay Leno’s ported by the legislative requirement monologue, and so forth. Whatever that they report not only to the agency, the cause, the trend is unmistakable but also to Congress. In other words, and unforgiving.

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Michael Second, newspaper companies took al no one knows how to guarantee. Alex Schudson on a lot of debt in the past decade at ex- Jones, director of the Harvard Kennedy on the future actly the wrong time. Newspapers were School’s Shorenstein Center on the Press, ofnews still a lucrative enterprise ½ve years ago. Politics and Public Policy, judges that 85 Newspaper ad income hit a record high percent of all of our news originates in of $49.4 billion in 2005.19 By 2008, ad the work of newspapers (whether they revenue was down to $38 billion, a 25 produce it in print or online).21 If those percent decline. Newspapers had been newspapers go under, or even if they con- maintaining a hefty 25 percent operat- tinue cutting editorial staff and reporting pro½t–exactly what they counted ing budgets to the bone to reduce costs, on to deal with their debt–but pro½t where will news come from–especially, was in rapid decline, too. This has to where will local “accountability” news do with a third factor: the Internet was come from? There would seem to be a stealing both readership and advertis- marketplace among various elites for ing. Why pay for a classi½ed ad to sell national news (and a certain amount your vintage lps, your baseball cards, of foreign news) so that those areas of or your grandparents’ china when you news coverage may well survive without can just go straight to eBay? Why sell heroic measures. That online technology your bike or rent your apartment in the makes it possible to start and maintain newspaper when you can turn to Craigs- a small news organization without the list for free? And why pay the now rapid- heavy investment in paper, ink, printing ly increasing cost of a newspaper at the press, and delivery trucks is very encour- newsstand when you can access it from aging. New news organizations staffed the comfort of your home or of½ce for by professional journalists and quickly free; follow whatever links you wish; making a name for themselves with sub- enhance your understanding of a story stantial, hard-hitting news stories have in which you have special interest with already emerged.22 Whether they can audio and visual sidebars; and quickly survive and maintain themselves in lo- respond to the writer and perhaps have cal news markets in the long run is yet your response posted on the website? to be seen. More and more newspaper readers now go online for their news in addition to The population of news organiza- or instead of attending to print editions, tions in 2012 or 2020 will likely have but so far online advertising has provid- many newspapers, but with smaller, ed only a small increment for news orga- leaner staffs than today. It will have nizations, a small fraction of their print- many new, online-only organizations based advertising income.20 run by a handful or a couple dozen Fourth, to complete the perfect storm, journalists, perhaps with a signi½cant- the 2008–2009 economic recession ly larger set of loyal readers who also brought things for newspapers from serve as scouts, correspondents, or citi- very bad to much worse. zen journalists. It may have enhanced One need not idealize the newspaper reporting capacity in public radio and press of yore to recognize that, to this television. It will surely be assisted by day, television, radio, and online news the large number of political observa- feeds off of the basic reporting that to tories that we can think of as institu- an overwhelming extent comes from tions of adjunct journalism. And with- organizations whose economic surviv- out abandoning narrative in the least,

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they will make growing use of data- ic.24 The Sunlight Foundation, an open Political ob- bases. Databases have become part government nonpro½t, and ProPublica, servatories, databases & of the lives of anyone who searches an investigative journalism nonpro½t news for information online. Our own trans- that partners with traditional news orga- actions online make us part of data- nizations in many of its investigations, bases ourselves; databases ‘r’ us. We have created a downloadable database even write the narratives of our own comprised of federal ½lings for 2007– lives through databases. Think of the 2008 from three hundred foreign agents. thirty-three-year-old medical intern, a The website www.foreignlobbying.org healthy woman pro½led in a Pulitzer allows citizens to explore which coun- Prize-winning New York Times series in tries’ representatives have spent how 2007 who made the painful choice to much money lobbying in Washington have a “preventive” mastectomy. She and which members of Congress they did not have cancer. She had never had have contacted how many times over cancer. But because her mother had had which legislative issues. Meanwhile, breast cancer, she chose to do dna test- Princeton’s Center for Information ing and learned that she carried a gene Technology Policy is going online with that raised her risk of breast cancer from recap, a database of the records of the 60 percent to 90 percent. About a third federal courts. (recap is pacer spelled of the women in a similar situation opt, backward, pacer being the database as she did, for the mastectomy. It is not the courts themselves maintain that, just the dna testing that changed her thus far, is not keyword searchable.) life; it is the database that gave the test- A database is not journalism, but, in- ing its predictive meaning.23 creasingly, sophisticated journalism Some databases are resisted. Although depends on quality downloadable, members of Congress often praise trans- searchable databases. parency in government–especially executive transparency–they are not so quick The growth of political observatories, to make their own records available. Nei- the advancement of monitors of govern- ther of the two houses of Congress nor ment (and monitors of other key power any city council of the twenty-½ve larg- centers in the United States and around est American cities nor eighty-nine of the world) both outside (“civil society”) the ninety-nine state legislative houses and inside government itself, and the make legislators’ roll-call votes available new availability of databases for public- in simple, downloadable form by legis- interest research: together, these devel- lator. This information is now available opments represent just one feature of for a fee from three different Congress- the future for news. Yet it is a vital fea- watching news organizations and avail- ture, and so far it has received little gen- able free from OpenCongress.org (be- eral notice. Political observatories do gun in 2004), GovTrack.us (also start- not replace journalists, nor do databases ed in 2004), and WashingtonPost.org. shove narratives aside. But the observa- This is just the beginning. Data on “ear- tories are increasingly valuable partners marking” in Congress has been painstak- for journalists, and databases lay new ingly gathered by an ngo, Taxpayers for foundations for narrative. Both offer Common Sense (founded in 1995), and promise for developing the kind of pub- these data are the basic starting point for lic information that makes democracy Washington reporters who cover the top- possible. In the midst of the present

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Michael news crisis, devastating as it is, are the for journalism–and for democracy– Schudson birth pangs of the kind of public infor- nearly a century ago. on the future mation that Walter Lippmann sought ofnews

endnotes 1 Lev Manovich, The Language of New Media (Cambridge, Mass.: mit Press, 2001). On page 218, Manovich holds: “After the novel, and subsequently cinema, privileged narrative as the key form of cultural expression of the modern age, the computer age introduces its correlate–the database. Many new media objects do not tell stories; they do not have a beginning or end; in fact, they do not have any development, thematically, formally, or otherwise that would organize their elements into a sequence. Instead, they are collections of individual items, with every item possessing the same signi½cance as any other.” Mano- vich argues also, on page 225, that “database and narrative are natural enemies. Competing for the same territory of human culture, each claims an exclusive right” to make meaning. I do not know what sort of evidence supports this hyperbole. Nevertheless, if Manovich’s self-assurance gets the better of him here, his boldness in articulating the narrative/database contrast is stunning. 2 Walter Lippmann, Liberty and the News (1920; Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2008), 45. 3 Ibid., 48. 4 Ibid., 53. 5 Ibid., 55. 6 Ibid., 56. 7 Walter Lippmann, Public Opinion (New York: Macmillan, 1922), 216. 8 H. L. Mencken, Prejudices: Sixth Series (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1927), 27. 9 Elizabeth Eisenstein, The Printing Press as an Agent of Change (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni- versity Press, 1979). 10 Daniel Headrick, When Information Came of Age: Technologies of Knowledge in the Age of Rea- son and Revolution, 1700–1850 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000). 11 See Michael Schudson, Discovering the News: A Social History of American Newspapers (New York: Basic Books, 1978), 12–60. 12 David Carr, “In Denver, A Thousand Little Pieces,” The New York Times, September 1, 2008. 13 Fred Turner, From Counterculture to Cyberculture (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006). 14 See the 2008 annual report of the Council of the Inspectors General on Integrity and Ef- ½ciency, A Progress Report to the Present, Fiscal Year 2008, September 8, 2009, http://www .ignet.gov. 15 Eric Lichtblau and Sharon Otterman, “Special Prosecutor Named in Attorney Firing Case,” The New York Times, September 29, 2008. 16 Robert Pear, “Violations Reported at 94% of U.S. Nursing Homes,” The New York Times, September 30, 2008. 17 James Glanz and T. Christian Miller, “Of½cial History Spotlights Iraq Rebuilding Blun- ders,” The New York Times, December 13, 2008. 18 Pew Project for Excellence in Journalism, State of the News Media 2009, http://www .journalism.org.

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19 Alan Mutter, from his blog, Reflections of a Newsosaur, December 21, 2008, http://new- Political ob- sosaur.blogspot.com. servatories, databases & 20 Pew Project for Excellence in Journalism, State of the News Media 2009. news 21 Alex Jones, Losing the News: The Future of the News that Feeds Democracy (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), 4. 22 See Leonard Downie, Jr. and Michael Schudson, “The Reconstruction of American Journalism,” Columbia Journalism Review, November/December 2009. 23 Amy Harmon, “Cancer Free at 33 But Weighing a Mastectomy,” The New York Times, September 16, 2007. 24 From a September 24, 2009, interview with Sarah Cohen, former Washington Post reporter and now professor of public policy at Duke University.

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Jack Fuller

What is happening to news?

In 1929, when he published A Preface to man nature we are still largely dependent Morals, Walter Lippmann was well on . . . upon introspection, general observa- his way to becoming the most influen- tion, and intuition. There has been no rev- tial journalist of his era. He had been olutionary advance here since the Hellenic editor of the editorial page of the New philosophers.1 York World since 1922. Two of his books Today, professional journalism is in –Liberty and the News and Public Opin- a crisis Lippmann could not have imag- ion–had outlined most of the key ele- ined. The late-twentieth-century revolu- ments of the twentieth century’s con- tion in information technology and data cept of journalistic professionalism. transmission has threatened the viabili- Public Opinion had also suggested some ty of the businesses–primarily newspa- of the concept’s limitations, foreshad- pers–that gathered, sorted, veri½ed, and owing the philosophical skepticism prioritized information about the impor- that much later in the century helped tant events of the day. While it perfected to undermine it. In fact, by 1929 deep people’s ability to communicate what- doubt darkened Lippmann’s thought; ever they pleased, the revolution made he was losing his belief in the capacity it very dif½cult for anyone to get atten- of the democratic public to guide policy. tion. It brought liberty and plenty to the He yearned for a better way but could system of free expression, and yet at the not quite ½nd it. A Preface to Morals re- same time it subverted journalistic dis- corded his intellectual struggle with cipline and the fragile sense of order of- how to live in a world without the hope fered by the mosaic of the newspaper of certainty. Though he believed in the page. power of science to repair some of the Meanwhile, the news audience has weaknesses of democracy, it was in res- changed its habits in fundamental ways. ignation that he wrote: This transformation is not just a matter Scienti½c method and historical scholar- of switching from print to the Internet. ship have enormously increased our com- The audience has been shrinking for de- petence in the whole ½eld of physics and cades, but today, even among the heavi- history. But for an understanding of hu- est news consumers–such as those who watch cable news–an increasing pro- © 2010 by Jack Fuller portion is drawn to the latest and most

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lurid rather than the most signi½cant. At when tradition becomes only a dead What is least as disturbing to serious journalists deposit of the past.”2 happening to news? and others who still believe in the tradi- For journalists the situation is ex- tional news values, more and more peo- tremely disconcerting. They believe ple are turning to shrill commentators, deeply that what they do serves the pub- bloggers with no particular concern for lic interest, but they know that the way accuracy, even comedians, all at the ex- they are doing it doesn’t seem to be work- pense of those who try to adhere to the ing the way it used to. Worst, they do not disinterestedness, neutrality, and strict know what to do about it. I am reminded epistemology espoused by Lippmann of the Matthew Arnold poem of a pilgrim and other founders of journalism’s pro- stripped by science of religious faith, fessional ideals. “Stanzas from the Grande Chartreuse,” These trends have signi½cant implica- written as the Industrial Revolution took tions for the way communities inform hold. Journalists ½nd themselves “Wan- themselves about important matters. dering between two worlds, one dead, / The news that people take in affects the The other powerless to be born.”3 way they exercise their sovereign choice At the moment most attention in through elections and exert their contin- journalistic circles has gone to ½nding uous influence on policy through every- an economic model that can sustain thing from opinion polls to protest dem- the institutions that do the basic work onstrations. Many people inside and out- of discovering and verifying what hap- side of journalism are worried what will pened. (For the most part these institu- become of the political system under an tions are newspapers and news agencies onslaught of instantaneous, often unver- like the Associated Press.) This focus i½ed flashes of information. How will we is natural since the precipitous decline be able to put events in historical con- of newspapers’ ½nancial fortunes has text? Where will we ½nd adequate expla- forced them to reduce their output dra- nation of complex and often technical is- matically. Some have gone out of busi- sues of great public importance (wheth- ness already, and others will follow. But er they be matters of international mone- the problem is bigger than the future tary policy or the best ways world health of newspapers; it is the future of news institutions can respond to a new infec- itself. This is what matters to the com- tious disease)? monweal. And to get a grip on this di- Though it is tempting to try to ½nd mension of the crisis, attention needs a way back to a news environment and to be paid to the deep change in the way the journalistic values that worked pass- people are taking in news, through what- ably well throughout the second half of ever medium. This is not just econom- the twentieth century, this is an exercise ics. It is about the increasing dif½culty in nostalgia. Nor is there reason to be- of getting important things through lieve the grandiose claims of digital vi- to people. In other words, even if we sionaries that unmediated democracy could come up with the money to save of expression will produce good soci- news organizations, journalism would etal results as if by an invisible hand. still be in crisis. Paul Ricoeur could have been describ- The social mission of journalism is ing our current situation when he wrote, intensely practical: to educate people “The present is wholly a crisis when ex- about matters that are important to the pectation takes refuge in utopia and community’s well-being. It cannot com-

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Jack plete this mission unless people actually yond observing that news and entertain- Fuller assimilate the information. Journalists ment have gotten mixed together or that on the future are teachers without the power to give advertising has moved to the Internet ofnews their students grades. In fact, the class and that Internet aggregators for the is in charge; the teacher is the one who most part have not been paying for the has to pass the test. news they distribute. We must not only In considering the challenge of reach- look askance at what some news organi- ing people, it simpli½es things to think zations are doing to get attention, but of the audience as being divided into also ½gure out why it is working so well. two segments. One is served by a few There is a reason that “why” is one of very sophisticated news organizations, the traditional ½ve Ws of journalistic re- which are national in scope. This audi- porting (along with “who, what, when, ence comprises only a very small frac- and where”). It is almost impossible to tion of the population, but it is a very know what to do about a fact or situa- influential part. The other segment in- tion unless you understand why it is the cludes everyone else. It has been served way it is. by metropolitan and smaller-city daily To get to the why, we have to reach be- newspapers, along with cable, network, yond traditional ways of thinking about and local broadcast news, though it has journalism. Simply asking people what been using these sources less and going they want–through opinion research, to digital interactive media more. The no matter how sophisticated–does not average individual in this audience is get down to the fundamental sources of considerably less influential than the change in the audience’s relationship to average reader of one of the great na- news. Most people, quite simply, do not tional newspapers. But in the aggre- know the most basic reasons they are gate, the larger audience is very pow- responding to news the way they are, erful. The elite may set the agenda, though the enormous capacity of the but it doesn’t have the votes. human mind for rationalization leads Whether The New York Times or The them to give a reason, and probably Wall Street Journal or The Washington even believe it. Post prospers matters a lot to the qual- Fortunately, the revolutionary advance ity of the national debate. And it prob- in thinking about human nature scien- ably matters personally to a lot of the ti½cally that Lippmann could not ½nd readers of Dædalus. But if journalism in 1929 is now well under way. The rap- is to ful½ll its social mission, it must id growth in knowledge assembled in reach beyond the small, highly educat- the past several decades by the sciences ed, usually well-to-do audience of po- of the mind has had a signi½cant impact litical and social elites. It must engage on many ½elds–including political sci- large numbers of people. Today that ence, political theory, and moral philos- means winning a battle for attention ophy, upon which discussion of profes- more ½ercely competitive than any sional standards in journalism has com- that our species has ever known. monly been based. But so far neurosci- To ½gure out how to win the attention ence has not played any important role of the larger audience, we are going to in the debate about what is happening have to understand rather precisely what to news and how journalists should re- has happened to news during the past spond. This is shocking, given how decade. We are going to have to get be- much it has to offer.4

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The contemporary sciences of the mind functions have not changed much in the What is –from research at the most basic, cellu- past ten thousand years. But the informa- happening to news? lar level to the increasingly important tion environment has changed radically. and more global study of the brain’s af- For most humans in the developed world fective functions–shed light on the way at least, the principal prehistoric threats we are reacting to our unprecedented, to survival–predators, starvation, and message-immersed environment. Evo- so forth–have given way to new ones: lutionary psychology suggests how the vehicular accidents, obesity, a seden- early development of the human brain tary lifestyle, social isolation. The oral shapes its contemporary behavior. The culture of early humans yielded to writ- study of cognitive heuristics and biases ing, printing, broadcasting, and now offers a way of thinking about the sys- digital interactive media. This last de- tematic ways in which the minds of velopment poses particular challenges both journalists and their audience can to the information processor we carry err. Modern philosophers of the mind within our skulls because today we are can also contribute to journalists’ under- immersed in messages, many of them standing. The work of Maurice Merleau- calling us by name. We can hardly get Ponty, for example, helped lead the way away from them. They pursue us wher- to breakthroughs in psychological theo- ever we go via our cellular devices. Just ry; his work reminds us that there is as one message gets through to us, an- more to the human mind than electro- other cries out for attention. We live, chemistry (more, for that matter, than in the words of one computer compa- the brain and central nervous system). ny executive, in an era of “continuous, Daniel Dennett and researchers in arti- partial attention.”6 ½cial intelligence have offered creative The problem of attention did not models of how our information proces- begin with digital media. In fact, it sors of flesh and blood make decisions did not even begin with humans. Our and even become conscious of them- brains inherited from vertebrate ances- selves. A number of influential philoso- tors the basic mechanisms for muster- phers have concluded that the brain’s ing information processing resources affective systems play a central func- in the direction of matters of great tion in the moral life of human beings. and immediate importance. Of course, As Martha Nussbaum has written, giv- natural selection shaped these mecha- en what we know today about how the nisms to ½t the particular circumstances brain works, we “have to consider emo- of the human species. But most of this tions as part and parcel of the system happened a very long time ago, and the of ethical reasoning.”5 ancient mechanisms still operate with- A great deal of what is happening to in us. As competition for our attention the news audience reflects the way natu- explodes, they become increasingly im- ral selection structured human brains to portant. Neuroscience can help explain deal with the challenge of survival and how these mechanisms drive such audi- procreation in prehistoric environments ence behavior as attraction to the latest such as the African savannah and Ice Age at the expense of the most important Europe. Though the human brain has an and the apparent appetite for emotion- enormous capacity to learn–plasticity ally hot presentation of information– is the somewhat unpleasant word often through infotainment and shrill com- applied to this–its basic structure and mentary, for example.

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Jack Evolutionary psychology even offers had a lasting, salutary effect on public Fuller insight into the appeal and function of discourse. The examination of heuris- on the future gossip and celebrity. For example, take tics and biases is as important today as ofnews the work of Robin Dunbar. He argues the examination of hoaxes was in the that gossip evolved to meet our ances- 1940s; they are the hoaxes our brains tors’ need to live in larger and larger so- play on themselves. cial groups in order to survive. Groom- ing–picking nits from one another– There are numerous reasons why jour- was our primate ancestors’ way of form- nalism has been immune to the power ing and sustaining social bonds. But the of the sciences and philosophy of the number of individuals who could groom mind. For one, these are arcane ½elds. one another was quite limited. With the Simply trying to understand the basics development of language, humans were of brain anatomy can take a journalist able to live in larger groups, with great- into an alien geography full of bewil- er success at survival and procreation, dering place names like the corpus cal- because they held themselves together losum, the aquaduct of Sylvius, the hip- through gossip. Celebrity, a much more pocampus, and the anterior cingulate modern phenomenon, probably devel- gyrus where substances like gaba oped to provide the much larger and and glucocorticoids ebb and flow less intimate social groups in increas- like weather. ingly urban settings something in com- The very rate of discovery in neuro- mon to gossip about. science has also made it daunting as a In a quite different vein, the study of source of practical journalistic insight. cognitive heuristics and biases is enor- In rapidly developing ½elds it is often mously important for journalists. The dif½cult to separate out what is durable Nobel Prize-winning work of Daniel from the theory of the moment. The Kahneman (with Amos Tversky) dem- emergence of popularized accounts, onstrated the way humans systematical- such as Malcolm Gladwell’s Blink or ly err in assessing the probability of un- Maggie Jackson’s Distraction, can make certain events. This happens through it all seem like a fad. mental heuristics (automatically applied, In some ways it is. Week after week shortcut rules of thumb) that evolved we read breathless accounts of research over millennia. These mental shortcuts that seems to show that some character survive in us because they have worked trait (cheerfulness, addiction, in½delity) most of the time, but in a contemporary has been located in a speci½c place in environment they can lead to disastrous the brain, or that medicine manipulat- mistakes. ing some neurochemical or another will It is very important that journalists make us smarter or happier or allow us and journalism scholars work through to remember the value of pi to twenty the implications of how these heuris- decimal places. More than three decades tics operate within the news audience– ago William Barrett warned about this and within journalists themselves. In sort of thing: 1941 journalism professor Curtis Mac- Dougall published an important book The light of a new scienti½c theory blinds on how the press had been gulled time us for a while, and sometimes a long while, and again by hoaxes and how it could toward other things in our world. The in the future avoid being taken in. It greater and more spectacular the theory,

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the more likely it is to foster our indolent judgments about what is important and What is disposition to oversimplify, to twist all what is misleading and to put discover- happening to news? the ordinary matters of experience to ½t ies in a larger context that gives them into the new framework, and if they do real meaning. Yet there are still two cul- not, to lop them off.7 tures: science is in one, and journalism is ½rmly rooted in the other. At one time it was Freudian categories The impact of technology on jour- that seized the popular imagination, nalists’ work, once simply an annoying giving rise to silly pseudo-explanations source of change in journalistic routines of nearly everything human. Today the and now a threat to survival, has surely rule of Oedipal complex and the super- increased journalists’ reluctance to look ego has given way to the rule of the amyg- to science for solutions to their problems. dala and the dopamine reward system. Moreover, quantitative disciplines have Our brains are capable of being just as often been used in news organizations silly about those. in foolish and often threatening ways. It is no wonder, then, that some years I remember one day when I was editor ago when I told a friend of mine who of the Chicago Tribune, a bright, young edited a signi½cant American newspa- man from corporate ½nance came down per that I was reading neuroscience to to my of½ce from the tower to seek my try to understand what has been hap- help in creating a system for measuring pening to journalism, he suggested the productivity of our reporters by the that when my book came out it might numbers–number of stories, number make a good subject for his science page. of words, that sort of thing. Later he be- I do not believe the thought crossed his came a truly great publisher and now mind that it would help him guide his remembers the episode with more than newspaper, and I can’t say that I blame a twinge of embarrassment. him. Nobody had showed him how. Marketing, with its techniques for Despite Lippmann’s early hope that measuring audience attitudes and re- journalism itself–along with the forma- sponses, was often seen as hostile to tion of public policy–could become as journalism’s social mission. After all, rigorous as physics, scienti½c discovery wasn’t the journalist’s job to tell the has never been very important in shap- audience what it needed to know, not ing journalism’s thinking about itself. what it wanted to know? Now, in the Even Lippmann did not look to the con- midst of crisis, more and more journal- tent of science but to its method as a ists are looking to marketing to show model for journalism. the way to survival. Unfortunately, tra- Of course, for a long time every seri- ditional marketing techniques are in- ous journalist understood that one could adequate to the task. not adequately reflect the contemporary The intense, almost religious conflict world without reporting on the scienti½c between traditional news institutions discoveries that are constantly altering and the interactive legions who hissing- it–hence the fact that my friend’s paper ly sneer at “mainsssstream media” also had a science page. And the more reflec- makes journalists less open to looking tive reporters and editors recognized that to the sciences of the mind. Traditional it was not enough simply to put the lat- journalism believes in the importance est research papers in laymen’s terms; a of professional standards, training, and serious journalist had to be able to make expertise. The digital interactive world

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Jack leans heavily toward anti-elitism, rejec- cess of many types of decision-mak- Fuller tion of expertise, and the “wisdom of ing. For example, experimental subjects on the future the hive,” as embodied in wildly creative with intact emotional systems who play ofnews and successful inventions such as Wiki- a game of cards involving several sepa- pedia. Each has an implicit view of hu- rate decks are able to detect which decks man nature. The traditionalists’ sense are advantageous to winning. Subjects is that people need instruction in order with severe impairment of the emotion- to make sound decisions. The digitalists’ al systems are not. The successful play- belief is that out of the hum of multi- ers do not know why they are successful. tudes something like truth and perhaps They cannot describe their strategy in even wisdom will inevitably emerge. rational terms. But scientists can docu- Neuroscience’s vision of human nature ment that their emotional systems have does not entirely support either position. had the hot hand. To the digitalists it points out the sys- Working with people with brain dam- tematic flaws in human reasoning that age that makes it impossible for them continuous summation through the new to feel emotion, Damasio has observed technology actually magni½es. And to how dif½cult they ½nd making decisions the traditionalists it undermines one of that are quite easy and ordinary for oth- the central tenets of professional think- er people. People who cannot feel emo- ing since Lippmann: the primacy in ef- tion may not show general cognitive im- fective human decision-making of the pairment. They may perform well on rational and disinterested over the emo- standardized intelligence tests. But give tional and engaged. them a problem with a lot of uncertainty Journalism inherited from ages of or one that requires them to understand Western thought a model of the mind other people, and they become para- in which reason and emotion are neatly lyzed. Though a surfeit of emotion can, separated, with reason needing to dom- of course, lead to irrationality, Damasio inate emotion in pursuit of truth and wrote, “reduction in emotion may con- wise judgments. The pedigree of this stitute an equally important source of model could not be better. It dates back irrational behavior.”9 at least to Plato, Aristotle, and the Sto- While this assessment conflicts with ics, and continues fairly directly right the professional journalistic ideal of down to Freud. There have been only disinterestedness and its inherent dis- a few dissenters, David Hume notable trust of emotion, if journalists can get among them. past the resistance that this dissonance We now know that this model is wrong. provokes, they will ½nd that the neuro- Neuroscientists such as Antonio Dama- science of emotion offers powerful in- sio have demonstrated that the parts of sights into what is happening to news the brain generally thought of as emo- today. There is a crisis in getting atten- tional and those thought of as rational tion for important news, and emotions are so thoroughly interconnected and in- are attention’s gatekeepers. teractive that thinking of them as sepa- Journalists have good reason, of course, rate produces more confusion than clari- for being wary of making pointedly emo- ty. Emotions are, in fact, themselves cog- tional appeals. Playing on emotion has nitive. As Nussbaum puts it, they bring been part of the arsenal of hucksters and us “news of the world.”8 More impor- propagandists from time immemorial. tantly, emotions are essential to the suc- Whipping up fear has been a favorite of

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warmongers. Sexual messages and im- cess has never been more important to What is ages did not begin nor will they end with journalism than it is today. happening to news? the “page three girls” of the British tab- loids. American journalism in the nine- Journalism is not scholarship. It is not teenth and early twentieth centuries had art. It is relentlessly practical. Reporting a phrase for women reporters who spe- that penetrates an important subject but cialized in heart-wrenchingly sad sto- does not penetrate the minds of the au- ries: “sob sisters.” dience may be noble, but it is a journalis- In reaction to the danger of falling tic failure. The barriers to success have into manipulativeness, journalists in never been higher, even as the barriers the second half of the twentieth cen- to distributing information quickly and tury increasingly drew back from emo- broadly have fallen. Here are some of the tional presentation of news. They never challenges: completely abandoned touching the au- • dience’s heart, of course. But they wor- Today and for the foreseeable future, ried about it constantly and consequent- individual reports–news stories, for ly inhibited themselves. As competition want of a better term–increasingly in the information environment inten- compete one-on-one with all other re- si½ed, they left the ½eld to those who ports. The days are over for compre- had no such reservations. And now hensive packages of reports that used they are losing the audience. to be able to tempt people to learn a There is reason to believe that in our little about something they hadn’t message-immersed environment emo- thought might interest them. We can- tional appeals are more successful with not count on serendipity as an educa- more people more of the time. There is tional strategy anymore. also reason to believe that this tendency • Brevity confers an enormous advan- in the news audience is durable and in tage in the competition for attention fact will only increase. Thus, a reluctance today. Nonetheless, many important to think about how journalists might use messages cannot be communicated emotion in an ethical manner can make in thirty words or a six-second sound it impossible over time for journalists to bite–let alone in the 140 characters ful½ll their social mission. of a Twitter post (“tweet”). We should be wary about emotion- • al presentation of information, but not Technological change continues to afraid of it. After all, hucksters and pro- bring down the wall between the writ- pagandists have not been the only ones ten, the visual, and the audible; effec- who have regularly played upon the emo- tive communications increasingly will tions of the audience. Great artists and require the use of all three, seamlessly great leaders also have. The challenge to integrated. effective large-public journalism today is • Attention spans will not spontaneous- how to distinguish between communica- ly lengthen. Moreover, there appear tion in the interest of public enlighten- to be severe limits on how much infor- ment on the one hand and manipulation mation a person can process in a given for socially useless or even deleterious period of time, limits that are only sus- purposes on the other. Using the knowl- ceptible to slight expansion through edge unlocked by neuroscientists and practice. People may get used to multi- other students of the mind in this pro- tasking, but they aren’t likely to get

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Jack dramatically better at it. Nor will the the ethical dimensions of journalists’ Fuller brain evolve quickly to adapt to the response to them. In the end, it should on the future new demands. Even under severe se- be part of the intellectual arsenal that ofnews lection pressures, complex organs of creative journalists committed to serv- complex organisms do not change in ing the public interest use to create the a generation. bold new ways of telling stories that will get the job done in our distracted, Understanding how the brain works message-immersed world. helps us think through all of these challenges. It also provides guidance about

ENDNOTES 1 Walter Lippmann, A Preface to Morals (New York: MacMillan, 1929), 157. 2 Paul Ricoeur, Time and Narrative, vol. 1, trans. Kathleen McLaughlin and David Pellauer (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984), 235. 3 Matthew Arnold, “Stanzas from the Grande Chartreuse,” in The Poems of Matthew Arnold, 1849–1867 (London: Oxford University Press, 1926), 272. 4 A full discussion of the implications of neuroscience for journalism can be found in Jack Fuller, What Has Happened to News: The Information Explosion and the Crisis in Journalism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010), from which much of this essay is drawn. 5 Martha Nussbaum, Upheavals of Thought: The Intelligence of Emotions (Cambridge: Cam- bridge University Press, 2001), 1. 6 Linda Stone, quoted in “A Survey of New Media,” The Economist, April 22, 2006, 24. 7 William Barrett, The Illusion of Technique (Garden City, N.Y.: Anchor Press/Doubleday, 1979), 149. 8 Nussbaum, Upheavals of Thought, 109. 9 Antonio Damasio, Descartes’ Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain (New York: Avon Books, 1998), 52–53.

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Paul Sagan & Tom Leighton

The Internet & the future ofnews

By any measure, the growth of the change brought about by the online digi- Internet over the last decade has been tal revolution. astounding. It took the telephone seven- The Internet’s ubiquity and easy ac- ty-½ve years to reach ½fty million users; cessibility offer an immediacy of infor- it took television thirteen years. It took mation that no other news medium can the Web just ½ve.1 In a few short de- match. This has irrevocably accelerated cades, the Internet has gone from an the pace of the news, as journalists race obscure technological novelty to some- to stay ahead of each other as well as thing as basic and essential to our lives their audiences’ demands. Similarly, as electricity. It now connects nearly a the way people consume the news has quarter of the total world population, changed. People are no longer restrict- having succeeded in reaching the far- ed to their morning papers and the eve- thest stretches of the globe where sim- ning news broadcasts. They listen to pler necessities, such as clean running podcasts on their way to work; check water, have not. By 2013, there will be for news updates on their cell phones; 2.2 billion Internet users worldwide, watch, pause, and rewind live video and the technological trends we are see- newsfeeds on the Internet; and read ing today–rapid-½re growth in broad- and comment on blogs at the of½ce, band, wireless, and video on the Inter- the gym, or the corner coffee shop. net–foreshadow an accelerated pace of Even more signi½cantly, the Inter- innovation and breadth of impact that net has endangered the concept of will be felt for generations to come.2 one-way news, be it in print or broad- Over the past decade, we have begun cast. News is now personalized and to see how the Internet is transforming interactive; the audience is taking nearly every industry and aspect of soci- charge. Viewers choose from more ety–from news to entertainment, poli- sources of news than ever before. tics to business, and communications to They share news stories with their commerce. The impact of the Internet social networks, helping to dictate a on journalism is simply a microcosm story’s distribution. They shape the of the larger phenomenon of dramatic discourse and coverage of the news. And more and more, they are helping © 2010 by the American Academy of Arts to capture, write, and share the news & Sciences themselves over the Internet.

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Paul Sagan While the Internet has already creat- speed of tv-quality streams.4 Moreover, & Tom ed massive dislocation in other forms both broadband penetration and speed Leighton on the of media–recorded music, most signi½- are expected to continue growing rapid- future cantly–its full impact on news media ly even in the current economic climate, ofnews remains to be seen. A key distinguish- as many governments around the world ing factor in the future evolution of have prioritized investing in Internet in- news media driven by the Internet will frastructure as critical to economic de- be the coming growth in high-quality velopment. video available over the Internet to per- As key news audiences now regular- sonal computers, mobile devices, and, ly blend online with traditional news ultimately, large-screen tvs in nearly sources, broadband adoption has been every household. tv and Internet us- instrumental in fueling a new era of age are rising together, and viewers news consumption. Multiple news sites, who watch news on both tv and the videos, archived stories, and searchable Internet watch more news than view- terms are all at one’s disposal with an ers who use only tv or the Internet.3 immediacy never experienced before This trend reveals the true power of in history. Broadband infrastructure is the coming convergence of tv-quality enabling fast access to content, and has video and the Internet. Integrated expe- created a world where news is no long- riences that weave together news vid- er a ½nite product that arrives at your eo accessed over the Internet into more doorstep once a day, or is broadcast and more of our lives will help to drive into your home each evening. Rather, dramatic changes in journalism and the news has become an in½nite, contin- news media. ual source that can be accessed on demand. The Internet is not simply reaching The Akamai Net Usage Index for more people each day; it is reaching News,5 which monitors aggregate them at faster speeds–so quickly, in Web traf½c generated at more than a fact, that the de½nition of “broadband” hundred global breaking-news web- itself is changing. The Federal Commu- sites, shows that when news occurs, nications Commission (fcc) currently the Internet serves as a primary means de½nes broadband connections as those for seeking information because of its that enable data transfer speeds of more accessibility, convenience, breadth of than 200 kilobits per second (Kbps), data, and ability for the end user to con- about four times faster than the fastest trol the speci½city and customization dial-up modems. However, what not of the news. Since consuming news is long ago was considered “high speed” such a big part of people’s daily lives, is now merely sluggish: tv-quality vid- tracking where news is consumed and eo streams require connection speeds which news stories attract the most about ten times faster than the fcc’s de½- online attention are critical measure- nition of broadband. ments in determining a variety of geo- Today, more than half of all users graphic and sociological trends. Some worldwide have Internet connections examples include: that can support tv-quality video, and • The Internet is much more likely to be roughly one-½fth have connections ca- dvd the main source of news during work- pable of supporting -quality video, ing hours on a weekday versus news which requires more than twice the

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breaking on a weekend. This is a direct fully to the Web with highly personal de- The result of a workforce highly dependent vices that are always with them. Many Internet & the future on the pc. of today’s most popular Web properties, ofnews from social networks to commerce to • Sporting events continue to be galva- video and news sites, would never have nizing news stories, generating some flourished without high levels of (wired) of the highest peaks in online news broadband accessibility. The widespread traf½c as eager fans follow competi- adoption of wireless broadband on to- tions in real time. day’s smartphones changes the game yet • Anticipatory news events, such as ver- again, with implications that we are just dicts, election returns, or other rapid- beginning to understand. ly changing outcomes cause a “refresh Consider the remarkable water land- phenomenon,” and thus high levels ing of U.S. Airways Flight 1549 on the of Web traf½c. Online news audiences Hudson River. Mobile devices connect- continue to refresh their Web browsing to the Web were among the ½rst ers or visit multiple news sites to get tools to publish photographs as well minute-by-minute coverage. as upload accounts to micro-blogging site Twitter about the heroic efforts of As quickly as wired broadband is ad- the crew and rescuers.8 These digital vancing, wireless broadband is growing assets from non-journalists were used even faster. Today’s news audience is by mainstream media, demonstrating used to the idea of accessing the Inter- the potential role of every individual net, untethered, from anywhere and with a mobile device when news breaks. everywhere–in coffee shops, on air- planes, on their iPhones, or via person- Perhaps the biggest trend in Internet al hotspots (powered by cellular mo- growth today is the juggernaut of online dem). In the United States, the number video and its potential to impact journal- of subscribers with broadband access ism. Ten years ago, the biggest applica- on their smartphones jumped by a mul- tion on the Internet was email. Today it tiple of twenty-four, from three million is video, an application that is set to be- in 2006 to seventy-three million in 2008, come the primary media platform of the driven by the explosive popularity of future. the iPhone and other smartphones.6 The growth in Web traf½c associat- With 250 million broadband mobile ed with news coverage of the last three subscribers worldwide, mobile data U.S. presidential elections sheds some traf½c is expected to continue its expo- light on just how far both the Internet nential growth, doubling every year and online video have grown in less through 2013.7 Meanwhile, new fourth- than a decade. One of the world’s lead- generation (4G) network technologies ing online news sites delivered more offer the potential to combine faster- than one hundred million page views than-WiFi speeds with cell-network during a twenty-four-hour period on breadth of coverage. Election Day 2000. That same site de- These faster access speeds won’t sim- livered more than 670 million page ply mean greater data consumption; views on Election Day 2004. Live, on- they offer the possibility of entirely new line video coverage of the respective types of interactions and innovative ap- inaugurations from each of those elec- plications, as users connect meaning- tions was nonexistent, as news sites

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Paul Sagan were still adopting live streaming solu- netbooks and cell phones now make it & Tom tions and broadband infrastructure was possible to watch Internet video with Leighton on the just beginning to grow. a $300 device. This new affordability, future Fast-forward to November 2008, combined with the near-ubiquity of ofnews when President Obama’s election-night wired and wireless broadband, has victory drove record-breaking traf½c made it easy to consume video, any- across news sites measured by the Aka- time, anywhere. mai Net Usage Index for News. Traf½c At the same time, videos have become to these sites peaked at a record of more far cheaper to produce, no longer an ex- than 8.5 million visitors per minute world- pensive proposition restricted to the do- wide. The number of television watchers minion of big studios. Today, anyone also reached historic heights, at 71.5 mil- with a webcam or cell phone not only lion, compared to roughly 60 million in can record videos and make them acces- 2000 and 2004. President Obama’s in- sible to the world, but also can stream auguration in January 2009 broke more video live via sites like ustream.tv and records, as the Akamai global content qik.com. It is the era of the citizen jour- delivery network served more than sev- nalist, the citizen ½lmmaker. Indeed, en million simultaneous streams at ap- with cell phones often present where proximately 12:15 p.m. et during the larger video cameras are not, amateur inauguration, a number that rivals the cell phone footage has made its way audience for many televised cable chan- into many mainstream news stories: nels. the 2005 London train bombings, Sad- By the end of 2008, nearly three-fourths dam Hussein’s execution, and the re- of Internet users watched videos online cent protests in Iran, for example. at least monthly. But even more telling The Internet has also made videos is the dramatic rise in the number of vid- cheaper and easier to distribute, with eos watched, a large part being news vid- paradigm-shifting economics that en- eos. Tracking ½rm comScore reports an able a viable distribution platform not 81 percent jump in the number of videos only for blockbuster hits, but also for per viewer between June 2008 and 2009, a long tail of media targeted to niche with 19.5 billion clips watched by more interests. The Web’s social platforms than 157 million people in the United and communities also play a key role States in June 2009 alone. Notably, com- by making it easier for media to ½nd Score attributes a surge in video viewer- its audiences and vice versa, multiply- ship that month primarily to interest in ing the power of word-of-mouth by the death of Michael Jackson. hundreds, thousands, even millions. Several technological innovations Finally, the Internet has made video over the last few years have brought much easier to share, as the Web’s wide about this rapid-½re growth in online reach, combined with its highly inter- video. First, online video became cheap- connected, highly social nature, ener and easier to consume. Today, watch- ables online media to reach an unprece- ing a video is a simple, one-click pro- dented number of viewers within a very cess, using video players seamlessly em- short time. The most viral video to date, bedded within Web pages. Moreover, Susan Boyle’s performance on Britain’s it no longer takes an expensive piece Got Talent, surpassed 170 million views of hardware to do so: not only have within a few short weeks. In compari- pcs and laptops dropped in price, but son, note that all three major tv net-

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works combined reach just under twenty- continue to accelerate as high-quality The three million viewers each night for the video becomes more readily available Internet & the future evening news. for a growing number of devices. ofnews The resulting explosion in online data The current momentum in online vid- is not without its challenges, particular- eo is toward longer, higher quality con- ly in terms of infrastructure. The scale is tent, evidenced by the enormous growth almost unfathomable: the Internet Inno- in the last year of long-form sites such as vation Alliance estimates that by 2010, Hulu.com and the sites of major network the amount of bandwidth consumed by tv channels. The fast-growing success twenty U.S. households will be greater of Hulu and other long-form sites points than that of the entire Internet in 1995. clearly to the convergence of tv and pc And the numbers will continue to grow –and, more generally, to the convergence exponentially. For example, in the near of all types of media and communications future, we can imagine the capability to devices. We can now watch tv shows deliver video events over the Internet to from our phone, make video calls from audiences comparable in size to televi- our computers, and surf the Web from sion’s Super Bowl audience. However, our gaming consoles. the bandwidth requirements to deliver a This convergence, in turn, drives con- tv-quality event to such an audience are tinual demand for higher video quality. a couple of orders of magnitude greater More than half of all U.S. households cur- than that of current Internet video traf- rently own at least one hd (high-de½ni- ½c. Realization of the numbers involved tion) television, and the number of hdtv has led to several high-pro½le reports households worldwide is forecast to grow and commentary in recent years indicat- anywhere from 20 percent to 30 percent ing that the Internet’s infrastructure will each year over the next several years.9 not be able to handle video’s onslaught. Web-enabled media devices–including To understand the challenges inherent televisions, gaming consoles, Blu-ray in supporting this level of traf½c, we need disc players, and set-top boxes such as to understand how the Internet works. Netflix Roku and Apple tv–now bring Although it is commonly referred to as Internet video direct to the living room. a single entity, the Internet is composed As these screens continue to grow in of more than thirteen thousand smaller, size and connect ever more effortlessly competing networks. Each network pro- to the pc and the Web, the Internet be- vides Internet access for a set of users comes the imminent platform of choice, and possibly a set of websites. It also pro- and hd video the medium of choice for vides the ability to transfer data across all forms of media, including news. its own network as well as connection points to exchange data with a number The year 2008 saw a signi½cant jump of other networks. from 24 percent to 40 percent of Amer- Because the Internet is made up of icans using the Internet as their prima- so many different networks, a user visit- ry source of national and international ing a website or watching an online vid- news. Notably, for those in the 18–29 eo is almost always accessing content age group, the Internet saw an even big- that lives on a different network than ger jump of 25 percentage points, rival- his own. That content typically must ing television for the ½rst time as a pri- travel across multiple networks in or- mary source of news.10 This trend will der to reach the end user.

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Paul Sagan Unfortunately, the connection points ple, brought down some of the Web’s & Tom between these networks tend to be un- most popular properties, including Leighton on the derprovisioned and extremely congest- Google, Twitter, and Wikipedia, due future ed–a reality dictated by the long-stand- to the unprecedented surge in interest ofnews ing economics of the industry. Networks in the hours and days after the news get revenue by providing Internet access broke. A massive, highly distributed to users and to websites, not by exchang- infrastructure is far more resilient to ing data with each other. This sharply these instantaneous surges in demand. limits the effective bandwidth between Achieving desirable video quality on- any single network and the Internet au- line presents another challenge. As con- dience at large. A network has no connection speeds go up, more and more trol over the many thousands of other users are demanding higher quality dvd networks and connection points it relies or hd video. However, it turns out that on to deliver its data to Internet users because of the way Internet protocols around the world. As a result, calcula- work, the streaming speeds necessary tions show that no video hosted on one, for high-quality video are not achiev- two, or even a dozen networks can come able unless the server is geographically anywhere close to supporting a Super close to the end user. Once again, this Bowl-sized online audience.11 points to the critical importance of a This does not mean that the scale we highly distributed infrastructure in are looking for is unachievable, how- realizing online video’s potential. ever. The capacity is there, but only at Other new technologies will also the edges of the Internet, where users play an important role. Adaptive stream- connect to their networks. Over the ing, for example, seamlessly adjusts a years of Internet growth, the Internet video stream based on changing, real- “edge” has seen continued capacity time Internet conditions, minimizing build out, as networks like Verizon wait time while delivering the best pos- FiOS and Comcast Cable have aggres- sible stream quality given current con- sively continued upgrading and offer- ditions. Another innovation is stream ing faster connection speeds in order transcoding, which transforms a video to expand their user base and revenues. stream on-the-fly to display optimally A highly distributed video delivery in- depending on the device used to watch frastructure that leverages the capacity it–whether it be a cell phone, pc, or of these last-mile networks is the way large-screen hdtv. Last, but not least, –the only way–to achieve the scale industry adoption of open standards that video demands. This type of infra- and platforms will be critical to accel- structure, in which video servers are erate user adoption and technological deployed within thousands of different innovation, as well as to enable the mas- networks, allows popular content to be sive scale in infrastructure that video delivered to users directly from within portends. their own network, avoiding the Inter- Fortunately, all of these key techno- net’s many chokepoints. logical advances have recently fallen Similarly, such an architecture is the into place, allowing us to carry forward only viable way to handle the highly var- the momentum online video has gath- iable and unpredictable levels of traf½c ered and push it past its tipping point that news events in particular can gener- into a revolutionary new era. As cur- ate. Michael Jackson’s death, for exam- rent trends in broadband, wireless, and

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online video growth continue to fuel lives will have an impact on news–and The the Internet’s progress, the pace of in- on society as a whole–that is far broad- Internet & the future novation will continue to accelerate. er and more transformative than we can ofnews Ultimately, the seamless integration even begin to imagine today. of real-time, interactive, tv-quality video into every aspect of our daily

endnotes 1 Irving Fang and Ann Norris, The Story of Communication, vol. 11, Internet (St. Paul, Minn.: Rada Press, 2005). 2 Estimated number of Internet users in 2013 comes from Forrester Research, July 2009, http://www.forrester.com/ER/Press/Release/0,1769,1296,00.html. 3 http://en-us.nielsen.com/main/insights/consumer_insight/april_2009/media_is_on _demand, http://en-us.nielsen.com/main/insights/consumer_insight/june_2009/ capitalize_on_your. 4 Based on data collected by the Akamai network, which is responsible for delivering approximately 20 percent of all Web traf½c. See Akamai’s State of the Internet, 1st Quarter 2009. 5 http://www.akamai.com/html/technology/nui/news/index.html. 6 Grant Gross, “us Broadband Ranking: Does it Matter?” nytimes.com, June 5, 2009. 7 Cisco Visual Networking Index, Global Mobile Data Traf½c Forecast Update, January 2009, http://www.cisco.com/en/US/solutions/collateral/ns341/ns525/ns537/ns705/ns827/ white_paper_c11-520862.html. 8 http://www.editorsweblog.org/multimedia/2009/01/twitter_½rst_off_the_mark _with_hudson_p.php. 9 Cable & Telecommunications Association for Marketing, Pulse Report, June/July 2009, http://www.ctam.com/html/news/releases/090804.htm. 10 Pew Research for the People and the Press, December 23, 2008, http://people-press .org/report/479/internet-overtakes-newspapers-as-news-source. 11 This complex problem is explored in greater depth in the white paper “How Will the Internet Scale?” available at www.akamai.com/whytheedge.

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Susan King

The Carnegie-Knight Initiative on the Future of Journalism Education: improving how journalists are educated & how their audiences are informed

I’m reminded of an old newsroom say- Since education is a foundational val- ing–“Better to be lucky than good”– ue and tradition at Carnegie Corpora- when I look back at the almost seven tion, we decided to focus our initiative years of the Carnegie Corporation of not on what was happening in U.S. news- New York Journalism Initiative. It be- rooms, but instead on what was happen- gan as a somewhat unfocused reaction ing within journalism schools at some of to the wholesale worry about the state America’s most prestigious research uni- of journalism at the end of the 1990s. versities. That was the lucky part of our The Board of the Corporation and the decision-making: our focus on a “pipe- then newly appointed president of the line” strategy that would affect the next foundation, Vartan Gregorian, want- generation of journalists. By 2009, the ed to respond to what was seen as an upcoming generation of newsmen and increasingly entertainment-focused newswomen was clearly more critical to news business shedding its values the debate about the news business than and foreign news bureaus faster than the middle-aged “leaders.” The revolu- it could stop the red ink. tion in news via the Web was challeng- The need for a democracy to be ing the ½nancial model of even Ameri- strengthened by a vital news business ca’s most secure newspapers, as well as was the impetus for the Corporation’s transforming the entire way that the initiative. After all, positive change can- news is delivered, consumed, and pro- not happen in school reform, the immi- duced. gration system, in international affairs, nuclear nonproliferation, or the under- There is an irony for me in the fact that standing of Islam–indeed, in almost Carnegie Corporation’s journalism work any area of our national life or interna- began in Silicon Valley, where the Inter- tional relationships that lies within or net transformation was born, and that it beyond the scope of the Corporation’s took place at the home of Walter Shor- work–unless vibrant news media en- enstein, who, already close to ninety at gage the American public about the that time, represented the world of news issues of this still-emerging century. as it was practiced in the last century. A successful businessman, Shorenstein © 2010 by the American Academy of Arts has always been predisposed to the need & Sciences for change. As a tribute to his daughter,

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a well-respected cbs newswoman who ism deans to become the nucleus for Improv- died prematurely, he began the Joan change in journalism education. This ing how journalists Shorenstein Center on the Press, Pol- is the story of how a lucky strategy for are educat- itics and Public Policy at Harvard Uni- changing journalism education has ed & how their audi- versity. It is both a teaching and re- helped transform America’s journal- ences are search center and a think tank, and is ism schools and create an incubator informed led by Alex Jones, a Pulitzer Prize-win- for new forms of serious journalism. ning reporter. The Shorenstein Center could be described as an institution at Our conversations with deans began the pivot point of assessing the chang- to frame a view of a journalism degree ing landscape of news. that demanded a higher quotient of in- In 2002, at Shorenstein’s California tellectual pursuit along with the practi- home, Alex Jones and Orville Schell, cal experience of producing news. In dean of the Graduate School of Jour- 2002, a dust-up at Columbia University, nalism at the University of California, precipitated by Lee Bollinger, the Uni- Berkeley, assembled a few dozen deans versity’s new president, over selecting a to assess the state of the news business new journalism dean, helped spotlight and to consider where it was heading the need for subject depth in a journal- as the digital challenge emerged. The ism curriculum in addition to traditional deans felt they were attracting some skill-building. Too many schools of jour- of the smartest and most experienced nalism continued to attract undergradu- students ever. But they feared that the ates who primarily wanted to take how- “dumbing down” of the news business to classes to develop newspaper clips as –particularly in local television news, well as radio and tv reels they could use but also network television–and the to get a job. The emphasis on producing abandonment of basic beats by news- graduates ready to go out and get ½rst papers threatened their students’ ca- jobs, rather than developing industry reers. They saw a crisis brewing in the leadership, prevailed. opportunities available for their stu- When Bollinger, a noted First Amend- dents and toyed with the idea of creat- ment scholar and lawyer, closed down ing some university-based news busi- the search for a new dean at the fabled ness that could ½ll this serious-news Columbia Graduate School of Journal- lacuna with student-produced news ism, demanding that a dean must have and analysis. the intellectual stature to lead a graduate Many times during the three years program at one of America’s most pres- after the Shorenstein gathering, a hand- tigious universities, he created headlines. ful of deans strategized with Gregori- There were guffaws and snickers that the an and me to think about the future academy was being pretentious about a of news and the role that a journalism business that had been built on the im- dean at a great university might play age of the hard-driving, hard-drinking, in the national conversation about smart-but-maybe-not-schooled, “get changes in the news business. Grego- me rewrite” reporter. rian, a former university president, Carnegie Corporation did not want believes that deans and other mem- to enter into the age-old debate about bers of the academy must take on whether journalism education demands leadership roles in society. He chal- intellectual rigor or is basically a skill- lenged ½ve of America’s top journal- building experience. So Gregorian con-

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Susan vinced McKinsey & Company to under- a “convert to the cause of journalism King take a pro bono study of journalism in- schools.” Keller confessed that if asked on the future dustry leaders to assess their need for if he believed journalism schools were ofnews journalism school graduates. The indus- necessary a dozen years ago: try was in the early throes of a changing I would have said, “Journalism schools– business model. Journalism jobs in the ehh.” I didn’t go to a journalism school twenty-½rst century were bound to be and we at the Times don’t hire people different than in the last century–how straight out of journalism school. We much different was not yet clear. But the hire them from major newspapers where survey emphasized three clear needs in they’ve already had experience. [My the industry: advice would have been]. . . follow the 1. A need for analytical thinkers with a traditional route: go ½nd a decent local strong ethical sense, as well as journal- or regional newspaper, apprentice your- ism skills; self to that mythical grizzled editor who will teach you the skills and the values 2. A need for specialized expertise: in- of journalism, build a body of work and sights into medicine, economics, and learn by doing. . . . [B]ut a lot of those lo- other complex topics, and ½rsthand cal and regional newspapers no longer knowledge of societies, languages, re- exist. Many of those grizzled editors ligions, and cultures; and have been bought out. . . . Nobody has 3. A need for the best writers, the most the time to take you under their wing curious reporters. and teach you basic stuff. If executives still harped on the Keller admitted he now realizes that same old saw that journalism educa- since so many people at his paper and tion was not critical to the business, others do spend time in journalism there was also a growing realization schools, “it matters that that time be that the majority of the recruits enter- useful.” ing newsrooms were graduates of jour- The report that McKinsey produced nalism schools. Also, the dismantling for the Corporation in 2005, Improving of newsrooms, which had gained steam the Education of Tomorrow’s Journalists, by 2005, meant that new recruits were supported Gregorian’s view that jour- not getting shaped by the culture of nalism as a profession is too important major news organizations, but had to leave to the vagaries of experiential to arrive with a sophisticated view learning. The report also surfaced the of their profession and their work. belief of editors and news leaders that Training of new recruits and editor- students need an array of skills as well ial redundancy were two items that did as intellectual opportunities to investi- not survive tough economic times. Bill gate the world. It reinforced the vision Keller, executive editor of The New York emerging from the Corporation that Times, had been skeptical that journal- university-based journalism programs ism education was the cure-all for pro- need to offer students multidisciplinary ducing better-educated journalists. How- opportunities such as those that inte- ever, during a panel discussion in New grate the role of religion in geopolitics, York in January 2008, and before an au- examine the place of medical advances dience of two hundred journalism facul- in influencing policy options, and look ty and students, he described himself as to history for context in international

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coverage. The world is changing at break- tion, participated in the intense meet- Improv- neck speed, and students need to know ings during which the initiative was ing how journalists more. shaped. The deans put together a pro- are educat- Indeed, with every change in the news posal for grant funding that emphasized: ed & how business, experienced, focused, special- their audi- 1. The Corporation’s priority of curricu- ences are ized reporters are increasingly becom- lum enrichment; informed ing the coin of the realm. Emerging as the news powerhouses are websites with 2. An experimental learning lab–the deep coverage of speci½c topics like pol- News21 Incubators–that would, under itics, health policy, business, arts, and the leadership of professors, dig deep international issues rather than “every- into content learning while producing man” publications focused on broad new forms of storytelling; this focus topics. Along with innovation that re- on innovation is a Knight Foundation quires Web skills, journalism schools priority; have to be innovative in the kinds of 3.Creation of the Carnegie-Knight Task subject courses they offer. Force, which would give the deans a leadership platform for research and By the time the McKinsey study was for making policy-focused recommen- complete, the Carnegie Corporation- dations and statements about the news sponsored conversations featured ½ve media. prestigious universities and ½ve leading journalism educators: Geoff Cow- Knight’s president, Hodding Carter, an, dean of the Annenberg School for joined Vartan Gregorian in New York Communication and Journalism at the for the launch of the multimillion-dol- University of Southern California (usc); lar program in 2005. By 2008, with the Orville Schell, dean of the Graduate involvement of Carter’s successor, Al- School of Journalism at the University berto Ibargüen, the initiative grew from of California, Berkeley; Loren Ghigli- the ½ve original deans2 who helped cre- one, dean of the Medill School of Jour- ate it to include representatives of twelve nalism at Northwestern University; universities. Along with usc, Berkeley, Nick Lemann, dean of the Graduate Northwestern, Columbia, and Harvard’s School of Journalism at Columbia Shorenstein Center, the other institutions University (Lemann was the dean cho- that joined the initiative as full players sen by Lee Bollinger following a task are the College of Communication, Uni- force report the University created to versity of Texas at Austin; the School of examine what was needed in a leader Journalism and Mass Communication, of a major research university’s jour- University of North Carolina at Chapel nalism school); and Alex Jones, direc- Hill; the College of Journalism and Mass tor of the Shorenstein Center on the Communications, University of Nebras- Press, Politics and Public Policy at the ka-Lincoln; the Philip Merrill College Harvard Kennedy School. These ½ve of Journalism, University of Maryland; crafted the three-pronged initiative the Missouri School of Journalism, Uni- that would win the backing of Car- versity of Missouri; the S.I. Newhouse negie Corporation and, just as impor- School of Public Communications, Syr- tantly, the Knight Foundation.1 Eric acuse University; and the Walter Cron- Newton, vice president for the jour- kite School of Journalism and Mass Com- nalism program at the Knight Founda- munication, Arizona State University.

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Susan A strategy, initially conceived by the journalism schools to be members of King Corporation to change journalism ed- this major change effort. That the doz- on the future ucation with a few select, well-respect- en deans now involved in the initiative ofnews ed schools, became a strategy encom- continue to meet twice a year on one passing geographic diversity, private another’s campuses, and that the pres- and public universities, and the strong, ident of the university serving as the collaborative voices of top journalism venue for the gathering always speaks school deans. to the assembled group at a dinner, is clear indication that these presidents When the Carnegie Corporation are involved in the success of the ven- challenge to journalism deans began, ture. it was not envisioned as a long-term But assessing other elements of grant-making strategy. It was a call the initiative is not so easy. The fall of to action by prominent deans to take 2009 marked the ½fth year that journal- leadership in this moment of change ism students were able to bene½t from in journalism and to make a difference. the change their deans have nurtured. Once the discussions became serious However, it must be noted that some and the deans outlined an action plan, schools have bene½ted more than oth- Gregorian promised two years of funders. Some interdisciplinary, integrative ing but insisted that the president of courses have made a major impact on each university underwrite the third campuses, others not. News21, a sum- year of the proposal from their own mer powerhouse for students and pro- discretionary funds. fessors alike, has yet to change the cul- This grant condition was not intend- ture of experimentation across the ened to be a simple “matching funds” tire curriculum. The revolving door of component, but rather a way to involve deans–the turnover is more rapid than the university presidents–and involve we expected when we began–has meant them deeply, since it demanded a ½nan- many restarts and the need to get new cial commitment on their part. Grego- leaders invested in a strategy they did rian made trips to each of the ½rst ½ve not create or a grant for which they campuses and won the presidents’ en- cannot take credit. dorsements, which were followed up The University of Texas won a renew- by a commitment in writing from each al for its curriculum work around cover- president. Gregorian believed strongly ing the Latino community, an effort en- that university presidents often saw the riched by a strong partnership with three journalism schools–no matter how ex- well-respected centers at the University: cellent their reputations–as cash cows the Center for Mexican American Stud- that did not need their attention and ies, the Brazil Center, and the Lozano support. Gregorian wanted to change Long Institute of Latin American Studies. that perception, and when the next sev- The additional funding led to expansion en schools were invited into the Carne- of this work. Seeing the power of these gie-Knight Initiative on the Future of “bridges” across the campus, Roderick Journalism Education, the presidents Hart, dean of the College of Communi- eagerly agreed to participate and cov- cation, and Tracy Dahlby, the new direc- er the entire costs of the third year. By tor of the School of Journalism, decided then the initiative had become presti- to create deeper relationships and new gious and the presidents wanted their courses with other leading centers at the

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University. They call their renewal strat- tion funding, had been initiated as a Improv- egy The 21st Century Journalism Chal- new minor in 2006, it had not attracting how journalists lenge: Bridging Campus, Community, ed enough students. Branham therefore are educat- and the Digital Media Divide. decided to replace that minor with a sci- ed & how their audi- The University added courses that take ence partnership that emphasized cli- ences are advantage of the resources of many of its mate change and the environmental informed most signi½cant campus centers and de- sciences. A second minor, also institut- partments. One new course, Practicing ed with Carnegie Corporation support, Investigative Reporting in a Globalizing focused on journalism and religion, fea- World, involves the faculty of the Lyn- turing challenging courses in the geopo- don B. Johnson School of Public Affairs, litical dimensions of religious thought; with its emphasis on both state politics it, too, did not attract as many students and geopolitics. All new courses will in- as hoped. Nevertheless, Syracuse con- volve challenging, rigorous curricular tinued to develop the minor, believing changes and will encourage students to it was a strong offering that could set produce reporting projects that will fea- the school apart. ture the University’s newly upgraded The University of Missouri also re- news service, CapTex, a service offered ceived a renewal of its curriculum enrich- to news organizations across the state. ment grant in June 2009 and decided to With a new head of the University’s continue its emphasis on arts reporting, journalism school, there was new ener- one strand of specialization that the jour- gy and a willingness to lay out markers nalism school had not been able to offer for metrics that could try to measure the students before the Corporation provid- power of these curricular changes–not ed support. Student involvement and fac- an easy thing to evaluate and not a well- ulty participation throughout the cam- de½ned goal when we began in 2004– pus ½ne arts and performing arts schools 2005. Nonetheless, Dahlby outlined met- were high, and Missouri was already cer- rics that included measuring student de- tain that this incubated curriculum spe- mand, campus-wide involvement of ut cialization would continue after Corpo- Austin faculty and departments, indus- ration funding ended. try involvement, and reader/viewer/lis- When Ernie Wilson joined usc’s tener comments on the CapTex website. Annenberg School as dean in 2007, he Those metrics were welcomed, but fur- found that the initiative’s support of- ther tweaked by Lorraine Branham, the fered him the opportunity to encour- new dean at Syracuse’s S.I. Newhouse age deans at other usc schools to col- School. Branham was well versed in the laborate. Following the University opportunities presented by curriculum of Missouri’s lead, Wilson wanted to enrichment grants; she had joined Syr- strengthen usc’s arts offerings since acuse University after leading the ½rst the University is known for its creative phase of ut Austin’s curriculum enrich- schools, like the usc School for Cine- ment work as director of the School of matic Arts. A new master’s program Journalism. Reviewing the curricular ex- was already under way as a result of periments at the Newhouse School, Bran- the ½rst round of funding, but Wilson ham put her leadership behind one of wanted a sweeping campus-wide rela- the two experiments. Although legal re- tionship with other schools. With the porting is a staple in many schools and ability to offer Carnegie professorships such a program, with Carnegie Corpora- to collaborating professors and formal

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Susan cross-school courses, Wilson was able to the idea of team teaching and what it of- King negotiate an important interdisciplinary fered students and journalism professors on the future strategy early in his deanship. in terms of depth and insight. Henry’s ofnews The master’s degree program in spe- leadership as dean reflects that commit- cialized journalism (the arts) is a partment to deeper content learning. nership with the ½ve art schools at usc: The Merrill College of Journalism the Roski School of Fine Arts, Thorn- at Maryland created a similar course, ton School of Music, and the Schools called the Carnegie Seminar, that also of Theatre, Architecture, and Cinematic changes topics each semester. The stu- Arts. Tim Page, a Pulitzer Prize-winning dents have taken on serious material, music critic, was recruited to teach two from Islam to nuclear proliferation. courses in the new program: Arts Writ- Some students, though they speak ing Practicum and Arts Criticism and highly of the quality of the lectures, Commentary. After the ½rst year, the complained that the complexity of the number of students who enrolled in the subject matter made the course tough M.A. program has almost quadrupled. going. The professors confessed that As Sasha Anawalt, director of arts jour- they learned much about the need nalism programs at the usc Annenberg to communicate dif½cult ideas more School, puts it: “[Students] are learning clearly, especially because it is journal- to write well from Tim Page. . . . Good ists who frame these issues for policy writing that contains original thinking discussions. and is inspired by exciting, solid ideas Deb Nelson, who runs the seminar is–and will mostly remain–the pro- and the one-credit journalistic practi- gram’s bedrock.” cum connected with it at Maryland, has Two schools turned to a less integrat- continued to choose topics that resonate ed strategy for offering their students with major news events. The course for exposure to the great minds at the uni- 2009 focused on economics, and was so versity. At Berkeley, a course called Key popular it was oversubscribed. Nelson, Issues focused on a series of three big determined to keep the seminar culture ideas each semester and was taught by of the course, and in order to offer the major professors on campus who each journalism students an intimate oppor- lecture for a month. Each semester, the tunity to interact with some of the Uni- subject matter was chosen in light of versity’s star professors, found a “very major news events in the political or large table” to maintain the seminar policy world. It was deemed so success- format. ful a way to expose their students to big Jean Folkerts, a new dean at the Uni- ideas that Key Issues is now a required versity of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, course at Berkeley’s two-year graduate came to her position predisposed to- program. ward interdisciplinary curriculum. Neil Henry, the new dean at Berke- She believes journalism schools some- ley, was a professor who taught a course times create rigid boundaries around the ½rst year of the Carnegie-Knight Ini- the forms of journalism: documenta- tiative on African reporting that empha- ries, dailies, magazine writing, and sized interdisciplinary collaboration. His multimedia, among others. She wants interests allowed him to recruit a profes- to keep the skill-building as a critical sor from the Center for African Studies component in assignments students at Berkeley. He became a total convert to produce while also promoting deeper

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learning in specialized subjects. She handling of entrepreneurship over the Improv- plans to do so by exposing students to past ten years. ing how journalists the richness and culture of other schools are educat- and other departments, including busi- onvinced that the intellectual capac- ed & how C their audi- ness, public health, and law. ity of journalism education will make ences are Within a relatively short time, Folkerts the difference in the future, Folkerts informed feels the University has already broken has partnered with Nick Lemann, dean down walls in this respect. Professors at Columbia, to produce a strategy for in the department of energy frontier change in graduate journalism educa- research who saw this past summer’s tion. It will create clear standards for News21 student reporting projects– what is taught and what is learned by which had emerged from the new inter- a student earning a master’s degree in disciplinary coursework–asked to part- journalism, building on the boldest ex- ner with the journalism school on solar periment under way in journalism ed- power experiments not only on campus, ucation. At Columbia, a new M.A. in but also within the Research Triangle journalism requiring a mastery of pol- area. “This is a connection to an impor- itics, business, science, or culture and tant initiative on the unc campus and the arts is being offered along with the in the region and I think ful½lls expec- usual M.S. in journalism, which focus- tations of introducing a higher level of es on journalistic techniques. intellectual capacity into the journal- This attempt to de½ne graduate jour- ism curriculum,” Folkerts reports. nalism education echoes the work a cen- Two interdisciplinary courses devel- tury ago of Abraham Flexner, who, with oped in the last year with the Kenan- support from another Andrew Carnegie- Flager Business School at North Car- founded institution (The Carnegie Foun- olina drew strong student attention dation for the Advancement of Teaching) in both the journalism and business investigated medical schools in the Unit- school. Both courses focused on “of ed States and Canada. He called for an the moment” issues, Digital Media overhaul that set medical education in a Economics and Behavior and Leader- new direction. As a result, many medical ship in a Time of Change. The linking schools that did not have the intellectual of business majors with journalism capacity closed, but the standards devel- majors created unintended outcomes oped during that time, and the focus on beyond the dynamic discussion from clinical practice, led to the superior rep- different perspectives. Extracurricu- utation of American medical training. lar collaboration meant that when the Flexner’s success presents itself as a chal- Kenan-Flagler Business School mount- lenge to this current journalism reform ed its annual Leadership Day, which movement, although it is not a perfect features successful entrepreneurs and analogy. Unlike doctors, journalists do senior Fortune 500 executives, the not need a certi½cate to practice their journalism students were invited as craft; but like doctors, they need theo- well. The emphasis on entrepreneur- ry and practice. ship was also recognized by the Uni- Folkerts and Lemann know that the versity’s vice chancellor for research marketplace will determine the real and economic development, who com- success of the change that is under way. mitted supplementary funding to sup- Lemann tracks his new M.A. journal- port a research study of the media’s ism students each year to document

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Susan the opportunities they are ½nding in cal practitioner,” who had transformed King journalism. The results have been en- medical education from one of theory to on the future couraging, with more than 80 percent one that was both theory and practice. ofnews of each new graduating class securing Fiedler established a position of clinical important, rather than simply entry- professor of journalism and hired a for- level jobs. Many have entered the brave mer Boston investigative reporter who new world of the Web, where their fo- could take advantage of the assets of the cus on deeper learning gives them an University and produce serious news for edge. Both Folkerts and Lemann also the Massachusetts community with the believe that a clear declaration of what help of student research and know-how. it means to obtain a master’s degree in Fiedler, recently out of the news busi- journalism will signal to students and ness himself, believes that it is crucial for the industry that not all degrees are universities to experiment with both in- equal. terdisciplinary learning and new jour- Since 2005, when this $16 million ex- nalistic forms. It is this experimentation periment in journalism education reform that he thinks will sow the seeds of suc- began, the criticism has been that it is cess for both journalism education and an elite strategy, housed more at centers the news industry. of graduate work and not where most new journalists emerge. If the strategy Rich Gordon, associate professor at of change works, the ideas that emerge the Medill School of Journalism, has from the dozen members will spread been experimenting since 2005 with wider and influence how journalism is the idea of interdisciplinary education taught across the country, particularly at Northwestern University. Although to undergraduates. he found the News21 incubators to be Tom Fiedler, the new dean of the Col- exciting opportunities for students, he lege of Communication at Boston Uni- does not believe the real innovation in versity, knows intimately the curricular journalism education resides there. He experiments that are under way across believes the innovation can be found the country. After a thirty-year career in the way professors think and teach at The Miami Herald, from reporter to ideas to a new generation of students. executive editor, with a Pulitzer Prize Gordon may be an apt spokesperson on his résumé, Fiedler spent a year at for what it means to change the way the Shorenstein Center. While there, journalism is taught at a respected re- he, along with Wolfgang Donsbach of search university, having been involved Dresden University, produced a mid- in three different educational experi- term report on curricular change under ments at Northwestern. As a result, he way since 2005 at the Carnegie-Knight has a good sense of what works and universities. what does not. He acknowledges that As a new dean, Fiedler brought a de- all three experiments “jump-started” termination to create a department that the kind of curricular changes needed was an incubator for change and that to get students ready for a different echoed what he learned in his report for profession. the Shorenstein Center. Fiedler was so His ½rst foray into curricular change influenced by learning about Flexner’s came in 2005, when he created an inter- strategy in changing medical schools disciplinary, team-taught course that that he borrowed the idea of that “clini- was a prelude to the summer News21

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incubator. The seminar focused on the of academic research in almost every Improv- idea of “privacy, liberty, and homeland discipline but not in communication ing how journalists security–not a simple narrative thread and journalism,” says Gordon. But it are educat- that the mainstream media would natu- is a course, he insists, that makes “a ed & how their audi- rally cover, or do well, and therefore a strong case for curricular innovation.” ences are topic that needed experimentation,” He believes this kind of interdisciplin- informed says Gordon. By crossing disciplines, ary thinking offers students windows students learned the issues from dif- into the new world they will navigate, ferent perspectives, paying attention and therefore is even more valuable to the areas where they intersected. than the hands-on experience of the Gordon argues that this combination News21 incubators. led students to ask better questions and For Gordon, these three curricular follow story lines that were not clearly experiments show the power of inter- evident in the post-9/11 world–in oth- disciplinarity as well as its shortcom- er words, story lines that were innova- ings. As he put it, the initial seminar tive. That summer, one Northwestern on privacy, liberty, and homeland secu- student’s discovery that the Department rity “is living on”; the statistics course of Education in the Bush administration taught us “what not to do”; and the net- was mining student loan databases for work theory course, in its ½rst iteration, terrorist suspects made national head- “will have an impact on our curriculum lines. The seminar also morphed into beyond the grant.” something broader. Northwestern has What all these experiments in cur- won a grant to create an entire track fo- riculum across campuses have in com- cused on national security issues. A mi- mon is that they stretched the faculty, nor is now being offered to graduate borrowed talent outside the journalism and undergraduate students around school, and, in an interdisciplinary fash- the issue of national security and lib- ion, approached subjects in new and erty, and scholars are examining how experimental ways. audiences respond to this important but sometimes dif½cult-to-understand From the very beginning, Carnegie news subject. Corporation’s call for journalism edu- Next, Gordon co-taught a course cation reform has been focused on a on statistics that he wanted to be “rele- vision: a vision of journalism that ex- vant, not watered down” for journalists, ists to serve the public, a vision that is and that attempted to give them a foun- about deep thinking, and a vision ded- dation in the quantitative method. “It icated to telling the unfolding drama wasn’t successful,” Gordon says flatly. of today’s history in a context that will He gave up on the course, although Me- keep the nation’s electorate informed dill is still trying to craft one that will and prevent it from being manipulat- ground students in the important ques- ed. That vision is also based squarely tions around statistics. on the idea that the university should This past spring, Gordon created a serve as the centerpiece in the process new course on network theory with of developing reporters, editors, and Northwestern professor Noshir Con- producers who want to tell the stories tractor, who holds a joint position in of their times; who want to help en- the Schools of Engineering, Business, sure the freedom of the American pub- and Communication. “It’s a hot area lic; and who expect to become mem-

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Susan bers of a profession worthy of its First ration grant, in order to better serve King Amendment privileges. It demands lead- all twelve members of the initiative, on the future ership from two university players: the eight campus incubators were created ofnews president and the journalism dean. that drew students from all twelve cam- That vision has driven our initiative, puses, and Callahan assumed leadership and it will be the key factor for judging of the experiment now involving more the initiative in the future. We do not than ninety students each year.) Calla- expect each and every grant to reveal a han has also begun searching for a sus- picture of a renewed world of journal- tainable model to cover costs after 2011. ism education. We do expect that the As mentioned above, Columbia’s twelve deans, and the twelve universi- Lemann is leading a small group with ty journalism institutions that have ac- North Carolina’s Folkerts to set stan- cepted the mantle of leadership in the dards for what a graduate degree in Carnegie-Knight Initiative, will rise to journalism should mean. Alex Jones the challenge by demanding more of has already stated that the work on their students, more of their faculty, journalism education is important and more of the industry. We ask our- enough that it will become a perma- selves each year, and we continuous- nent part of the Shorenstein Center’s ly ask the deans: a dozen years from work, which, until this point, has fo- now, what difference will this initia- cused more on professional journal- tive mean to those who follow? ists than the “pipeline”: a Web-based Over the next few years, we will not journalistic resource focused on issues be supporting the deans with further will be open to all journalism profes- grant funding. To continue its push for sors and students. change, the Corporation has instead We believe that the dozen deans now decided that it will use the convening in the leadership seat at the twelve uni- power a foundation possesses to bring versities participating in the journalism deans and their faculty together to ex- initiative have an opportunity that few amine the experiments under way on before them have had. They have a spot- their campuses, to evaluate the News21 light, they have standing, they have a incubators to see if they are producing community of like-minded deans who new ideas for storytelling that can serve are not sleepwalking through accredi- the business, and to assess changes in tations and boring debates over how the industry. Recently, the Corporation to teach on the “new” digital platforms. supported a few targeted research proj- These deans have the chance to respond ects that are looking into the critical to the ½ndings of the McKinsey report changes under way in the business that began our initiative and to justify models of news. Foundations do not their role in building the news business make things happen, the people and of the future. They know that new jour- institutions that they support do. nalists have to be smarter, better educat- The Corporation will also rely on a ed, more nimble and entrepreneurial few of the deans to take leadership roles than their predecessors if they are go- in thinking about the future. Christopher ing to make it in a business in which Callahan, the dean of the Walter Cronkite the future is just being written. School at Arizona State, has agreed to We believe deans at journalism schools lead the three-year expansion of News21. should have the same clout with the in- (At the time of the renewal of the Corpo- dustry as deans from business schools

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and medical schools have with their pro- mercial media. But degree-granting in- Improv- fessions. Clearly, articles like this that stitutions like journalism schools do not ing how journalists focus on the changes under way erase turn on a dime to embrace change, and are educat- what was perhaps an unfair reputation for that reason, they are good partners ed & how their audi- about most journalism programs: that with foundations. By de½nition, univer- ences are they are bastions of old-timers who tell sities must constantly renew themselves, informed stories about the way it used to be in the and although they are in constant motion golden age of journalism. I have found preparing for the next semester, they also an energy in these twelve schools that always have their eye on the next decade. are led by men and women who care The real results of the Corporation’s deeply about the business and who, un- work in journalism will be seen a decade like many of their colleagues working from now, when the graduates of these today in the news business, have the institutions (and graduates of other in- luxury of being able to take risks. They stitutions challenged by our vision) are are preparing their students for a new making the decisions about news. I do world of news, and although no one not know if these graduates will be mak- can say what that world will look like, ing the decisions in great newspaper most of the faculty are anxious to ex- newsrooms, at small international docu- periment with new forms as long as mentary start-ups, in daily, city-focused the journalistic values of information, Internet websites, or at their personal evidence, analysis, and ethics are not laptops connected to some virtual news compromised. “way station.” But I do expect them to Market forces are eroding, reshap- be de½ning the news that I read, watch, ing, and changing the news business and hear. And I expect that news to be at a frantic pace, and the thoughtful, more informative, more multilayered, long-term thinking that exists in foun- and more interactive than it is today. dations often does not match the heartbeat of change under way in the com-

endnotes 1 Three reports have been produced by the Corporation to capture the evolution of the industry at a time of change: The Business of News: A Challenge for Journalism’s Next Generation (2002), Journalism’s Crisis of Con½dence: A Challenge for the Next Generation (2006), and Jour- nalism in the Service of Democracy: A Summit of Deans, Faculty, Students and Journalists (2008). 2 Throughout this article, in referring to the ½ve deans who helped to create the Carnegie- Knight Initiative on the Future of Journalism Education, I am including Alex Jones, whose title, as noted earlier in the text, is actually director of the Joan Shorenstein Center at Har- vard. Jones’s pivotal role in the early conversations about journalism education and his leadership of an important journalism-focused Center made him a valuable addition to this leadership team of deans.

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Loren Ghiglione

Does science ½ction–yes, science ½ction– suggest futures for news?

If at ½rst an idea does not sound absurd, The presence in science ½ction of then there is no hope for it. many bits of hard-to-digest information that Shippey calls “not-true, but –Albert Einstein also . . . not-unlike-true, not-flatly- (and in the current state of knowledge) im- I long dismissed science ½ction as fairy- possible” annoys those academic read- tale foolishness banged out by hacks for ers.3 They are troubled by technologi- barely literate adolescents. Such ½ction cal gimmicks and fanciful otherworld- was aimed at pimply teenage boys who liness. They are perplexed by intention- purchased or purloined their sci-½ paper- ally confusing narrative and references backs from the bus-station racks next to to an unfamiliar, futuristic device, con- displays of romance novels and the hard- cept, or circumstance that the author core men’s magazines in brown wrap- has not fully explained. pers. They also may be bothered, I suspect, My doubts about speculative ½ction by science ½ction’s subversiveness–its echoed the reservations of philosophers, attack on reality and fact. Science ½ction poets, and scholars, ancient and contem- suggests illogical, counterfactual possi- porary. Aristotle warned that no one can bilities. A future based on those possibil- narrate what has yet to happen. John ities may threaten logical people who Donne dismissed as perverse those who have thought of the future as something undertake “to write a chronicle of things that can be rationally determined. before they are done.”1 But, as I will try to make clear, science A more contemporary commenta- ½ction, like a giant July 4th ½reworks pin- tor, the English literature professor wheel, throws off flashes of potential fu- Tom Shippey, described the revulsion tures for news that readers are not likely by otherwise open-minded, sophisticat- to encounter by reading the predictions ed academic colleagues toward science and pre½gurements of scientists and oth- ½ction: “They ‘never read science ½c- er scholars. However rational, however tion, just can’t read science ½ction, commonsensical, the scientists and schol- don’t see how anyone gets anything ars may fail precisely because they are out of science ½ction.’”2 rational and commonsensical. The writers of speculative ½ction choose instead © 2010 by Loren Ghiglione to explore ideas that, while not demon-

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strably possible, are “not-flatly-impos- ble from the possible?8 Do we know our Does sible.” limitations in trying to determine the science ½ction order in apparent disorder, the regulari- suggest an speculative ½ction really offer ties in apparent irregularities? Not un- futures C for news? anything important and fresh? Spec- til the 1970s, the science writer James ulative ½ction, I confess, rarely ranks Gleick suggests, did mathematicians, as great literature. It does not dazzle physicists, and other scientists begin with its character development. Its seeking to understand different kinds dialogue is often stilted. of irregularities. Those irregularities Speculative ½ction–really more would be lumped together under the about today than tomorrow–also shorthand name of chaos. cannot be counted on to offer consis- Scientists found chaos everywhere, tently accurate forecasts.4 The science Gleick writes–in the random, rising ½ction writer Frederik Pohl compares swirls of smoke from a cigarette, in the the forecasting ability of speculative unpredictable flow of blood, and in the ½ction writers to the accuracy of a unanticipated behavior of turbulent broken clock. Assuming the dial of weather.9 The physicist Paul Halpern the clock contains the usual numbers, argues that “incompleteness of knowl- we can rely on the broken clock to be edge is the rule rather than the excep- accurate twice a day. “If you put togeth- tion.” He adds, quoting James Doyne er enough science ½ction stories,” the Farmer, cofounder of the Prediction science ½ction writer Ben Bova says, Company, that “science has come to “some of the events described in the realize that ‘there are always going to stories will come true, eventually.”5 be inherently unpredictable aspects of But speculative ½ction should not the future.’”10 But even before the for- be judged by its ability to predict the mal study and appreciation of chaos future, which may be impossible to theory, visionaries questioned wheth- predict. Speculative ½ction plays with er inventions and scienti½c and tech- trends and assumptions to describe nological changes ever permitted what what could happen. It provides “an Herman Kahn called surprise-free fu- arena for the exploration of ideas un- tures–that is, futures based on current available elsewhere,” writes Thomas trends and foreseeable inventions.11 Hine in Facing Tomorrow: What the Fu- For speculative ½ction writers contem- ture Has Been, What the Future Can Be.6 plating the future of news, the past is not This “subjunctive reality,” as the sci- prologue, the present is not a key to the ence ½ction writer Samuel R. Delany future. In 1984, Spring: A Choice of Futures calls it, is a way of examining what is (1984), Arthur C. Clarke described how neither impossible nor veri½ably pos- he would have responded to a magazine sible–a way of considering present editor who asked him in 1842 to forecast possibilities by working out their the major changes of the next century- consequences.7 and-a-half. He guessed that he would The subjunctive reality of science have imagined the invention of photog- ½ction–the boundary enclosing the raphy and the increased importance of arena for the exploration of ideas–is the steam-driven iron ship, the railroad, dif½cult to de½ne or describe. Do we and the electric telegraph. But he doubt- understand the barriers, symbolic or ed that he would have anticipated auto- otherwise, that separate the impossi- mobiles and heavier-than-air planes, the

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Loren existence of electromagnetic waves, or no air to push against. They dismissed Ghiglione the discovery of X-rays. “Any extrapola- Goddard’s rockets as impossible, as God- on the future tion based on existing technology–or dard’s Folly. The New York Times sniffed ofnews even reasonable extrapolations of it– condescendingly: “Professor Goddard will always be hopelessly short of reali- does not know the relation between ac- ty,” Clarke concluded.12 Less than ½f- tion and reaction. . . . He seems to lack teen years later he could have added to the basic knowledge ladled out daily his list of unforeseeables the Internet in high schools.”16 and other news-related inventions. Scientists also widely believed in the Speculative ½ction often imagines fu- 1930s that an atomic bomb was impossi- tures based on scienti½c and technologi- ble. Physicists understood that, accord- cal advances that are not extrapolations ing to Einstein’s equation E = mc2, the from the present–that are, instead, ad- atom’s nucleus contains a tremendous vances of speed and scale that appear to quantity of energy. But the physicists con½rm one of Clarke’s laws: “Any suf- did not focus on the signi½cance of the ½ciently advanced technology is indis- energy released by a single nucleus. The tinguishable from magic.”13 Bova says: exception was Leo Szilard. He recalled reading the 1914 H. G. Wells novel The No futurist is going to predict that a semi- World Set Free, in which Wells forecast accidental discovery will transform the en- the development of an atomic bomb for tire world. Yet the invention of the tran- a war that would devastate the world.17 sistor did just that. . . . A futurist’s forecast P. D. Smith, who chronicled discover- of improvements in electronics technol- ies that led to the development of the ogy, made around 1950, would have con- atomic bomb, suggests that Szilard’s centrated on bigger and more complicat- love of speculative ½ction explains ed vacuum tubes and missed entirely the his creative advantage over Albert Ein- microminiaturization that transistors stein, Enrico Fermi, and other peers have made possible. Science ½ction writ- who were slower to see the humanity- ers, circa 1950, “predicted” marvels such threatening applications of atomic en- as wrist-radios and pocket-sized comput- ergy. Looking back at the atomic bomb ers, not because they foresaw the inven- dropped on Hiroshima, Smith writes: tion of the transistor, but because they in- “It was no idle boast when, in 1949, sci- tuitively felt that some kind of improve- ence ½ction writer Theodore Sturgeon ment would come along to shrink the said: ‘There is good reason to believe bulky computers and radios of that day.14 that, outside of the top men in the Man- Michio Kaku begins his Physics of the hattan [Project] and in the Armed Impossible, which explores the world of Forces, the only people in the world phasers, force ½elds, teleportation, and who fully understood what had hap- time travel, with a simple, short warn- pened on 6 August 1945 were the a½- ing that may be relevant to those who cionados of science ½ction.’”18 choose to write off speculative ½ction: Writers of science ½ction are, says “We ignore the impossible at our peril.”15 Donna Haraway, “anthropologists of Kaku, a physicist, recounts the attacks possible selves . . . technicians of realiz- in the 1920s and 1930s on Robert God- able futures.”19 They are prepared to dard, founder of modern rocketry. Crit- sacri½ce the rational and commonsen- ics insisted rockets could not fly in out- sical to the irrational and barely possi- er space because outer space provided ble. Ironically, throughout history the

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irrational and barely possible sometimes writes about the Earth Chronicle’s being Does have turned out to be more than just pos- spoken, not printed, every morning to science ½ction sible. subscribers who, “from interesting con- suggest versations with reporters, statesmen and futures In the nineteenth century, French writ- scientists, learn the news of the day.”23 for news? ers of speculative ½ction playfully en- Speculative ½ction of the twentieth visioned new news media. Some were and early twenty-½rst centuries offers little more than extrapolations from “not-flatly-impossible” worlds of news the present. The novelist Emile Sou- reporters and news media that imagine vestre’s The World as It Shall Be (1846) at least four other possibilities. First, describes Le Grand Pan, “the paper speculative ½ction plays with the idea that never sleeps,” as a print version of improving humans’ ability to hear, of 24/7 cnn, reporting the news in the smell, and see, acuities that would be year 3000 as it happens.20 An immense especially useful to reporters. The re- roll of newsprint on large spools flows porter Clark Kent/Superman, for ex- from the newspaper’s building, endless- ample, can see through anything, smell ly snaking along waist high in front of what humans cannot smell, and hear cafés, shops, and reading rooms, then the quietest of sounds across a wider climbing to a third-floor subscriber’s frequency than mere mortals. (Clark apartment and returning to street lev- Kent/Superman to arms dealer: “I can el, “hotly pursued by non-subscribers hear your heartbeat. I know you’re who hoped to snatch a little informa- lying.”) tion as it went by.”21 The behavior of Science ½ction has a special fascina- the non-subscribers suggests the behav- tion with improving the human eye of ior of Internet users today who choose reporters to permit their audiences to to read newspapers for free online rath- experience what otherwise might be im- er than pay for subscriptions. possible. The television network boss The French novelist Albert Robida’s (Harry Dean Stanton) in Death Watch, The Twentieth Century (1887) went further a 1979 movie based on D. G. Compton’s in updating the newspaper.22 Robida’s The Continuous Katherine Mortenhoe (1974), novel imagines all-electric homes out½t- implants a miniature camera in the head ted with telephonographs (news bulle- of Roddie the reporter (Harvey Keitel) tins are delivered automatically through so that, in a world where human death telephones) and wall-sized telephono- has virtually disappeared, he can ½lm a scopes (televisions) that are interactive. medical aberration, Katherine Morten- Subscribers at home can receive news hoe (Romy Schneider), who is dying of and entertainment. They also can react an incurable disease. Maya Andreyeva, to a televised opera performance along the News One “telepresence” camera with the audience at the theater, applaud- in Raphael Carter’s The Fortunate Fall ing, booing, and even talking from home (1996), can transmit to viewers’ heads with friends in the theater audience. a holographic memory of an hours-long The website TechNovelgy.com– interview: “The event seems vivid and “where science meets ½ction”–high- complete.”24 lights a story written about 120 years Real-world research projects today re- ago by Jules Verne and Michel Verne. call bionic eyes from science ½ction. A “In the Year 2889” seems to be describ- stretchable, silicon electronic “eye” cam- ing a modern news broadcast. Verne era–the size and shape of a human eye–

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Loren integrates a transparent hemispherical While Ananova, the digital news per- Ghiglione cap and a simple imaging lens.25 Such a sonality, did not survive, other experi- on the future device, already implanted in a small num- ments update the effort to broadcast ofnews ber of patients, restores vision to people news from computer-generated ava- blinded by retinal diseases. Researchers tars. Kristian Hammond, codirector of say a computer system’s high-speed vid- Northwestern University’s Intelligent eo cameras, acting as eyes, outperform Information Laboratory, has had his the eyes of line judges and reporters at students creating computer-generated tennis matches, especially on balls ruled News at Seven virtual newscasts since out that are actually in. (A 150-mile-per- 2006. Two young avatars–a woman hour serve travels faster than the human in gray dress, dark sweater, and glasses eye and brain can track it.)26 and a man in knot-down red tie and Second, speculative ½ction imagines white shirt, shirttails hanging out of various Others–avatars, androids, and his pants–present the news. cyborgs–in place of entirely human jour- News Anchors: The Next Endangered Spe- nalists. In the 1980s, Max Headroom–a cies?–a Miles O’Brien–narrated video British and U.S. television series, a video posted by the National Science Founda- game, and a U.K. tele½lm, Max Headroom: tion, which helped fund News at Seven– 20 Minutes into the Future–featured an ar- reminds viewers that human newscast- ti½cial intelligence (Headroom) that suc- ers, in contrast to the News at Seven ava- ceeds Network 23’s star investigative re- tars, cost their employers signi½cant sal- porter, Edison Carter, who is unconscious aries and have bad hair days. Other com- and suffering from head injuries. (A copy puter programs that are being developed of Carter’s mind is downloaded into a by Northwestern’s Intelligent Informa- computer, resulting in Headroom.) tion Laboratory suggest that even more The supposedly computer-generated humans from the world of news may Headroom delivers the news in a stacca- someday be threatened with extinction. to, stuttering style, as if he is a comput- Those programs, for example, generate er. But in the mid-1980s, computer tech- movie reviews and baseball game recaps nology was not advanced enough for (bylined “The Machine”).28 The Intel- a full-motion, voice synchronized talk- ligent Information Laboratory’s Ham- ing head; in the British television series, mond envisions generating coverage the actor Matt Frewer, covered in foam- of, for example, Little League Baseball: and-latex makeup and a ½berglass suit, “No one ever writes a game story for the played Headroom. He was superimposed thousands of games that get played each over a moving geometric background, spring. But we could. And could do so in which also was not computer generated. multiple languages.”29 Versions of Headroom began to appear The idea of machines with bylines en- in the real world of news less than a gen- courages us to consider what the literary eration later. In 2000, the British news critic Larry McCaffery calls “the basic agency Press Association introduced Ana- paradigms and oppositions that we’ve nova.com, billed as “the world’s ½rst vir- relied upon to understand ourselves and tual newscaster.”27 A text-to-speech en- our relationships to the universe–the gine read news stories while a parallel categorical oppositions, for example, of three-dimensional engine animated an organic/inorganic, male/female, origi- attractive female face ringed with hip, nality/duplication (image/reality, arti- close-cropped, green-tinted hair. ½ce/nature), human/nonhuman.”30

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Science ½ction dramatizes the human- current news from every perspec- Does nonhuman tension. Chester Hummin, tive “might march before her eyes science 33 ½ction the human reporter in Isaac Asimov’s at whim.” suggest Prelude to Foundation (1988), turns out Drawing on cybernetics and commu- futures to be a robot, R. Daneel Olivaw; the nication webs, William Gibson’s cyber- for news? R stands for robot. In Made in U.S.A. punk novels, beginning with Neuromanc- (1953) by J. T. McIntosh (a pseudonym er (1984), introduce hackers and other of James Murdoch MacGregor), the high-tech lowlifes who prepare us for morning after Roderick, a psychologist, a twenty-½rst-century reality of fewer marries Allison, an ex-copywriter, she shoe-leather storytellers and more “hack- tells Roderick, a human, that she is an er journalists”–programmers who mas- android. He sues for divorce, despite a sage computer databases, search engines, recent ruling that the android half of and other technology tools to dig up the population has full legal equality. mountains of facts and other data.34 Two reporters for Twenty-four Hours– Not surprisingly, the aggregators/edi- Anona Grier, human, and Walter Hall- tors equipped today to quickly digest smith, android–cover the historic trial the hacker journalists’ work, speedily with the intention of ensuring fair cov- create Web pages, and link to the latest erage between them.31 in breaking news are known by a word The human-nonhuman opposition that comes from the title of a science often evolves into something threaten- ½ction movie: RoboCop editors.35 ing. Clifford Simak’s story “Skirmish” Fourth, speculative ½ction questions (1950) features a reporter’s typewriter notions of reality. Is, for instance, the that talks back to him, a liberated sew- universe three dimensional, four dimen- ing machine, and a giant computer that sional, or ½ve dimensional? Science ½c- has escaped from Harvard University. tion writers often focus on the dimen- The reporter worries that the freed ma- sion of time–especially the possibility chines could threaten humanity. Simak that journalists might someday be able writes, “They might set up a machine to experience the past and exploit their civilization with Man as the servants knowledge of the future. of machines, with the present roles re- In Robert Silverberg’s “What We versed.”32 Learned from This Morning’s News- Third, speculative ½ction posits paper” (1972), The New York Times beats journalist-free dystopias. Norman Spin- the competition by printing news that rad’s A World Between (1979) takes place will not occur for nine days. A brilliant on Paci½ca, an Earth-colonized planet scientist in John Buchan’s The Gap in where an inquisitive citizen can plug the Curtain (1932) offers several men “into the electronic universe of the the chance to glimpse the Times of Lon- . . . media network,” the Galactic Me- don a year in the future; two think that dia Web. No reporters are necessary. they have read their own obituary, but “Through cameras, microphones, and guess that it is perhaps “a hoax or some screens,” each citizen’s hearing and journalistic blunder.” One dies exactly sight “became not only planetwide but a year later, one does not. Edward W. multiplex and compounded like the vi- Manger, the Beacon correspondent in sion of an insect.” Everyone’s face and Charles Dickinson’s A Shortcut in Time voice on worlds beyond, all of human (2002), obtains the money for a world- history since videotape’s invention, and circling jaunt by betting on that year’s

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Loren winning Kentucky Derby horse and by [the science ½ction writer John] Ghiglione World Series victor “because a girl had Brunner more carefully,” Minsky says, on the future returned from the future and told him “we would have had screens in our eye- ofnews to do so.”36 glasses” in the 1980s. He says the movie Scientists long have regarded time 2001 introduced him to the idea that a travel as mind magic–a waste-of-time computer might eventually be able to exercise of the imagination. But J. Rich- lip read: “I have spent years trying to ard Gott (“time travel to the future is devise computer lipreading systems.”40 possible”), Paul Davies, and other twen- The thought experiments of spec- ty-½rst-century scientists now treat the ulative ½ction may even help us face subject seriously. Davies, a physicist, whatever real futures await us, says writes, “Just the fact that time travel Orson Scott Card: “We have to think seems doubtful, or even impossible to of them so that if the worst does come, us today, doesn’t mean that we can ig- we’ll already know how to live in that nore its implications. It may be that easi- universe.”41 Our desires and fears are er ways to build a time machine will be like voices inside ourselves debating discovered, ways that would not require what constitutes the good life and what the resources of a supercivilization.”37 threatens to end that good life. Specu- lative ½ction about the world of news Historians, scientists, and others explores those conflicting voices. One who have seriously addressed the fu- voice embraces future communications ture usually have preferred to call on technology and a utopian tomorrow, reason and the scienti½c method, not the other voice worries about the dan- magic or pure imagination, as their gers of that technology to human priva- tools of choice. “Imagination” suggests cy and envisions an apocalyptic future. the play of children–“Don’t let your One voice rejoices in an industrialized, imagination run away with you!”–not urbane, increasingly urban existence the serious thought of adults.38 But do in which all humans directly commu- not discount the playful, powerful use nicate the news to other humans with- of the imagination that characterizes out journalist intermediaries, the other the best of speculative ½ction’s creative, voice worries about sprawling, oppres- counterfactual representations of the sive megalopolises and yearns for the future. life of a small-town editor rooted in a The mit Media Lab’s Marvin Minsky, remote village. an expert in arti½cial intelligence who Drawing on myth, history, science, has dabbled in science ½ction, says that and the stereotypes and conventions “a couple of hundred years from now, of the present, speculative ½ction cre- maybe [the science ½ction writers] Isaac ates worlds and characters that explore Asimov and Fred Pohl will be considered those conflicting voices. John Varley’s the important philosophers of the twen- Steel Beach (1992) provides an example tieth century, and the professional phi- of the conflicting voices at work in spec- losophers will almost all be forgotten, ulative ½ction, based on myth and mov- because they’re just shallow and wrong, ies, science and stereotypes. Following and their ideas aren’t very powerful.”39 Earth’s destruction, the reporter Hildy Minsky credits Robert Heinlein’s sci- Johnson, who has adopted the famous ence ½ction for his interest in tele-oper- Front Page reporter’s name, covers Luna, ators. “And if we had all read the books Earth’s colony on the moon, for the elec-

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tronic News Nipple. Johnson has a love- New Austin’s mayor, and tackles the evil Does hate relationship with Luna. He loves as well as good done by Luna’s Central science ½ction living virtually forever and changing Computer. suggest his gender at will. The Central Comput- Varley’s novel explores a concern with futures er, the arti½cial intellect that runs Luna, computers, television, and other tech- for news? keeps the air clean and comfortable and nologies voiced by many science ½ction provides fabulous, if fake, sunsets. writers. Even before the age of television But Johnson dislikes his/her job. Luna’s reality shows best known for their unre- inhabitants expect to experience the news ality, these writers focused on the ability from their info-nets instantaneously, and of the latest technological toys, especial- the news consists of “celebrity scandal, ly television, to transform or avoid reali- the pseudo-scienti½c breakthrough, psy- ty. In Ray Bradbury’s short story “The chic predictions, lovingly bloody cover- Veldt” (1950), parents anger their chil- age of disasters.” The ultimate headline dren by threatening to take away their trumpets: “Win Free Sex Aboard a ufo television room. The children use their to Old Earth.”42 television room–a giant three-dimen- Most reporters have gone to “Direct sional television set that creates images, Interface.” They interface with their com- smells, and sounds from their imagina- puters not through a keyboard or mi- tion–to retaliate. The children imag- crophone but, after entering an altered ine that lions devour their parents. The state, directly through their brain. John- lions do. son, however, takes notes and writes sto- Almost three decades ago, long before ries on an old-fashioned “handwriter.” YouTube and Facebook, the science ½c- By pressing the three rows of four col- tion writer J. G. Ballard said, “You’re ored dots of the handwriter, which is in- about to see the transformation of the stalled in the heel of his/her left hand, home to a tv studio, in which we’re Johnson can write stories in shorthand, each the star, director, scriptwriter, and and, he/she says, “watch the loops and audience of our own continuing mov- lines scrawl themselves on a strip of ies.”45 In Ballard’s The Day of Creation readout skin on my wrist, just where (1987), Doctor Mallory, the narrator, a suicide would slash himself.”43 dreams of bringing a lifesaving river to Johnson also provides moving im- arid central Africa. The river appears. ages from the holocam in his/her left Mallory’s rival, Professor Sanger, a tele- eye. Johnson regrets failing to report vision documentary maker, challenges momentous news–the ½ve times when Mallory’s apparent creation. Sanger says, the human race almost came to an end– “Look at your river–that’s a complete though the Central Computer reassures invention.” Johnson that “people don’t want to hear Mallory: “A television company might these things because they don’t under- even have thought it up?” stand them.”44 Sanger: “Perhaps it did. And the differ- Depressed, Johnson moves to Luna’s ence? Sooner or later, everything turns 1830s Disneyland village–New Austin, into television.” West Texas–to teach students reading Sanger concludes: “The truth is mere- (a skill really of no use anymore) and ly the lie you most wish to believe.”46 to put out a twice-weekly newspaper. A postmodernist like Jean Baudrillard Eventually Johnson has an operation argues that the truth or reality that jour- that makes him/her asexual, becomes nalists observe is really a ½ction anyway:

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Loren “It is thus not necessary to write science All that you Change Ghiglione ½ction” because we already live in it.47 Changes you. on the future Some experts argue that reality is so The only lasting truth ofnews complex, so dif½cult to see, despite the Is Change. power of modern cameras and comput- God ers to “see” what human senses cannot Is Change.51 see, that we lack an adequately convinc- Usually, speculative ½ction asks us to ing vision of reality.48 To Ballard that be cautious in our assumptions about means the role of speculative ½ction is change. Humanity plays a children’s “to invent the reality.”49 game called “Cheat the Prophet,” said The notion of inventing reality is not G. K. Chesterton: “The players listen the exclusive preserve of speculative ½c- very carefully and respectfully to all that tion. In Asia, computer-generated “news the clever people have to say about what reports” now offer what The New York is to happen in the next generation. The Times calls “Maybe Journalism,” which players then wait until all the clever men depicts events “no journalist actually wit- are dead and bury them nicely. They then nessed–and that may not have even oc- go and do something else.”52 curred.”50 The animators at Next Media, Not surprisingly, speculative ½ction, a Hong Kong–based, Chinese-language as a literature of change, keeps chang- entertainment and news ½rm, produce ing. The so-called modern genre of sci- online video “daily-motion news reports” ence ½ction, associated with Amazing that guess at, for example, the facts sur- Stories (started in 1926) and other pulp rounding the Tiger Woods suv crash. magazines founded by Hugo Gernsback The police may have said Woods’s wife and his successors, ½rst featured holy- was using a golf club to free him from cow stories. One such story, Isaac Asi- the car, but the animators, program- mov’s “Nightfall” (1941), appeared in mers, and actors at Next Media show John W. Campbell’s Astounding Science her chasing Woods with a golf club. Fiction magazine. The short story stars a cocky young redheaded Saro City Chron- However pessimistic science ½ction’s icle reporter and syndicated columnist, tales about the technologies of the pres- Theremon 762, on the Earth-like planet ent and future, such ½ction often asks us of Lagash. For two months, a skeptical to embrace change–spectacular, often Theremon has written articles ridicul- sudden, change–as central to life. Spec- ing astronomers’ efforts to have human- ulative ½ction’s almost religious faith in ity take steps against an approaching best understanding the world through darkness that threatens it. understanding change permeates Octa- As the light from the last sun, Beta, via E. Butler’s Parable of the Sower (1993). wanes, Theremon, out of habit and con- In Butler’s dystopian United States of scientiousness, keeps writing in his note- walled enclaves, drug-crazed arsonists, book for the article he plans to write the and death, the eighteen-year-old Lauren next day: “I’m a newspaperman and I’ve Olamina escapes north, recruiting fol- been assigned to cover a story. I intend lowers to her embryonic faith called covering it.”53 But he realizes his work is Earthseed. The secular religion’s credo is meaningless. The eclipse occurs. There- All that you touch mon goes mad and knows it. The long You Change. night of dark doom has arrived.

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In the almost three generations since ists obsolete, the human horse-drawn Does Asimov’s story, speculative ½ction has carriages of the twenty-½rst century? science ½ction become a more sophisticated way of In pursuit of audience will those journal- suggest thinking about the future. Brooks Lan- ists who survive, whether professionals futures don sees contemporary speculative ½c- or amateurs, rede½ne news to focus less for news? tion as “a language that must be learned on what we think of as reality and more or as a mode of writing as distinctive as on faux facts–make-believe news about poetry, complete with its reading proto- society’s sinners and celebrities that en- cols quite different from those used for tertains but fails to edify? What reality reading other kinds of ½ction.”54 The or unreality will be the subject of jour- language of computers, the reality of vir- nalists’ work? tual games, the existence of robots–all The novelist E. L. Doctorow, an inven- contribute to a different reading proto- tor of reality who is not himself a science col, reinforcing the message of change. ½ction writer, describes a secret of his Sentences like “The red sun is high, craft. “A sentence spun from the imagi- the blue low,” and “I’m not human till nation, that is, a sentence composed as I’ve had my coffee” need to be read dif- a lie,” Doctorow says, “confers on the ferently in speculative ½ction. Those writer a degree of perception or acuity sentences are “if” sentences, warning or heightened awareness that a sentence us that reality as we have known it now composed with the strictest attention to requires careful questioning. As Ursula fact does not.”56 K. Le Guin explains: “The reader can’t Using the Big Bang theory of the ori- take much for granted in a ½ction where gin of the universe as a metaphor, Doc- the scenery can eat the characters.”55 torow attributes a little bang to writers’ We do not know where the digital imaginations. Doctorow’s description revolution and other transformative strikes me as an especially apt explana- changes will take journalism or where tion of science ½ction writing–of why world environmental crises, global ter- the storytelling of speculative ½ction, rorist threats, numerous nuclear-armed committed to the notion of extraordi- nations, and other potentially species- nary change in the world, may contain threatening challenges will take human- a signi½cant measure of meaning and ity and this planet. Will the availability understanding about the potentially on the Internet of in½nite amounts of quite otherworldly future of news. information make professional journal-

ENDNOTES 1 Paul K. Alkon, Origins of Futuristic Fiction (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1987), 3. 2 Tom Shippey, ed., Fictional Space: Essays on Contemporary Science Fiction (Atlantic High- lands, N.J.: Basil Blackwell, 1991), 3. 3 Ibid., 9. 4 Paul Halpern writes that “most science ½ction visions of future human behavior tell us more about the world in which the story was written than they do about the world of tomorrow”; Paul Halpern, The Pursuit of Destiny: A History of Prediction (Cambridge, Mass.: Perseus, 2000), 201. Donna Haraway suggests that “the boundary between science ½ction and social reality is an optical illusion”; Donna J. Haraway, Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature (New York: Routledge, 1991), 149.

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Loren 5 Ben Bova, “Joan Vinge: The Turing Criterion,” introduction to Joan D. Vinge, Eyes of Ghiglione Amber and Other Stories (New York: New American Library, 1979), 1. on the 6 future Thomas Hine, Facing Tomorrow: What the Future Has Been, What the Future Can Be (New ofnews York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1991), 247. 7 Gary K. Wolfe, The Known and the Unknown: The Iconography of Science Fiction (Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, 1979), 18. 8 Ibid., 15. 9 James Gleick, Chaos: Making a New Science (London: Abacus, 1987), 306. 10 Halpern, Pursuit of Destiny, 225. 11 For the application of chaos theory in history and other nonscienti½c realms, see John Lewis Gaddis, The Landscape of History: How Historians Map the Past (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 71–89. 12 Arthur C. Clarke, Greetings, Carbon-based Bipeds! Collected Essays, 1934–1998 (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1999), 412. 13 Ibid., 413. 14 Ben Bova, Escape Plus (New York: Tor Books, 1984), 11. 15 Michio Kaku, Physics of the Impossible: A Scienti½c Exploration into the World of Phasers, Force Fields, Teleportation, and Time Travel (New York: Doubleday, 1998), xiv. 16 Ibid., xiv. 17 Ibid., xv. It is only fair to acknowledge that Wells borrowed the idea of an atomic explosive from the book of a scientist, the British radiochemist Frederick Soddy’s The Interpre- tation of Radium (1909). See Richard Rhodes, ed., Visions of Technology (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1999), 59. Also see William Irwin Thompson, “The World State and the Shadow of H. G. Wells,” Passages About Earth: An Exploration of the New Planetary Culture (New York: Harper and Row, 1974), 56–83. 18 P. D. Smith, Doomsday Men: The Real Dr. Strangelove and the Dream of the Superweapon (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2007), 302–303. 19 Scott Bukatman, Terminal Identity: The Virtual Subject in Postmodern Science Fiction (Dur- ham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1993), 299. 20 Emile Souvestre, The World as It Shall Be (Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, 2004), 151. 21 Ibid., 150. 22 Albert Robida, The Twentieth Century, trans. Philippe Willems; ed. Arthur B. Evans (Mid- dletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, 2004). 23 “Live News: The Modern Concept of a News Broadcast,” TechNovelgy.com, excerpt from “In the Year 2889” by Jules Verne and Michel Verne, www.technovelgy.com/ct/content .asp?Bnum=752; the full text is available at Project Gutenberg, www.gutenberg.org/etext/ 19362. 24 Raphael Carter, The Fortunate Fall (New York: Tor, 1996), 104. 25 “Stretchable Silicon Camera Next Step to Arti½cial Retina,” Nanotechnology Now, August 6, 2008, www.nanotech-now.com/news.cgi?story_id=30257. 26 David Whitney, Nicole Wurnitsch, Byron Hontiveros, and Elizabeth Louie, “Perceptual Mislocalization of Bouncing Balls by Professional Tennis Referees,” Current Biology 18 (20) (2008): R947–R949. 27 Adnan Ashraf, “Ananova Gives Web ‘Human Face,’” Developer.com, May 5, 2000, www.developer.com/tech/article.php/628821/Ananova-Gives-Web Human-Face.htm.

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28 National Science Foundation, “News Anchors: The Next Endangered Species?” Fall 2009, Does www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=1257341588785. science ½ction 29 Kristian Hammond, email interview with the author, February 28, 2010. suggest 30 futures Brooks Landon, Science Fiction after 1900: From the Steam Man to the Stars (New York: for news? Routledge, 2002), 176. 31 J. T. McIntosh, “Made in U.S.A.,” in Connoisseur’s Science Fiction, ed. Tom Boardman (Harmondsworth, U.K.: Penguin, 1964), 174–209. 32 Clifford D. Simak, Skirmish: The Great Short Fiction of Clifford D. Simak (New York: Berk- ley Medallion Books, 1977), 51. 33 Norman Spinrad, A World Between (New York: Pocket Books, 1979), 7. 34 See Renay San Miguel, “The Hacker Journalists,” TechNewsWorld, August 28, 2009, www.technewsworld.com/story/The-Hacker-Journalists-67977.html. 35 See Gillian Reagan, “The Aggregator That Newspapers Like,” New York Observer, July 28, 2009, www.observer.com/2009/media/aggregator-newspapers. 36 Robert Silverberg, “What We Learned from This Morning’s Newspaper,” reprinted in In½nity Four, ed. Robert Hoskins (New York: Lancer Books, 1972); John Buchan, The Gap in the Curtain (London: Thomas Nelson and Sons, 1934), 227; Charles Dickinson, A Short- cut in Time (New York: Forge, 2002), 175. 37 J. Richard Gott, Time Travel in Einstein’s Universe: The Physical Possibilities of Travel through Time (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2001), 33; Paul Davies, How to Build a Time Machine (New York: Penguin, 2001), 123. 38 David J. Staley, History and Future: Using Historical Thinking to Imagine the Future (Lanham, Md.: Lexington, 2007), 103. 39 Stewart Brand, The Media Lab: Inventing the Future at mit (New York: Viking Penguin, 1987), 224. 40 David G. Stork, “Scientist on the Set: An Interview with Marvin Minsky,” in hal’s Leg- acy: 2001’s Computer as Dream and Reality, ed. David G. Stork (Cambridge, Mass.: mit Press, 1997), 30, 12. 41 Stephen R. L. Clark, How to Live Forever: Science Fiction and Philosophy (London: Routledge, 1995), 9. 42 John Varley, Steel Beach (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1992), 22, 10. 43 Ibid., 15. 44 Ibid., 292. 45 Toby Goldstein, “J. G. Ballard: Visionary of the Apocalypse,” Heavy Metal, April 1982, 40. 46 J. G. Ballard, The Day of Creation (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1988), 57. 47 Bukatman, Terminal Identity, 182. 48 Margot Lovejoy, Postmodern Currents: Art and Artists in the Age of Electronic Media (Ann Arbor, Mich.: umi Research Press, 1989), 247–248. 49 J. G. Ballard, “Introduction to Crash” (French ed.), RE/Search #8/9 (1984). 50 Noam Cohen, “In Animated Videos, News and Guesswork Mix,” The New York Times, December 6, 2009. 51 Octavia E. Butler, Parable of the Sower (New York: Four Walls Eight Windows, 1993), 3. 52 Clark, How to Live Forever, 9. 53 Isaac Asimov, Nightfall and Other Stories (New York: Doubleday, 1969), 22.

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Loren 54 Landon, Science Fiction after 1900, 7. Ghiglione 55 Ursula Le Guin and Brian Attebery, eds., The Norton Book of Science Fiction (New York: on the future W.W. Norton, 1993), 31. ofnews 56 E. L. Doctorow, Reporting the Universe (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2003), 76.

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Poem by Greg Delanty

The rocks below on the river trail foam ½ns as if they swim upstream along with the salmon returning to their spawning grounds, leaping falls, freshets, the ancient anonymous struggle. The ½sh age instantly to mottled old-timers, dying in the nursing pools of their birth waters. A tour group of elderly are the only other diners, their skin mottled not unlike the salmon. They seem to get along. They jaw about the weather, the water height, the amount to tip. One woman’s trembling hand ½lls the diner questionnaire with praise. I scribble this on the back of mine, and tip the kind waitress a little more than usual. She laid their steaming bowls like a priestess setting her libation on the altar of trembling elder gods.

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Contributors

Jill Abramson, a Fellow of the American Academy since 2001, is Managing Editor of The New York Times. Previously she served as a senior reporter in the Washington bureau of The Wall Street Journal, eventually becoming Deputy Bureau Chief. From the end of 2000 to 2003, she was Chief of The New York Times’ Washington bureau. She is the coauthor of Strange Justice: The Selling of Clarence Thomas (with Jane Mayer, 1994).

Greg Delanty is Artist-in-Residence and Poet at Saint Michael’s College in Ver- mont. His poetry collections include Collected Poems, 1986–2006 (2006); The Ship of Birth (2003); The Blind Stitch (2001); The Hellbox (1998); American Wake (1995); Southward (1992); and Cast in the Fire (1986). He has been honored by the Poetry So- ciety of England, the Arts Council of Ireland, and the Royal Literary Fund, among others. In 2007, he was named a Guggenheim Fellow in poetry. He is currently the Vice President of the Association of Literary Scholars and Critics, and will be its next President.

Jack Fuller, a Fellow of the American Academy since 1991, is former President of Tribune Publishing Company. He began his career with the Chicago Tribune as a copyboy, later serving as a Tribune reporter in Chicago and Washington, D.C. Eventually he became Editor of the newspaper and then its Publisher and Chief Executive Of½cer. In 1986, he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for his editorial writing at the Tribune. He is the author of What is Happening to News: The Information Explosion and the Crisis in Journalism (2010) and News-Values: Ideas for an Information Age (1996).

Herbert J. Gans, a Fellow of the American Academy since 1982, is the Robert S. Lynd Professor Emeritus of Sociology at Columbia University. He is the author of a dozen books, including Deciding What’s News (1979; reissued, 2004), Democracy and the News (2003), and most recently, Imagining America in 2033 (2008).

Loren Ghiglione, a Fellow of the American Academy since 2004, is the Richard A. Schwarzlose Professor of Media Ethics at the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University; from 2001 to 2006 he was Medill’s Dean. He was the owner and Editor of the Southbridge (Mass.) Evening News and ran its parent company, Worcester County Newspapers, for twenty-six years before entering aca- demia. He served as President of the American Society of Newspaper Editors in 1989–1990 and President of the Association of Schools of Journalism and Mass Communication in 2006–2007. A regular commentator for national news outlets, he is the author or editor of eight books about journalism, including cbs’s Don Hollenbeck: An Honest Reporter in the Age of McCarthyism (2008).

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Robert H. Giles is Curator of the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard Contrib- University. Previously he was Editor and Publisher of The Detroit News and served utors in editor positions at the Rochester, New York, Democrat & Chronicle and Times- Union, and the Akron, Ohio, Beacon Journal. The Detroit News and the Beacon Jour- nal were both awarded the Pulitzer Prize under Giles’s editorship. Before coming to Harvard in 2000, he was Senior Vice President of The Freedom Forum and Edi- tor-in-Chief of its Media Studies Journal. He has co-edited several books and is the author of Newsroom Management: A Guide to Theory and Practice (1987).

Jeffrey A. Gottfried is a senior researcher at the Annenberg Public Policy Center and a doctoral student of the Annenberg School for Communication at the Univer- sity of Pennsylvania. His publications include “A Rhetorical Judiciary, Too?” (with Kathleen Hall Jamieson), Critical Review (2008).

Brant Houston is the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation Chair in Investiga- tive and Enterprise Reporting at the College of Media at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He currently is Chair of the Investigative News Network. Pre- viously he was Executive Director of Investigative Reporters and Editors (ire), and before that he was an award-winning investigative reporter for daily newspapers, including The Kansas City Star and the Hartford Courant. He is a coauthor of the fourth and ½fth editions of The Investigative Reporter’s Handbook (2002 and 2009, respectively) and the author of Computer-Assisted Reporting: A Practical Guide (3rd edition, 2004). In 2003, he cofounded the Global Investigative Journalism Network.

Kathleen Hall Jamieson, a Fellow of the American Academy since 2001, is Eliza- beth Ware Packard Professor of Communication at the Annenberg School for Com- munication and Director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania. Her publications include Presidents Creating the Presidency: Deeds Done in Words (with Karlyn Kohrs Campbell, 2008) and Echo Chamber: Rush Limbaugh and the Conservative Media Establishment (with Joseph N. Cappella, 2008).

Donald Kennedy, a Fellow of the American Academy since 1968, is President Emer- itus, Bing Professor of Environmental Science and Policy Emeritus, and Senior Fel- low of the Woods Institute for the Environment at Stanford University. He is the former Editor-in-Chief of Science and former Commissioner of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. His recent publications include U.S. Policy and the Global Environment (with John A. Riggs, 2000).

Susan King is Vice President for External Relations and Director of the Journal- ism Initiative, Special Initiatives and Strategy, at Carnegie Corporation of New York. Previously she served as Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs at the Department of Labor and as a communications strategist for three cabinet secretaries. She spent twenty years as a journalist, including as an abc White House correspondent during the Reagan administration. She received an Emmy Award for her reporting from Lebanon.

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Contrib- Tom Leighton, a Fellow of the American Academy since 2003 and a member of the utors Academy Trust, is Chief Scientist and a Director of the Board of Akamai Technolo- gies; he cofounded the company in 1998. He is also Professor of Applied Mathemat- ics and a member of the Computer Science and Arti½cial Intelligence Laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Named one of the Top 10 Technology In- novators by U.S. News & World Report, he served on the U.S. President’s Information Technology Advisory Committee and chaired the Subcommittee on Cybersecurity. His publications include Introduction to Parallel Algorithms and Architectures: Arrays, Trees, Hypercubes (1992).

Paul Sagan, a Fellow of the American Academy since 2008, is President and Chief Executive Of½cer of Akamai Technologies. Previously he was Senior Advisor to the World Economic Forum and was President and Editor of New Media at Time, Inc. He began his career in broadcast television news, and is the recipient of three Emmy Awards for broadcast journalism. He was a founder of Road Runner, the world’s ½rst broadband cable modem service, and Path½nder, a pioneer in Internet advertising.

Michael Schudson is a Professor at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. Previously he was Professor of Communication and Adjunct Pro- fessor of Sociology at the University of California, San Diego. His recent publications include Why Democracies Need an Unlovable Press (2008) and The Sociology of News (2003). He is a past recipient of the Guggenheim Fellowship and the Mac- Arthur Foundation “Genius” Fellowship.

Jane B. Singer is an Associate Professor in the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Iowa and a Visiting Professor at the Univer- sity of Central Lancashire, United Kingdom, where she recently completed a three- year term as Johnston Press Chair in Digital Journalism. She is coauthor of Online Journalism Ethics: Traditions and Transitions (with Cecilia Friend, 2007). She serves on the editorial board of seven scholarly journals and is a contributing editor for Media Ethics magazine. She also is currently the national President of Kappa Tau Alpha, the journalism honor society.

Mitchell Stephens is a Professor of Journalism in the Carter Institute at New York University. He is the author of A History of News (3rd edition, 2007) and of the rise of the image the fall of the word (1998). He was a Fellow at the Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard University in Spring 2009.

Ethan Zuckerman is a senior researcher at the Berkman Center for Internet & So- ciety at Harvard University. In 2004, he cofounded Global Voices, a community of more than two hundred bloggers around the world who work together to translate and contextualize reports from blogs and citizen media everywhere. He maintains a personal blog, My Heart’s in Accra.

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Interim Chair of the Board Louis W. Cabot Chief Executive Of½cer and William T. Golden Chair Leslie Berlowitz Treasurer John S. Reed Secretary Jerrold Meinwald Editor Steven Marcus Vice Chair, Midwest John Katzenellenbogen Vice Chair, West Jesse H. Choper

Inside back cover: A man uses a mobile phone to record images of a protest in Tehran, Iran, in this undated photo made available June 22, 2009. The George Polk Awards in Journalism have recently, for the ½rst time in the history of the Awards, honored work that was produced anonymously. The 2010 George Polk Award for Videography recognizes the efforts of the unnamed people responsible for recording the death of twenty-six-year-old Neda Agha-Soltan at a June 2009 protest in Tehran, and uploading the video to the Internet. John Darnton, curator of the George Polk Awards, said, “This award celebrates the fact that, in today’s world, a brave bystander with a cell phone camera can use video-sharing and social networking sites to deliver news.” Photo- graph © reuters via Your View. Cover_Sp2010 3/17/2010 11:31 AM Page 2 Cover_Sp2010 3/17/2010 11:30 AM Page 1 Dædalus coming up in Dædalus:

poetry Greg Delanty In a Diner Above the Lamoille River 151

U.S. $13; www.amacad.org Cherishing Knowledge · Shaping the Future