The Golden Age, Maybe?

any reporters, producers, and editors believe that sociology and religion and ... and ... it's all over. Their kind of Journalism - with a So, you do your story. Your summary piece might not be Mcapital J - is kaput. Quick cuts, three-second that different from, say, that story of the "old" journalism. sound bites, three-graf snippets of news, and the new But that's just the. beginning. As your summary appears on technology have taken over. In-depth, multidimensional the reader's or viewer's screen, you've highlighted some key reportage of any kind is becoming hut a q~aint and nostalgic words and some key pictures. The reader just moves an memory. indicator to a highlighted word or picture and, whammo, the This new column will be examining some of the machinery does magiC; up pop all sorts of options for more presumptions, such as the one above, that accompany the and more and more, interconnections to the whole subject, in "compunications" revolution as they apply to capital-J parts or wholes, documentaries, books, you name it. Journalism. Despite the lamentations we're hearing, it may Whatever you'd like to know appears on the screen virtually wb ell be thatlth~~oolden age of real Journalism is poised to, instantly. In full color. In full motion video. With sound yet. egm, The reader/viewer/listener can go as deeply or as narrowly Consider this: a basic problem of journalism has always as she chooses; she can stop with just the summary, as if she been length. For anybody who cares about a subject, and were reading USA Today or watching the CBS Evening knows a lot about it, the typical journalistic account of News. Or she can read or view one sidebar, or read a history anything is too short. For everybody else, it's too long. No of Bosnia, or watch a documentary or two or three. She can happy medium seems possible. spend two seconds or two minutes on your dispatch, or two So far, anyway. days, depending on how deeply she cares to dig. It just so happens that in electronic communications, this In fact, our ever-mare-complicated world sometimes can't basic problem of joumalisl!.:_~'-'-~E9tl}J~~,_ ip~~~~,.~ther, ~s i~ and shouldn't be shoe-homed into 800 words, or 8,000. Here were. Flattened trees are no'longer necessary; nor -are"thlrty­ we have all these journalists who are ever more highly minute newscasts full of 1: 10 "stories" packaged among educated, ever more sensitive, ever more thoughtful, ever eight minutes' worth of Ex-Lax and Geritol commercials. more cosmopolitan - and we tell them to boil whateveritis Unlike generations of reporters, editors, and producers down to 800 words. before them, the new breed won't have to grieve that their Three newspapers are already experimenting with this best stuff is on the spike or the cutting room floor. new in-depth Journalism. They are the San Francisco That doesn't mean they vacuum up every fact, Examiner, The Virginian-Pilot and The Ledger-Star in unevaluated, and regurgitate it into the public maw. What it Norfolk, and, above all, The News & Observer in Raleigh, means is that important, complicated, thoughtful Journalism North Carolina. Ticking away in The News & Observer's - some of which takes time and/or space to convey - will rather incredible electronic service (which I dialed up from become routinely possible. Even perhaps compUlsory. home) sits an account of a conference held at the Nieman In the "old" journalism, suppose you're sent to cover the Foundation last May. The topic; the role and challenges of whateveritis in Bosnia. As always, you can't tell the real public-interest journalism in an expanding information story, only what happened yesterday, in a few clipped marketplace. Shallow this account certainly isn't. Says the sentences or pictures. The result is that the audience, whether introduction: readers, listeners, or viewers, is often or even usually - if you listen to some critics - misled. Our time- or space­ Assembled here in hypertext format are full transcripts from the conference discussion sessions (nearly 100,000 words), 'plus the limited journalistic protocols ordinarily preclude penetrating seven commentaries, linked to pertinent documents, photographs, a the veneer. . few audio and video clips, numerous Internet archives, and other Suppose, instead, that when you get assigned to Bosnia, sites ... you bone up beforehand on everything. You get there and find the historic and ethnic and religious war, and you find The new forms of media will finally allow journalists to people who personify the issues precisely, but it takes a few deploy some of the sophisticated knowledge and skills thousand words to explain what your eyes and experience and they've worked so hard to gain. Yes, ~1tiI11.~\e 12\l~~.li~ll1. intelligence have trained you in particular to see. In the may be just about to happen. What will it require of its journalism of the coming media, you report it all, and more, practitioners? Watdi- i1:irssp~~e:'~ and more. You take the pictures, the video; you capture the Stephen D. Isaacs sounds; you connect what you're seeing within the context of Stephen D, Isaacs is a professor and associate dean of Columbia's the reading and research you have done, with journalistic Graduate School of Journalism and co-chair of the university's inquiries that have gone before, and with history and Center for New Media.

CIRNOVEMBER/DECEMBER 1994 69 LETTERS

PUBLISHER JOAN KONNER EDITOR-IN·CHIEF ROGER ROSENBlATT real Journalism" imposed on them. THE AGE OF IRON EDITOR PYRITE, MAYBE? GEORGE GERBNER SUZANNE BRAUN lEVINE Professor and Dean Emeritus The Annenberg School for Communication MANAGING EDITOR GlORIA COOPER In CJR's new Technology column ("The University of Pennsylvania Golden Age, Maybe?" November/ Philadelphia, Pa SENIOR EDITORS MIKE HOYT December), Stephen D. Isaacs says that EVAN JENKINS the "basic problem of journalism has ART DIRECTOR always been length." And since technolo­ CENTERS OF ATTENTION RUTH ANSEl gy now allows both journalist and reader ASSISTANT ART DIRECTOR to file and retrieve anything on demand, Lloyd Cutler is right about some points: PEGGY ROAIF including full texts and background mate­ Washington coverage tends to vastly ASSISTANT EDITOR JEFF GREMilliON rial, the "basic problem of journalism overemphasize the president and downplay CONTRIBUTING EDITORS evaporates into the ether," and "the golden everyone else ("On the Presidency and the JAMES BOYlAN, D.D. GUTTENPlAN, age of real Journalism is about to begin." Press," CJR, November!December). That's CHRISTOPHER HANSON, All that with as much of a straight face as true in the way major news organizations TRUDY liEBERMAN, MICHAEl MASSING, BRUCE PORTER, STEVE WEINBERG print can bear. deploy their resources - over-covering a RlSEARCH ASSOCIATES In fact, the basic problem of journalism president's every sneeze and golf game - lIZA FEATHERSTONE, MARGARET KENNEDY is not "length" but media conglomeration and in the way most every newspaper, even EDITORIAL/PRODUCTION ASSISTANT and the consequent reduction of staff, those without their own White House ANDREW HEARST diversity, and time to do an adequate job. reporter, plays Washington news. INTERN As to the retrieval of reams of background Travel to almost any city on any given CHRISTOPHER T. NOlTER material, there is no evidence that the day, pick up the local paper, and page-one number of news readers who search Washington news is. de facto, White House ASSOCIATE• PUBLISHER databases is any larger than (or different news, culled from the AP. The Washington DENNIS F. GIZA from) those who use the library to do their Post, or The New York Times. It is a grossly ADVERTISING DIRICTOR research - free. distorted portrait of Washington - as if the lOUISA D. KEARNEY Technology makes news processing president exists in a vacuum - which can't ACCOUNT EXiCunVI faster and more efficient for those who just be blamed on the White House regulars MAVIS SCANlON own or Gan access and have the time, but on the editors back home at the smallest DIRECTOR OF DEVELOPMENT HElEN THURSTON money, and interest or need to use it. But newspapers. BUSINISS ASSISTANT one-third of all children and nearly half of For its part, the Clinton White House SIERRA EVERlAND African-Americans never see a computer insists on courting the Post, the Times, and UADERSHIP NETWORK in school, and even fewer see one at a small number of other extremely power­ KIKI PARIS home. Only about one in three of the more ful opinion-leading organizations; it has affluent homes has a computer. For the not, however, sought to diffuse its message FOUNDING• PUBLISHER EDWARD W. BARRETT (1910-1989) vast majorify, newspaper technology among other news outlets. And believe it or EDITORIAL ADVISERS means speeding up, chopping up, and not, there are others: papers from Seattle to PHIliP S. BAlBONI, JIM CAREY, BARBARA jazzing up the news. For journalists, it Palm Beach maintain their own people in COCHRAN, ROBERT CURVIN, ARTHUR GElB, means further loss of control to a few Washington but this White House has DON HEWITT, AlEX JONES, JOHN lEO, wholesalers and global marketers of media largely ignored them in order to court more J. ANTHONY lUKAS, SAllY BEDEll SMITH, JUDY WOODRUFF "software." influential organizations. By this point dur­ Technology, as it is used, also speeds ing the Bush administration, I'd met in • mindless instant twenty-four-hour small conferences with Bush twice; so far, COLUMBIA imagery of mayhem and trivia, and exac­ I've yet to be in such a setting with Clinton. JOURNALISM REVIEW erbates the gap between th~ information A good number of hometown editors 700 JOURNAliSM BUilDING rich and infonnation poor. Diversity of have the same problem the Clinton White COlUMBIA UNIVERSITY perspectives, not fitting into the House does. They buy into the influence of NEW YORK, N.Y. 10027 machine. and democratic citizen initia­ the Post, the Times, and the AP - to an EDITORIAL 1212) 854-1881 tive, not technocratic fantasies, can liber­ extent, understandably. What's not so under­ E-MAIl, [email protected] ate journalists - and the uses of tech­ standable is that. like Lloyd CutIer, they 8USINESS & ADVERTISING, 12121 854-271 6 SUBSCRIPTIONS, 18001 669.1002 nology - from the new "golden age of complain bitterly about the outcome of their

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