A WAKE-UP CALL: Can Trust and Quality Save Journalism? The Wake-Up Call Conference • August 9, 2005 • San Antonio This conference is the centerpiece of a one-year Restoring the Trust project developed in partnership with the Robert D. Fowler Distinguished Chair in Communication at Kennesaw State University and the Reynolds School of Journalism at the University of Nevada-Reno in consultation with the PJNet and the AEJMC’s Civic Journalism and Community Journalism interest groups. The Journalism and the Public: Restoring the Trust project is underwritten in part by the Ethics and Excellence in Journalism Foundation. Final report Edited by Donica Mensing, Merlyn Oliver and Leonard Witt Design by Alex Newman Table of Contents An Introduction: Do We Trust Our Audiences? Thirteen Percent of Americans Cole Campbell Prefer Ethnic to Mainstream Media Dean, Reynolds School of Journalism, Alice Tait University of Nevada, Reno 1 Central Michigan University 29 The Audience Can Save Quality Immigrants Have a Different Definition Journalism, If Asked to Help of What’s News Leonard Witt Alejandro Manrique Robert D. Fowler Distinguished Chair in Managing editor, Rumbo de San Antonio 31 Communications, Kennesaw State University 2 Is There A Need For Mainstream Media? The Wake-Up Call: Are the George White Mass News Media in a Death Spiral? Assistant director, UCLA Center Phil Meyer for Communications and Community 33 Knight Chair in Journalism, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. 5 Small Papers Have a Big Place on the News Media Spectrum Expanding The Definition of News Media Trust Daily Encounters with Readers Reinforce Trust A Jay Rosen-Led Conversation Peggy Kuhr Jay Rosen Knight Chair in Journalism, University of Kansas 35 ProfessorNew York University with Neil Chase, Charles Lewis and Dan Gillmor. 10 How Do We Get Youth to First Read or Watch and Then Trust the News? There is No Death Spiral, Just a Renewal Kendra Hurley Clyde Bentley Editor, Youth Media 39 Associate professor, School of Journalism, University of Missouri at Columbia 17 So How Is One Mainstream Media Paper Coping? The Answer is Niches MarketWatch: Starting a News Alternative Brett Thacker A Conversation with Jay Rosen and Neil Chase, Managing editor, San Antonio Express-News 41 Deputy editor, NYTimes.com 18 What the News Media Future Will Look Like Can Nonprofits Fill Mainstream Media’s A Jay Rosen-Led Conversation with: Investigative Reporting Gap? David Gyimah,Producer and journalist, An Open-Forum Conversation with Jay Rosen and University of Westminster, UK Charles Lewis, Founder, Center for Public Integrity. Bill Grueskin, Managing editor, Dan Gillmor, Author, “We the Media: Grassroots Wall Street Journal Online Journalism by the People, for the People” and the Chris Nolan, Stand-alone online journalist blog Bayosphere 21 Craig Newmark, Founder, Craigslist.com 45 Can You Have Trust if You Practice Censorship by Omission? Why People of Color Don’t Read the Mainstream Media Dori Maynard President, Robert C. Maynard Institute for Journalism Education 25 An Introduction: Do We Trust Our Audiences? Cole Campbell • Dean, Reynolds School of Journalism• University of Nevada, Reno don’t know how many of you saw the piece by Jack Shafer on Slate that he posted at the end of the week on Friday. He basically said: “I’m beginning to doubt the trust and credibility of Ithe mainstream reader.” It’s a fun piece to read, and I think he puts a finger on something, perhaps inadver- tently, we ought to be thinking about today, and that is our ambiguous relationship to the people we serve. We don’t know whether to blame them, serve them, ig- nore them, or how we ought to be treating the people who populate the communities we serve. We don’t know whether to think of them as clients, as custom- ers, or as citizens in the narrowly defined Black’s Law /AP stylebook version or in the more expansive ver- sion. I think that’s the probably the central question that underlies what we’ll be talking about: who these people are, what do we think about them, what room are we going to make for them in our work lives, are we going to treat them as our peers, as our superiors, or as our inferiors. I think, thematically, we’ll be ex- Cole Campbell. ploring many dimensions of that. Photo by Wendi Poole 1 A Wake-Up Call: Can Trust and Quality Save Journalism?• The Wake-Up Call Conference • Aug. 9, 2005 • San Antonio The Audience Can Save Quality Journalism, If Asked to Help Leonard Witt • Robert D. Fowler Distinguished Chair in Communications • Kennesaw State University s I said earlier, we all sources. When they have ignorant know that trust in or incompetent reporters. When journalism is at an they prey on the weak and they ‘The public said all-time low, al- concentrate on bad news. When though this year the they lack diversity. When they al- newspapers were AState of the News Media 2005 said low editorial bias in news stories unfair and they get that the expectations from the and they can’t admit that some- media have stabilized. But then times there’s just no story. facts wrong and they they add that it may be that expec- Of course all these issues are tations from the press have sunk important and they actually are refuse to admit errors.’ enough that they will not sink any fundamental to trust and qual- further. People are not dismayed ity, but for newsrooms, or for us by disappointments in the press; to deal just solely with this (and they expect them. that was my original intent when A few years ago when the I was thinking of this conference) Today ethnic communities, Freedom Forum put out its Best would be like trying to fine-tune though, are getting their own Practices book for newspaper the fiddle while Rome was burn- place in the media world. They journalists, it addressed trust ing. Newsrooms are besieged by are now part of the competition issues by posing a series of state- corporate ownership woes, there’s for the mass media. On almost all ments it had learned from talk- rampant criticism from the left fronts, news circulation and view- ing to the public. The public said and the right, and when it comes ership are declining; few youth get newspapers were unfair when to coverage of the minority com- their news from traditional news they get the facts wrong and they munities, Mercedes Lynn de Uri- sources; entrepreneurs are giving refuse to admit errors. When they arte said, “The mass news media away free newspapers; new cable don’t name names in anonymous practice censorship by omission.” channels spread audiences thin- 2 A Wake-Up Call: Can Trust and Quality Save Journalism?• The Wake-Up Call Conference • Aug. 9, 2005 • San Antonio ner and thinner; and classified ads are being eroded by the likes ‘Why don’t of Craigslist, whose founder, Craig Newmark, is with us. journalists accept Phil Meyer, author of “The Van- ishing Newspaper” and who gave what’s happening? I’d me the idea for the Wake-Up Call, even talks of a death spiral. And say part of the reason more than a year ago, Jay Rosen, is attitude.’ another of our speakers, told an audience at the World Economic Conference in Davos, Switzerland, that the age of the mass media is just that, an age, and that it front of one billion people, or doesn’t have to last forever. This one-sixth of the world’s popula- year, in preparing notes for an- tion. That remarkable achieve- ment wasn’t in anyone’s ten-year Leonard Witt. other speech, Rosen wrote, “Each Photo by Wendi Poole nation will shortly have a chance plan. Today, at any Net terminal, you can get an amazing variety to re-establish, or overhaul, its Then he adds, “What we failed of music and video, an evolving own press or to create a new one. to see was how much of this new encyclopedia, weather forecasts, And that’s a moment for careful world would be manufactured by help-wanted ads, satellite images thought.” And in the same vein, users, not corporate interests. This of anyplace on earth, up-to-the- the State of the Media report for bottom-up takeover was not in minute news from around the 2005, after listing its litany of news anyone’s ten-year plan.” globe, tax forms, tax guides, road media woes, writes, “Somehow And of course he mentions we- maps, stock quotes, telephone journalism needs to prove that it’s blogs. “No web phenomena,” he numbers, etc, etc.” acting on behalf of the public, if it says, “is more confounding than And what about the trust in all is to save itself.” blogging. Everything media ex- of these things? About eBay, he I would argue, though, that there perts knew about audiences—and writes, “We have an open global really is help. And it’s everywhere, they knew a lot—confirmed the flea market that handles 1.4 billion if journalists are willing to accept focus group belief that audiences auctions each year and oper- it. It’s in the form of audiences would never get off their butts and ates from your bedroom. Users themselves. It’s presenting itself start making their own entertain- do most of the work; they pho- in the form of weblogs, videologs, ment. Everyone knew writing and tograph, catalog, post and man- podcasts, none of which are going reading were dead. Music was too age their own auctions. And they away.