Making Important News Interesting

Journalists can cover haters without helping them

2010-09-09T14:29:00.001-04:00

Via Romenesko, more on how the media can do hate-mongers' jobs for them, this time over the weekend's planned Koran burning. The key insight from this Orlando Sentinel column:

We created the Rev. Terry Jones from dust. And in two weeks, to dust he shall return. Then we'll move on to the guys who plan to run over the Quran at their monster-truck pull. Whatever it takes to keep your attention.

And some good advice from Poynter on how not to be used.

Journalists culpable in mosque madness

2010-08-17T13:56:00.007-04:00

Things are not well in our anarchic, allegedly gatekeeper-less new media environment when the most radical, bizarre and hateful voices routinely infect and then somehow come to dominate mainstream thought.

I keep hearing things in the news that sound outlandish and so outside what is reasonable, rational or Constitutional that I shrug them off as little asides in our grand diverse discourse, only to find days or weeks or months later that these off-the-wall agendas have become Big Stories.

So, for instance, little dribs and drabs of complaint are sounded about an Islamic center being built in New York City near the site of the terrorist-destroyed World Trade Center, and I think: Well, naturally, some people will let fear and ignorance and xenophobia trump the uniquely powerful and enduring American ideal that all people have a natural and (domestically) a Constitutional right to assemble and worship as they please, but cooler heads will surely prevail and the addition of another religious fixture in the nation's most diverse and vibrant city will not become a national story engulfing Congressional politics and cause the president to waver in his firm declaration of support for this unique and enduring American right and lead to overwhelming popular opposition to the construction of such a center.

I was wrong, as usual. Because that's what happened, because politicians and politico-entertainers would much rather divert people with issues like this than discuss, say, the economy, or our continuing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, or, heaven forbid, the remaking of the earth's surface through global climate change.

Salon.com has a piece charting how the story might have gained traction, which seems to follow a similar pattern for much of our diseased national dialogue.

Lots of people let us down when these things happen, but my primary concern on this blog is the journalists, who allow something like a noncontroversial building permit to grow into A Threat To The Nation through inertia, pack journalism and fear of appearing biased against xenophobia.

Let me just come out and say here, as a supporter of traditional journalistic values, that those values do not require the fanning of xenophobic flames. That traditional journalistic values call for judging the relative significance of one story against another, and that journalistic time and resources should not be steered toward the basest and most superficial kinds of stories in service of politicians and pundits who want to say "Hey, look over there!" so we don't have to talk about real problems in real ways. Journalistic values call for us to say: Well, I see that over there, but how is that going to affect the country's jobless rate or stop the bloodshed in Iraq and Afghanistan or produce better responses for the increasing natural disasters affecting millions of people around the world? Why don't we talk about that for a minute?

Because journalism is an independent process. It has no obligation to hop on the diversionary political agenda of the moment. Its goal is to make people smarter about the world, better prepared for its challenges and more understanding of why things are the way they are.

Its job is also, I would argue, to defend the First Amendment, against all challengers. Because it looks like nobody else is going to do it.

A specific proposal for a local news consortium

2010-04-22T15:47:00.000-04:00

Here. J-Lab, a new-media based public affairs journalism think tank, is way ahead of me on the collaboration idea I floated a couple of posts below. J-Lab did a study of old and new Philadelphia media that led to a recommendation of a collaborative effort encompassing newspapers, blogs and niche Web sites to focus citizens on key public affairs issues. It's local instead of national, but that makes more sense as a way to start, anyway.

What makes us watch

2010-04-13T11:44:00.000-04:00

Seems like more people are interested in connecting what goes on in the brain with how people seek and interpret media content. The Poynter Institute has an interview with former Chicago Tribune editor and publisher Jack Fuller, whose new book apparently deals in part with the neuroscience of news consuming.

From Steve Myers' Poynter story:

Fuller explained that we're drawn to scary images like fires and car wrecks for the same reason our ancestors kept an eye on predators: survival. When we see such images, fear courses through our brains and focuses our attention on what appears to threaten us. Our brains respond the same way that our ancestors' did, even though we know we're not really endangered by those dramatic images.

An interesting discussion ensues over the extent to which journalists must use emotion to get readers' attention, and the ethical limits of this approach. It's worth reading, and so likely is Fuller's book, which comes out in May.

A new kind of agenda-setting

2010-04-01T23:51:00.002-04:00

I was invited by the Committee of Concerned Journalists yesterday to participate in a survey the organization is conducting to prepare comments for the Federal Communications Commission, which is in the throes of a project aimed to help shape the future of media. The survey asked several interesting open-ended questions about the state of journalism today and what can be done to ensure that Americans continue to have access to credible, reliable information in the digital age.

This led me back to my thinking about re-aggregating the splintered audiences of America. And for the first time, I discovered the kernel of an idea, which I expressed poorly in the survey because I hadn't thought about it enough.

Here's the idea: What if there was some way, around major issues like health care, climate change, the war in Afghanistan, the deficit, that news organizations -- new and traditional, large and small, national and local -- could form voluntary, shifting consortia that fostered simultaneous, parallel coverage focused on a shared set of basic facts and central questions? In other words, rather than The New York Times holding one conversation on one issue and ABC News holding another conversation on another issue and The Daily Beast talking about something else and local media ignoring it altogether, a vast coalition of newspapers, broadcasters, bloggers, tweeters, etc., could agree on what to talk about, set basic parameters and hold similar discussions, in their own styles, at the same time.

That way, instead of everybody in the country having their attention pulled in different directions depending on their primary news source and therefore having nothing in common to talk about, the majority of people who were remotely tuned in could be having similar conversations on significant issues and might be able to focus long enough to reach a broader, quicker national consensus -- or at least might have a collective sense of what was going on.

Of course, people on the margins -- those who refuse to believe anything in the "mainstream media" or who simply refuse to get on board with what most rational people can agree are the central facts of an issue -- will remain on the margins. But they might be far less likely to dominate the discussion than in the past, because such a large number of people will have access to good information and be paying attention to it at the same time.

Now, this might or might not be a good idea (or maybe someone's already thought of it -- let me know). It would require a great deal of good reporting, coordination, trust and -- most significantly -- a shared sense of priorities. It could result in one important issue getting too much attention while others languish. But it could also be a way to fill the gap left by the death of the Walter Cronkite model of national conversation -- where a very few people set the agenda and everyone else followed it. Now, agenda-setting power is in more hands, but that power is so diffuse that there is virtually no agenda, so almost nothing gets done.

If we could return the role of agenda-setting to the press, but also make that role exponentially more broad-based and transparent, maybe we could get Americans talking to one another again in constructive ways.

Anyway, it's worth thinking about.

Who cares what you THINK?

2010-03-31T21:34:00.002-04:00

Via Romenesko, a new PressThink post by NYU journalism professor Jay Rosen offers suggestions for CNN's primetime programming in light of news that the network is in a sustained ratings funk. I'm not super crazy about Rosen's suggestions, because despite his likely aim of generating more interesting discussion, he's still advocating for more of the same "talking heads" formula that has ruined television news. I prefer the first couple of comments on his post, which call for less opinion and more news from the 24-hour cable network, which I stopped watching a couple of years ago because it regularly set me off into a life-shortening, sputtering rage.

The problem with so much CNN programming is not just the contrived "balance" that leads to ridiculous hyping of false and trivial assertions that distract from meaningful issues, it's the relentless quest for opinion to the near exclusion of the quest for facts. Worse still, CNN doesn't seek opinion from independent-thinking experts on the issues of the day; it returns again and again to partisan hacks who are clearly pushing specific political agendas and dispensing talking points issued from central authorities. The "debates" among these people are about as authentic as professional wrestling, and I suspect people have stopped watching because they know that none of these pundits has the public interest at heart during these all-but-scripted bloviating sessions.

As one Rosen commenter said, in so many words, it's time we stop listening to what people THINK and concentrate on finding out what they KNOW. Maybe then we can actually learn something from watching the news, instead of leaving CNN and other cable news networks dumber than when we came to them.

More on the challenge of mythbusting

2010-03-30T22:02:00.003-04:00

A belated nod to my University of Georgia colleague Barry Hollander, who recently published a paper on public perceptions that's gotten some attention.

Hollander uses a study of persistent misperceptions about Barack Obama's religion -- he's a Christian, not a Muslim -- to illustrate how people tend to hang on to incorrect beliefs even after the false perceptions have been corrected in the media.

I've posted before about both the importance and the difficulty of mythbusting. It's growing increasingly clear that people are wired to cling to their beliefs, even in the face of contradicting evidence, and also that repeating a myth for the purposes of debunking it tends to reinforce it.

I've also noted that the greatest challenge for journalists today might be finding ways to re-aggregate a perhaps hopelessly fragmented nation so that we can all pay attention long enough to have a constructive conversation. Everyone doesn't need to agree on everything, but it would be helpful to keep the more fantastical stuff off to the margins instead of having it dominate the discussion.

An open letter to Sarah Palin

2009-09-07T21:44:00.001-04:00

Dear ex-Gov. Palin:

I see that you have taken a position on The Associated Press's decision to publish a photo of a dying U.S. Marine in Afghanistan, and that, as is your special skill, you're getting a lot of attention for it.

Your courageous stand is that it was wrong for AP to have published the photo of Lance Cpl. Joshua "Bernie" Bernard. Here's what you apparently posted on your facebook page:

Shame on the AP for purposely adding to the grieving family’s pain. Ignoring the family’s wishes by publishing a sacred image of their loved one proved a despicable and heartless act by the AP. The family said they didn’t want the photo published. AP, you did it anyway, and you know it was an evil thing to do

While I appreciate your sympathy for the family, I'm troubled by your apparent conviction that no one should see images of soldiers who are wounded or dying in our wars. I'm reminded of your courageous quitting speech a few weeks ago, during which you goaded the news media: "So, how about, in honor of the American soldier, ya quit makin’ things up."

Well, one of the great fictions perpetrated on the American people by the government and news media over the past eight years is that the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are painless. We've been encouraged or bullied to "support the troops" with trite bromides and yellow ribbon car magnets, but that's the limit of civilian involvement in these fights. No need to pay more taxes or alter our lifestyles to provide for body armor or reduce our demand for the resources that make this region such a powder keg. And for heaven's sake, no physical evidence that when soldiers are sent off to wars, some of them come home in pieces, and some come home in boxes.

Only recently has the Pentagon lifted its longstanding ban on photographing flag-draped coffins when they return from overseas. And even now, the very idea that everyday Americans should witness a fraction of the violence that our soldiers and Marines are thrust into for months on end is considered one of the great moral transgressions of our time.

The truth, ex-Gov. Palin, is that thousands of American soldiers have died in Iraq and Afghanistan. Tens of thousands have been physically wounded. Countless others have been emotionally scarred for life, and have brought those scars home to their families and communities. It should not be too much to ask that the rest of us develop the stomach to witness that sacrifice, rather than turning away from it, rather than pretending our willful ignorance is the moral high ground.

The photo in question, which appears here (at the risk of facing AP's copyright wrath), was taken by an Associated Press photographer who was feet away from where this Marine was wounded, which means she could easily have been wounded, too. The image is difficult to read, and the soldier's face is all but unidentifiable, but the mortality of the situation is plain. The photographer, Julie Jacobson, witnessed this event, because she had the courage and selflessness to risk her life to tell the truth about the war and its violence. The other troops on the scene witnessed this event, because we sent them there to risk their lives to further American interests. The implication that asking the rest of us to witness this event, to contemplate its meaning, to consider that the war is real and physical and kills actual people -- the implication that this is "despicable and heartless" is wide of the moral mark. To suggest that such reporting is "evil" -- well, that's the hallmark of self-serving hyperbole. I'm not sure what makes you such a moral authority, ex-Gov. Palin, but there are many greater evils in the world than telling the truth.

Publishing graphic images is always an ethical challenge for journalists, and the grieving family's desire that the photo not be published heightens the dilemma. Reasonable and well-meaning people can disagree about whether making this image public was the right thing to do. But Joshua Bernard did not just die for his family; he died for his country and his fellow citizens. We owe him the dignity of confronting and acknowledging his sacrifice.

Ex-Gov. Palin, your facebook post includes this promise:

Our thoughts and prayers are with the Bernard family. Words can not adequately express our sorrow and appreciation for your sacrifice. We will never forget your Marine or his fallen comrades

Call me a skeptic, but I don't believe you. I'd be surprised if you can recall this Marine's name a week from now. More to the point, I'd like you to tell us something about the last U.S. soldier who died before Bernard, or the next one who died after. You know, share your heartfelt memories of the troops whose pictures you didn't see.

The pitfalls of short-term thinking

2009-04-28T22:42:00.005-04:00

Knowing what audiences say they want and what they are chasing is a useful tool for news judgment, but it should not be the sole driver of content. As Tom Rosenstiel mentions in my book, news is what hasn't happened yet, and there's no backward-looking research that can tell you what content will be useful or desired going forward. More to the point, audiences/readers/citizens can't ask for something they don't know is there.

That's why this column on Web hits at the Project for Excellence in Journalism site is so important.

To quote Jim Brady:

I was pretty confident that a story about the celebrity meltdown du jour would get more traffic than our story on President Obama’s current thinking on the Department of Agriculture. But The Washington Post’s bread and butter is coverage of the federal government, politics, diplomacy, national security, local news and local sports, not national entertainment news. To put it another way: If The Washington Post decided to promote stories on its home page based purely on traffic potential, what makes it unique would quickly evaporate.

And, his example originally quoted by Romenesko:

There was nothing in our traffic history to suggest that stories about military veterans were of particular interest to our readers. But when Dana Priest and Anne Hull uncovered the poor conditions at Walter Reed Army Hospital, the story went global in hours. That kind of journalism will be increasingly at risk if we get too caught up in the race for page views.

The search for the silver bullet is one of the reasons, to mix a metaphor, that journalists have been chasing their tails for the last several years. The most successful content isn't the kind that follows an audience; it's the kind that creates an audience.

No more national consciousness

2009-04-22T21:00:00.003-04:00

OK, I realize that going seven months without posting eliminates me from consideration for the blogger of the year award.

Politico has an interesting story today asserting that Barack Obama is getting away with many affronts to human decency (reducing travel restrictions to Cuba, hosting the Grateful Dead in the White House, going on the Jay Leno show, etc.) that are infuriating conservatives but hardly blemishing his overall popularity. The story quotes pundit Mark Halperin saying that President Clinton, by contrast, "would have gotten hammered" for such pokes in the eye of tradition and dignity.

It may be true that Obama is getting away, relatively speaking, with activities that would have been much more damaging to Clinton in the 1990s. But these examples of an official escaping mass outrage, it seems to me, miss the forest for the trees. Instead of, say, reducing prosecutions of users of medical marijuana, as Obama has done, imagine if Clinton had clandestinely approved the torture of U.S.-held prisoners in a bid to elicit false confessions that would provide evidence to start a war resulting in more than 4,000 American deaths. Such a revelation, a decade ago, likely would have led to bipartisan impeachment charges that would have stuck.

Of course, these are the kinds of details emerging about the Bush administration's treatment of terror detainees (for the best aggregating on this topic over many years, see Dan Froomkin's reporting and editing at washingtonpost.com). But, just like the video of Obama bowing respectfully to the Saudi Arabian king, the torture revelations are landing on the American conscious with all the impact of a fluffy feather.

It seems to me that the reason for this universal lack of popular outrage is simple, and it's not the conclusion that Politico reaches in its story. Politico suggests Obama is getting an easier ride on cultural affronts than Clinton did because the country is getting more liberal, and upcoming generations don't have all the hangups that the Baby Boomers did about late-night television and respecting foreign leaders. That might also be true, but the "more liberal" theory doesn't explain the general shrugs with which ongoing revelations about our program of torture are being received.

Here's my argument for why both the Bush and Obama administrations suffered, and are suffering, less widespread scrutiny and criticism for their crimes and misdemeanors than Clinton or any previous administration of the past several decades: It's because Americans no longer have a coherent, broadly recognized and heeded structure for receiving and understanding the news.

Two phenomena -- the fragmentation of news sources brought on by cable and the digital era, and the "hyperlocal" movement among newspapers that has essentially banished national and world news from the front pages of all but the biggest dailies -- have resulted in a widespread mainstream disengagement from the news of the day. When big chunks of us get our news from the Fox network, and big chunks of us get our news from MSNBC, and those of us who still subscribe to local newspapers find largely parochial coverage from within a day's drive of the reporting staff, there is no medium or institution that foments and moderates a national conversation.

Clinton's scandals were on the front pages of most newspapers in the 1990s. Bush's scandals were relegated to inside wire pages or briefs. Coverage of first three months of Obama's administration has been similarly kaleidoscopic: Throughout their days, most Americans receive and personally assemble tiny shards of news from talk radio, cable news, word of mouth, RSS feeds, etc. Each of us builds from these fragments a different impression of the world, an individual view of events that skews to our personal interests (kite flying, NASCAR, whale watching) and leaves all but the most politically engaged of us with the sparest impressions of public issues and events.

We no longer have national conversations about the most important questions -- like how should we deal with our recent legacy of torture -- because no majority of us is seeking or receiving the same reliable information from the same set of trustworthy sources.

People have celebrated the digital age for the liberating effect it's had on all of us as consumers of information. We are all free to seek and receive the kind of information we want, when we want it. The traditional gatekeepers, the "mainstream media," which used to inform and guide our civic conversations, are decreasingly influential. One result of this is that more information is available than ever before, and that a select few can't determine what we see and know as a national community. But another result is that, while we can see and know whatever we want, there is no national community to deliberate over what we know.

As newspapers continue to shrink and die, concerned journalists and citizens are wondering who will ask the tough questions, hold officials accountable, and provide the kind of information we need to make good decisions that sustain our democracy. But I don't think our major problem is that there will be less journalism. All these stories are out there. There's plenty of information available about torture, plenty of information about Obama's friendly handshake with Hugo Chavez. More people than ever are asking questions, digging up facts and publishing information that make powerful people uncomfortable.

The big challenge for journalism going forward is not whether it will get done, but how we can get a critical mass of people to pay attention to it. Because right now the future of journalism appears to be thousands of trees falling in the forest, and no one hearing a sound.

Lipstick on the press

2008-09-12T10:52:00.005-04:00

The national news media, especially the cable and broadcast news media, might as well go ahead and put big "tool" stickers on their foreheads for the duration of the presidential election. Their complicity and delight in helping divert the American public from substantive issues has been evident throughout the primary season this past year, and -- despite the extraordinary stakes in this election -- it continues apace.

The latest and perhaps most egregious example is giving credence to the McCain campaign's objectively bogus claim that Barack Obama called Sarah Palin a pig the other day when Obama repeated a cliche he's often used ("You can put lipstick on a pig, but it's still a pig") when discussing McCain's economic policy. Obama was clearly referring to economics and had not even brought up Palin so far in his remarks when he used the refrain -- one that McCain has also used this year in criticizing Democratic policies. But the McCain people are smart enough to know that, since Sarah Palin recently brought up lipstick to distinguish hockey moms from pit bulls, they could then accuse Obama of sexism and tie up a couple of news cycles.

News outlets like CNN took up this cause, despite knowing, and generally pointing out, that the McCain campaign's claim was fabricated. It doesn't seem to occur to these reporters and producers that when they go ahead and lead news programs with bogus claims, they lend support to those claims and give aid and comfort to their progenitors. See my previous post on research showing that repeating a lie further embeds it in people's heads, even if you prove the lie to be false.

The extraordinary thing is that, even as self-proclaimed journalists wallow in this incendiary crap -- to the exclusion of delving into actual health, tax and national security policy in any meaningful way -- they pretend that they're just along for the ride and have no choice but to cooperate. Watch how CNN Deputy Political Director Paul Steinhauser introduces the "lipstick on a pig" hoax by saying, "This is what they're arguing about today ... Can you believe it?"

As Obama explains in the clip, he wasn't arguing about lipstick -- he was arguing about economic policy. He had to talk about lipstick the next day because the McCain campaign made up a ludicrous charge and the news stations all started repeating it.

What if these journalists did their jobs, evaluated the truth or falsity of stories BEFORE airing them, and stopped being boxing gloves for whichever campaign is smart enough to distract and delude them from their real responsibilities?

Fortunately, there is some deeper reporting that is bothering to call out the McCain campaign for its carefully crafted and expertly deployed low blows in this election, despite the danger of being called partisan for doing so. Here's an AP analysis, for example.

I need to disclose here that I'm supporting the Obama campaign. I'm not presently affiliated with a news organization. I believe the fate of our democratic republic -- which has been under assault from within as well as without in the past eight years -- rides on the outcome of this election. This is not a partisan belief. It is based on my understanding of the Constitution and of the role that both the people and the press play in deciding the future of our country. If John McCain and his supporters want to convince the American public that they truly have a better plan for restoring this country's strength, security, global leadership and economic stability, let them do it. Let the news media hold McCain and Obama accountable for their records and ideas. Let all the candidates submit to tough questioning from fair-minded reporters, and let the best ideas and leaders emerge.

In the meantime, if this is the best the national political media can do for our country, we might as well consign the very idea of a democracy guided by an informed public to the dust bin of history.

If you don't like it, stop it

2008-05-22T10:22:00.005-04:00

Romenesko linked to an interesting speech that Washington Post political reporter Dan Balz gave the other day at Columbia University.

He said a couple of things that would have brought me to my feet, like this:

This election reminds us of something that has too often been ignored: That Washington matters. That government matters. Most of all, that who wins the White House matters. As we have seen over the past eight years, the choice of a president affects the way America projects its power around the world and how the world sees us. It affects who gets health care and at what price. It affects who gets taxed and at what rates. It affects the distribution of wealth in a society where income inequality continues to grow. It affects how we educate children and how we care for older Americans. It affects what this nation does to combat global climate change and therefore the world your children and your grandchildren will inherit.

That's exactly the kind of understanding that leads to substantive political reporting and, ideally, a better informed and more thoughtful electorate. Balz also said this:

Good political reporting devotes as much energy and curiosity to plumbing the state of the country, the aspirations of all Americans, the clash of ideas and the changes that may be realigning the nation’s political power structure, as it does to what candidates say or do on any given day.

That's about context, which lends meaning to the news of the day. Amen.

Here, though, is where Balz lost my sympathy:

My first concern is that we talk more and more about less and less. We seize on trivial developments rather than big ideas. We obsess over process and but not over policy. We over-cover a snide remark by David Geffen about the Clintons and under-cover a major speech. We spend too much time speculating about the future and not enough examining and understanding the present and the past. We write for one another and talk too much to one another. In other words, we are in danger of reducing to an insider’s game the most important set of decisions people are making about the future of our country.

Note the disconnect in this relatively short speech between what Balz says is important (see his first passage) and what he says political journalists do. His acknowledgement of how far off the rails most political reporting is, is particularly disappointing because Balz so clearly understands what it should be.

My advice to Dan, and all the other people currently covering politics but unhappy with the state of political coverage, is: START DOING IT RIGHT.

Balz's lamentation implies a feeling of helplessness, but all it would take for political coverage to improve in this country is for political reporters and their editors to stop complaining about how trivial much of their work is and do the other kind of work instead. Stop talking about how political journalism needs to be better, and make it better. If the Washington Post can't do it, who can?

In fairness, the Post's political coverage is about as extensive as one could hope to find, and although it delves deeply into the inside-baseball, blow-by-blow aspects of electoral politics, it also spends a lot of time on substance, issues, fact-checking and the other elements that make elections historic decisions and not cultural side shows. If everybody covered politics as thoroughly as The Washington Post, Dan Balz wouldn't have to complain.

But every election cycle we watch journalists wring their hands over how shallow, horse-racey and misguided election coverage is, when they're the very people who produce it. It's like going to a restaurant and having the chef complain about how bad the food is there.

Hey, chef, make better food!

Sucking up to pols, vs. socking it to them

2008-02-28T14:32:00.006-05:00

I've got another column on the Committee of Concerned Journalists site, this one comparing two incidents of presidential election coverage on cable.

In one case, a network continued flogging a story that its own journalists and analysts were consistently saying was a non-story.

In another case, an anchor didn't let a candidate's surrogate get away with generalizations.

Check it out.

The problem with 'hyperlocal'

2007-12-06T10:40:00.001-05:00

I wrote a column for the Committee of Concerned Journalists last week, discussing how being TOO local of a news organization means missing a great deal of national, world and state news with a direct impact on your audience.

Local is the franchise of small and mid-sized newspapers, but it's a bad idea to assume your readers are getting the bigger news they need elsewhere. The best local journalism explains how all the world's events affect and change local communities, and how those communities can have an impact on the wider world.

Local is vital, but context is king.

See the column here.

The dangers of mythbusting

2007-09-11T15:46:00.001-04:00

I need to address some new research reported recently in The Washington Post that warns truth-tellers to be careful in the way they attack myths and false conventional wisdom.

In my book I make a big point of the importance of repeatedly correcting public misperceptions, because merely reporting the truth once and moving on is not a powerful enough weapon against misinformation. But a recent study seems to show that busting myths in the wrong way can do as much to perpetuate them as to dispel them.

The basic finding is that once an idea has entered people's heads, repeated exposure to the idea tends to reinforce its original message, regardless of whether new information contradicts that message. So even though people are repeatedly reminded that Saddam Hussein wasn't involved in planning the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, a pretty steady 40 percent continue to believe it.

The research, which wasn't specifically about terrorism, "highlights the disturbing reality that once an idea is implanted in people's minds, it can be difficult to dislodge," the Post story says. "Denials inherently require repeating bad information, which may be one reason they can paradoxically reinforce it."

Citing another study, the story concludes that, rather than denying falsehoods, "it is better to make a completely new assertion that makes no reference to the original myth."

The Post does some great regular reporting on how the brain's inherent tendencies affect our response to politics, news and information. Lots of stuff we intuitively think is constructive or obvious can turn out otherwise, because of the way we're wired. This latest story is a warning that, in pursuit of making sure people know the truth, we have to be very careful not to reinforce fallacies.

2007-06-13T12:05:00.000-04:00

Holding people accountable

A couple of things from this past week demonstrate an increasing commitment by journalists to making sure audiences get the truth from news reports -- not just unchallenged speculation and spin.

On Friday, Matthew Felling blogged for CBS News' PublicEye about "Pop Up Politics," in which he proposed covering debates with VH-1-style "pop-up" boxes that emerge onscreen as candidates ramble through their talking points. The pop-ups would provide background and biographical information on the candidates, explain their positions on issues and, ideally, point up contradictions between their present and past statements in real time.

Felling seemed to be half joking in his post, but this is a terrific idea. Not only would it help bring televised debates into the 21st century, it would be engaging, informative and help keep the candidates honest. Major style points to the first network (does it have to be Comedy Central?) that tries it.

Then yesterday Romenesko posted a lengthy internal memo from AP writer Ron Fournier about writing with authority. The memo is posted under Miscellaneous Items -- I'm not sure if this is a permanent link or if a search would be required.

This memo is a great litany of tools reporters can use to make sure they are acting as journalists and not just stenographers of official statements, including:

-- Following up on process stories by checking in six months or a year later to see how proposals and promises fared in reality

-- Actively and unapologetically exposing intentional lies and misstatements by officials

-- Working sources to get more insight into what's really happening behind the scenes

-- Writing what reporters know to be true based on verifiable observations rather than relying solely on the official word. Fournier uses coverage of Hurricane Katrina as an example.

If AP adopts these ideas as standard practice, the ubiquitous news organization could help revolutionize the way officials are covered, to the disadvantage of the disingenuous and in great service to the public.

2007-05-07T16:50:00.000-04:00

Do newspapers deserve to live? (Part II)

Yes, if they maintain the gumption and independence the San Antonio Express-News demonstrates in its coverage of a recent Al Gore speech to an architects group.

The speech, to an audience of thousands, was supposed to be closed to the media -- but the newspaper sent a reporter in under his own name without declaring himself as a journalist. We can discuss the ethics of this practice, but I'm persuaded by the argument of Express News public editor Bob Richter, who explains the paper's decision in his column.

The point is, here we have a newspaper that recognizes its role in the community and its duty to the public -- which is to share information that citizens have an interest in, even if that means annoying powerful people. The last paragraph of the news story sums it up: " On the request of Gore's media handlers, Saturday's event was closed to the media. Because of the importance of the issue and Gore's status, the San Antonio Express-News chose to cover it anyway."

This paper knows who it's working for.

Thanks, as is often the case, to Romenesko, for spotlighting these stories.

2007-05-07T10:52:00.000-04:00

Do newspapers deserve to live?

Not at the rate they're going. Here's nationally syndicated columnist James Lileks, a sharp and witty writer with an audience that seeks him out, explaining that his bosses at the newly commoditized Minneapolis Star Tribune are killing his column and moving him to a local straight news beat. In other words, rather than trumpeting its unique voices, the paper is stamping them out. It's being bland on purpose.

This is so ridiculous that it feels like it might be one of those hoaxes perpretrated to get people like me all riled up, only to end up with egg on our faces because we didn't bother to check it out before we started commenting about it. If that's the case, congratulations to the joker who pulled it off. Unfortunately, the news business has reached the point where, as blatantly stupid, short-sighted and mean-spirited as this move is, it's entirely believable.

2007-02-26T14:18:00.000-05:00

Here's how to do it

Right off the subject of the last post is a Readership Institute column describing research into people's openness toward serious news, if it's reported and presented in the right way. The column cites the reporting of Doug McGill, who's linked on the rail of this blog and has pioneered the concept of doing global reporting from local communities. And it makes this excellent point about how to approach world news in a meaningful way:

There is no research I know of that says that people want to read about genocide. What research I see - especially as it relates to young people college and much younger - suggests they want to know about the lives of their neighbors. They ask such questions as, Why did they leave their country? How did they get here? What is it like for them to start over? In a way this explains their current world to them.

In the United States today, there are more than 10 million young people between the ages of 5 and 17 who were born in another country. That is 1 out of every 5 children K through 12 was not born in the United States. They are the friends and neighbors of our children. North American children are living in the most global society. It is natural for them to be interested in other places.

This is the essence of my chapter on reporting world news. People need to know what's going on in other countries; but they need to see it in a context that makes sense to them. The answer is not to cover the world less, but to cover it well.

2007-02-26T13:42:00.000-05:00

But where's the news?

One major phenomenon in traditional media's desperate struggle to maintain audiences is the free or cheap tabloid aimed at the 18-34 age group, often published by a daily newspaper that seems unable to reach those people on its own merits.

The latest of these efforts is apparently underway at the San Antonio Express-News, and its characteristics are similar to other publications targeting this age group: Most notably, it intends to cover everything but news. A memo published in the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies describes a content "focus on music, the Web, film, gaming, pop culture and trends in general, the arts, local nightlife and outdoor recreation."

Leaving aside whether the Express-News ought to be covering those topics satisfactorily in its daily paper (it should), we should wonder why so many publications for people under 40 reflexively recoil from the idea that this audience could handle serious subjects. Yes, there are studies showing that this generation of young people is less interested in news than any preceding generation, but news bean counters always seem to place the blame for this with the people, instead of the news.

What if, instead of assuming that young people avoid the news because they're dumb and apathetic, we assume they're uninterested in news coverage because it seems to ignore them, talk above them, dwell on political style over issue-oriented substance, and foster a sense of helplessness by refusing to demonstrate the vital role regular citizens play in the democratic process? What if, instead of targeting young people with pandering escapism, we tried harder to engage them in important matters that affect their lives every day?

Those what-ifs are hard to answer, because nobody's trying it. My guess is that if we showed younger people their stake in the news through compelling, meaningful coverage that addressed them as citizens instead of commodities, we could start building some credibility and maybe an audience. It's not just a guess, either: The Readership Institute has done research showing that young people appreciate news coverage that makes them feel smarter and looks out for their civic interests.

What news decisionmakers have to get their heads around is that, just because research shows people don't like the news they get, it doesn't mean they don't like the news they COULD get. Let's, for a minute, stop assuming that apathy is about them and consider that it might be about us.

2007-02-15T21:16:00.000-05:00

Highlighting good journalism

Here's something I should have known about before but didn't: It's a blog by a Northwestern journalism professor who trolls daily for really good journalism -- stories that are groundbreaking, innovative, watchdog oriented or particularly well told. It's called Jon Marshall's News Gems, and it's worth a regular look.

Marshall provides reliable evidence that good, important journalism persists to this day, in spite of every hurdle news organizations face and the remarkable hostility journalists face from nearly all segments of society.

And, while we're talking about good news, Reuters reports today on some empirical evidence that spending money on your newsroom is a way to make money in the news business. This ought to be a no-brainer, but of course media bean counters have been betting on the opposite premise for well over a decade -- cost cutting themselves right out of business.

The new evidence comes from a study by the University of Missouri-Columbia, a top-flight J-School. I suppose you could argue that the study's authors have a vested interest in these results, since bigger newsrooms means more jobs means better placement for journalism school graduates. But the spokesperson for this study, Esther Thorson, associate dean for graduate studies at Missouri's J-school, is an advertising professor, touting results indicating that newsroom spending is more lucrative than spending on any other department in the news business.

If we're lucky, the bigwigs with the fancy suits will pay heed to this study and stop gutting newsrooms so we can get more of the good work highlighted by Jon Marshall. Unfortunately, the momentum to bleed news organizations to death might be too powerful to overcome at this point. Time will tell.

UPDATE: Here's an interview with Thorson from the public radio business program "Marketplace," which gets a big shout-out in my book for its smart and creative journalism.

2007-01-31T13:49:00.000-05:00

Poynter's Romenesko pointed to an intriguing story in Talking Biz News yesterday about a couple of Gannett papers merging their business and metro desks into one big reporting squad.

It's easy enough to interpret these moves as cynical cost-cutting efforts packaged as improved public service, but the irony of this particular development is that it could make the papers better.

The comments with the story do a good job capturing the range of good and bad that could result, with the bad leaning toward a dissolution of the business staff and the diversion of economic expertise into a schedule of night cops shifts. And, with the way things are going, this is an unfortunate likelihood.

But my first reaction to this move was more like commenter Tim, who posits that uniting the news and business staffs under one editorial roof could result in more holistic reporting. As people like Tom Friedman have asserted at length, the manifold forces affecting our lives no longer can be viewed in isolation from one another. Globalization, the Internet, increasing public-private partnerships and a much larger chunk of the population invested in the stock market through 401(k)s and similar investments means that segregating "news" and "business news" paints a false picture of the way the world works.

Governments, corporations and citizens are mixed up in so many ways that it's foolish trying to extricate one from the other. The State of Michigan's now-chronic budget crisis is largely attributable to declining tax revenues resulting from the shrinking American auto industry, and the impact extends to higher unemployment, rising college costs and fewer resources for public school children. Michigan State University is now partnering with the state to develop a number of economic development incubators aiming to solve these public and private problems in tandem. The Wal-Mart a few miles from my office is suing a local township that has voted against its expansion plans. Coporations are lobbying the government to address our national health-care and environmental crises, because boards of directors are beginning to feel the sting of short-sighted political policies.

The less that newspeople view these stories through separate lenses, and the more they pay attention to the relationships among public, private and personal, the more creative and meaningful reporting they can provide. Having news and business reporters working under one editor might well create more problems than it solves, but here's a case where the idea of synergy, if approached properly, can bear some sweet fruit.

2007-01-31T13:32:00.000-05:00

A Michigan State University journalism student, and one of my advisees at the student paper here, Josh Jarman, has started a blog as part of a digital reporting class. He calls it "Michigan Student Journalist," and it provides information and ideas for student journalists to chew on as they prepare for their careers.

I was invited to speak to the digital reporting class earlier this month, and Josh went through the trouble of audiotaping the talk and editing it into several intelligible podcasts. So here's some commentary on the state of journalism today, and its potential future.

2007-01-26T16:10:00.000-05:00

A major shortcoming of this blog is a dearth of regular examples of the kind of illuminating and meaningful journalism I preach in my book. Paul McLeary at CJRDaily.org found such an example in the New York Times this week.

The story is from reporters embedded with an American unit in Iraq trying to patrol a Baghdad neighborhood in partnership with the Iraqi Army. And as McLeary points out, the story is written with the authority that could only come from someone who was there on the ground. The story makes observations and judgments that border on opinion, but these observations aren't policy opinions -- they're reactions to what the reporters witnessed and experienced on the scene. And they shed a bright light on the obstacles American troops face in trying to bring order to Iraq, especially in conjunction with the Iraqi troops we're supposed to turn the country over to some day.

The comments under McLeary's post are instructive, because they reveal the vitriol reserved for honest reporting, and the way even a story that is clearly sympathetic to American forces gets twisted by critics into an ultra-liberal screed because it reveals facts that conflict with official statements.

Where this fits with my book is the idea that, for most reasonable people, blunt and vivid storytelling from reporters with the resources and courage to be where the news is can truly engage and enlighten audiences -- helping them understand the complexities of a world that is typically packaged in simple terms and swallowed with little reflection. You can't read this Times piece and not think deeply about what it means for U.S. policy -- whatever your policy preferences happen to be. Good journalism introduces new information that makes people question what they know, or think they know.

More authoritative journalism, more often -- from City Hall as well as from Baghdad -- would make us all more thoughtful people.

2007-01-17T17:01:00.000-05:00

For a continuing conversation between me and new media advocate/guru Howard Owens, a commenter on the last post, check out his blog.

2007-01-15T17:00:00.000-05:00

News today that another young project touted in my book is on the ropes. This one is Backfence.com, a series of "hyperlocal" Web sites that's attempting to build a business model off citizen contributors in smaller communities.

The lack of sufficient audience to sustain revenue here, and the management shakeup, are all part of the sorting out process of creating new models for journalism on the Web. But the problems many of these startups are having should be a reality check for those offering utopian models of a world of journalism without journalists, or those who are a bit too eager to write off all forms of traditional journalism in favor of the brave new world.

That new world is coming, and it certainly won't resemble the ink-smudged hegemony newspapers enjoyed for much of the 20th century. But people are also making predictions and assumptions about what modern news audiences need and desire that have yet to come true. Universal access and the ability for every person to write their own stories might be cool and useful, but demand for people to help package and organize the world -- that is, editors -- hasn't abated. A consultant quoted in the above-linked story about Backfence is paraphrased saying, "Community news sites have to invest in the quality of the content before advertisers will take notice."

In other words, it's not just the medium; It's still the message. Excitement about the Internet and multimedia delivery methods isn't enough; we have to produce content that's worth consuming.

2007-01-03T10:05:00.000-05:00

I canceled my subscription to my local newspaper today.

It was a wrenching, if largely symbolic, decision. I've earned my livelihood from newspapers for more than a decade, and I've worked for one newspaper or another almost constantly for 20 years dating back to high school. I believe, at least in theory, that newspapers hold the key to enlightening our society and shoring up our democratic system. I have, through my 5-year-old daughter, the opportunity to pass on the daily habit of going out for the paper each morning and reading the news over breakfast -- a habit I've faithfully exhibited since well before her birth. If anyone has both a moral and civic obligation to support the newspaper industry, it's me.

But, as I've explained in earlier posts, newspapers can make a series of decisions through which they cease to become NEWSpapers and morph into something else, something less. When this happens, maintaining a subscription doesn't support the newspaper industry any longer -- it enables the abdication of standards and responsibilities that current news executives seem to think they can get away with forever.

My newspaper crossed the line -- my line -- with the introduction of supermaket ads tucked into the corner of the nameplate. The nameplate! It's the top of the front page: the newspaper's name, and then today's produce deals. This follows years of unobtrusive but still troublesome strip ads at the bottom of Page One, and irrepressibly annoying "stickie note" ads that get plastered right over top of the news of the day. I've engaged in more than one debate over the impact these ads have on readers, and after years of arguing about it, I'm voting with my feet.

But the ads are just part of it. Over five years I've watched this newspaper deteriorate from a solid local paper that devoted ample resources to local news coverage and, importantly, enterprise reporting, to one that might catch a city council meeting every three weeks or so and visit the school board once a month. Basic news coverage is spotty, and enterprise is virtually nonexistent. The newshole has shrunk to almost nothing. One of my journalism professors introduced me to the edict that the morning paper has to "tell me something I don't already know," and those instances are increasingly rare in this newspaper. As another final straw, the paper went four or five straight days between Christmas and New Year's Day without a single locally generated editorial -- even on the Sunday that marked the last day of 2006. This is a fundamental dereliction of duty.

I don't blame the current rank and file staff, who seem pretty good and committed. They used to have the time and space, and colleagues, to produce innovative and thoughtful journalism now and then. I cite the paper several times in my book for creative work, which has never been the norm but at least showed up occasionally. This paper now is so gutted and stripped, and its priorities are so out of whack, that good journalism can only occur as an afterthought. And I feel sorry for the good journalists who'd like to do more, and better, but can't.

I've held on to my subscription long past the point of losing respect for the paper, because of the obligation I feel to the newspaper industry. I certainly don't want to hasten its demise; I've devoted the last several years to preserving it. But the death spiral of newspapers' terrible decisionmaking in response to readership trends is now pushing even the most loyal readers, like me, off the cliff. Continuing to subscribe would send the message that these decisions and priorities are OK, and they're not.

I oppose killing newspapers, but I'm not going to linger while they commit suicide.

2007-01-02T09:52:00.003-05:00

Happy New Year.

Let's start it off right with a link to a great essay by Doug McGill, recently appointed executive director of the World Press Institute, on the power of language and journalists' relationship with their audiences.

It's a little heady, but provacative and important.

2006-12-12T13:23:00.000-05:00

Mary Nesbitt over at Northwestern's Readership Institute has a great column on the subject of making important news interesting. She mentions my book, which is nice, but she also talks at length about the research showing that news audiences want important civic news -- they just want it delivered in ways they see as relevant.

Mary points out that news decisionmakers need to start thinking more about the content they're delivering, and not just about the bottom line, if they want to keep their papers intact. These folks follow research like hound dogs, which unfortunately has led to a number of content problems as oversimplified research results have indicated that people don't flock to traditional institutionalized news. What the Readership Institute offers is research showing that while people don't want the same old stuff, they do want to know what's going on in the world and how they can be involved.

If we can get top newspaper people to recognize that their franchise is helping keep citizens informed and active, maybe we can redirect some resources toward meaningful news. And if it's done in the right way, that might turn out to be what audiences have wanted all along.

2006-11-07T15:04:00.001-05:00

Newspaper editor Tom Honig was inspired by the book to ask readers to let him know what news that's important to them is missing from his paper in Santa Cruz, Calif. He gets that people are hungry for significant news, as long as they can see how it relates to them.

2006-09-26T17:05:00.000-04:00

And here's another example of editors' insulting news judgment toward Americans. The Nation points out that in its three internationally circulating covers (Europe, Asia and Latin America), Newsweek International promotes a story on the decaying conditions in Afghanistan. The U.S. edition's cover is a happy profile of celebrity photographer Annie Liebovitz.

The headline on The Nation's commentary, "All the News Our Tiny Minds Can Manage," says it all.

2006-09-26T11:50:00.000-04:00

My book is starting to become part of the conversation over what we should do with our journalism.

The Poynter Institutue's Roy Peter Clark, whom I quote extensively on matters of injecting creativity into news reporting, was kind enough to support the book in his blog discussing his own newest work, "Writing Tools."

To return the favor asymmetrically, I'll note that Clark's writing tools are among the most succinct, diverse and effective summaries of both original and time-honored writing principles in print today. I enjoyed reading them as they were rolled out over the course of a year at www.poynter.org, and their collection into a book was both welcome and inevitable.

I've also discovered the first academic discussion of my book on a blog hosted by Andrew Gruen, a student at Northwestern's Medill School of Journalism, my alma mater. The post focuses on my chapter on online innovations, and the analysis is insightful and I learned something from it. I'm really looking forward to seeing and hearing others' reactions to, and interpretations of, my work -- especially things I'm not expecting or never considred when putting the book together.

2006-09-25T16:59:00.000-04:00

OK, I'm back with this because the topic comes up again and again, and it's important to respond.

We've got a story about a potentially useful new lab at Arizona State University devoted to researching how people use media. Gannett is the first company to tap the lab's resources, which are going to go find out what college-aged people are up to.

Research is good. Knowing things is helpful. The Readership Institute in particular seems pretty good at coming up with actionable information about how audiences interact with the news media.

But news organizations are too quick to chase any old research down any old rabbit hole that takes them away from reporting the news, without studying what the research means or thinking about the consequences of their decisions.

The money quote in this story about the New Media Innovation Lab comes from Mike Coleman, The Arizona Republic's vice president for digital media.

"There is a lot of research saying that many people are not interested in getting local news, like you see in the (newspaper's) 'A' and 'B' sections, online. ... And the younger you are, the less interested you are.

"It seems we need to constantly look at redefining the definition of what news and information is."

Well, if "news and information" turn out to be primarily about garage bands and video games, as this story hints, then can we stop calling ourselves newspapers and just call ourselves fun and games?

It might be that companies need to pursue superficially evident audience interests to the ends of the earth to make more money than they do now, but it's silly to suggest that, after redefining news to exclude news, we're still in the journalism business. Redefine yourself if you want, but don't pretend you're fulfilling your First Amendment role as a news provider.

By the way, just because some research shows that people are boobs with no civic interest doesn't necessarily mean that they are. As I describe in my book, the Project for Excellence in Journalism did a study a few years ago testing the questions asked of TV news audiences. When asked a general question like, "How interested are you in news reports on issues and activities in local government and politics?", 34 percent said they were "very interested." That's not too encouraging, right? But look how little it takes to virtually double that number:

Instead of the generic question, ask: "How interested are you in reports on what government can do to improve the performance of local schools?" The "very interested" number jumped to 59 percent. For stories on government reducing health care costs, it was 64 percent; for the government preventing terrorism, 67 percent.

People do want to know about how government affects their lives and what they can do about it. The fact that they don't see government news as relevant NOW doesn't mean we stop should covering it. It means we need to start covering it RIGHT.

2006-08-23T16:32:00.000-04:00

I'm not the only one who sees Afghanistan as a perfect example of how journalism can't just be about following surveys of what people say they "want" from their news reports.

In an interview for the Dart Center for Journalism & Trauma, Newsday Foreign Editor Roy Gutman talks about the news media's neglect of conflicts that appear unconnected to American lives, and how that neglect can rise up to bite us all in the behinds. He cites Afghanistan as a case in point. As that country festered in the '90s, most journalists, most politicians and almost all citizens paid scant attention. A few years later, we invaded after being blindsided by the terrorists harbored there.

The question for today's reporters and editors is: What's the next Afghanistan, and how do we get it on people's radar before it blows up in our faces?

2006-08-17T14:19:00.000-04:00

A key purpose of my book, and the idea behind the title, is to shatter the false but oft-invoked dichotomy in news judgment between what's "important" and what's "interesting."

The latest example of this false dichotomy is displayed in a provocative and generally useful essay by design consultant Alan Jacobson called "How to sell more newspapers."

Jacobson's first premise is that, inherent in any newsperson's plan to redesign or innovate, is the intention to boost circulation, and that recognizing this will allow for more creative and realistic decisions. (The development of this premise leads to how readers much prefer crosswords and comics to news content, so stop being so smug, Joe Editor.) This is all useful rhetoric to the extent that it encourages holistic thinking toward the newspaper and reminds news folks to be humble as they pursue their goals, which include selling newspapers but -- and this is where Jacobson jumps the tracks -- are not SOLELY to sell newspapers.

If the single overriding goal of a newspaper were to sell itself, and public service journalism weren't an effective sales tool, the solution would be to run the jumble and Soduko all over the front page, with extended horoscopes and comics through the rest of the A-section. To do that, though, would be to kill the newspaper. The idea that any content and marketing decision is acceptable if it sells papers neglects the simple fact that a newspaper without news has ceased to be. Call the result whatever you want -- a shopper, a direct advertising tool -- but stop calling it a newspaper.

To preserve newspapers, then, we have to direct our innovations -- and Jacobson is correct that they must be bold, noticeable and sustained -- in the service of providing news and information the community finds valuable enough to pay for.

Here's where the false dichotomy comes in. In his section titled "Update the news paradigm," Jacobson says, "If anything, we're losing readers because we're too focused on what's important to the exclusion of news that matters to them."

This is an oft-repeated and readily accepted argument, but it leads me to wonder how its proponents are defining the word "important." Because, without participating in the literary ritual of reaching for a dictionary, I'd define "important" as "something that matters."

Jacobson goes on to contrast "importance" with "compelling, relevant and interesting" stories, which again implies some mutual exclusivity.

Here's the part that's easy to concede to Jacobson: The overwhelming majority of important newspaper stories are not compelling, relevant and interesting. But here's where I challenge the dichotomy: The overwhelming majority of important newspaper stories CAN and SHOULD be compelling, relevant and interesting.

Part of the problem in this debate is that detractors of "important" news use it as a synonym for traditional government process news emanating from institutions. This is the stuff that's loaded with proper names and large jargony terms and never seems to meet readers on their level. The news is IMPORTANT because what the president, and Congress, and the state legislature and City Hall do -- which includes taking the country to war, monitoring the safety of food and drugs, deciding how old you have to be to drink alcohol, telling you how much of your paycheck you can keep, dictating whether your kids go to nice bright schools or drafty old shacks, determining where you can skateboard, fixing bridges that are about to collapse and a few hundred thousand other things -- MATTERS to people. These decisions are of unquestionable day-to-day relevance, whether you're a policy wonk or a total civic recluse.

Journalists' job is not to pick "interesting" stories over "important" ones -- it's to use journalism to demonstrate why the important news IS interesting and relevant and compelling. As Jacobson points out, this often comes down to news judgment. The traditional process story might not be the most important story on the budget. And figuring out new ways to communicate important but incremental news -- through the update format or formatted graphics or whatever -- while devoting more time and energy to ferreting out the people and impact behind significant news stories, gives newspapers the flexibility to produce compelling content that fulfills their public service role.

So for a shot in the arm on what newspapers need to build audiences and sell newspapers, read Jacobson's piece. But don't buy the argument that selling papers means being less important. Be more important, more interestingly. Be so important that people feel like they can't miss a day.

2006-08-07T14:26:00.000-04:00

The Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication, which Editor & Publisher reports has 3,500 members who teach and study journalism and related subjects, made an important statement at its convention in San Francisco last week.

The association passed a resolution calling on the Bush administration to cut out its "anti-press policies and practices." Jay Rosen provides the text of the resolution here. Among other points, the resolution decries the administration's stonewalling in the face of information requests, its "massive reclassification of documents" that had been available to the public, and its use of the courts "to pressure journalists to give up their sources and to punish them for obtaining leaked information."

This public declaration, which resolution author David T.Z. Mindich of St. Michael's College says in E&P is "the first statement against general anti-press policies in an administration in at least 30 years," is a risky venture. The press is currently on the losing end of a public relations battle aiming, for political purposes, to discredit its members as liberal partisans who are out to sink this administration at any cost. (See the comments to Rosen's post for a couple of examples.) Journalism educators have a responsibility to produce journalists who are truth-seekers, not partisans or standard-bearers for narrow political ideologies, and therefore they hold a certain responsibility to remain, as a group, neutral in matters of partisan politics.

For discerning readers, this resolution succeeds in maintaining that political neutrality while affirming the values that journalists are obligated to uphold and defend. The preamble acknowledges that "The relationship between the presidency and the press has always been uneasy" and that "When each side conducts its duties with honesty and integrity, both hold the power of the other in check." And the language in the specific condemnations of press-related policy is neutral on questions of broader foreign and domestic decisionmaking, as in this observation: "While we do not take sides on the issue of whether 'enemy combatants' should be detained without charges by the United States government, we are troubled by the administration's failure to provide names and other vital information. When a democratically elected government holds people indefinitely without charges, it is the press's role to shine light on the practice so that citizens and their elected representatives can debate that policy and decide its merits."

In my book, in a section on writing with authority, I argue that news reporters and editors should not take political positions. They should favor no party, no tax policy, no position for or against subsidies or foreign conflicts or oil drilling or the minimum wage. While journalists may hold personal biases on these issues, they must subsume those biases in favor of reporting a full and fair story that gives differing opinions a fair shot.

But I also argue that there are natural, nonpartisan biases which journalists must hold and even promote for the good of our country. They are, most prominently, a bias toward honesty in public conduct, a bias toward openness in government affairs, and a bias toward the public's participation in democratic processes. In these realms, I believe, the journalist is not only entitled but is obligated to be an advocate.

That means exposing falsehoods promoted by Democrats, Republicans and independents alike. It means clamoring for access to government activities and documents. It means promoting robust debate among adherents of competing ideas and ensuring that the best possible truths are on the table for citizens to decide what's right.

By calling attention to, and condeming, administration policies that mislead the public, obscure the truth and erect barriers between citizens and their government, the AEJMC's resolution serves these ends.

It's not up to news journalists or journalism educators to lay out which paths our communities should follow or who should lead us on these paths. But it is up to us to help citizens understand the paths we ARE following and explore alternative paths we COULD follow, and it is our right and duty to challenge anyone who interferes with this responsibility.

2006-08-01T11:50:00.000-04:00

Have we all lost our minds?

A guy who was named the best sports broadcaster in North Carolina a few years ago lost his job after a technical snafu resulted in the airing of an outtake during which he uttered the dreaded s-word. Eleven years as the station's sports director, and that's it for him, getting caught saying a word probably 99 percent of people over age 10 have used at least once in their lives.

This comes amid news that PBS stations have taken to pixellating the mouths of certain documentary subjects who use words that might offend the ears of FCC regulators who are threatening fines in the hundreds of thousands of dollars for a single slip -- fines that could bankrupt small PBS stations.

With all the obscene things going on in the world right now -- and do I really have to go into detail about Iraq, Afghanistan, the Middle East, Guantanamo, domestic and global poverty, etc., to make the point? -- and with the widespread availablility of any kind of offensive words and images you might crave, this witch-hunt against every instance of a banal scatalogical reference hitting the airwaves strikes me as insane. It's endemic of our utter failure as a people to prioritize our moral outrages.

Meanwhile, bloody images of murder, rape, incest -- all the worst things you can imagine -- pour out over the major networks during prime time police shows each night, without so much as an apparent second look from the government, as long as nobody says the word "shit." This imagery is rampant and apparently widely accepted as less harmful than a glimpse of a woman's breast, as long as it's fictional and not, say, bloody images from the actual killings and maimings that are taking place in our real, live wars.

Somebody needs to push the reset button on our national sense of right and wrong, so we can get a grip on reality and focus our energies on the most significant, most dangerous challenges we face instead of destroying careers over a single slip of a syllable.

2006-07-28T15:11:00.000-04:00

American Journalism Review has an important story about how the U.S. news media aren't paying nearly enough attention to the escalating war in Afghanistan, the country that launched our war on terror because it's where Osama bin Laden lived.

An international coalition led by the United States invaded Afghanistan with great fanfare, deposed the ruthless Taliban regime and helped establish a new elected government along with international pledges to fortify the state and build up its infrastructure. For years the U.S. government touted Afghanistan as a poster child for purging terrorists and building democracies.

But neglect and diverted attention have helped lead to a Taliban resurgence, escalating violence, minimal central government control of provinces and an economy largely dependent on the illegal drug trade. In other words, Afghanistan is at risk of returning to the state it was in before the world intervened -- the last time nobody was paying attention to it.

Afghanistan is the best modern example of how dangerous it is to overlook what appears to be an isolated catastrophe -- in my book I quote from an editor's column discussing how "Afghanistanism" used to describe editors' predilection for arcane news nobody cared about. But maybe if the news media had turned America's attention to Afghanistan sooner, Sept. 11 could have been prevented, or at least come as less of a shock.

The idea that journalists have largely turned away from this story again is a sad commentary on our short attention span. It's on us to do better.

2006-07-25T13:53:00.000-04:00

So Jay Rosen's got an idea for helping frustrated citizens set the news agenda. He proposes a nonprofit news site that accepts story "assignments" from users who want questions answered that they can't get from traditional news organizations. In a blend of the bubbling citizen journalist concept and old-school newsgathering, Rosen wants these ideas developed by professional editors, who would then seek both the right correspondent to complete the story and the donors to support its completion.

The proposal aims to solve the challenge of getting important stories covered by independent journalists as traditional newsrooms succumb to corporate pressures and rampant cost cutting. Under this model, if enough people want a story reported and are willing to back their curiousity with cash, it'll get done.

This supports the notion that the people will ultimately determine the fate of our country, either by taking control of it or handing it off. By our action or inaction, we get not only the government we deserve, but the journalism we deserve.

2006-07-24T15:30:00.000-04:00

If you've found this blog, maybe you're a little like me -- a journalist or avid news consumer who pays close attention to important events because you believe that, as citizens, we have an obligation to stay informed so we can work to make things better. You wonder how, in a world of instantly available access to nearly all realms of human knowledge, so few people can know or care about what's going on. And you're involved, or would like to get involved, in efforts to rouse the public's interest in public affairs.

Since 2002, I've been a journalism instructor and student newspaper adviser at Michigan State University. For the eight years before that, I was a reporter and editor at The Virginian-Pilot in Norfolk, Va. In all my journalism work dating back to high school, I've wrestled with this idea of how to get people focused on news that matters. Early on (before the Internet and in the early days of cable news), I thought that straight, dispassionate reporting would make its way through the clutter and into people's consciousness. But over nearly two decades, it's become clear that journalists must work harder to make important news engaging, relevant, accessible -- and ideally, irresistable -- if it's to compete with the manifold distractions of daily life.

In a few weeks, Marion Street Press will publish my book, "Making Important News Interesting: Reporting Public Affairs in the 21st Century." The book aims to help journalism students and professionals accomplish this weighty task through powerful storytelling and application of a few key principles -- the most important of which are to show citizens that they control their destiny through our democratic institutions, to help establish a set of agreed-upon facts as a baseline for public problem-solving, and to make it easier for people to act on what they learn in the news. The fundamental point of the book is that while journalists must remain fair, honest, accurate and clear, they should employ every innovation and any tools necessary to get across important news. This blog is an effort to continue the conversation I begin in my book about how to pull this off.

Today's inaugural post was inspired by a Poynter Online piece by Doug McGill, whose insights into international reporting helped inform my chapter on covering world news. In this piece, McGill argues that all news organizations, even small local outlets, have an obligation to explain international events to their audiences, and he shows how the best way to do it is by getting as personal as possible. His example today is of how a blogger in Lebanon engaged him in the current Middle East crisis in a way no news reporting was able to do. The woman told her story, and McGill got interested.