[NYTr] If Journalism Becomes Further Marginalised, Look Out, World

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

InterPress Service - Oct 29, 2007
http://www.ipsnews.net/print.asp?idnews=39837

If Journalism Becomes Further Marginalised, Look Out, World...

Interview with Chuck Lewis, Fund for Independence in Journalism

ROME, Oct 29 (IPS) - Shrinking newsrooms, declining sales and
audiences, vanishing foreign correspondents, concentration of
ownership, shrivelling papers...is journalism imploding? Can
independent journalism survive? "Yes," says Chuck Lewis, founder of the
Centre for Public Integrity, and one of the most respected voices in
journalism today. And the answer is non-profit journalism.

Lewis is a former producer of the CBS show 60 Minutes, and a
journalist-in-residence at American University in Washington. He has
written for The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles
Times, Christian Science Monitor, Columbia Journalism Review, The
Nation, and many other publications. A pioneer of the non-profit model,
Lewis speaks with Miren Gutierrez, IPS Editor-in-Chief about the future
of journalism.

IPS: So, the news is that in-depth, independent journalism may
endure... But investigative reporting is expensive, it could be risky
too. Who will pay for it?

Chuck Lewis: Civic-minded, wealthy individuals who believe in the
concept of an "informed citizenry" and public service journalism --
local, regional, national, international... Great work itself will begin
to attract "buzz" online, and other revenue sources could open up, from
advertising, to subscribers/members, to paid partnerships with existing
hollowed out media corporations desperately seeking content, etc. In
some parts of the world, such as Europe, government funding or direct
public subsidies (as with the BBC) are possible too, with its related
issues...

IPS: In your recent article 'The Non-profit Road: It's paved not with
gold, but with good journalism', you say that while increasingly
newspapers will develop into "print-digital hybrids" (an expression
coined by Robert Kuttner, co-founder and editor of the liberal U.S.
magazine The American Prospect), advertising revenue is still to come
up to editorial payroll levels. So what happens in the meantime?

CL: In the meantime, downsizing will continue, bureaus will close,
investigations will not be undertaken or funded...Some media
organisations will cease to exist or become unrecognisable vis-à-vis
news as we have known it...
Celebrity-headline-entertainment-sport-weather pap instead,
masquerading as "news".

IPS: What do you think of fads like the so-called "hyper localism" and
branding?

CL: Newspapers in the U.S., at least, initially were hyper
local...every kid's name in the paper, photos of everyone in school,
what's for lunch at school today, etc., etc. It could be that this kind
of information -- and individual citizens needing it -- is what builds
a dependency, an audience, eyeballs, and eventually a base from which
to also do include in-depth journalism... in and of itself, it is
unremarkable; if it evolves, it could be exciting and important.

IPS: According to a recent report by the Project for Excellence in
Journalism, there is a "disconnection" between the public and the
press. "Journalists see themselves, as Humphrey Bogart put it in the
movie 'Deadline USA', as performing 'a service for public good.' The
public doubts that romantic self-image and thinks journalists are
either deluding themselves or lying. In the midst of a major downsizing
trend and 'citizen journalism' sprouting from every corner of the
world, professional journalists seem to be growing defensive, or at
best baffled. You speak of a "profession under siege." How should
journalists react?

CL: Blogs and citizen journalism have injected substantial media
accountability and, dare I say it, a tinge of humility and
self-consciousness to many journalists; their every word scrutinised
and criticised. Professional journalists should be and are alarmed,
incredibly insecure right now about "the biz" and the profession
itself, recognising the precarious state of affairs.

Most citizens do not fully grasp the seriousness of the situation,
because, at least in the U.S., they are blissfully aloof and ignorant
of the intricacies of politics and business and the prices of
power... Democracy without an informed citizenry is a charade, to anyone
actually paying attention. Sixty percent of Americans thought Saddam
Hussein and Iraq had something to do with 9/11 six months after the
March 2003 invasion... Yikes!

IPS: How do you think non-profit organisations can save independent
journalism?

CL: Non-profit journalism organisations are not directly tethered to
marketing and advertising, commercial imperatives and impulses. Stories
are done because they ought to be done by someone, and they're not
being done... public service journalism, with no titillation required.
Major donors should be disclosed, and transparency to the public is
important in order to build credibility and respect. Ultimately, the
work must be definitive; if it is, the organisation can flourish under
good and competent leadership.

IPS: As an example of successful non-profit organisations, you mention
the Associated Press, with 3,000 journalists worldwide, The Christian
Science Monitor, National Public Radio and others. Do you think they
will survive as institutions?

CL: Yes, I believe they will survive, and AP and NPR are, in fact,
flourishing, including in a multimedia format.

IPS: In 1988, you founded the CPI (Centre for Public Integrity) with no
money but your own, and set out to find philanthropic support. By 2004,
you oversaw a full-time staff of 40 and more than 20 part-time, paid
intern researchers on a 4.6 million dollar annual budget. What about
the CPI model? Could it be imitated?

CL: I believe there could be a CPI in countries throughout the world,
and I am not kidding. Do wealthy, educated citizens actually care about
their countries and the state of the world, or are they just on the
sidelines, sniping to themselves and selfishly hoarding and hiding
their money offshore? The U.S. has a system which encourages wealthy
donors to create philanthropic institutions which financially grow
annually while also avoiding taxes... Many other countries don't have
such a system, but wealthy, educated, engaged citizens certainly abound
throughout the world, as do journalists in need of new places to work.
It is, I believe, a natural confluence and symmetry...

IPS: According to the same report by the Project for Excellence in
Journalism, a look at three dozen websites from a range of media shows
that they have done more to exploit immediacy than the potential for
depth. If you have a look at a wider array of sites, it seems that web
media have yet to invest in original journalism let alone ambitious
in-depth projects. Many are just aggregators. Doesn't the non-profit
model have still a long way to go?

CL: Aggregating is a problem -- no one wants to pay for reporting,
which costs money and takes time and, if investigative or
international, also incurs risk. At some point, the gimmick of
re-purposing other people's content will get old. With video and audio
exploding and more appealing than text to newer generations,
investigative reporting will have drill-down layers for the most
interested, and offer a new, more nimble, facile presentation of
in-depth journalism but in a multimedia, multilayered format. As
broadband improves, entire documentaries will be seen on websites, as
they already are now, but more so, with investigative... and as
television and computer screens become one, well... anything is
possible, which is the exciting part of this conversation.

IPS: What about issues like responsibility and anonymity on the web?

CL: Anonymity is a problem right now. As long as there is no
accountability for content, it has no credibility, for me at least. But
some bloggers are realising that standards and protocols of some sort
in the information itself are not only important, they are essential.
Lawsuits will start increasing, and online behaviour will discover
responsibility.

IPS: The publisher of the New York Times Company, Arthur Ochs
Sulzberger Jr., told an interviewer: "I really don't know whether we'll
be printing The Times in five years, and you know what? I don't care."
In what fundamental way will journalism be changed by the Internet and
mobile and ubiquitous technology? What will the unintended consequences
be?

CL: My biggest single worry is that journalism -- especially
investigative journalism -- will become further marginalised, like a
rare book or unique culinary delicacy to be savoured by a very, select
few, and written and actually practised the way Egyptologists study
hieroglyphics. And the rest of the dumbed-down masses will be reading
headlines on their mobile phones and thinking they are informed.

That, if it happens, will mean no independent check on government and
corporate power, anywhere. No independent truth teller standing up to
power, telling it like it is.

If that happens, look out, world. 

(END/2007)