Archive for the 'journalism' Category
Monday, June 15th, 2009 by Joe Torres
While news about the mainstream media seems to get worse by the day, the same can’t be said for ethnic media.
A recent study by New America Media revealed that the launch of ethnic media outlets and their reach have been increasing over the past four years. The audience for ethnic media grew by 16 percent during this period, reaching 57 million people on a regular basis.The study also found:
- Ethnic media reach 82 percent of all Hispanic, African-American and Asian-American adults;
- The percentage of the Asian-American adult population reached by television programming targeting Chinese, Vietnamese, Korean and Filipino viewers has grown by 30 percent over last four years. For Asian-Americans, watching news about their countries of origin is a major reason for viewing these stations;
- The penetration of Spanish-language television is now almost universal; and,
- Chinese and Korean newspapers now reach 70 percent and 64 percent, respectively, of their adult populations. Newspapers like Sing Tao, the World Journal, Korea Daily and Korea Times have substantially increased their circulation.
While the advertising downturn, among other things, has caused the mainstream media to spiral into crisis, ethnic media have been able to withstand the economic meltdown. It’s not that ethnic outlets aren’t facing tough times as the recession hits local businesses, but ethnic media have always struggled to secure national advertisers, making them less dependent on corporate ad dollars.
“Advertising is more of a mosaic of small businesses, causing no big holes in ad revenue as it would by big corporate advertisers,” Juana Ponce de Leon, the executive director of the New York Community Media Alliance, told Colorlines magazine.
Julian Do, the Southern California director for New America Media, added: “Their (ethnic media) model is more resilient with standing up to the crisis. They are more flexible to cutbacks… they won’t totally shut down [as mainstream media might]. A number of ethnic media did close, but when compared to the mainstream media, it pales in comparison.”
Ethnic media are also in a better position to withstand the economic crisis because of their historic mission to serve the community.
A Center for Integration and Improvement of Journalism study found that 68 percent of ethnic media outlets believe that providing a voice for their community is the most important goal for their organization.
This commitment is reflected in the longevity of ethnic media staffers. Despite traditionally low-to-modest salaries, the study found that 39 percent of participants worked for their companies for 11 years and that 32 percent believe their jobs provide them with an opportunity to grow in their careers.
But the report did touch upon the technological challenges facing ethnic media outlets. While Spanish-language and African-American-oriented Web sites have expanded their reach, only about one in five Hispanic and African-American adults visit those sites on a regular basis.
The news is better for Asian-Americans. Asian language Web sites have greater penetration. More than half of all Chinese-American adults visit sites in Cantonese or Mandarin, and about one-third of Korean-American and Vietnamese-American adults visit sites in their native languages.Asian-Americans are far more likely to have broadband access at home than any other ethnic group in the country.
As we work on new solutions to save quality reporting, maybe we should take a few tips from the ethnic media outlets that are still serving their communities – and doing it well.
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Monday, May 18th, 2009 by Tim Karr
It’s hard to empathize with struggling newspapers when those running them continue to suffer from the short-sightedness that got their industry into a mess.
The editors at the Washington Post put on a display of such backward thinking on Saturday, when they published an op-ed by two lawyers from the influential D.C. firm Baker Hostetler.
In writing this op-ed, the lawyers hide certain conflicts of interest that should weigh heavily against their analysis. The Post ’s editors might have connected the dots for readers, but didn’t.
But the piece is just so stunningly stupid that it falls apart all by itself. In it, Esq. Bruce W. Sanford and Bruce D. Brown call for reactionary legal measures that would stifle access to news and information and return us to the grand old days of consolidated ownership, bloated media giants and information gatekeepers.
To save journalism, Brown and Sanford argue, we must “eliminate ownership restrictions” and open floodgates to a new wave of media concentration.
We should also “grant an antitrust exemption” for consolidated media, allowing them to join together and wall off content from users. “Antitrust immunity is necessary because most individual news sites can’t go it alone,” they explain in the op-ed. “Readers will simply jump to sites that are still free.”
They urge readers to support more stringent copyright restrictions that would bar bloggers, Web sites and all others from the online sharing of even a small portion of mainstream media news content.
Nowhere in this silliness do they see the consolidation and walling off of news for what it is: more the real culprit in the demise of newspapers than is their favorite bogeyman — the free flowing Internet.
We have nearly survived an era of media mergers that shackled newspapers with massive amounts of debt and high shareholder expectations. Look no further than real estate magnate Sam Zell, who in 2007 purchased the Tribune Company using financial contortions and shifting debt structures that made heads spin among even the most seasoned bean counters.
Zell is not alone. Media consolidation over the last 20 years has been typified by leveraged deals and unserviceable debts.
But consider this. Just a few years ago, the average profit margin for newspapers was 20 percent — with some raking in twice as much or more.”
Did they use these astronomical profits to invest in the quality of their products or to innovate for the future?” asked Free Press’ Craig Aaron on Thursday. “No. They just bought up more newspapers and TV stations.” (On May 12 Free Press released a National Journalism Strategy that outlines forward-thinking policies to save journalism, and not merely prop up the creaking old guard.)
This debt-loaded structure began to implode as their monopolies over local advertising revenue were undercut by Internet upstarts such as Craigslist and Google News.
The recent economic downturn was the final straw. And the aftermath has been dire — at least for journalists. By one count, 24,000 journalism jobs have been lost since 2008. Foreign, Washington and statehouse bureaus have been shuttered. Major news organizations are in bankruptcy. Others, like the Rocky Mountain News, have closed their doors for good. Newspaper circulation is nose-diving. The Seattle Post Intelligencer and Tuscon Citizen have shed their print operations opting (far too late) to take exclusively to the Web.
In Saturday’s Post op-ed, both Brown and Sanford are nostalgic for the corporate media oligarchs that predated the Internet. This fantasy is so far removed from the contours of today’s media landscape that it’s easy to dismiss these two lawyers as ancient barristers who rely on secretaries to print and hand deliver their email.
They aren’t. And that is what’s disturbing about this article.Undisclosed by neither Brown and Sanford nor the Washington Post is the A-list of corporate media clients represented by the authors.
Here’s what I found from quick scan of the Baker Hostetler Web site: Sanford has been counsel in cases representing publishers E.W. Scripps Co, Tribune Co., the Hearst Corporation, Random House, Simon & Schuster and Bertelsmann, A.G. He also represents consolidated broadcasters Clear Channel Communications, ABC/Disney, NBC, Fox Television as well as AOL/Time Warner. Brown has represented Scripps Howard Broadcasting Co. and the New York Times.
This list is not complete. As far as I can tell the Post doesn’t seek counsel from Baker Hostetler. But that doesn’t preclude the paper’s publishers from benefiting from Brown and Sanford’s myopia.
That these two lawyers have sold themselves out to corporate media seems no surprise in a city of lobbyists and snake oil. What’s disturbing is the lengths to which the Washington Post will go to promote such swill without full disclosure to readers.
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Tuesday, May 12th, 2009 by Josh Stearns
This week, Free Press released Saving the News: Toward a National Journalism Strategy, a comprehensive new examination of the journalism crisis from a public policy perspective.
Free Press’ new report provides an in-depth analysis of current and emerging models for journalism and public policies to support these new models. As the first study of its kind, Saving the News outlines the clear and immediate need for a national journalism strategy. (Download the full report.)
The debate over the future of news in America has raged in editorial pages and conference rooms, on blogs and on Twitter. These have been important and fruitful conversations. But all too often, lost in these discussions about new business models, declining profit margins and job cuts is the central role that quality journalism and in-depth news have in sustaining our democracy. Even rarer — despite all the ink spilled about journalism’s demise — is any serious evaluation of the policies that contributed to journalism’s decline, and which new policies could help to reverse it.
We need a national journalism strategy to overhaul our failing media system and coordinate government intervention to support a vibrant media landscape and a wide variety of experiments in journalistic models.
Any national journalism strategy must:
- Protect the First Amendment: Freedom of speech and freedom of the press are essential to a free society and a functioning democracy. Everyone should have the right to access and impart information and opinion through the media of their choice.
- Produce Quality Coverage: To self-govern in a democratic society, the public needs in-depth reporting on local issues as well as national and international affairs that is accurate, credible and verifiable. Journalism should include a diversity of voices and viewpoints.
- Provide Adversarial Perspectives: Reporting should hold the powerful accountable by scrutinizing the actions of government and corporations, and journalism should foster genuine debate about important issues of public concern.
- Promote Public Accountability: Newsrooms should serve the public interest, not private or government aims, and should be treated as a public service, not a commodity. Journalism should be responsive to the needs of diverse and changing communities.
- Prioritize Innovation: Journalists should use new tools and technologies to report and deliver the news. The public needs journalism that crosses traditional boundaries and is accessible to the broadest range of people across platforms.
Saving our news media and implementing a national journalism strategy for this transitional moment will require both short- and long-term solutions. Based on the analysis in our report, we have identified five models with the most promise that should be the top priorities for policymakers:
- New Ownership Structures
- Incentives For Divestiture
- Journalism Jobs Program
- R&D Fund for Journalistic innovation
- New Public Media
These models, alone or collectively, will not provide an instant panacea to the crisis in journalism. However, we believe these alternatives are worth further consideration, study and action. Journalism is a critical infrastructure. It is too precious for a democratic society simply to sit back and pray that the market will magically sustain it.
The role of public policy in supporting journalism and fostering public service media is easily overlooked, but its importance cannot be overstated. The media system we have didn’t emerge in a vacuum. It was shaped by specific political and policy decisions. And it is in large part policy decisions — and the political will to make the right ones — that will decide what’s next for journalism.
Unfortunately, there is no magic bullet. The crisis in journalism will undoubtedly require a menu of responses, not a one-size-fits-all solution. Driven by a growing media reform movement, a period of vigorous experimentation with bold new models is the best hope for the future of journalism, the lifeblood of democracy.
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Friday, May 8th, 2009 by Joe Torres
Wednesday’s Senate hearing on the future of newspapers felt more like an autopsy. Call it CSI: Newspapers.
At a time when we need to step back and take a holistic approach to examine the crisis facing journalism, the participants in yesterday’s hearing seemed all too ready to hone in on one culprit: the Internet.In doing so, they were ignoring a vast crime scene, with a slew of villains and victims on every side.
As it unfolded, the hearing began to resemble an interrogation room where the police – or in this case, the Senators – gathered evidence from their key witnesses. The witnesses took sides early on, and an old dichotomy emerged: print versus Web. The Dallas Morning News and the Baltimore Sun versus Google and the Huffington Post. Fingers were pointed, and accusations were made that the Internet has killed print journalism.
Meanwhile, the majority in the room ignored the incriminating evidence that the current challenges facing the newspaper industry are self-inflicted, mostly due to greed and media consolidation. Most large newspaper companies are publicly traded. For decades, Wall Street has demanded these companies return unrealistic profit margins. And thanks to bad policymaking, newspapers have consolidated and slashed staff to maximize profit over the last few decades. Thus, our policymakers and regulators should have also been in the witness chair as accomplices to this crime.
A Case of Bad Behavior
With lax policies encouraging their bad behavior, newspaper companies rushed to buy up more media outlets and took on greater debt, which is why they find themselves overleveraged and having a hard time paying off their debt. Even still, the newspaper industry continues to make an average annual profit margin of 12 to 15 percent. The newspaper properties at companies like McClatchy and Gannett made 21 percent and 18 percent profit margins last year, respectively.
You won’t see newspapers reporting on the bad business decisions made by their own industry. Instead, most newspapers report on their declining ad revenues, giving you the impression they bare no responsibility for their current predicament.
Mounting Evidence
A remarkable thing happened nearly two hours into Wednesday’s hearing. James M. Moroney, publisher and CEO of the Dallas Morning News, gave the senators the evidence they needed to understand what’s really happened to newspapers. He said that newspapers were struggling due to the debt they took on as a result of consolidation.
Sen. Kerry, chairman of the subcommittee, initially picked up on the admission and pressed Moroney on how bad business decisions may have created the crisis in journalism we see today. But quickly thereafter, the blame was shifted back to the Internet and those pesky bloggers.
Case Unclosed
The journalism industry faces short-term and long-term problems. The short-term issue is what will happen to all the closing local newspapers and the journalists who work there. But more critical to this debate is how to create policies that support the production of quality journalism, regardless of platform, by funding the experimentation of emerging media companies.
Wednesday’s hearing spent too much time trying to track down fingerprints on the old, broken model of journalism, when it should have focused on seeking out how to move forward. We need to explore how government policy can help stop the bleeding and help ensure such a crime never happens again. This means searching out long-term solutions that don’t prop up old business models, but instead invest in new ideas.
The most intriguing discussion about the future of news in America came from the two people in the room advocating for new nonprofit news models: Alberto Ibargüen, president of the John S. And James L. Knight Foundation and former publisher of the Miami Herald, and Steve Coll, president of the New America Foundation and former managing editor of The Washington Post. They both made an important case about the need to invest in experimentation, innovation, and noncommercial media to save journalism.
Pointing fingers aside, it’s key to remember that while newspapers may be threatened, the news is far from dying. There is still much left to discuss and investigate before we draw the chalk outlines on the sidewalk and close the book on this case.
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Monday, April 27th, 2009 by Joe Torres
The crisis in journalism has reached such proportions that any efforts to fix it seem impossible.A new report by the Radio-Television News Directors Association last week found that nationwide, local television news stations slashed 4.3 percent – or 1,200 – newsroom jobs last year.
Meanwhile, the American Society of News Editors announced this month daily papers collectively reduced their staff last year by an astonishing 11 percent, or close to 6,000 jobs. Meanwhile, minority newsroom employment continues its decline with a loss of 854 journalists of color last year. Minorities now make up just 13 percent of the newsroom work force. But the actual number of journalists of color working in the newsroom (6,300) is at the lowest level since 1998.
If you dig deeper, the ASNE report reveals even more disturbing trends about dwindling diversity in the newsroom. African-American employment at newspapers fell by 13.5 percent, Asian American employment by 13.3 percent, and Hispanic employment by slightly less than 11 percent last year.
“The headline for me is that diversity has been demoted,” said Barbara Ciara, the president of the National Association of Black Journalists. She added that African American journalists were “the single most targeted group for job losses in newsrooms across the country.”
UNITY: Journalists of Color, a coalition of four minority journalism organizations, is calling for all journalism stakeholders to convene a summit this summer to find ways to prevent further declines in minority newsroom employment.
And while newsrooms and the public suffer from a diminished press corps, news organizations and media reform groups like Free Press are trying to stave off efforts to allow for more media consolidation – one of the main reasons we’re facing this journalism crisis in the first place.
During a hearing in Congress about the journalism industry, Newspaper Guild President Bernard Lunzer rejected any efforts to allow for further newspaper consolidation. The hearing was held after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi urged U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder to consider relaxing anti-trust laws to allow her hometown paper, the San Francisco Chronicle, to explore merger opportunities. The Chronicle has threatened to shut its doors because it’s losing money.
Meanwhile, Free Press Policy Director Ben Scott also testified at the hearing and called for a national journalism strategy that would bring together government, industry and public stakeholders to work on developing policy solutions to support the production of quality journalism across platforms.
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Tuesday, April 21st, 2009 by Megan Tady
It’s easy to get mired in hopelessness and despair as thousands of fired journalists close their reporters’ notebooks, shelve their AP Stylebooks, and leave their posts, their beats often left unfilled.
It’s easy to feel a sense of righteousness as newspapers across the country crumble under a greedy business model that puts profit before quality journalism and protecting the public’s interest. And it’s easy to simply hope that the Internet provides a new vehicle for a robust press.
It’s a lot harder to make the shift from failing market-supported journalism to sustainable new models that support the production of journalism as a public good.
Today, Free Press’ Policy Director Ben Scott called on Congress to embark on a national journalism strategy, to develop policy solutions to the collapsing newspaper industry, and to promote a vibrant news marketplace.
In testimony before the House Subcommittee on Courts and Competition Policy, Scott weighed in on how to approach the work of “saving journalism”:
What we need to have journalism is journalists – and lots of them. The biggest problem we face today is not the collapsing business model of print newspapers, it is the possibility that this market failure will result in the dissipation of tens of thousands of highly trained and experienced reporters into other sectors of the economy. Or that it will dissuade tens of thousands of talented students from going to journalism school. I am not arguing that all journalists must be professionally trained to earn the moniker. Nor am I arguing that professionally trained journalists are necessarily better than those who are not.
But I am arguing that for the future of journalism to work, we need to create and sustain a model of news production in which it is possible to earn a living writing the news. And to return to my earlier vision that this crisis is an opportunity – we should strive for a model that makes it possible for more journalists than are working today to earn a living writing the news.
Combining the best elements of traditional and new media forms, we need to create and sustain models of news production in which it is possible to earn a living writing the news. These new institutions of journalism need to have the resources to cover expensive beats like international affairs and investigative reporting as well as the essential news about the workings of local government.
These policy solutions don’t need to mimic the business models that failed us, nor do they need to bail out the media companies that chased short-term revenue through disastrous media mergers. Scott said the knee-jerk reaction by Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and others to allow for more media consolidation is not the answer:
This is exactly the opposite of what we should be doing. Not only does it reward bad business decisions—namely, leveraging news organizations with crippling debts to finance the last round of consolidation—but it also brings no new jobs, no new voices, and effectively props up a failed model. In other words, we should not subject journalism’s fate to the corporate consolidators who got us into this mess. It is not unlike rewarding the banks who drove our economy into the ground. Instead, we should seize this rare opportunity to liberate journalists and journalism from the downward spiral they’ve been stuck in for years.
Asking the government to help support the Fourth Estate has prickled some people who fear government regulation of speech. But Scott argued that government policies that restrict speech or favor particular speakers should not be tolerated:
There is nothing wrong with government policies that promote speech of all kinds. In fact, inherent to the First Amendment’s guarantee of the freedom of the press is the responsibility of the government to promote the widest possible dissemination of diverse viewpoints.
In order to support journalism and journalists as a public good, we need to re-imagine how we think of journalism enterprises and consider subsidy models sustained by grants, tax incentives, or public investments in education and infrastructure.
And we need to fully face the digital divide between America’s Internet haves and have-nots, which keeps more than one-third of the population from getting their news online.
Saving journalism is urgent, but it doesn’t need to be haphazard. In his testimony today, Scott outlined a series of guiding principles to help shape the policies and approaches that a national journalism strategy should include:
- Protect the First Amendment: Freedom of speech and freedom of the press are essential to a free society and a functioning democracy. Everyone should have the right to access and impart information through the media of their choice.
- Produce Quality Coverage: To self-govern in a democratic society, the public needs in-depth reporting that is accurate, credible and verifiable on local issues as well as national and international affairs.
- Provide Adversarial Perspectives: Reporting must hold the powerful accountable by scrutinizing the actions of government and corporations. Journalism should foster genuine debate.
- Promote Public Accountability: Newsrooms must serve the public interest, not private or government aims, and should be treated primarily as a public service, not a commodity. Journalism must be responsive to the needs of diverse and changing communities.
- Prioritize Innovation: Journalists must use new tools and technologies to report and deliver the news. The public needs journalism that crosses traditional boundaries and is accessible to the broadest range of people across platforms.
Certainly, it’s a frightening time for one of America’s most vital institutions, and for our democracy. But out of the current system’s failures comes opportunity, and we will only be thwarted by an inability to use our imaginations to support what journalism is at its very core – a record of events disseminated to the people.
It’s easy to simply hope the journalism crisis somehow gets solved. But we need concrete action and a comprehensive policy approach. We need to develop a national journalism strategy, not to find the answer, but a multitude of answers.
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Wednesday, March 11th, 2009 by Jordan Berg
Dying newspapers are not the result of a failure of journalism or a casualty of the Internet. The collapse of newspapers around the country is the direct outcome of the narrow vision of the big conglomerates and stock holders who own most of our nation’s print publications.
Even in the Internet age, newspapers are profitable. Over the last decade, newspapers have posted profits of 10 to 20 percent — even as recently as last year. While the economic decline is hitting all sectors of our economy, newspapers have fared no worse in earnings than other industries and yet are seeing huge cuts in staff and are even being shut down.
The reason for this jump-ship mentality is that newspapers’ corporate owners, accustomed to increasing profit margins, refuse to stick with papers no longer making a 10 to 20 percent profit. Big Media conglomerates would rather make huge cuts to keep that profit margin, or close the paper and cut the costs altogether, than provide the necessary resources to keep a vibrant, functioning paper running.
Newspaper owners’ allegiance is to the corporate bottom line, not the readers’ interest, not cities that depend on the paper as a source of community news, and not our democracy that depends on a robust press.
The viral video of the closing of The Rocky Mountain News (or “The Rocky,”) just days before its 150th anniversary exemplified the priorities of these big conglomerates:
“They don’t have to do this, everybody knows the arithmetic. We get the annual reports; several parts of their company [E.W. Scripps Co.] are doing very well. The Rocky [Mountain News] had a tough year, they decided to walk away. Basically my feeling is, they quit on us, they quit on everyone in the newsroom.” – 3:02 http://www.vimeo.com/3390739 Jeff Legwold – Broncos Writer
This follows a trend in the newspaper industry worldwide. This past week, the staff at the Financial Times threatened to strike in the face of more layoffs.
Despite an 11 percent rise in profits over 2008, the company that owns the Financial Times is cutting 80 jobs, including 20 reporting positions.
The irony shouldn’t be lost on us: The quality journalism and in-depth coverage — the competitive advantage that makes a paper profitable in these hard economic times – is being cut for short-sighted economic gain.
It is no surprise that a steady decline in newspaper readership has coincided with unchecked consolidation. We can’t blame a shifting audience on young people who prefer reading on computers, or on the Internet giving content away for free. Rather, newspapers are putting out a poorer product as their owners focus on profit rather than producing a quality product.
While newspaper owners may be saving money, the newspaper cuts are costing the public. Newsrooms have been gutted, foreign bureaus have all but disappeared and even covering Washington, D.C. is no longer within the budget for most dailies. Content is focused on sensationalism, crime, and celebrity gossip. Even political reporting is often focused on the celebrity of politicians and pundits, rather than an exploration of the issues that most affect the public.
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Friday, February 27th, 2009 by Joe Torres
“Do you know what your paper published about Cesar Chavez’s birthday?” a Latino leader asked John Temple, the editor, publisher and president of the Rocky Mountain News in Denver, Colorado.
“No,” Temple replied.“That parking was free downtown. That’s it.”It was one of many tough questions Temple would field from the Latino community during a 2003 town hall meeting the paper co-sponsored with the National Association of Hispanic Journalists (NAHJ).
Under the leadership of its president Juan Gonzalez, NAHJ had launched an ambitious effort in 2002 to increase the presence of Latinos in newsrooms across the country as a means of improving coverage of the community. At the time, I was the Association’s deputy director who helped to launch the initiative, called the Parity Project.
The Parity Project partnered with news organizations that struggled to recruit Latino journalists and to cover the community. The Rocky Mountain News was the first news organization to join the initiative, which called for its partners to hold a town hall meeting with the community and to form an advisory board.
For years, Denver’s Latino leaders had been angry with the paper for its poor coverage of the community and for its conservative editorial positions. But following that contentious town hall, Temple led an effort to forge a new relationship.
He created an advisory board, doubled the number of Latinos on staff in just two years, met regularly with Latino leaders and developed a true partnership with the community. As a result, coverage of Latinos improved. Quickly.
The paper believed in quality journalism and the obligation to serve the public good.Temple and his staff have made a real difference in the both the city’s Latino community and the entire city.
But today, the Rocky printed its last edition. Despite efforts to save it, the paper’s owner, E.W. Scripps, announced it was shutting down the publication that has been in existence for nearly 150 years.
The closing of the Rocky is a terrible day for the Latino community, but a worse day for Colorado and for a newspaper industry spiraling deeper into crisis. Our country and our democracy need journalists and editors like John Temple and the staff of the Rocky.
Let’s hope we see their bylines again soon.
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Friday, February 20th, 2009 by Joe Torres
Did the mainstream press cover 2008’s historic presidential election with an eye toward examining race relations in America in a fair, accurate and thoughtful manner? Survey says: “No.”
An astounding 92 percent of journalists of color polled for a new survey believe the mainstream media did not effectively cover race relations during the election. The survey was conducted and released this week by the African-American news Web site, The Loop 21, and UNITY: Journalists of Color Inc.
The press’ coverage of race relations during the election was the topic of a panel discussion I took part in yesterday that included Chicago Tribune columnist Clarence Page, CNN political pundit Leslie Sanchez, moderator Ed Gordon, formerly of NPR, and other journalists of color.
My take on whether coverage of the election illuminated the issues for people of color or provided thoughtful treatment of issues important to people of color? Again, no.
We learned little from the media about substantive issues affecting the lives of African-Americans and Latinos. When the media did focus on race during the election, it too often spun its wheels rehashing stereotypical themes and questions that distracted from real underlying issues facing our communities.
The result? Coverage that was distracting and vapid: Is Obama black enough? (Or, is he too black?) Will whites vote for a black candidate? Will Latinos vote for a black candidate? Do black churches preach hate speech? And on and on …
The media’s failure to seize the opportunity presented by the candidacy — and subsequent election — of its first black president to explore issues affecting people of color was a disappointment to say the least.
Sadly, a part of me was relieved that Obama did not often address race in his campaign because the media would likely have handled it irresponsibly. The issue here is not deliberate distortion on the part of individual journalists, but something broader and systemic.
Much of the problem stems from the fact that people of color do not control the mass dissemination of their images. Too often, other people tell their story and get it wrong. This misrepresentation of our lives and issues causes great harm. The misguided and sensationalistic media coverage of immigration issues this past year is just one example of the troubling outcome of our lack of representation in our nation’s newsrooms.
Again, journalists don’t deserve all the blame for poor coverage of communities of color. Journalists increasingly work in a media environment that is not supportive of quality journalism. Media companies are controlled by owners who care more about the bottom line than serving the public interest. In many cases, these giant media companies have burdened their news operations with massive debt as they expanded beyond their means and bought up more and more media outlets. In seeking to shore up their bank accounts, these huge conglomerates have jettisoned quality journalism to serve us junk news and tired old scripts that are cheap to package and produce.
The trend toward consolidation, fueled by bad business decisions and poor government policy, has hit journalists especially hard. Consolidation has led to record layoffs in recent years. And in a related trend that does nothing to boost race relations coverage, more journalists of color are leaving newsrooms than entering them, while minority ownership of media outlets continues its downward spiral.
While debating coverage of the presidential election is important for improving media coverage, journalists have to advocate for media policies that support and reward quality journalism, not destroy it. Maybe then, we will see issues like race relations receive the coverage they deserve. Let’s hope.
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Thursday, February 12th, 2009 by Megan Tady
There’s a changing media landscape in Washington, and it doesn’t bode well for the public.
As I reported last week, media companies across the country have scaled back their D.C. staff and even closed their Washington bureaus, getting rid of the reporters who covered policy and politicians from a local angle.
This week, the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism and journalist Tyler Marshall issued a report offering new evidence that a watchdog press corps covering the issues that matter to local folks miles from the capital is disappearing fast.The three-month study assessing the changing nature of journalism and national news reporting from D.C. reached three conclusions:
- Since the 1980s, the number of newspapers covering Congress has fallen by two-thirds.
- Narrowly focused special interest or niche media, such as newsletters and specialty newspapers, have taken the place of the mainstream press.
- Foreign media outlets have dramatically increased in Washington.
The report’s biggest takeaway isn’t the number of journalists who have been pulled from the D.C. beat; rather, “The real story is in where those journalists work and the kind of coverage they are providing.”
The implications of specialty publications and newsletters outnumbering newspapers that serve local interests are serious. Communities no longer have scouts watching out for their best interests in the heart of the political establishment. With fewer reporters sending stories back home about their communities’ elected officials, holding those officials accountable becomes increasingly difficult. With fewer reporters following the trail of corporate lobbyists, holding corporations accountable becomes nearly impossible.
The report put it this way: “Elites who are plugged into the new fragmented niche media of Washington will know how that government is growing and what it means, and they will be learning it through new media channels. Their fellow citizens who rely on local or network television or their daily newspapers, however, will be harder pressed to learn what their elected representatives are doing.”
In other words, our media system is becoming more class-based than ever, allowing only the people in-the-know, with the dough, to stay informed.
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