Whither journalism?

[Peter Fisk]

Another thread here got me thinking about the objections that are occasionally raised against the term "professional journalism." For those who have an aversion to defining journalism as a profession, try substituting "vocational" for "professional." It's a vocation, a trade. OK? Well, that notion still involves a paycheck and an expectation that the worker has had adequate training and meets certain standards of responsibility, accountability, and competence, while still not necessarily having to possess a college degree with a major in journalism.

Anyway, it shouldn't be necessary for people to justify wanting to get paid for their labor, nor should they be ridiculed for refusing to endorse unworkable schemes that only accelerate and perpetuate job losses in their field.

We as a society must find a new industrial model or models to facilitate the survival of quality journalism, and that is simply not possible without the inclusion of real jobs that offer decent enough compensation to attract and retain ample numbers of competent full-time journalists. "Citizen journalism" is clearly not the answer that its advocates claim. We need to stop attaching credence to the citizen journalism movement and start thinking seriously about other ideas that might lead to viable economic arrangements -- like maybe looking to the PBS/NPR model for inspiration. Yep, public funding and subsidies. I suspect we'll end up doing that at some point to salvage what's left of many newspapers and their websites, and we'll still have a variety of other news outlets that survive on private commercial revenue and provide an adequate guard against the possibility of malevolent government influence in the publicly funded outlets.

Markets aren't perfect. Market failures happen all the time, and we have a long history of prudent government intervention to address market failure. (Pretty much any legitimate act of government you can think of was devised to address some form of market failure.) The market for good journalism is failing. This isn't like buggy whips. Buggy whip factories weren't worth saving, because there was no longer a social need for buggy whips. However, that is not the case with journalism. Society needs good journalism, and right now the free market is not allocating the resources that are needed for this crucial public good. It did so for many decades, via the happy accident that coupled ad revenue with print newsholes, but that coupling has been broken by technological and social change. That's where we are, and we shouldn't just accept this undesirable market outcome as an immutable fate.

By the way, I think it's quite possible that a market-based system will eventually arise whereby consumers in great numbers would pay for online news, a system similar to the way cable TV companies provide bundled content. Excludability would not be 100% attainable (that is, there will be ways to gain illegal access, just as there are with cable TV) but the legitimate access would have a great enough value and low enough cost that consumers would overwhelmingly accept the model, which would in turn provide ample "eyeball" traffic to profitably recouple ad revenue with news. And in support of this possibility, as print news continues to decline, advertisers should migrate more and more to online venues.

Another possibility, quite conceivable, is that a variety of private philanthropic foundations will be established specifically to fund some high-quality news outlets in perpetuity.

I also think an appreciable number of print newspapers will actually hang on for quite some time on their own.

And who knows -- it's not entirely impossible for online ad revenue to someday reach the point that it sustains free online news and well-paying journalism jobs on a widespread basis.

So I see great cause for concern in the near term, yet reason for optimism.

Good luck to all.


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p.s.
I certainly agree that "user-generated content" can be a useful component in the future of online news outlets, but only as a complement to, not a substitute for, the work of dedicated, paid journalists.

[Peter Fisk]

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Interesting development:

Government aid could save U.S. newspapers, spark debate

By Robert MacMillan - Analysis

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Connecticut lawmaker Frank Nicastro sees saving the local newspaper as his duty. But others think he and his colleagues are setting a worrisome precedent for government involvement in the U.S. press.

Nicastro represents Connecticut's 79th assembly district, which includes Bristol, a city of about 61,000 people outside Hartford, the state capital. Its paper, The Bristol Press, may fold within days, along with The Herald in nearby New Britain.

That is because publisher Journal Register, in danger of being crushed under hundreds of millions of dollars of debt, says it cannot afford to keep them open anymore. [...]

[...] Providing government support can muddy that mission, said Paul Janensch, a journalism professor at Quinnipiac University in Connecticut, and a former reporter and editor.

"You can't expect a watchdog to bite the hand that feeds it," he said. [...]

Paul's right, I suppose, that you can't expect it, yet it happens all the time already. Ever watch Frontline on PBS, for example? Despite receiving government funding, that crew typically does a better job of holding government accountable than any of the private-sector TV news outlets do. So I certainly have no trouble envisioning a public-private hybrid funding model as a viable solution for some newspapers' financial plight.
(fyi: I once worked for Paul way back when.)

This Courant story adds a little clarity to what is being considered in Connecticut:

[...] Ten lawmakers gathered at the Capitol with the state's top economic development administrator to see whether the state could offer low-interest loans or other incentives to a buyer for the two daily newspapers and 11 weeklies in Greater Hartford that are slated to close as early as mid-January. [...]

[Pete Zicari]

Government aid? You gotta be kidding. Who pays the piper calls the tune, and the experience of PBS under Bush II can tell you where that leads.

On the other hand, foundation aid might work. Consider the success of policymattersohio.org. The problem is that you'd have to please the donors.

Frank support from political parties might work better than you might believe, too: If a paper as successful as the New York Times can be considered to be in the liberal camp already, would it lose much by adopting an explicit party connection? Cities might go back to being two- or three-outlet towns with support from competing interests.

[Dan Puckett]

The membership of many mainstream Protestant denominations is declining, and they're having trouble keeping some of their churches open, and many would say those churches do some good, so why not scoop out some government aid for them too?

Failure is failure, whether it's in the marketplace of products or the marketplace of ideas. If customers aren't buying, there's probably a reason.

[Peter Fisk]

The membership of many mainstream Protestant denominations is declining, and they're having trouble keeping some of their churches open, and many would say those churches do some good, so why not scoop out some government aid for them too?

You mean like giving churches tax-exempt status? That's government aid. But no, that's a crazy idea. We could never get that into law.

Failure is failure, whether it's in the marketplace of products or the marketplace of ideas. If customers aren't buying, there's probably a reason.

Well then, it's time to shut down the local fire department because it hasn't been turning a profit in years. And don't get me started on that damned public library. If people want books, they should pay for them. And the schools, my god, the schools -- what a waste of money. If people want to send their kids to school, let them pay as they go. The market knows best.

[Dan Puckett]

You mean like giving churches tax-exempt status? That's government aid. But no, that's a crazy idea. We could never get that into law.

But all churches have tax-exempt status; despite it, only some are failing.

Well then, it's time to shut down the local fire department because it hasn't been turning a profit in years. And don't get me started on that damned public library. If people want books, they should pay for them. And the schools, my god, the schools -- what a waste of money. If people want to send their kids to school, let them pay as they go. The market knows best.

Treating the gathering and dissemination of news as a public good will probably be a tougher sell than fire protection or education, especially given polls such as this indicating that many people don't believe us, which means they don't think we're doing a very good job as it is, which may be one reason they're voting with their checkbooks as they are.

And are fire departments and government schools a good example for the argument? In exchange for public funding, those organizations accept licensing of their personnel and government micromanagement of their operations — just think of all the city council and school board stories you've reported or edited on the subject.

[Peter Fisk]

Treating the gathering and dissemination of news as a public good will probably be a tougher sell than fire protection or education, ...

A tough sell? Fair and accurate news reporting has been widely accepted as a public good for decades: PBS, NPR, C-Span, PRI, the BBC ...

[editer]

A tough sell? Fair and accurate news reporting has been widely accepted as a public good for decades: PBS, NPR, C-Span, PRI, the BBC ...

By Jove, you're right! I've never heard anyone suggest we cut off public funding to the BBC.

As for the rest, PBS, NPR and (presumably) PRI often have to scramble for their budgets because funding for the CPB gets controversial fairly often; they're doing well to be holding their own. I seriously doubt that inviting newspapers, which unlike the others are not nonprofit entities, to the public trough would be widely hailed as a fine idea. What have you seen or heard that leads you to believe differently?

And does C-SPAN even do reporting? It shows government proceedings and related happenings such as news conferences and campaign events, and interviews with authors are always interesting, but I wouldn't call that "reporting" in the journalistic sense. C-SPAN is more of a conduit.

Every day, fewer and fewer people see newspapers as essential to the way they live their lives. Public aid basically means that I have to pay for the newspaper whether I subscribe or not. You may like that idea, but I doubt many others would.

[Dan Puckett]

Fair and accurate news reporting has been widely accepted as a public good for decades: PBS, NPR, C-Span, PRI, the BBC ...

The Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which supports both PBS and NPR, is getting $400 million from the federal government this year, after the Bush administration unsuccessfully proposed cutting the fiscal year 2009 appropriation in half. Of that money, only about 22 percent goes to programming; I don't know how much of that goes to its news programs, but I know that most of the broadcast day on my local PBS and NPR stations is not news, so I figure it's probably less than half.

So let's say it's $40 million for news, which is probably generous. As editer points out, that amount still causes a ruckus from time to time, as it did this past year. Now imagine the kind of multiplier necessary to bail out all the failing or at least shrinking newspapers in this country, newspapers that more and more of our fellow Americans are saying they're unwilling to pay for. "A tough sell" is, if anything, a dramatic understatement.

Aside from some of us, who's going to support this? And on what grounds? The television, radio, cable and Internet lobbyists will argue that their industries are perfectly capable of meeting Americans' news needs, and as we're the primary news source for a dwindling minority of Americans, lawmakers won't find all that many constituents who disagree.

Moreover, look at the other end. As far as I know — and our journalism historians may be able to correct me — we have never had government ownership of newspapers in this country; the subsidies have been of the nature of legal ads (frequently a bone of contention, especially in small towns). Are we really sure that we're willing to have the government, at any level, as our boss?

[Peter Fisk]

Fair and accurate news reporting has been widely accepted as a public good for decades: PBS, NPR, C-Span, PRI, the BBC ...

The Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which supports both PBS and NPR, is getting $400 million from the federal government this year, after the Bush administration unsuccessfully proposed cutting the fiscal year 2009 appropriation in half. Of that money, only about 22 percent goes to programming; I don't know how much of that goes to its news programs, but I know that most of the broadcast day on my local PBS and NPR stations is not news, so I figure it's probably less than half.

So let's say it's $40 million for news, which is probably generous. As editer points out, that amount still causes a ruckus from time to time, as it did this past year. Now imagine the kind of multiplier necessary to bail out all the failing or at least shrinking newspapers in this country, newspapers that more and more of our fellow Americans are saying they're unwilling to pay for. "A tough sell" is, if anything, a dramatic understatement.

Aside from some of us, who's going to support this? And on what grounds? The television, radio, cable and Internet lobbyists will argue that their industries are perfectly capable of meeting Americans' news needs, and as we're the primary news source for a dwindling minority of Americans, lawmakers won't find all that many constituents who disagree.

Moreover, look at the other end. As far as I know — and our journalism historians may be able to correct me — we have never had government ownership of newspapers in this country; the subsidies have been of the nature of legal ads (frequently a bone of contention, especially in small towns). Are we really sure that we're willing to have the government, at any level, as our boss?

Dan, I didn't suggest "bail[ing] out all the failing or at least shrinking newspapers in this country." What I wrote was: "I suspect we'll end up doing that [using public funding and subsidies] at some point to salvage what's left of many newspapers and their websites." I'm not talking about the government taking over newspapers. I'm talking about expanding the public broadcasting model to help finance a continuation of the valuable public service that has traditionally been provided by for-profit newspapers. I don't necessarily even envision a print edition as part of this new model.

The budgetary figures that you cited only bolster the point that a lot of good can be accomplished in these areas with relatively little public funding.

As you point out, the Bush administration failed to gut the public broadcasting budget. That's an indication of how resilient the support is for public broadcasting.

How many budget items don't cause a "ruckus"? I can think of many well-established government programs that caused a "ruckus" when they were proposed and implemented, like Medicare for one.

And I hardly think PBS journalists like Bill Moyers and others of his caliber would agree that the government is their "boss." ... In a parallel way, I certainly never considered major advertisers to be my boss when I worked in newspaper journalism, even though they supplied a large portion of the funding.

[Peter Fisk]

UPDATE
Sounds to me like a good start, though I'd like to see the emphasis more on preserving the traditional mission (professional newspaper journalism) rather than the traditional medium (print):

U.S. bill seeks to rescue faltering newspapers
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - With many U.S. newspapers struggling to survive, a Democratic senator on Tuesday introduced a bill to help them by allowing newspaper companies to restructure as nonprofits with a variety of tax breaks.

"This may not be the optimal choice for some major newspapers or corporate media chains but it should be an option for many newspapers that are struggling to stay afloat," said Senator Benjamin Cardin.

A Cardin spokesman said the bill had yet to attract any co-sponsors, but had sparked plenty of interest within the media, which has seen plunging revenues and many journalist layoffs.

Cardin's Newspaper Revitalization Act would allow newspapers to operate as nonprofits for educational purposes under the U.S. tax code, giving them a similar status to public broadcasting companies.

Under this arrangement, newspapers would still be free to report on all issues, including political campaigns. But they would be prohibited from making political endorsements. Advertising and subscription revenue would be tax exempt, and contributions to support news coverage or operations could be tax deductible.

Because newspaper profits have been falling in recent years, "no substantial loss of federal revenue" was expected under the legislation, Cardin's office said in a statement.

Cardin's office said his bill was aimed at preserving local and community newspapers, not conglomerates which may also own radio and TV stations. His bill would also let a non-profit buy newspapers owned by a conglomerate.

"We are losing our newspaper industry," Cardin said. "The economy has caused an immediate problem, but the business model for newspapers, based on circulation and advertising revenue, is broken, and that is a real tragedy for communities across the nation and for our democracy. [...]

Course, we'll have to figure out how to draw the line on who or what is eligible for non-profit news-org status, and that will likely get controversial.