PJNet

An Open Letter to Romenesko and the Journalism Industry

Floyd Norris of the International Herald Tribune writes:

The consensus Wall Street view of newspapers now is that they are a dying breed, destined to wither under relentless competition from the likes of Google.

Profits may be good now, but they will not last, as circulation declines and advertisers seek newer media. An index of newspaper stocks is down 22 percent in 2005.

An Editor & Publisher headline cries out, with the emphasis on cries:

“More Than 1,900 Newspaper Jobs Lost in 2005″

I go down Romenesko’s daily story listings and see more gloom and doom stories. Mixed in with them, I see Valerie Plame stories via Bob Woodward and Judith Miller. I know somewhere in there must be a story about preserving great journalism, but I can’t find it. Romenesko, reflecting what’s being written about journalism, reminds me of a big gossip tabloid.

I see great minds like Jay Rosen, who is in the forefront of examining journalism’s future, spending too many days speculating on what Judith Miller knew and when she knew it. Everyone wants to take a poke at the New York Times–which of course has faults, who among us doesn’t — but would the world be better off with or without its brand of journalism?

I notice that the Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s circulation fell 7 percent last year, and I worry because it is my regional newspaper and it’s an aggressive regional muckraker. Who else is going to do that? TV news? Hardly. Public radio? Nope. There are fewer than five journalists working for WABE, metro Atlanta’s NPR affiliate office. Who will provide the AJC’s lead story that today says: Voter ID memo stirs tension: Sponsor of disputed Georgia legislation told feds that blacks in her district only vote if they are paid.

We get it already: Newspapers are failing, newspapers and TV media make mistakes, and journalists, and here is a real revelation, are not perfect. We get that part.

I want more news on how we can save excellent journalism as an entity. I don’t care what its delivery mechanism is. I just want excellent journalism that is rich in investigative reporting and which provides its readers the information they need to function in, while protecting, our democracy. I want academics, critics, the industry, journalists and citizens all to start producing ideas for the future of journalism that will guarantee its rightful place in a functioning democracy.

We keep seeing the stories on We Media, Participatory Journalism, Open Source journalism, which means producing journalism via collective action. So why not take collective action to ensure we have quality journalism as the digital dynamics change its delivery systems? We can all do it, but we have to ease ourselves away from our collective tabloid mentality and start producing solid ideas to protect and preserve the best that journalism has to offer.

This entry was posted on Friday, November 18th, 2005 at 9:31 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.