Robert McChesney and John Nichols came to speak about their book that was recently published, the “Death and Life of American Journalism”. They discussed the importance for Generation Y to get involved in Journalism. McChesney stated that there are now 4 P.R agents to 1 journalist in the United States today. McChesney and Nichols blame the lack of content that is present in the news you find today.
McChesney and Nichols argue that journalism should be seen as a public good and that the government should help save American journalism by granting more subsidies to newspapers and media outlets. They believe that under the first amendment the government should help subsidize journalism. Nichols said that the first duty of the state is to make sure the press system exists, and that is a structural requirement.
Finally, I found it interesting how they stressed the importance of printed journalism and discounted online media such as blogging. Blogging is more of an opinion based media however, I disagree that people who blog cannot be considered journalists. What is your opinion of bloggers and journalism? Can people who maintain a well respected blog be considered a journalist, where is the line drawn?
-Erika
Wow, I really wish I had attended this event!
ReplyDeleteFirst, and perhaps this is because I'm in public relation, I would argue that having 4 PR practitioners for every 1 journalist is in fact not to blame for news content, but rather the journalist's fault for using press releases instead of investigating. But it's not quite as simple as that. Newspapers (which I will focus on since they said blogging doesn't count) across the country are losing money, and it's likely their journalists simply can't afford to go out and investigate and find their own cutting edge stories. But whose fault is that? Surely not PR practitioners. If newspapers are losing money it's because they don't have a good product anymore. As people turn to the Internet for free news (and why shouldn't they?) newspapers simply must change with the times. When CD sales dramatically decreased did we argue that art is a fundamental right and the government should subsidize our discs of music? No! Artists went on tour more to make up for lost money and we all won because we get to see our favorite artists in our hometown and get their music for slightly cheaper than we used to on iTunes.
Second: subsidizing newspapers is a terrible idea. Let's look at history for a second. Were newspapers always "un-biased"? No way! When newspapers first started they were funded by one rich individual who wrote about whatever he wanted. Then, when we switched to advertising sales as the main means to support newspapers, suddenly papers had to be unbiased and present both sides equally so that advertisers wouldn't be offended and pull out their money. The only problem with an un-biased approach is that it gives equal weight to both sides even when that equality doesn't truly exist. If the government starts funding newspapers we will have new problems arise with equality in politics when it does not truly exist. Sure, people complain that a newspaper is liberally slanted or conservatively slanted, but isn't that why we buy the papers that we do? I love the NYTimes no matter what bias you say they have. I don't want the government to have a hand in what they write about because it will likely slant their views in a new way for fear of losing the new public funding.
And finally, bloggers: Sure, some bloggers are hacks, some are mommies who are sponsored, some are kids writing about their latest soccer games, and some are serious journalists. But that's when the invisible hand comes out to play. In the marketplace of ideas all ideas must be presented in order for the best idea, or the "truth," to raise to the highest position. With the aid of sites like alltop.com and even the recommendations of our friends we will quickly be able to find the bloggers who are writing about important issues in ways we understand and appreciate.
And that's my rant that I wish I could have said to the people presenting!
What does everyone else think? Don't feel like you have to match my comment length - I went off on my own a bit there.
Greta post, Erika!