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IN THE SPOTLIGHT ...
by Jon Margolis Feb 02, 2010 -
You talkin’ to us, Mr. President?
Sure sounded that way:
“The more that TV pundits reduce serious debates to silly arguments, big issues into sound bites, our citizens turn away,” he said toward the end of his State of the Union speech.
Talking Journalism
It's easy to think the worst of the world's despots. It's often a well-informed guess, maybe even a correct one. Certainly, it's cathartic. But is it what journalists should do? Mark Twain had it right when it comes to lightning and lightning bugs. Distinctions matter when we decide which word to use. Take the socialist label, for example, and whether Barack Obama is one. If you use "socialist" correctly, Obama is not one - and nobody else is, either. Go home, shut the bathroom door, look straight at the mirror and repeat after me: It's possible I don't have the answer. Maybe I don't know. My story could be ... wrong. There - doesn't that feel better? Acceptance of infallibility puts you on the road to real answers. Is it too much to ask journalists to know a little something about the subject they're reporting on? Maybe ask a question or two? Challenge their assumptions? Sometimes, apparently, it is. The next time your iPod or cell phone seals you in a world of unceasing sound and babble, remember the thousands who would give anything for a few minutes of peace and quiet. Fed up with bland "he said/she said" news? Tired of shrinking newspapers doing less and charging more? I was, so I decided it was time to stop complaining and start doing the reporting myself. Let me tell you how it's going.
Articles
One the morning of Election Day, David Plouffe, who managed Barack Obama’s campaign last year, was on NBC’s Today show to plug his new book, The Audacity to Win. But first, co-host Meredith Vieira had to ask him about that day’s elections Anybody who’s been in this business for a week or more has heard the gripe of someone who lost all faith in news coverage the first time there was a story in the neighborhood Way back when I was still young and green enough to be thrilled to be in possession of an honest-to-God press pass, an old-timer passed on a piece of wisdom. “Having a press pass,” he said, “has kept me out of a lot of places I coulda gotten into if I hadn’t had a press pass.” Are we all forgetting something?
Or, more precisely, ignoring something? Well, not entirely, at least not any more. Not since Maureen Dowd’s column in Sunday’s New York Times declared that one reason for the current political tumult
Speeches
Journalists often discuss the issue of audience as a dichotomy – do we give people what they want or what they need? In the Committee’s work with journalists, we have been told that the question does not have to be either/or. Instead, why not find important news and then present it in ways that make it interesting? Minnesota State University's Scott Olson delivered this uniquely narrative speech to drive home the point that it's the stories - not the medium through which they're told - that matter most for journalists and all communicators. Huntly Collins outlines the potential the Web holds for journalism, and implores her audience to think creatively about how to overcome the Web's journalistic shortcomings. President and CEO of the AP Tom Curley says journalism needs to take bold, decisive steps to secure audiences and funding or risk fading into obscurity. CCJ Founding Chairman Bill Kovach's 2007 Baccalaureate Address to Boston University students invites graduates to view the world around them skeptically - to see it as it REALLY exists and not merely how those in powerful positions would have them see it.
Research
The Better Government Association and National Freedom of Information Coalition give 38 out of 50 states an 'F' grade in overall responsiveness to FOI requests. PEJ and the Shorenstein Center teamed up on a study aimed at learning early lessons about how the media is treating the 2008 presidential campaign. The Poynter Institute released the findings of its 2007 EyeTrack study at the ASNE conference earlier this year. The study aims to provide new insights into how readers consume the news. CJR's Curtis Brainard highlights a recent Pew Research Center report studying 20 years of American news consumption preferences. Harvard's Shorenstein Center recently released a report suggesting that the Internet is redistributing news audience in a way that benefits large national papers but hurts daily papers without nation-wide readership.
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