I’m Not Dead Yet…Some Slightly Angry Thoughts about Journalism

Tom Avila is a contributing writer to Metro Weekly [1] news magazine and a staffer for the National Lesbian & Gay Journalists Association (NLGJA) [2].

“Journalism isn’t dying. More people than ever are consuming news.”

This is said to me by someone with the best of intentions. I’m meant to see this as a reason for feeling positive, optimistic. A sunny little factoid pulled from a statistic that I don’t necessarily believe or trust.

Usually, when this bit of wisdom is being shared, it comes weighted down with a host of disclaimers and qualifiers. The definition of “news” has been broadened into the larger more ambiguous category of “news and information.” The amount of time being spent “consuming” is shorter than it once was and might amount to nothing more than scanning the homepage headlines that pop up when exiting a free e-mail account.

It rarely takes into account the nature of the “news” being “consumed.” The habit that has been documented of individuals seeking out information that suits their particular ideology or pre-drawn conclusions about an issue or set of issues as opposed to the accidental learning that can occur when flipping the pages of a newspaper or watching a television broadcast.

I don’t discount the value of the news and information offered on Web sites and outlets with a distinct and declared point-of-view. But it’s a different kind of experience, one that is focused on affirmation and not information.

So, as the person sitting across the table says to me, “Journalism isn’t dying. More people than ever are consuming the news.” I fight my first instinct. The instinct that makes me want to say, “Are you kidding me? Where have you been? Have you seen the running count of journalism jobs lost that UNITY has been distributing with its e-newsletter? Have you spent any time on the phone with a colleague who is packing up their desk because they didn’t manage to avoid another round of cuts?”

In fact, this instinct is all the stronger on the day this statement is made to me because it is said during a week when three more journalists I know were leaving their newsrooms. Two had no immediate plans to find another job in the industry.

That, by the way, is the disclaimer. This is an issue I take personally. This is a statement that bothers me on a very primal level.

I acknowledge the fine work being done by citizen journalists and bloggers and neighborhood news gatherers. I know that the rules are changing and delivery methods need to change and the specter of a paperless future hangs out there on the horizon.

I hate the idea of paperless, but I know it’s a looming possibility.

All this admitted, I find myself staring into the inkless void asking, “What, exactly, is the point of all this?”

I mean, fine, journalism isn’t dying.

Some 30,000 journalism jobs have been lost since September 2008 but the patient is still fine. She’s in and out of consciousness and a good number of her corporate family members are not so subtly suggesting it’s time to pull the plug, but that’s because we seem to believe that there’s an Easter miracle waiting in the wings.

Old journalism will not die but be reborn as a new kind of journalism. A journalism that will perhaps arrive sporting a top hat and diapers and a sash that says: New Journalism.

But what’s really so different?

Neighborhood news sites and citizen journalism projects are often praised for their ability to deliver hyper-local content that is of immediate use to their audience. This was, of course, a role that reporters working for local television stations and daily newspapers used to fill, before cutting reporters became the solution to shoring up the bottom line.

The most successful news blogs are run by individuals or teams of information gatherers who are focused on something very specific. They are, essentially, working a beat. They follow the story, track down the leads, anticipate where things might be going and mind the store. A store that is a carefully edited boutique and not a sprawling superstore where the same clerk is responsible for hunting equipment and baby strollers.

And then there’s the passion factor. Something that is easily ignored by talking about “journalism” and “the industry” and not about reporters and editors and journalists and photographers and designers.

How often do we consider the impact that all the layoffs and cutbacks and closings are having on the human beings in newsrooms. Is it that difficult to imagine how much easier it is for some of those citizen journalists and nonprofit newsroom reporters to get up and go to work knowing that they are—to a degree—in control of their future? No one has suggested that the journalists working at places like the Seattle P-I weren’t working hard enough. The individuals controlling layoff decisions at some news organizations have even elected to include members of Pulitzer Prize winning teams in their cuts.

It brings new meaning to the idea of no good deed going unpunished.

So, instead of grabbing hold of empty slogans meant to convince me that “journalism isn’t dying,” (which I can’t hear without also thinking “It’s the pictures that got small.”) I want to know that we’re realizing something very basic.

Everything old is new again.

The successes that we’re seeing are being accomplished by individuals who saw the value in what others tossed away in the name of profit margins and stockholders:

Serve the readers, viewers and listeners first. Give them the information they need to contribute to their communities and country.
Give journalists time and resources to become experts and build authority.
Reward hard work and passion with opportunity and security, not an escorted walk to the parking lot.

Now, the giving content away for free thing?

Maybe I’ll try and figure that one out for next time.

Tom Avila (avilatom@hotmail.com) periodically hops up on his soapbox when he writes about journalism because he actually believes it to be a critical element of a healthy democracy. And while this is something he has learned by listening to a lot of really smart people, the opinions expressed in this essay are his own.