Connecting the Dots

In today’s media saturated world, a person would have to really make the effort to get through a day without seeing or hearing the day’s headlines.

An alarm clock could not be set to a radio station, a television could only show cartoons or sitcoms, the radio would have to be shut off while driving to work, newspapers would have to be taken off the news stands, and the internet would have to be down at the workplace and the home.

But with all the various mediums available, the old adage is proving true: quantity does not necessarily mean quality.

“In an information age, when good journalism should be flourishing everywhere, it isn’t” (Downie 9).

Not only is the caliber of journalism not up to par, profit-seeking conglomerates are stressing higher revenue rather than improving the quality of their journalism. In an attempt to produce increased profits, newspaper editors are filling their papers with more infotainment. If readers want to hear about Brad Pitt’s infidelity or TomKat’s wedding, than newspapers are now providing that in an effort to raise sales. By raising sales, circulation numbers increase, advertising revenue follows leaving stockholders pleased. After all, newspapers are a business.

‘“The media world was invaded by money,’ explained William B. Ziff Jr., chairman of a family company… ‘What had been a sedate and family-oriented corner of the business world was thrown into the financial spotlight…The pressure on publishing management to produce enhanced financial performance became progressively more intense…Most would have been better off without it.”’ (25)

And the more profit a company requires, the less money is available to be spent improving journalism- providing in-depth stories, having several bureaus to serve all of the paper’s audience, etc (Gans 26-27). And on top of all that, newspapers are having an incredibly difficult time attracting the younger audience- not necessarily because they are getting their news from other mediums but because they simply just don’t care.

So are you depressed yet?

While the budgets, the statistics, and the competition creates a “gloomed and doomed” picture of the future in newspapers, there is hope. (Hopefully we didn’t just waste 4 years of tuition!)

In a democracy, citizens depend on the press to be informed (Downie 1). Although they may not always chose to be informed with the time constraints of family, entertainment, and work, when citizens do chose to be informed, they turn to the media.

But which medium will citizens turn to when they want to be informed, especially in times of national crisis? Downie explained the roles of newspapers and television in the context of the Sept. 11th attacks.

Sept. 11th was a day for television. Americans remained glued to their televisions watching repeatedly the video of the planes being flown into the World Trade Center, President Bush address the nation, and the horror of the devastation and destruction of the lives lost that day (63).

“But September 12 belonged to newspapers, and reminded us why, even now, decades into the electronic era, newspapers remain so important” (63). The Washington Post sold a million copies, more than 150,000 papers above its normal circulation. The Los Angeles Times sold an additional 227,000 copies.

People, including regular readers and ones that never pick up a paper- bought newspapers because they were filled with information that had not been given to them from television and because the paper itself was a record of history.

The papers didn’t just tell the readers simply that the World Trade Center was attacked and destroyed. Rather, they told the readers the context of the attack: the history of terrorism against American targets; the known facts about Osama bin Laden’s terrorist network; the history of the World Trade Center and its design; information about intelligence linking bin Laden to the terrorists; details about who was on the four crashed planes; and the first account of what happened on United Airlines Flight 93 (63).

“Television gave Americans immediate access to the news, but the journalism that provided the information essential to understanding what had happened was done primarily by newspaper stories,” (64).

Bottom line- newspapers did original reporting on the 9/11 attacks proving that good journalism does make a difference (4).

Dan Rather of CBS complemented newspapers when he reported on Bush’s speech about his decision to allow limited use of embryonic stem cells for medical research. “‘It’s the kind of subject that, frankly, radio and television have difficulty with because it requires such depth into the complexities of it. So we can, with, I think, impunity, recommend that, if you’re really interested in this, you’ll want to read, in detail, one of the better newspapers tomorrow” (64).

But newspapers aren’t always doing this- actually most of them aren’t at all.

So here is a proposal to combat the pessimistic future of newspapers.

Newspapers don’t need to tell people news they already know. Instead, papers need to provide context, depth, perception, interpretation, and narratives.

People have already heard the today’s news from the Internet, television, radio, and word-of-mouth by the time the newspaper shows up on their front door step tomorrow morning. Instead of filling the paper with the exact same facts people already know, newspapers need to provide stories about the news.

Basically, journalists need to connect the dots.

“‘The idea that a newspaper is going to be people’s first port of call to find out what’s going on in the world is no longer valid. You have to add another layer’” (Stephens 35).

Newspapers can still deliver the breaking news and compete with local television and the Internet by continuing to post news updates on the paper’s Web site. But for the daily paper, journalists need to provide “analysis: thoughtful, incisive attempts to divine the significance of events- insight, not just information” (36).

An advantage over television also lies with newspapers: a larger staff. Since journalists are split up amongst various beats, they can become experts on their specific community or genre. Therefore, if a journalist is an expert on their beat, they will be able to be an analyst and write an in-depth story with a certain angle. That doesn’t mean writing an editorial; rather, it means approaching the story with intelligence and vast knowledge that ultimately adds to the simple facts of the story.

‘“Our secret is to tell people things they don’t know. It’s so simple it sounds stupid at first, but when you think about it, it is our fundamental advantage. We’ve got to tell people stuff they don’t know.’ This means information acquired by creative reporting, conveyed by good writing, digested by smart analysts who know what to make of it. It means high-quality work” (103)

An example of this type of journalism is at The Independent in England. Stephens compared the Independent’s headline of Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s visit to the Middle East with the Washington Post’s headline. The Post ran “Rice Cites Concern For Palestinians, But Low Expectations Mark Visit” on A26. The Independent ran “The Road Map to Nowhere: Four Years After George Bush Unveiled His Middle East Plan, Condoleezza Rice Arrived To Find Peace As Far Away As Ever” on the front page. John Mullin, the Independent’s executive editor, said that it can be challenging for some journalists to present news with a coherent viewpoint when they have been used to thinking the “who, what, where, and when” method.

Journalists, especially U.S. journalists, also live in the fear of the charge of bias. But Stephens argues that in order “to achieve vigorous analysis, they may have to get over that fear” (37).

In order to produce diligent reporting and thus in-depth and complex stories, journalists have to look beyond the press conferences and the press releases, think “outside of the box”, spend time with the people who never appear in the news, and never rely on the same few sources. Journalists will need to be so informed at times that they are more knowledgeable than their sources.

Stephens argues that since four of the old five W’s (who, what, where, and when) are more widely and easily available, there needs to be the five I’s: informed, intelligent, interesting, industrious, and insightful.

The five I’s might be the thing that saves newspapers.