Recipe for a Better Journalism

Discussions about how to save journalism sometimes remind me of a “stone soup” party – everybody brings ingredients to the table, but sometimes it adds up to a meal that even the dog wouldn’t eat.

But this month, Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting’s Extra! magazine dove deep into the crisis facing journalism. In one piece, they asked a handful of media makers, activists and scholars how to “build a better” journalism. The final product? Soup du jour.

Here’s the recipe:

Siva Vaidhyanathan, a media scholar from the University of Virginia, is proposing a “Human Knowledge Project” that values civic engagement. He says: “We should remove impediments like overly protective and anti-competitive intellectual property powers, coercive Internet practices that ‘pick winners’ by favoring some content over others (i.e., violates network neutrality), and the general problem that the wealthy and better educated can leverage those advantages in the digital environment (i.e., close the ‘digital divide’).”

Nancy Kranich, former president of the American Library Association, envisions a populist media model that can produce more accessible, inclusive and robust journalism. But she says the public needs to be involved: “It also shifts more responsibility to citizens as both producers and consumers of news, capable of generating stories and discriminating about the authenticity of sources. Without the imprimatur of well-known imprints, readers need to develop more sophisticated information literacy skills so they can find, evaluate, use and produce sources effectively.”

And the director of the Media Education Foundation, Sut Jhally, says the public is complicit in independent media’s struggles if they fail to provide funding. “Let’s say you could get a million people to spend $100 a month on independent media. If you don’t have a calculator, I'll do the math for you. That is $1.2 billion. If we act together and if we make the media something that is central to how we think about politics, think of what that would make possible…Why don’t we do that? Because media issues are still seen as secondary.”

Cheryl Leanza, managing director of the Office of Communication at the United Church of Christ, warns against leaning too heavily on philanthropy. “Although the private sector may not be the whole story, I would be concerned to rely only upon philanthropic support for our news. The existing non-profit sector is already strapped for resources. A journalism sector that is as diverse as possible in its business models and revenue sources will be the most likely to provide long-term stability and innovation, as well as excel as our much-needed Fourth Estate,” she said.

Like it or not, journalists have become part of this story, and we need them to help make journalism better. Loris Ann Taylor, executive director of Native Public Media, said, “Change can either shape journalism according to the winds, or we can help to manage that change by articulating the values of what journalism means and has meant to our communities: how it holds our governments accountable, how it connects us on important issues and how it encourages our democracy to remain true and strong.”

Citizen journalism is empowering communities long ignored by mainstream media, and often, citizen journalists are breaking the stories. Deepa Fernandes and Joshua Breitbart of the People's Production House want to see more investment in citizen-led media. “We need to raise the bar on quality by teaching the craft of journalism in public schools, community centers and church halls, and then lower the bar on participation by building public computer labs, deploying local broadband networks and acquiring broadcast licenses to make these very locations the newsrooms of tomorrow,” they wrote.

Journalist Jill Nelson says simply, “Outlaw pundits.”

Our media system has been shaped bad media policies and corporate greed. Craig Aaron of Free Press (the organization I work for) is pushing for a national journalism strategy that doesn’t give industry a bailout. “Hiding from Google or suing bloggers for quoting you does not count as innovation. We won’t find the answers to this crisis behind closed doors on Capitol Hill or at secret industry meetings among top media executives. We need a national journalism strategy that recognizes that newsgathering is a public service -- not just another commodity. That strategy needs to be developed and debated in the light of day,” he said.

Journalist Barbara Ehrenreich says journalists never stop reporting, even as their medium is evolving. “As long as there is a story to be told, an injustice to be exposed, a mystery to be solved, we will find a way to do it. … A recession won’t stop us. A dying industry won’t stop [us]. Even poverty won’t stop us because we are all on a mission here.”

Want seconds? Read FAIR’s latest issue, “The Future of Journalism.”