Conclusion

Conclusion

After the release of the Knight Commission Report, Eric Newton of the Knight Foundation wrote an article commenting, “How do you make ‘news and information’ everyone’s issue?” He responded, “The hard part is ahead of us: that is, involving every aspect of our communities in this issue, governments, non-profits, traditional media, schools, universities, libraries, churches, social groups—and, especially, citizens themselves.”131

Perhaps the place to start is to remember that journalism belongs to all of us. It always has. Just like the freedoms of speech and religion and the rights to peaceably assemble and petition our government for redress of grievances.

But journalism has not always felt like that to many people. Through most of the past century, journalism has been largely a one-way conversation. The methods and costs of production and distribution made it so. Journalism was done for people, and sometimes to people, not so much with people.

At the end of the 20th Century, consolidation of media ownership into big public companies took journalism even further from people. Increasingly, profits trumped public service. Public trust and confidence in the integrity and quality of the news media had been on a long downward slide, which is still accelerating.

The Internet and search engines have turned the world of professional journalism on its head. A journalism colleague said recently, “I do not know anybody from my profession who is not heartbroken, devastated, terrified, scared, enraged, despondent, bereft. I just do not know anybody.”132

Those feelings are raw and real. The words sound like something a journalist might report out of the mouth of a steelworker or autoworker, a family farmer or a logger or a shrimp boat operator on the coast of Louisiana.

When you feel that your life’s work is endangered, it is hard to see the possibilities. But, the Internet is also giving journalism a fresh start—a chance to recreate itself in the way it should have been originally, if the technology had allowed.

It is also a fresh start for the public. For all the bad things people say about the press, they understand its importance in their personal and civic lives. They want journalists to live up to the standards and values they espouse.133 The people now have a genuine opportunity to help shape the future of journalism and a responsibility to do it.134

Are people really up to the task of being partners in developing their own news? Is the press capable of creating a “next journalism?”

Bill Kovach and Tom Rosenstiel ask those questions in their new book, Blur: How to Know What’s True in the Age of Information. They write, “The answers are hardly a matter of philosophy or academic curiosity. If the public and the press are not up to the task, then the question of whether democracy works falls into doubt.”135

This raises two final area of strategic importance: (1) public engagement and trust and (2) leadership.

Public Engagement and Trust

Journalism has little purpose if it is not trusted by the public it is meant to serve. Public engagement and public trust are inseparable in the networked world of digital journalism. Advancing local journalism will require both.136

When people have unprecedented control over their use of media, engagement is essential for journalism to have value in their lives. Not just the kind of engagement that allows people to post comments at the end of online news stories, but engagement that sees journalism as being by, for and of the communities it serves.

Transparency is necessary to establish journalistic credibility, but it is not sufficient if journalists do not understand and respect the values of the people they serve. People who are motivated and have the opportunity to be part of creating journalism will be more trusting of it. Journalists and journalistic organizations should celebrate this fact and utilize it to create content that is more complete and accurate than they could produce on their own.

The point is that whatever one calls it—public insight journalism,137 networked journalism, citizen journalism, open-source journalism138—it will be better for being inclusive and tapping into the collective knowledge of the community. This is the essence of journalism for a networked world. It is a partnership between journalists and the people they are meant to serve.

Leadership

Leadership is not a strategy, but it may be the essential ingredient in advancing local journalism in these turbulent times.

Geoffrey Cowan, dean emeritus of the Annenberg School for Communication & Journalism at the University of Southern California, observes that in recent years “commentators have looked for structural or financial solutions designed to stop the cutbacks in industry and to restore daily papers to greatness…. In the end, the key ingredient is leadership, creativity and commitment of the owner, editor, and/or corporate manager.”

He says that to produce and protect great journalism, the leaders of companies must have two sets of important qualities: (1) a commitment to great journalism and to the financial investment that makes it possible and (2) the range of business skills needed to build and sustain great companies in a world where there are certain to be continuing changes in technology, society, markets, regulations and tastes.

What sets the great leaders of journalism apart from other great business leaders, Cowan says, is “their willingness to stand up to government when the public’s need for information demands it and to use a disproportionate share of their resources to support, and at times subsidize, the needs of their newsroom, even when shareholders might wish them to beef up the bottom line.”139

This is an especially tricky proposition at a time when news organizations are necessarily reaching beyond the realm of traditional journalism to find leaders who understand the digital world. That understanding is pointless if future leaders do not also understand the mission, values and standards that give journalism meaning in a democratic society.

And, leadership within news organizations will not be sufficient to advance local journalism if it is not accompanied by leadership elsewhere.

When the Aspen Institute convened a forum on “Models for Transforming American Journalism” in 2009, participants spoke of the need for financial markets and foundations to show courage in support of journalism.140 That is a call to leadership.

In looking at building community, author Peter Block offers that transformation requires a certain kind of leadership. He describes a person with a mindset of abundance and generosity, a belief in the social fabric, a focus on citizens and an emphasis on possibility rather than problems.141 In a dynamic, interactive world, the people who advance local journalism, individually and collectively, will embrace all of these qualities.

The leadership that is needed will come in many forms from many places. As Peggy Holman, a co-founder of Journalism That Matters,142 writes in her new book, Engaging Emergence: Turning Upheaval into Opportunity:

We no longer need to wait for formal leaders or facilitators to declare an initiative or pose a good question. Any one of us can do so by taking responsibility for what we love as an act of service. When invited to do so, people consistently rise to the occasion.143

This truly is a moment to make news and information everyone’s issue.

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