Brendan R. Watson

The New York Times had this funny piece about naked hikers in the Swiss Alps on its homepage yesterday night. (And no, I am not linking to it again). What’s more disturbing? Naked hiking in the snow or the fact that naked hiking in the snow is news worthy enough not only to warrant coverage by the New York Times, but prime real estate on its website?

I would surmise the New York Times’ editors probably don’t think it that news worthy. But they know there’s people like me sitting in front of our computers watching mindless television and equally mindlessly perusing the web who will post these stories to our Facebook pages and Twitter feeds to humor our friends — and sure enough three friends quickly commented on the article on my Facebook profile. And in the era of hits as the end-all-be-all of defining value on the web, this is precisely how stories like this become “news,” and proliferate in various iterations of the news-of-the-weird (cute-puppy-dog, bikini-shot and stupid criminal stories).

I’ve gotten more invitations to join “Save Newspapers” Facebook groups. Forget it! I’m not joining. Save newspaper journalism? Sure. Where do I sign up. But these groups make no distinction between medium and message and newspapers in of themselves as a medium are not worth saving. Lets stop trying to save the dinosaurs and think about how we can influence this new medium, while preserving the message.

And could we not start by refusing to pass along worthless stories? Granted, they’re sometimes funny, but they have no value. The person counting the clicks as we pass along the stories on Twitter and Facebook — and not the intangibles (or at least the much more difficult to measure tangibles) of the impact of real, public-affairs news — doesn’t see that. Instead of joining meaningless “Save the Dinosaur!” groups on Facebook, it would be much more productive to concentrate on an area of social media where journalists could demonstrate an impact by only passing along news organizations’ serious, public affairs journalism, and encouraging their networks to join the group and do the same. This will actually help expand the market online for the serious newspaper journalism that we want to save.

The Chicago Tribune may declare bankruptcy. The Rocky Mountain News and the Miami Herald are up for sale. The Rocky may be down for the K.O., and the latter may end up being little more than a real estate deal for the paper’s water-front property. The Star-Tribune is going to cut another 25 newsroom jobs; Newsday 5% of its work force, while raising prices for a lesser product. The New York Times is struggling with cash flow problems and is having to borrow against its new headquarters . Are we seeing the beginning of the end? And like the fears over the auto supply chain, what will go down with the newspapers?

In her article “Objectivity as Strategic Ritual” Gaye Tuchman discusses journalistic ‘objectivity’ as a ritual, a “routine procedure which has relatively little or only tangential relevance to the end sought” (661). Presumably, that end sought is the truth. But if it were, why is there such a perliferation of “fact-checking” websites in this election cycle, some which are run by journalism organizations who presumably are presenting truthful accounts of the campaigns through their reporting?

That’s because the right-wing has mounted an extremely successful campaign against the ‘liberal media elite,’ so much so that more than ever journalists are falling over themselves to be “objective.” This doesn’t mean truthful, but rather means giving equal weight to both sides of the debate with “little or only tangential relevance” to the truth. Thus, the rise of the truth seeking website to take it’s place, often using different reporters to be arbiters of the truth, a different vehicle and format to publish its conclusions, insulating the reporters from charges that they too are part of the ‘media elite.’

The journalism organizations invested in this outside enterprise are also careful to pick relatively non-controversial “facts” (“1.3-million people in America make their living off eBay”) and almost always use half-rulings (mostly true, half true, barely true) to hedge their bets and cushion their blows. What I would be curious to study, is that after one of this journalism organizations does rule on a fact, does that conclusion make its way into its traditional reporting, or are readers still left with a safe “he said/she said account”?

Regardless, I think journalism organizations would be far better served to focus on truthful reporting throughout their enterprise than to focus on these mostly separate factual enterprises. Even as a frequent consumer of allegedly serious political reporting, I’ve been left with little factual information to base my vote on, being left instead as have most voters to mainly base their vote on party affiliation and whether or not one “likes” a candidate, eroding the usefulness of political journalism in our civic lives.