Brendan R. Watson

The fundamental role of journalists is to help make the public well-informed, active participants in a democracy.

The contemporary media landscape makes this goal difficult, if not impossible, particularly given our existing journalism models. Information overload drowns out much of the significant work journalists do, not to mention the infotainment, merely a marketing gimmick to compete for an increasingly fragmented audience, which makes up much of the day’s “news.” Overwhelmed by a deluge of information, much of the public simply tunes it out, or pays attention very selectively, picking from the media that adds clarity.

The great irony of the Internet is that despite being a repository for an amazing wealth of knowledge, it has largely acted to reinforce and amplify individuals’ existing beliefs, allowing the audience to seek out opinions that confirm theirs. That’s partly why the electorate is currently so polarized. The unprecedented around-the-clock political coverage hasn’t resulted in more informed voters, but has deepened existing biases, reinforcing voters’ ignorance.

What is needed is a fundamental shift in journalists’ biases, away from reporting on what is new, even when it is not significant. This existing bias only adds to the information overload. The more we bury the audience with information, the more they have to dedicate cognitive resources towards to the search process. These finite resources are draw away from processing information.

What journalists need to do is redefine the gatekeeper role — perhaps we see this role as a guide or a reference librarian on steroids. Instead of primarily creating new information, the journalists’ primary mission becomes helping the audience to aggregate and analyze information. What form this is communicated to the public is unknown, but the hyperlinked world of the Internet makes it infinitely easier to aggregate and illustrate connections between sources.

This new emphasis doesn’t eliminate reporting. Reporting remains an essential element of gathering sources and analyzing information, and remains critical particularly in areas of investigative journalism. Establishing expertise in a given area/beat is also critical to meaningful aggregation. But there is little information that the journalist has that is new, that isn’t accessible to the public elsewhere. Thus, the primary role of the journalist becomes acting as a filter/editor/analyst of existing data. Some editor-driven aggregation sites like The Daily Beast and to an extent the Huffington Post are already leaning in this direction.

However, I would argue about these sites, if their primary goal is to inform, they should eliminate all non-moderated content. Much of what passes as “citizen journalism,” and especially reader comments, doesn’t contribute anything beyond simply creating more information — frequently inaccurate — for the audience to sift through. Philosophically, I think it is important to incorporate feedback from the audience. But you don’t have to blow down the gate to let the audience in. Really, all forms of journalism need to be reassessed: Do they communicate meaningful information, or are they simply acting to add to the noise?

The goal of the researcher in helping to define this new model of journalism is not to start with biases of traditional journalistic forms, which result from imagining the research question from the perspective of the media. But rather is to approach media from the perspective of the audience, understanding their cognitive processes and information needs in order to suggest an effective and sustainable journalistic model.

Even though I know there are many community weeklies that exist in this manner, I tend to be dismissive of — even laugh at — such jack-of-all-trades job postings (my college newspaper was more sophisticated than this).

“Plan publications, focus and coverage. Cover community events; conduct interviews and take photographs; write and edit stories. Maintain rapport and active exchanges with residents, schools and government. Layout and paginate newspaper. Supervise Sports Editor and Reporter.”

Sadly, though, I can also imagine a time when almost all newspaper jobs are like this, though I hold out hope that the decline of newspapers does not spell the decline of journalism, while knowing that there is going to continue to be a painful transition period.

In some ways Paul Farhi’s essay isn’t even worth responding to. He says, “Newspapers are in trouble for reasons that have almost nothing to do with newspaper journalism, and everything to do with the newspaper business.” I find that position completely incomprehensible and indefensible.

True, the newspaper business model is in a state of crisis, but study after study shows that journalism is, as well. Surely, your local newspaper — and even the Washington Post — is not filled with the high-minded analysis and investigative work with with Farhi likes to associate himself with.

Rather, journalists — not business executives — are pursuing an extremely self-destructive editorial strategy. Thomas E. Patterson explains in his 2000 research paper that the journalism decisions newspapers are making are “shrinking the news audience and weakening democracy.” This is not a business-side problem, but reflects poor editorial judgement, which is only being accelerated by a misguided short-term strategy to pursue online page views at any cost, driven as much by editorial as business executives.

There’s lots of research out there — Patterson’s is a good start — that can help one understand the role of (bad) editorial decision-making in this crisis. This is if you want to do something about the crisis rather than just wash your hands of it.

Jeff Jarvis also tackles this subject in his own overstated, pundit-like manner.

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.