Whats New for News?
The Chicago Tribune and the Chicago Sun-Times have declared bankruptcy. Respected newspapers and magazines around the country have folded. The media industry faces the challenges of an economic recession and changing media formats. Yet more news is being written, and more consumed, than ever before.
In the midst of this, Loyola opened its School of Communication, and journalism classes are among the most popular. What’s in store for the next generation of journalists? What’s the future of journalism, and why is it so important? Loyola magazine sat down with Don Heider, broadcast journalist and dean of the SOC; Phil Ponce of WTTW11 in Chicago; and Don Wycliff, longtime Chicago Tribune editor, to get some answers from those with their fingers on the pulse of the industry.
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Donald Heider, PhD From 1980 through 1990, Heider worked in broadcasting, including positions as syndication producer for the Gillett News Bureau in Washington DC, special projects producer and manager of special news in Nashville, Tenn., and executive producer at WTVC-TV in Chattanooga, Tenn. He has been recognized with five Emmy awards and an Associated Press Award, and has taught at several universities prior to Loyola. |
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Phil Ponce Ponce is the host of Chicago Tonight, a nightly magazine of news and culture on WTTW11 Chicago. He’s been an award-winning journalist for more than 20 years. In 1997, Ponce was tapped to serve as national correspondent for the Washington-based NewsHour with Jim Lehrer. Two years later, he returned to Chicago to take over the Chicago Tonight anchor chair. He teaches broadcast classes in the School of Communication. |
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Don Wycliff Wycliff served as public editor of the Chicago Tribune from 2000–2006 and as editorial page editor from 1991–2000. He has also worked for the New York Times, the Chicago Sun-Times, the Dallas Times-Herald, and the Chicago Daily News. He was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in editorial writing in 1996, has been inducted into the Chicago Journalism Hall of Fame, and received a lifetime achievement award from the Chicago Journalists Association. Wycliff teaches reporting and editing at the School of Communication. |
Many well-established newspapers have closed, declared bankruptcy, or are on the verge of financial collapse. Is there a future for print journalism?
DH: This is a perfect storm of circumstances for American journalism. Probably the most devastating blow to newspapers was the loss of classified advertising. We didn’t realize how much classified ads were the economic engine of newspapers. With the advent of Craigslist, almost all of that revenue is gone. That added with the amount of online readers as opposed to in print—these factors have spelled serious economic trouble. I don’t think it will spell the demise of print journalism, but I think we are going through what might be called a severe adjustment.
PP: I’m optimistic, although everything is exacerbated by this terrible economy. I believe there will always be a demand for magazines and newspapers, but who’s going to run them? Who’s going to own them? Will they be publicly held? Are they going to be funded by foundations? A good newspaper has the resources, the clout, and the institutional wherewithal to identify a story and really go after it—like what the Chicago Tribune is doing right now with the admissions story at the University of Illinois. Unless you have that kind of institutional backing, you simply do not have the foundation to do that kind of reporting. What it comes down to is this: if we do not have a strong press, then this country is in trouble. If you don’t have the press looking over the shoulder of government, it inevitably will lead to abuses that go unchecked or unidentified.
DW: I fully agree with what they’ve said. One thing I would emphasize is that whatever form print journalism assumes in the future, financial independence is going to be crucial.
What do you mean by financial independence?
DW: The ability to not be dependent on government funding. A foundation might be a possibility, but I think profit-making has got to be the future.
So is a nonprofit model for a newspaper a possibility?
DW: I think a news organization can’t be financially dependent and be a consistently good news organization, and so it’s got to have its own source of revenue. Certainly a foundation can do that, but I really think it’s going to have to be a profit-making entity.
DH: We do have two good models of nonprofits in PBS and NPR, but we’ve never really had that on the print side. It would be interesting to see whether a print model could emerge that would be reader-supported. I worry especially about investigative reporting, because it’s the most expensive, most important, most likely to get you in legal trouble, and it doesn’t produce quick profits. You know, Chicago has this history of great investigative reporting, and when we talk about journalists being watchdogs, these are reporters who have the time and resources to take a day, six months, a year, or whatever it takes, to really dig into a story. Foundation funding is in three- or five-year grants—it’s a short-term solution to a long-term problem.
PP: The real danger is in smaller news markets. In a larger market people will find a way to generate news and fund it. But, for example, if the public television station in Little Rock gets the majority of its funding from the government and that funding evaporates, that station may no longer exist. There could be something akin to news deserts in parts of the country, and that is just not good for democracy.
So with the future of journalism so uncertain, why do so many students enroll in these courses and pursue these careers?
DH: One, we see a generation that has been raised with communication: IM, text message, e-mail, cell phones. I think they understand that communication is the future. Second, I call it the new liberal arts degree. If a student can write or edit a story well on deadline, they can work in many different fields.
DW: I think the journalism program at Loyola offers two additional things that students value: the ability to think critically and the ability to find things out, which are skills that you carry into any number of professions.
PP: No matter what the future of news dissemination is there’s always going to be a need for good storytelling. If you have storytelling skills coupled with truthseeking skills, there’s a future for you.
With the advent of Web 2.0, of user-generated content, YouTube, Twitter, and all the rest, what’s the role of the trained journalist?
DH: One thing that hasn’t been said so far is that this is one of the most exciting times in the history of communication. It’s much more participatory. When you open it up and it’s more pluralistic, that inherently adds some value, and you take with it a lot of stuff that does not have particular value, or has lower value. It’s just like being in a democracy— it’s messy, and you have to hear opinions you don’t like sometimes, even opinions that are hateful. But everyone gets a voice. That’s why I am hopeful of journalism emerging in this new atmosphere, because I think people can discern between the junk and good storytelling with accurate facts.
DW: I think it’s easier to say what value the journalist adds than it is to say what a normal person is going to bring to the table. I have been struck over the last few weeks, with the coverage of the Iran elections, by how many times I have been watching the news on TV or reading dispatches online, and they start by saying, “We are unable to verify such and such.” The fundamental purpose of journalism is the discipline of verification. They try to find out what is the truth and present that in an informative, creative way. I routinely get good value from the time I invest in reading the Chicago Tribune or the New York Times, as opposed to reading all the individual notes on Twitter, or whatever else.
That’s an interesting case study though, Iran, with the fact that all the journalists were kicked out by the government, so the only information coming out was through everyday Iranians.
PP: That goes back to Don’s point. These new media vehicles can have tremendous value. When you have a repressive government, new media can work around the established formats. Were it not for people Twittering, for people loading videos to YouTube, we would not have known much of what was going on in Iran. But these are just slivers. The value of a journalist is to take these slivers and put them into a cohesive narrative.
Any thoughts on how print, broadcast, Web, and so on, will continue to converge?
DH: When you go online to read a story, it will not just be a print story online. There is the expectation that there are photographs, and you can click through and see 20 photos instead of one. I think the expectation will be that you can hear a little bit of audio and see a little bit of video. I can comment on a story; I can e-mail the story to a friend.
PP: To Don’s point, when the jet crashed into the Hudson River, you could go online and read about it, and there was a box you could click and can see the plane land. The article said that within 4 minutes and 34 seconds, the first ferry boat was there. And so you say, “oh really,” and you click on the video, and, sure enough, it’s there: it’s coming down, it’s landing, it’s falling in, and you’re watching the timer as the video is going…4 minutes and 34 seconds. You’re personally verifying that information, and it just gave you a more complete view of what exactly happened.
Recently, the news media has been criticized for being “asleep at the wheel,” for example in the run up to the Iraq War and the collapse of major American banks. What responsibility do the news media have to question political and business leaders?
DW: I don’t think that there is any doubt about the responsibility to question. That’s the essence of the business. Some were asleep at the wheel on Iraq, no question, although there were some notable exceptions— unfortunately, not among those that we usually look to as the most credible. But I don’t think the indictment holds as well in the case of the financial scandal.
PP: People were beating those drums for a long time.
DW: And, you know, we were all having a party then.
PP: We were having a collective kegger, and the public just did not want to hear it.
Where there was a falling down, what happened?
DH: I think there is tremendous political pressure. You know, Chicago, in its heyday, had close to 30 newspapers—not all of them great, some of them very sensationalistic, but it brought different perspectives. As the number of newspapers dwindles, we have lost those voices, and what happened a lot, even in a two-newspaper town like Chicago, was that both newspapers moved to a more political centrist position because of economics. They wanted everyone to read the paper and advertise with them. I think also there has been so much rhetoric around media bias that there is some selfcensorship.
One last question. What skills are necessary for a young student to succeed in today’s
journalism market?
PP: First and foremost, I think what any aspiring journalist needs to have is a driving sense of curiosity. If you’ve got it, then you have the makings of a journalist. If you don’t, you should probably do something else.
DW: I know there are people who disagree with me on this, but I think a passion to change the world is crucial for a journalist. And, to go along with curiosity, a critical mind and relentless skepticism.
PP: And that’s skepticism, not cynicism. It’s giving the viewer, the listener, the reader, the tools by which he or she enhances his or her skepticism and critical world view.
DH: We have to still teach the basics. Students need to learn how to check facts, especially on the Web. How do you tell if a Web site is valid?
PP: Please let me know when you figure that out.
DH: On top of all that, I think the new generation has to have a sense of entrepreneurship. They have to think about ways in which they might invent their own publication or market themselves or learn how to blog. Students may end up working for the big monolithic media organizations, but they may also work for a startup, or they may start their own organizations. Honestly, it’s a very different terrain from that of people who graduated in the previous four or five decades.