“Society doesn’t need newspapers.
What we need is journalism.” I came across this Clay Shirky quote as I read the
first assigned article, “What Society Requires is Reputable Journalism” and it
resonated with me immediately. Obviously, we as journalism students have been
told since the first minute, of the first class of our first day, in the field,
that newspapers are dying.The author of the article,
Catherine Ford, made sure that fact was not lost on the reader.
What struck me however was the argument that it was not necessarily about the newspapers, but instead about the journalism. She argued that newspapers in their current physical form may indeed be dying but their function as a concrete, reusable form of knowledge transformation, is one that has yet to be satisfactorily replaced and will indeed live on. Newspapers conveyed journalism in a reliable fashion that is still unparalleled. One may argue that newspapers are no longer the dominant form of media consumption, but I would indeed make the argument that they are still more reliable than television or Internet sources. The traditional nature of newspapers almost harkens back to the days of straightforward journalistic reporting as opposed to the biased, agenda pushed reporting that permeates the field today. Perhaps newspapers stand in as a reminder of what once was, in the journalistic profession. And maybe a return to our journalistic roots is exactly what will save the industry that for so long has been believed to be dying.
What struck me however was the argument that it was not necessarily about the newspapers, but instead about the journalism. She argued that newspapers in their current physical form may indeed be dying but their function as a concrete, reusable form of knowledge transformation, is one that has yet to be satisfactorily replaced and will indeed live on. Newspapers conveyed journalism in a reliable fashion that is still unparalleled. One may argue that newspapers are no longer the dominant form of media consumption, but I would indeed make the argument that they are still more reliable than television or Internet sources. The traditional nature of newspapers almost harkens back to the days of straightforward journalistic reporting as opposed to the biased, agenda pushed reporting that permeates the field today. Perhaps newspapers stand in as a reminder of what once was, in the journalistic profession. And maybe a return to our journalistic roots is exactly what will save the industry that for so long has been believed to be dying.
As I begin to do the second
reading, “The Dark Continent of American Journalism”, I began to think about
whether or not journalists were indeed living up to our obligation to inform
citizens and to do it the “proper” way. Are we getting the job done?
The line in this article that stuck
out to me the most was “How and why are the most problematic aspects of
American journalism: the dark continent and invisible landscape.”
These two aspects, “How” and “Why”,
are the essence of what citizens rely on journalists to convey to them. When we
deliver hard hitting news, aimed at informing the populous, we have an
obligation to be able to convey the nuts and bolts of a story (the “How”) and
the reasoning behind the madness (the “Why”). If these are the most problematic
aspects of our journalism today, we are heading in the wrong direction and we
are not getting the job done.
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