| Home | Blog | Ask This | Showcase | Commentary | Comments | About Us | Contributors | Contact Us |
'Comfortable media companies losing sight of their mission'COMMENTARY | October 06, 2005Michael Bugeja of Iowa State questions internships without pay, convergence, and the proper place for reporters’ posteriors. One of our most talented students, who also works for a network news affiliate in Because of state budget cuts, journalism programs must rely increasingly on media companies to sustain our training of students to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable – a century-old maxim that has been tarnished by comfortable media companies losing sight of their news mission and afflicting mostly the journalists who work for them. The company wants the student to replace an intern on one of the coasts. To do so, he would need to drop out of his courses, lose $2,700 in tuition, set back his graduation date, and take out a loan to cover lost tuition and living expenses for four months in a pricey town. He would have to dole out close to $10,000. On my desk are financial-disclosure documents from Viacom, including a news release to stockholders noting that 2003 was a record year, with revenues up 8 percent to $26.6 billion, more than the gross national income of My student asks if the university can help him financially so he can take advantage of this "once in a lifetime" opportunity. "I know we are dealing with the devil," he says, "but it's all fire out there. If I don't take it, they'll give it to a student at" – he names a prestigious institution where the outlet is located. "What should I do?" I tell him to take the internship because he will make contacts and impress supervisors, parlaying the unpaid position into a full-time network job, if not at Viacom, then at TimeWarner or Disney/Cap Cities/ABC or another conglomerate. He leaves the next day with his mother, who will drive him to the big city so he can rent a room that meets minimum Our academic adviser, Maureen Deisinger, hears the news and notes the built-in socioeconomic bias of the situation. "It makes you wonder about other students who may not be able to accept unpaid internships if they don't have someone backing them financially," she says. I'm conflicted. Historically, journalism education has fostered its industry ties. We happily name schools and faculty chairs after companies or their founders. In the past, we did so because those companies typically strove for objectivity even when their newsrooms operated at an occasional loss. But now? According to the "State of the News Media 2005" report by the Project for Excellence in Journalism, 500 fewer people were working in newsrooms in 2003 than in the previous year, with job losses anticipated to continue at newspapers. Last year's "State of the News Media" report analyzed these longer-term trends: · Between 1991 and 2000, newspaper profits rose 207 percent while increases in newsroom personnel were about 3 percent, "most of which then got wiped away during the 2001 downturn." · As of 2003, newspapers had about 2,200 fewer newsroom employees than in 1990, with "work once done by printers and composing room workers" migrating to the newsroom, adding more jobs "related to production rather than news gathering." · Data collected by Joe Foote, a journalism professor at the · In local television, "average workload increased 20 percent between 1998 and 2002," and "59 percent of news directors reported either budget cuts or staff cuts in 2002." Each week on the campus or beyond, I hear complaints about news-media ineptitude. Recently, however, the indictment has changed. Colleagues used to carp about the misinterpreted jargon of the molecular biologist and neighbors about the misidentified person in a photo caption. Now colleagues accuse Fox News of spreading right-wing propaganda. Neighbors accuse CBS News of promoting an anti-Bush agenda. To some degree, their conjectures about political ideologies may be correct. But they miss key pieces of the new media mosaic: · Downsizing reporting staffs is dangerous in a republic founded on the principle that truth, not profit, should rise to the top. · Disseminating opinion is cheaper than gathering fact because the former can be aligned to a target market, such as Fox News slanting to the right. · Too many journalists are doing their work perched in front of computers instead of sources. The latest "State of the News Media" report notes that the last is "part of a larger trend in American journalism," with newsrooms increasingly concerned about "repackaging and presenting information, not gathering it." Journalism educators should be criticizing these practices, but many are in cahoots, changing curricula so graduates can operate effectively in the corporate world. The buzzword is "convergence," which in cynical moments I think is the automation of reporters, and in more reflective ones I'd define as combining one or more old media with the Internet. The new editor of Insights, published by the Association of Schools of Journalism and Mass Communication, has been seeking manuscripts and ideas about convergence. "How do you successfully teach students about it and assure they have practical experiences with it," he asks, "especially if the department or school does not have the facilities? What does an effective convergence curriculum look like? ... How, if at all, can this be done within accreditation guidelines?" These are valid questions, but they also imply that the issue has been settled and that convergence should be taught. Should it? Some of my Earlier this year I paid a nifty honorarium to Bill Elsen, an editor at The Washington Post for 33 years, now retired. We wanted him to reaffirm basic journalism lessons that have more to do with comfortable shoes than with computer software. During lunch, I asked, "Why the hell am I paying you good money to teach students to get out of the newsroom when you know as well as I that they will be working indoors at computers?" Old reporter that I am, I took notes on a napkin. "Good reporters see stuff that wouldn't have happened if they stayed in the newsroom," Elsen says. He wants students to realize that. He talks about Alfred E. Lewis, the Post police reporter known as "Uncle Al," who helped break the Watergate story. "Some reporters never wrote stories," Elsen recalls. "They just dictated them. 'Uncle Al' probably never wrote a story in The Washington Post, and yet you'd find hundreds of his bylines. He would say, 'Get me rewrite.' He'd wear a police sweater and wander around police headquarters, and everyone thought he was a cop. So during Watergate, when everyone was being briefed about the break-in, Al wanders into the Watergate building – right past the cops and the crime-scene tape – and calls in with more details than anybody except the cops. He was a Metro reporter, and that is why Watergate was a Metro story." In relating that and other anecdotes, Elsen emphasizes that some assignments – like covering hurricanes – cannot be done sitting down. "Take that, Elsen is referring to the Drama, maybe. Power, probably. But depth? Reporters in a converged newsroom typically operate indoors fiddling with computers, rather than outdoors monitoring public officials. Forrest Carr, news director for WFLA-TV, in "Common Convergence Questions" on Poynteronline.org, says that focusing on depth is more important than working across platforms. But then he says, "No matter how you slice it, there must be full-time posteriors in chairs to make these jobs happen." That comment worries me and some Should journalism educators be training students for the news media that once existed, concerned about constitutional freedoms and public accountability, or for those that exist now, concerned about revenue? "Good journalism is expensive," says Richard Doak, former editorial-page editor and now senior columnist for The "That's where we're headed, I'm afraid." I'm afraid, too. But I also take heart that our journalism school is clinging to its culture, shaped by alumni like Doak, who is on our advisory board. We are revising curricula to emphasize basics in each media platform before training students to work across them. We use technology as a tool rather than as a crutch. We also create partnerships with companies, like the Meredith Corporation and Lee Enterprises, that share our values and hire our graduates so that influence is two-way. But there are ever-fewer news companies beyond the merged behemoths. My thoughts return to the Viacom intern, accompanied by his mother, entering the bright lights, big city of megamedia too profit-conscious to pay student interns, instilling early a fiscal message for new employees. We educate and train those future employees. We send them. And that nags my conscience, prompting me to write this plea – less than an alarm but more than a demur – for journalism educators to contemplate our unspoken compromises. We may be accomplices. At the least, we have been negligent in challenging corporate media to correct unethical practices. Doing so again may lead to a moral rather than a technological convergence around the industry's societal obligations.
|
|
