The Graduate School of Journalism today released its long-awaited report, The Reconstruction of American Journalism by Leonard Downie Jr., and Prof. Michael Schudson.
You can read the whole thing here.
It is, in a word, terrible.
It is terrible because the best idea it can come up with to save American journalism is to fall back on the PBS model of begging foundations and the government for some handouts. Crumbs. Turn the NY Times into a non-profit. Â
Terrible.
It is ironic that on the same day that the report was released The New York Times itself announced that it was laying off 100 reporters from the newsroom. Â Downie and Schnudson don’t have to recommend that The Times turn into a non-profit operation. The paper seems more than capable of doing that on their own.
The best response I have read so far is from David Carr, himself of the soon to be diminished NY Times.Â
My own assessment of the report: Â Oatmeal.
Insipid, luke-warm and pointless.
Which is a tragedy because journalism has so much potential. But the report itself, and their plan for survival through begging is indicative of a larger problem in American journalism today: spineless.
The collapse of the world of journalism begins and ends with the Internet. Â
The rise of the web chowed through journalistic institutions like The New York Times, The Rocky Mountain News, The Chicago Tribune and a thousand others (and soon TV networks). It was able to do that because the web is fundamentally about journalism.
The web is, in fact, a fantastic machine for gathering, processing, editing, curating and distributing information. Â What it does do is beat the living crap out of the old business model.
As journalists, we should have been on the cutting edge of the Internet Revolution.
The San Francisco Chronicle should have created and developed and owned Craigslist.
The New York Times should have owned Google (which they were, so I hear, offered for $1 million and they turned it down). What better representation is there of ‘all the news fit to print’.
NBC should have developed and owned Youtube.
We’d all be in fine shape were that the case.
But it isn’t.
Instead, as a profession we are on the ropes.
Now along come mssrs. Downey and Shudson and offer their solution: a tin cup.
Great.
We are nowhere near finished with the Internet Revolution. But if journalism is to survive, indeed to thrive, it has to rethink what it is and what it teaches. Â
We need an aggressive, dynamic, highly technical kind of entrepreneurial journalism. One which will both teach and honor people who build new websites, create new companies, know how to finance them, grow them and sell them. Â
Journalism has for far too long derided the business side of the business as ‘dirty’. Â That is wrong. Plain wrong. Â Journalism is first and foremost a business. And without the income, there is no journalism at all.
We have to abandon our notions of the noble ink-stained wretches forever in search of ‘the truth’ and embrace and learn to love making money. Â (Turns your stomach to hear that, doesn’t it, you old ink-stained wretches?” Â Too bad.
Ironically, for most of its glorious history, the business of journalism and journalism itself were intertwined. Â Benjamin Franklin was a great journalist – published one of the first papers in North America, if not the world – but he was also a great and rich businessman. Â No crime! Â Joseph Pulitzer of the oft-longed for Pulitzer Prize was first and foremost a businessman. Â No crime there either.
Enough with the ‘noble profession’. Enough with the glorification of suffering and poverty. Â Let us embrace a holistic journalism that incorporates and indeed glorifies a profit. For without profit there is nothing. Â
My friend Jeff Jarvis runs one of the great journalism courses in the world. He forces his students to come up with a business plan for a journalism based business. He has them present it to a jury. And then, guess what? He funds the best ones with seed grants.
Now that is a model for journalism for the future.
Not this.
That gets you a robust profession that knows how to survive and thrive.
This gets you a tote bag, and umbrella and a pink slip.
19 Comments
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Chelsey October 21, 2009
Having been familiar with Schudson’s previous work and how he tends to use adamant reporters such as Lippman, Bernay, Bramson (the list continues) to form his quiet opinions on the death of journalism, I anticipated his suggestion for public support and non-profit reform. I agree with you, his advise is too far fetched in hopes of awakening the sIeeping enthusiasm in a participatory culture in which the participants have all gone digital. Even though I read your critique to be totally sappy and needlessly pessimistic, I want to be your student. How do I get to you?
Katherine Warman Kern October 20, 2009
We need people like you to ripp the band-aid off. http://bit.ly/f3G9d Otherwize the paid will drag on and on.
We also need a “We” era renaissance. The CJR report demonstrates that the “Post We” era attitude is a significant barrier to fixing the media economic crisis. My take in two parts One: http://bit.ly/4rLVMN and Two: http://bit.ly/5JftZ
Katherine Warman Kern
@comradity
Katherine Warman Kern October 20, 2009
that would be “pain” dragging on and on not “paid”
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Michael Rosenblum October 20, 2009
You are right.
digger October 20, 2009
And then you left – That’s why you’re the man Michael!
But don’t be using up all your spineless jibes on the guys on the front lines – at least they are trying.
Michael Rosenblum October 20, 2009
Conceptually I don’t disagree with you. When I was teaching at NYU I used to tell my students to go the bursar’s office, get their money back, (40k then), go buy a camera and a plane ticket and go make films. Few took the advice. So if they insist on going to school, at least they should learn how to make a living.
digger October 20, 2009
Minimal tuition – OK my bad – but add in living expenses in NYC and how what is the $$$?
When talking $$$ is “minimal” more or less than “seed”?
Michael Rosenblum October 20, 2009
First, CUNY, where Jeff Jarvis teaches is part of the City University of New York, and tuitions are minimal. Really minimal. I don’t know where the 200k comes from.
As for The Chron owning Craigslist, Craigslist has a valuation of $5 billion. If the Chron had that on their balance sheets I think they would be opening bureaus not firing reporters. As Keith R says, real news has never paid for itself. It has always been carried by the ad space. But the Chron and other papers gave the ad space away.
anon October 20, 2009
I’m not sure I follow your argument when you say, “The San Francisco Chronicle should have created and developed and owned Craigslist.”
Isn’t the key lesson of Craigslist that on the web you don’t need to bundle content with classified ads? Wouldn’t staffing a reporting organization simply be a drain on Craigslist revenue?
To put it another way, it seems to me that if the Chronicle had invented Craigslist, surely they would right now be laying off their reporters to increase profits, eventually converging on exactly the current situation.
digger October 20, 2009
Hmmm… charging aspiring journalists $200,000 to come with ideas and then funding the best of them with “seed” money?
That’s a journalism school??????? Sounds like a fright of desperate tenured professors.
Here’s an idea. Keep the 200K and fund your own idea.
KeithR October 20, 2009
It’s not only the Luddites who are saying that accountability journalism will have to be publically funded, it’s people like Clay Shirky. There exists no working business model where you can make money providing accountability journalism in the public interest. That’s not to say someone can’t invent one, but it’s unlikely. The old newspaper model subsidized the real journalism read by a few, with the mass eyeballs showing up for sports scores, car reviews, classfied ads and comic strips. Advertisers overpaid to reach this audience because they had few or no other options. This won’t work online. Real news has never paid for itself. Any solution needs to confront this reality.
Kevin October 20, 2009
…there are working business models in place. But the first step is to convince journalists that such a model exists, then train those journalists how to make money in the new media.
Chances are it won’t be for this generation of journalists. A good example is coyotes. Ranchers will take livestock to a pit to dispose of carcasses. The coyotes will return to this pit over and over again. The rancher may change the location of where the animals are disposed of, but the coyotes will continue to go back to the initial location, sometimes for years after the rancher has stopped disposing in that spot. The coyotes just don’t get it.
A whole new generation of journalists/marketers will have to find the direction. Investors will have to get out of the mode of investing in what they know and back new media. As content becomes available, people will have to directed to its location.
It will be grass roots, but global.
Michael Rosenblum October 20, 2009
Dear Chris
Then let me be as clear as possible.
For journalism to thrive in the future, journalists must learn to create and own the businesses first.
How’s that?
Clear enough?
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Chris Anderson October 19, 2009
Intriguing. Your own response to the report seems to be a semi-coherent string of half-baked “up by the bootstraps / Dale Carnegie” cliches, joined together with dramatically placed punctuation marks. Nice work.
(Disclosure: I was a research assistant on this spineless piece of oatmeal … I mean, report).
Chris