Needed: Congressional hearings on the newspaper industry, by gimleteye

On the editorial page of The Miami Herald, Susan Estrich takes up the question of newspapers and print journalism. One of the purposes of our blog, nearly two years old, has been to provide alternative views avoided, minimized, or suppressed in local print media like The Miami Herald and Miami Today. (Check out our index "The Miami Herald" or "McClatchy" for earlier commentaries on the topic.) For the most part, we are not journalists.

But many readers are nevertheless motivated to read our blog because they concur with our complaint: the failure of the mainstream media to confront issues deemed controversial by big advertisers. It is left to free blogs like ours to point out the connections between local politics, banking, real estate development and prevailing "free market" orthodoxy; a fuse that lit the explosion in housing markets and also, at the same time, steam-rollered the public interest in quality of life, fiscal prudence in the planning of infrastructure like transportation and water, and the environment.

Since Miami is the epicenter of the housing market crisis, critical analyses of these phenomena by The Miami Herald as they occurred would have been a countervailing force to the insanity that prevailed and the consequences which have rippled through world credit markets. But it is not just The Herald.

The absence of critical analysis is due to the fact that newspaper executives, media conglomerate managers, and publishers are compensated by stock options based on a Faustian bargain with real estate advertisers. What the collapse of production home builders makes clear is that newspapers were able to compete with the Internet based sources of news over the past decade mainly because of advertising revenue that was tied to the housing bubble. Today the large sucking sound you hear is not just the value of your home, but of newspapers and journalism disappearing into both the vacuum of Fox News and dissolving into the laughter of the Daily Show.

Susan Estrich points out (her editorial is re-printed below), the Internet is not a substitution for what newspapers can do for readers, or, for the future of American democracy.

The outstanding Herald I Team investigative series on Florida's mortage fraud shows the power of muscular journalism, but we can't help but noting that the focus of the investigation has been on the exploitation of poor people by low life. white collar scum: for our money, I wish there had been and perhaps still may be focus higher up the political and economic food chain where the expression of fact is inhibited by powerful insiders; from downtown lobbyists to land use law firms.

For instance, it is interesting that in its election endorsement of County Commissioner Barbara Jordan, the Herald editorial board failed to note her family interest and connection with the horrendous development plan planned by Lennar and a local rock miner that the Herald opposed, Florida City Commons, in coastal wetlands. Not enough space?

It would have been a timely reminder, had the Herald editorial board chosen to give one. It would be even more timely if the Herald editorial board would take the opportunity for critical analysis of the investigative series on mortgage fraud in Florida that would help the public connect the dots in the direction we have continuously described (noting, of course, that we aren't paid for this work).

As much as I fault the performance of papers like The Herald, whose hard working journalists are victims of economic circumstance, my criticism is not born by a hope that the papers' performance will improve but by a conviction that our democracy is doomed unless the free and independent press is protected from the vicissitudes of the "free market".

In this respect, I would hope that Congressional leaders, from the House and Senate, will ask for hearings on the newspaper industry. There has to be a way for the newspaper industry to profit from print that does not force the industry to compete for profits with Internet based sources of news-- most of which are freely available. At this point, I would be in favor of trying just about anything.

If the housing crash has revealed anything, it is that our perspective on real estate-dominated influence of print media is correct. The equation must be changed.



Posted on Fri, Aug. 15, 2008
Unbiased reporting crucial to society

By SUSAN ESTRICH
T
he Sunday opinion section is gone. So is the book review section. So are literally hundreds of the reporters I have come to respect over years of reading my local paper. What is happening in my hometown is happening in every city across the country. Layoffs. Cutbacks. Slow death.

Meanwhile, talk show hosts -- who don't pretend to ''report,'' who don't try to be ''objective,'' who will tell you themselves, if they are being honest, that they are in the business of entertainment -- sign record contracts. I don't begrudge them their riches. They're making money because their shows do. But for those of us who care about the role of a free press in a democracy, something is askew.

Not long ago, a fine newspaper reporter who covers the Supreme Court came to lecture in one of my classes about some of the cases then pending before the court. Frankly, I didn't expect that many of my students would be familiar with his work. But I was wrong.

''How many of you read the paper every day?'' he asked them. A surprisingly large number of hands went up. We looked at each other, puzzled. We both knew that circulation was dropping, that young people don't buy the paper in the same numbers that their parents did. ''How many of you read it on paper?'' I asked. Most of the hands went down. They read the paper; they just didn't buy it.

Challenge online

I'm not going to mourn the decreasing demand for newsprint. Let the trees live. The danger of reading newspapers online, I have discovered, is that you miss all the stories you don't think you'd be interested in until they catch your eye as you're turning the page. When I read papers online, I always read the political and legal stories, but I miss an interesting book review, a surprising side bar, an obituary that doesn't make it to the front index. The challenge for newspapers as they go online and off paper is to find a way to tell me about all the good stuff inside that I don't know I'm interested in until I read the first few lines or see the picture.

The bigger problem goes to the question of standards. ''All the news that's fit to print,'' the motto of The New York Times, isn't really about printing, but about standards of fitness. It's about old-fashioned values like professionalism and fairness, about good and demanding editors who take the time to make sure you've checked the facts and given everyone a chance to respond before they put the story in the paper. It's about the difference between the news pages and the editorial pages, the difference between reporting the news and commenting on it, and the need to respect that line and make sure readers can see where it's drawn.

I'm not a reporter and I don't pretend to be. I write commentary. I offer opinions. I don't pretend to be objective. That's not my job. But it should be somebody's.

It has always been the job of newspaper reporters and editors to live by a set of rules that ensure that when you read a ''news story,'' as opposed to an opinion column, you can assume that a substantial effort has been made to document the facts, to tell a story rather than opine about it, to ask the tough questions and fairly report the answers. Moreover, when it comes to news, the evening news still tends to be guided by the morning paper. If the latter declines in quality, so will the former.

Of course, some television and radio reporters try to live by these standards, as do some bloggers. The problem is that the most-watched programs on television, the reporters who make the most money and the sites that get the most hits are not necessarily the best journalistically.

In all the years I've done television, I can count the number of times someone has complimented me for what I said. People watch TV; they don't listen to it. If you do well, they'll tell you how good you looked, not how smart or knowledgeable you sounded. What's worse, when it comes to the substance, you get attention not for being well-informed and reasonable, but for being out there and outrageous, even if you know nothing about what you're talking about.

Pretty and shallow

''I want to be a political pundit,'' pretty young girls and boys tell me all the time. No, they don't want to actually do politics, study politics, learn the game. They just want to get paid to look good and give opinions. Lawyers barely out of law school, who have never argued a case in their life, decide to be legal commentators. And too many good reporters, looking for television slots and the paid speeches that come next and trying to dodge the pink slips that are everywhere, are aiming to play the same game. They may win, but the rest of us are losing.

©2008 Creators Syndicate



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