Journalism suffers shooting, but hope survives. Maybe

Bill Knight column for Thurs., Fri. or Sat., July 5, 6 or 7, 2018

Maybe last week’s mass shootings at a Maryland newspaper are just “one of those things” involving a disturbed individual, like too many tragedies at schools, Post Offices and other workplaces. After all, there had been other U.S. journalists assailed for doing their jobs: daily newspaper reporter Don Bolles in Phoenix, weekly reporter Chauncey Bailey in Oakland, and several Vietnamese-American reporters (all assassinated), to editor/abolitionist Elijah Lovejoy’s murder in Alton, Ill., and assaults on journalists covering the Civil Rights movement. But the press is the only industry protected in the Bill of Rights and used to be mostly respected until President Trump launched repeated verbal attacks.

Maybe ceaseless demonization of news media by Trump didn’t contribute to someone who resented the press to get violent. True, Trump wasn’t the one who called for assassinating journalists (that was ex-Breitbart firebrand Milo Yiannopoulos, hours before a 38-year-old gunman killed the five Capital Gazette workers). But one wonders whether this is what happens when journalists are called the “enemy of the people” and critical, factual reporting “fake news.”

“President Trump isn’t responsible for the Annapolis tragedy any more than the Second Amendment is,” commented Tom Marquardt, former editor of the Capital Gazette. “But he and his supporters seem to have forgotten that the Constitution that gives them the right to bear arms is the same document that safeguards the right to free speech.”

Maybe it’s culture. Some 1,800 daily papers have folded or merged since 2004, and surviving newsrooms have shrunken staffs (what was 455,000 U.S. journalists in 1990 is about 170,000 today). With that, people’s social involvement has dropped, from voting to volunteering, say four new studies logged by the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy (SC).

“Studies have found that areas with fewer local news outlets and declining coverage also have lower levels of civic engagement and voter turnout,” said Chloe Teichel of SC. “On the other hand, studies show that areas with more local coverage tend to have increased turnout in local elections and lower spending on discretionary municipal projects.”

Maybe it’s the Internet or Facebook, but TV remains the main culprit, as viewers watch more than a decade ago, according to the Department of Labor’s American Time Use Survey (ATUS).

Also, the nation is experiencing “news deserts,” places where little or no original reporting is done, where people have trouble finding out what’s going in local government and other institutions that affect their lives, says the Poynter Institute. Since 2004, some 900 communities started lacking coverage, especially rural areas and minority neighborhoods.

Some still see value in journalism’s news and opinion, photography, sports, arts and more. It’s tied to its meaning for the middle class, the late media scholar James W. Carey wrote decades ago, when he predicted that it would dissolve when that class no longer finds it relevant.

“News both forms and reflects a particular hunger for experience – a desire to do away with the epic, heroic and traditional in favor of the unique, original, novel, new,” he wrote.

Maybe society has become “post-literate” – we don’t read things we dislike. Americans spend 20 percent less time reading daily than in 2003, from about 40 minutes to less than half an hour, ATUS reported.

Maybe there’s hope, though. Amid irresponsible, unconscionable vilification and violence, polls show Americans want more journalism, according to two studies from the Media Insight Project. American Press Institute director Tom Rosenstiel said, “The public actually wants what most journalists say they want to give them.”

Plus, the nonprofit Report for America project, an AmeriCorps for newspapers and the public, started placing reporters in understaffed newsrooms, aiming to add 1,000 by 2022; data from the Center for Innovation and Sustainability in Local Media recognized that loss of 1,800 dailies but also the launch of 300 new weekly papers; the Civic Media Co. wants to launch 1,000 digital publications by year’s end for investigative reports, features and explanatory journalism (but no breaking news or meat-and-potatoes coverage of local schools, sports, government, etc.). Its first is The Colorado Sun, employing former reporters from the Denver Post, which laid off dozens; Washington State University’s Mike Caulfield wants to create 1,000 new Wikipedia articles about local newspapers; and in Illinois, the MacArthur Foundation announced $2.4 million in grants to four small local news outfits in Chicago.

            Such hopeful acts matter, according to Teresa Gorman and Josh Stearns of the Local News Lab: Erosion in local news is tied to drops in civic engagement, every dollar spent on local news produces hundreds of dollars in public benefit, local watchdog reporting helps keep government costs down, local news builds social cohesion and strengthens community, and local news is an indicator for tracking public health.

Maybe help’s on the way.

Maybe.