Journalism in the Digital Age

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"I don't think a tough question is disrespectful."

Helen Thomas (1920–2013)
Longtime White House correspondent

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Once, when I was teaching journalism at the University of Oklahoma, a student asked me what I thought newspapers would do about the then–emerging internet. Would newspapers survive?

At the time, I thought I gave a wise reply. I told the student that I thought newspapers and the digital world would find a way to peacefully co–exist, and I really did believe that.

I remember thinking of my first newspaper job. I covered the police and fire beats in those days along with a couple of reporters from two local radio stations. We were in competition with each other, but it was a friendly competition. We often helped each other in double checking our facts. I never felt that people who listened to either radio station did so instead of subscribing to my newspaper, and I don't think either of those radio reporters felt that people who read the paper did so instead of listening to the radio.

It was generally understood that many folks did both.

The manner in which news was delivered had changed when I had that conversation with my student — and it has changed even more since — but newspapers always existed alongside the newest technological advance, whatever it was, and I believed newspapers would find a way.

But nearly all newspapers failed to grasp the nature of the challenge they faced from the internet.

Initially, most newspapers treated the internet like some kind of commercial fad. They put the fruits of their employees' labors, their content, online because, well, positively everyone had a website. It was like an email address. If you didn't have one, you were not legitimate.

But newspapers didn't treat their websites like another part of their newspaper — for which a price must be paid — because it was online. They didn't take it seriously, and so they charged nothing. Like many people, they contended that home computers wouldn't last. Computers were novelties. It was only a matter of time. Funny. Folks said the same thing about radio and television.

To be fair, few, if any, people could foresee the changes that have occurred in journalism since I had that conversation with my student. In an ideal world, perhaps newspapers would peacefully (and profitably) co–exist with the digital delivery system; indeed, I believe there was a time, a relatively brief time as it turned out, when the proverbial window was open to such an arrangement, but it slammed shut without any warning.

One of the things that newspapers failed to understand was that folks quickly got the idea that, once you paid your admission fee (internet access), everything online was free. Copyright law magically stopped at the water's edge.

I think that will change. In fact, it is changing already. Communications laws — i.e., copyright and libel laws — will be expanded via court rulings to apply to the digital world. That really is simply a matter of time.

Some of the more visionary operators of websites concluded early on that there was money to be made from charging for access to their wares, whatever they happened to be, and from hiring people who could position the digital arm of a newspaper to be on the cutting edge, but few of those websites actually were arms of newspapers.

By the time newspapers realized they were losing print subscribers — many of whom, no doubt, found they could get the same material from the internet for free — it was too late for most. Charging for access to online content was a lost cause. Savvy online news readers knew that, except for local news, they could find articles on just about anything anywhere else, and subscription rates plummeted.

Advertising revenue has paid the bills for newspapers for a long time, but advertising revenue declines when circulation declines. In the recoveries that tend to follow economic downturns, circulation usually rebounds. In the current economy, it has become a death spiral. The internet has advantages that newspapers are not likely to overcome.

If I could go back in time and re–live that conversation, I would tell my student to focus on small– to medium–sized newspapers because they were the ones uniquely positioned to provide news their readers could use.

I live in the Dallas area, and I tell my students the large city newspapers in the Metroplex — the Dallas Morning News and the Fort Worth Star–Telegram — will provide some but not all of the local news being generated in the smaller cities nearby. They simply don't have the manpower, and the tendency of some newspapers to rely on citizen journalists who can post their articles directly to the website overlooks the fact that trained journalists are much more likely to ask the questions that need to be asked and provide the information that readers want.

They're more likely to double check their facts. Their stories are likely to be better organized, and they are more likely to utilize little writing strategies that professors have been talking about in journalism school at least since I was a student. These tactics make articles easier and more enjoyable to read.

That part hasn't changed. Well–written articles make a news website stand out and have a greater tendency to make such a site a destination site that people will want to visit again.

People in those smaller cities around here can get some local news through radio stations and cable access channels, too, but the local newspaper is more likely to send a reporter to a city council meeting or a school board meeting. More detailed accounts of the high school football or basketball game can be provided by the local sportswriter. Local police and fire news won't make the big–city newspapers unless it is a really big story.

Writing for a small– to mid–sized newspaper isn't as glamorous as covering the White House or Capitol Hill, but it is the purest form of journalism remaining. Through it, journalists can serve the purpose they were intended to serve — being the eyes and ears of their community.

Not its conscience.

Too many journalists these days appear to think that they are expected to choose sides and belittle whichever side is opposite theirs. I'm not even sure that is what should be done when a piece is clearly labeled opinion; I'm absolutely certain that it should not be done in news coverage.

(When I was studying news reporting in college, I was told to present the facts as neutrally as possible — and let the reader reach his or her own conclusions. The professor who told us that once worked for the New York Times. I believed what he told me. I still do.

(Opinion writing was a different subject, and we were encouraged in that class to be sure that all opinions were confined to the opinion page[s].

(That's another problem with modern journalism. The line between news and opinion is blurry, indistinct — but that is really a topic for another discussion.)

In hindsight, I am inclined to think that I gave the concept of compromise more credibility than perhaps I should have in that conversation with my student, and, based on what I read in an article in the American Journalism Review, many in the business agree with me.

Speaking of the New York Times, Mark Potts writes in the American Journalism Review that a problem for the Times — which has dabbled over the years with a few ways of charging for access to online content — is divided manpower.

The priority at the Times, Potts writes, is the print edition. "As long as there are both print and digital products coming out of the same newsroom," he observes, "the natural internal tensions and conflicts may be too great to find a workable middle ground."

Especially when the same people are expected to perform both functions simultaneously.

Some newspapers have resolved that problem by hiring special staff to keep the website up to date while the other staffers work on the print edition. But that isn't feasible for most newspapers.

Potts argues that "the ultimate answer for the Times and other papers may lie in the nuclear option: ditching print — or greatly minimizing it — so that we're forced to deal with the digital issues as our primary concern, not a secondary annoyance."

I hope it doesn't come to that. But, to survive, newspapers will have to adapt.

"[I]t's not just about being more creative digitally and spending less time worrying about what's on Page One," writes Potts. "[W]hat's needed is a top to bottom newsroom rethink of content forms, workflows, technologies and products to adapt to a rapidly changing world."

Sad Times for Journalists

We live in a Through–the–Looking–Glass kind of world — where everything is the opposite of what it should be.

I tend to see that contradictory nature most vividly in my field of study, journalism — or, put in more general terms, communication.

Sometimes I look back on the scope of my life, and it takes my breath away to realize how much things have changed — I mean everything.

When I was growing up, we had three TV networks. Today, we have hundreds of options.

When I was in graduate school and I had research to do, I had to go to the university library, and I might spend days looking for one item. I guess you still need to spend some time in the library, but today, a lot of that legwork can be done from the comfort of your home with your laptop or desktop computer.

When I was a child, I expected it to take hours, days, maybe weeks to get a response to an inquiry about something. Today, people get agitated if takes more than a few minutes.

Modern people seem to think it is their right to have immediate access to any information they want whenever they want it — but they forget (if they ever really acknowledged it to begin with) that someone still has to do the dirty work.

With the entire world seemingly in turmoil — never mind the political squabbling in this country (and the only thing new about that is probably the intensity, which is a byproduct of all the information delivery methods that are available to us today) — it may never have been more important to have good, experienced journalists on the ground where events are unfolding.

Modern technology makes it possible for those journalists to transmit their findings halfway around the globe in a matter of minutes, if not seconds — but that doesn't change the fact that they put their lives on the line to do it.

And sometimes they lose those lives.

This morning, news reaches these shores that an American journalist and a French journalist have been killed in heavy shelling in Syria.

I don't know if much will be made of their deaths in this country. The American journalist was interviewed by Anderson Cooper on CNN hours before her death, but neither was a household name here.

Neither, for that matter, was Anthony Shadid, a New York Times journalist who died recently of an apparent asthma attack while covering the conflict in Syria.

Shadid's death got some notice in this country, mostly from other journalists who were familiar with the two–time Pulitzer Prize–winner's work.

But it was overshadowed by the extensive coverage of the death of pop star Whitney Houston.

I'm not sure what that says about our national priorities (and I mean no disrespect to Houston — 48 is too young for anyone to die).

But it can't be good.

Too many people are under the mistaken impression that citizen journalists with no training in journalism can do the job as well as professional journalists can.

Whenever I hear people saying that the man in the street, equipped with a laptop, can gather news efficiently and adequately, I want to ask something like this:

• Would you permit a citizen doctor to perform surgery on you?


• Would you trust a citizen architect to design your home or workplace?

As the son (and grandson) of trained educators, there was a time when I included citizen teacher on that list, too — but Rick Santorum has taken some of the wind out of those sails.

It isn't that I agree with Santorum. I don't. And I believe the decline in national standards that would inevitably result from a mass decision to home school a majority of American children would prove my point.

But Santorum is riding the crest of a semi–popular position — so it isn't an effective argument for me at the moment.

Still, it doesn't change the fact that it has always taken training to do the demanding jobs the way they need to be done.

There can be no more demanding job, I think, than reporting from a war zone.

The training and experience those three journalists had was invaluable — and their loss cannot be measured.

Breaking News

The dire situation facing newspapers in America these days is every bit as severe as the unemployment problem.

In many ways, it is worse, I think, because a free press is so important in a democracy. Without it, I see no way for a free nation to remain free because there is no one to fill the watchdog role that literally keeps an eye on what elected officials do — or do not do.

Newspapers have been tumbling like dominoes in the last year or two, and, regardless of where one stands on the political spectrum, that should be a cause of concern for all of us.

A friend of mine sent me an e–mail this week. He observed that the New York Times Co. has decided not to sell the Boston Globe because its financial prospects had "significantly improved."

My friend concluded that this was a sign that the economy is getting better. From a business perspective, I suppose that isn't an unreasonable conclusion.

Unfortunately, his e–mail arrived in my inbox the same day that reports were circulating that the New York Times plans to eliminate 100 newsroom jobs by the end of the year.

So what is one to make of this?

I've heard many theories about the decline of newspapers. As someone who studied journalism in college and worked for newspapers for many years, I suppose I am naturally drawn to this subject. I have written about it in the past, in part to help me understand what is happening, and I see a certain amount of logic in each point that is raised.

I've heard it said, for example, that newspapers are struggling because the quality of writing has fallen. In turn, that has led to a drop in paid circulation.

There's no doubt in my mind that there is a relationship between writing that is weaker (or perceived to be weaker) than it used to be and decreased demand for the product.

But the thing that newspaper people understand that people outside the industry do not is that a drop in paid circulation is like a symptom of a disease. The disease that is killing daily newspapers is the decline in advertising revenue.

It never has been possible to pay all the expenses involved in running a daily newspaper with the revenue of a product that sells for 25¢ or 50¢ a copy. Even if a newspaper could sell its product at the Sunday rate seven days a week, it wouldn't be possible.

But the income from advertising is a different story. When advertising dollars begin to dry up, that's when the writing is on the wall for a newspaper, no matter how good (or bad) its writing is.

I was reminded of this today when I read the latest installment at a blog called The Arkansas Newspaper War. It is devoted to a topic with which I am familiar — the newspaper war between the Arkansas Gazette and the Arkansas Democrat that raged when I worked for the Gazette in the 1980s.

Today, the blog gives grades to the different departments at the Gazette, and the one in which I worked — news — gets an A+. If any of my former Gazette colleagues read this blog — and I know that at least one does — I'm sure that is a source of pride for them, as it is for me.

But then the author of the blog makes an important observation: "The Gazette ... was both weak and strong. Unfortunately, her weakness was in an area vital to success. If the well of ad dollars dries up, a daily newspaper cannot survive."

As the crisis in the newspaper industry has worsened, I've seen and heard a lot of talk about the rise of citizen journalists and internet news coverage taking their toll on daily newspapers. But, like declining paid circulation, they are only symptoms of a much larger problem for daily newspapers.

The real problem is the loss of advertising revenue. Unless newspapers can find someone with really deep pockets to pick up the slack — and it is worth noting that, in its final years, the Gazette's ownership, the Gannett Co., had pretty deep pockets — they cannot continue to exist.

And that is the kind of news that breaks a journalist's heart.