Insomniactive

I’ve been thinking a lot about the idea of “civic” or “public” journalism as championed by Jay Rosen and Buzz Merritt in the mid-90s (and as set forth in Rosen’s essential book, What Are Journalists For?). At the time, Rosen was doing a Knight Fellowship at the Shorenstein Center at Harvard, and Merritt was editor of my hometown paper, the Wichita Eagle-Beacon. I see great consonance between the idea of a more civically engaged journalism and what we and publications like Voice of San Diego are attempting to do. I ran across a summary of Rosen’s ideas again today in a volume called Political Journalism, edited by Kuhn and Neveu (pp. 214-15). As I wrote to some friends last night:

What we’re really talking about is reviving the public journalism (buzz merit called it “civic journalism”) movement that got cut off by the appearance of the commercial internet in the mid 90s. In describing the journalistic approach he was championing, Rosen used the term, “proactive neutrality.”

It’s an interesting, if somewhat Pollyanna-ish argument. But maybe their really is a silver lining in the implosion of the newspaper model.

During the golden age of newspapers between the end of the war and the bursting of the bubble, papers became judged largely on two standards. The first was exhaustiveness; after all, the resources really were there to print all the news that was fit. The second was objectivity and accuracy. As what had been kind of a grubby trade professionalized, coverage went from being biased to being so objective as to be mistakable for stenography. Sure, good journalism was getting done that is not getting done now, but soooo much of the stuff in the papers was redundant and not terribly relevant to the civic life of the reader.

Lots of people bemoan how groups like ours are just so tiny, that we can’t possibly replace the papers. But what if we turn that bug into a feature by saying, “since we can’t cover everything, we have to cover what’s important. And to know what’s important, we really have to engage with our public.” Journalism never was an end in itself, anyway. What’s being lost more than anything else is the connection between the polity and their government that good journalism provides. Yes, that means accountability journalism, but it also means explanatory journalism and commentary that is meant to stir debate. As Rosen says in his book, it’s not just that newspaper readers are disappearing; it’s that the public is disintegrating. By wrapping resources and f2f interaction around our journalism, we begin to arrest that disintegration. Because we can’t do everything, we listen to the public and make some judgments about what’s most important (based partially but not entirely on that feedback). And that in itself is a public service

Clay Shirky posted it on his blog. I especially liked the conclusion:

The kind of journalism that we have trained you to do—reporting—requires economic support. American journalism’s traditional systems of support have eroded in recent years. We have to find new ones. Some of these will be commercial, some will be philanthropic, and some will be public. That is the case for all professions. It is the case for ours already, but in these next few years our reliance on a mix of support systems, many of which will be new, will become more obvious than it has been.

So this is your charge. You will not only have to reinvent journalism, you will also have to reinvent the conversation about journalism, making it less internal to the profession, and more interactive with the rest of society. That’s an enormous job; I wonder whether any generation of journalists has had a more momentous mission than yours. But, to me, and I hope to you too, it sounds like fun. Good luck. We’ll miss you.

First, FT.com reports that if Bain Capital partner and Celts investor Stephen Pagliuca wins The Globe, he’ll focus it on local and (surprise) sports.

Then, the Bost Phoenix looks backward and then forward on the state of state coverage in MA:

“When I started in the State House in March of 1963, there were 35 bodies in the press room,” says Peter Lucas, who covered the building for the Globe, the Phoenix, and the Boston Herald. “Now I walk by, and the room is practically empty. It’s very sad. . . . When was the last time you saw a roll call [covered by the media]? When’s the last time you saw coverage of a debate in the House or Senate?”

A decade or two ago, adds Pam Wilmot, who began representing the good-government watchdog group Common Cause Massachusetts at the State House in 1989, “There were just so many more reporters who covered the State House, in much greater depth. There was a lot of blow-by-blow coverage that helped the public to feel involved, and to get involved.” In contrast, Wilmot argues, today’s coverage tends to be scandal-driven — which is sometimes warranted (e.g., DiMasi), but also exacerbates public contempt for and disinterest in state government as a whole.

But were things really that much better in the (alleged) good old days? Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation President Michael Widmer ran communications for former governor Mike Dukakis in Dukakis’s first term, and covered state politics for United Press International before that. He longs for the days when the state-budget process was covered in minute detail, in contrast with the broad-stroke treatment used today. But he also recalls trying — and failing — to get the media to cover the de-institutionalization of the state’s mentally ill and mentally disabled populations in the late 1970s. “Peter Goldmark [then the secretary of human services] would say to me, ‘How come we can’t get more coverage?’ ” recalls Widmer. “And I’d say, ‘I know it’s good stuff, and I know it’s important, but it’s kind of boring.’ “

Boring, yes, especially if TMZ is your home page. So is tax policy. So is education policy. So….what?