One dog barking

By John Dineen

Despite the recent election-driven revenue gains for the largest organizations, the landscape facing the news media remains perilous. Saddled with a teetering business model, a skeptical public and a hostile president, the press is groping for a clear path to the future.

While bright spots abound — scarcely a day goes by without reaffirmation of the critical role of the press and the skills journalists display — the business of news remains uncertain. Numerous streams of revenue that once contributed to handsome profits have evaporated or migrated to other industries.

Meanwhile — and it’s a big meanwhile — public trust in the news media has declined; it’s around 30 percent, according  to Gallup. That’s not auspicious if you’re hoping to get people to pay for news.

Partisans of all stripes have their own pet explanations for the decline in trust. But the slide matches that of political institutions. It’s no surprise, then, that the rapt chronicler of a dysfunctional and partisan Congress, for example, is as esteem-challenged as Congress itself.

Journalists, of course, often bring their trademark raised eyebrow to congressional coverage, but it’s small-bore skepticism — they almost always uncritically accept the premise of the action they’re covering. If it’s months of meaningless political theater, then that’s what reporters serve up.

Consider:

We've all heard ... endlessly ... about the plight of the "forgotten" Trump voters. These voters are variously described as older white males without advanced degrees or people in particular regions, such as “coal country.”

(Never mind that Trump attracted these voters in no small part by using Goldman Sachs as a club against Hillary Clinton, and now he uses it ... as a club — in the first instance appealing to people who never seem to win, and in the latter delivering for the people who never seem to lose.)

Why were these people “forgotten?” We know that automation and the digital revolution are exacting their price demographically: The less educated are losing, while the nation’s wealth is funneled to a smaller and smaller elite at the top.

None of this is news.

The (subtle) pun is intended: In fact, this really wasn’t news. With the exception of the occasional band-aid, Congress has not addressed the persistent and growing problem of economic exclusion (with the exception of Obamacare) — so the press didn’t focus on it.

But Congress had time for more than a half-dozen inquiries into Benghazi and numerous investigations of the scientific conspiracy behind climate change, among other priorities.

The press covered the the bread and circuses, obviously. And almost any editor would tell you, that’s what Congress was doing so that’s what we reported.

But, who were those stories for? Were our underemployed friends in Ohio supposed to believe those stories were important to them?

I talked with an editor recently who described his newspaper’s Washington coverage as “the broccoli” — the stuff that’s good for you but not what you really like.

I wonder: Do people really see the economic well-being of their community and their children’s futures … as information “broccoli?” Or does it just taste that way after journalists are done preparing it?

If Congress ignores the real issues facing communities across the nation, do journalists have to as well? Couldn’t journalists make those issues the baseline of their coverage? Couldn’t journalists focus on the fact that representatives were returning to Washington every two years and not addressing core issues facing the nation? Why not?

I don’t think the press needs more interactive graphics. I don’t think it needs more video.

I think it needs to examine the lives of the 320 million people living in this country and provide information to help meet their needs and advance their goals.

Maybe that’s the answer to a president who has declared the press to be a public enemy. And it might just be a service for which people would pay.

Comments

[Linda Cartwright]

Thanks for your comment, Charlotte!

[Charlotte McNeill]

Excellent! Makes it clear what's been missing and why I've been yelling "who cares" at news outlets.