Losing the News: The Future of the News that Feeds Democracy by Alex S. Jones. Oxford University Press (2009)

“I don’t read the newspaper, I get my news online” is a phrase heard so often, it could be considered the battle cry of the digital-age. And as with any battle, this one is not without its casualties. Today it seems as if the entire country is declaring the passing of the newspaper industry. Newspapers are seen simultaneously as outdated relics and another victim of the multi-headed hydra known as the economic recession. In a particular stroke of irony, in the first nine months of 2009, the New YorTimes Business/Financial desk has published between ten and twenty stories

documenting the downfall of papers both large and small, including the Times itself. There is even a website, newspaperdeathwatch.com, started in March 2007, which is doing an unofficial body count of papers that have fallen by the wayside.

What the online generation may not be aware of is that most of the news they find on web sites such as Google, Yahoo, and MSN is drawn, in whole or in part, from the major national newspapers which they claim not to read. What would happen if news as we know it simply ceased to exist?

From this point of departure, Alex Jones, a newspaper reporter since childhood (a story which figures prominently in his account) brings us Losing the News. He sets the scene with a moment in h

Shorenstein Center Director Alex S. Jones with Franco Ordonez and Ames Alexander of the Charlotte Observer, at a 2009 panel on the future of reporting.

is career as a journalist whose beat was the press itself. He broke a story about a Kentucky newspaper family who decided to sell their papers in the face of family turmoil. That story was written in 1986, long before the current ‘crisis’ of the news industry came to the fore, though it had been facing the all-too-common consolidation process that was characteristic during the Reagan years and has only increased since.

This introduction, though it was about the selling of a newspaper, was more illustrative of the journalistic process that Jones and others like him prize as the essence of a trade. The story was in depth—6,500 words in the New York Times business section—took a lot of time and resources to write, and kept the reporter away from his desk where he could have been covering other stories. Nonetheless, the story was deemed important by the editor and the paper covered it. From the introduction, it is clear that the author is certainly nostalgic about his work, and he makes no effort to hide that fact. But, to simply cast this as a swan song of a bygone age would be to misrepresent why it seems to have been written. The author is wholly concerned with the implications of the loss of independent journalism for a democratic society.

The book makes the case that while news and newspapers will certainly persist, the nature of journalism is undergoing fundamental changes due to the circumstances facing newspapers, which Jones argues do the majority of original reporting on which other news media base their content. In his analysis, then, simply focusing on saving the newspapers as businesses will not be sufficient to save the news. “The news” as Jones conceives of it is more about standards of objectivity than the medium of columns and newsprint. He observes that, at their genesis, newspapers were often directly financed by unions and political parties; thus any thought of objectivity or verification would have been laughable. Professional journalism, Jones argues, was the result of both an increased financial stability which provided editorial independence as well as the establishment of a set of best practices. As journalism found its way into the academy, standards of objectivity were incorporated into a professional code, a sharp contrast from the days of William Randolph Hearst and “yellow journalism.”

The news is also determined by what is covered. His first major discussion outlines the different types of news one sees in a paper, be it a daily owned by an old newspaper family like his in Greenville, or one owned by a large conglomerate like the Gannet Company. At the center of any real newspaper are the “accountability” stories which range from the coverage of international affairs to policy debates in the congress and statehouses to local issues. Under the umbrella of “accountability news” are “bearing witness” stories, which are descriptive accounts of events, “explanatory” pieces which offer analysis of events and provide historical and/or present context, and finally investigative journalism, which is done against and in spite of powerful interests who would rather that certain events remain secret or covered in a very superficial fashion. Since the advent of professional journalism, these types of stories have been the lynchpin of any good paper and are thus called the “Iron Core”
of news.

Though these stories are often the least entertaining to read, they inform the reader of things that will affect their lives, be it directly or indirectly. However, the impact of these stories does not end with their publication. Accountability news has a second life in the subsequent analysis, which forms a second tier of reporting that is largely based on opinion. Editorials and other forms of “advocacy news,” in all the different media ranging from magazines to television programs to blogs are largely reactions to the accountability news produced by the paid reporting staffs of newspapers. Writers and orators on all sides of the political spectrum thus depend on the steady stream of information that newspapers provide. Political and social thinkers at least as far back as the founding of our country have seen a free and independent press as indispensable to our democratic practice. This is at the heart of the link between news and democracy envisioned by thinkers such as Walter Lippman and John Dewey, who Jones references in his chapter on “Media and Democracy.” Though Lippman and Dewey had different ideas of who ‘the public’ was and therefore who needed the news, the purpose remained consistent: to inform the citizenry for their more effective participation in self-governance.

The primary problem facing the news today is a financial one. Newspapers were at their zenith from the 1960s until the 1980s. Profits were high even at many small papers and so were investments in the quality of news; reporters were hired en masse and compensation for the work was handsome. The pursuit of truth was a prized value among the best of the profession, regardless of political persuasion. But, as Jones points out, truth is expensive and time consuming. The journalistic maxim of verification requires maintaining relationships with many sources and often protecting those sources under pain of prosecution and lawsuits. If papers like the New York Times and Washington Post weren’t financially stable, they would surely have caved under pressure from the federal government at notable moments such as the Watergate scandal and the publication of the Pentagon papers. More often, however, it is smaller local incidents that show the value of an independent press, whose role has time and again been to hold government and industry accountable for their practices.

Profitability is thus an essential element of providing the most objective news. Since the 1980s, and at an accelerated pace since the passage of the 1996 Telecommunications Act, newspapers, along with television and radio, have been consolidated into an increasingly small number of hands under the umbrella of large corporate media conglomerates. With the switch to a corporate model, newspapers have come to expect larger profit margins in the short term and are no longer as concerned with news as with attracting larger audiences and greater advertising revenues. In this model the iron core of news has taken a back seat. Sensational content such as entertainment coverage more commonly seen in magazines now finds its way into serious newspapers and is ubiquitous among local tabloids. Opinion pieces and syndicated columns replace locally oriented stories, leaving a paper with a local reputation but little local coverage. Likewise, content provided by government and business public relations desks, often unedited, have become a more common feature in news media of all forms.

While the new business model engendered a shift in the choices made by newspapers from within, top-down technological shifts further affected changes from without. Advertising, which has accounted for the viability of newspapers nearly since their introduction, has been adversely affected by web-based services such as craigslist and autotrader. The lower (and sometimes nonexistent) cost and increased visibility of internet advertising has created a serious obstacle for newspapers, which were once unparalleled in their ability to reach consumers. Falling advertising revenues forced papers to cut back on labor in the form of reporting and to increase pressure on the remaining staff. Jones gives numerous accounts of once-mighty newsrooms throughout the country that have been reduced to thin staffs of amateur reporters forced to fill quotas of content. The shift is perhaps most evident in the orientation of editors, who had erected a metaphorical wall between the advertising and news desks of their papers. Many of the same editors now must divide their time equally between these two tasks.

A third aspect of the crisis is the declining circulation of papers large and small. This is again connected with technological shifts that make print seem antiquated. While he imagines that there will always be some who prefer a print form newspaper, the availability of online editions, often for free, makes economic and practical sense for an increasing numbers of readers. That many people read New York Times stories through search engines such as Google News, which does not pay anything to the Times for its content and keeps the ad revenues for itself, renders the online editions of even large papers redundant, not to mention self-destructive, since it is precisely from these sites that Google gets its content. A compounding problem for circulation is the public faith in newspapers. Because so much of today’s journalism in all media is advocacy and opinion-based, a fact which bloggers and television pundits make no attempt to hide, the public has come to see news in all media as inherently biased. In sum, he sees newspapers being caught, and often lost, in a glut of news media without being set apart for their central contribution and particular ethos of objectivity and verification. The end result, for Jones, is that regardless of the work that goes into reporting, people see any story that they don’t agree with as a result of intentional skewing by the source. While there is discussion of some recent breaches of media ethics, such as the Jayson Blair case, more often than not journalists make an attempt at verification. If anything, Jayson Blair made the New York Times re-evaluate its scrutiny.

The casualties of this multifaceted crisis are laid plain in Jones’ book. The San Francisco Chronicle and to a lesser extent the Los Angeles Times and Boston Globe are all major market newspapers which have been forced to shed significant portions of their newsrooms. Medium-sized papers like the Rocky Mountain News and the Baltimore Examiner have been forced to close their doors, while others such as the Detroit Free Press and the Seattle Post-Intelligencer have moved to online and hybrid print-online formats. The Washington Post, New York Times and Gannet conglomerates have seen their share prices fall a great deal, out of proportion even with the precipitous market drop of October 2008. Considering these circumstances, it is unlikely if not impossible for newspapers to continue along on their old model.

The book concludes on a somewhat hopeful note, as Jones remains optimistic about the future of the news, if not with newspapers as its primary source. As the problem was framed as primarily financial, the question of “saving the news” gets tangled up with concerns around financing the news. He looks at exemplary cases of newspapers which, faced with the crisis, have devised creative strategies for engaging readers and remaining viable.

Obviously, news agencies of all sorts need to increase their web traffic in order to compensate for lost advertising revenue in print. Though newspapers do have relatively reliable names, the size of their operations has made their transition to the web slow. Jones is skeptical about the recent phenomenon of “citizen journalism,” where readers become collaborators and contributors to the news they read. The problem he sees is that though writing content is easy enough, citizen journalism is not beholden to the same standards as professional journalism. The blogosphere, though he points out some of its brighter spots, is equally suspicious because it is flooded with interested voices above which it is hard for even the best of them to rise. He is also, at best, ambivalent about a nonprofit model for newspapers, where donors and foundations would support newspapers instead of advertising revenue and circulation. Though in rare instances there have been large donations of time and resources, it is unlikely that foundations or donors would enter into long-lasting commitments with newspapers.

Ultimately, the solution for Jones is for newspapers to find a way to reconnect with their readers while remaining economically viable. While he bemoans the loss of reporting staff in newsrooms throughout the country, he recognizes that this may be a response to overexpansion while times were good. Newspapers must find ways to cut costs and perhaps endure a period of lower profits. But, in the face of all this, the core of accountability news must not be sacrificed. With accountability news at its core, he feels newspapers can adopt new strategies that cater to the mediums readers prefer. Content can be provided for print readers, online consumers, and even those that prefer to read their news over their cell phones. This would allow papers to remain in print while capitalizing on new outlets and remaining relevant to the next generation. Regardless of the format, Jones is concerned with saving the news for what matters most about it, its role as an objective source of information for citizens in a democracy.

All told, Losing the News offers a breadth of information on a timely issue that is of critical importance. The author is a true insider who cares deeply about the future of the industry both economically and ideologically. As such, he is critical of the direction papers are heading and the motivations that have brought them there. Through his historical and contemporary discussions of the role of newspapers, an effective case is made for why we need news as a centerpiece of a democratic society. He frames the crisis and the solutions in terms of the principles of the industry, the journalistic ethos, and the economic strength that makes adherence to it possible.

With that in mind, the critical flaw of the book is its grounding in the industry. Perhaps, because the author is a professional journalist and a part-owner of a newspaper, he can’t see beyond the profit motive to examine strategies that might exist outside of it. As such, it is easy to see why he is so skeptical of a non-profit approach to news. While it is certain that economic strength has had some positive impact on news coverage in the past, that might not be the
way forward.

The book also doesn’t do enough work highlighting the strengths in emergent online reporting. Though the Daily Beast and Politico may simply be “truth squads” who hold mainstream media like newspapers accountable through their tertiary reporting, sites such as Salon.com and Slate produce original investigative reporting that is severely lacking even among the best print sources. The point is well taken that the massive proliferation of the blogosphere can lead to sensory overload; but some standout sites have risen above the clatter to provide original and useful reporting that adheres to many of the same standards of quality that have characterized newspapers at
their best.

A book written by an industry luminary during perhaps the greatest panic that industry has ever known cannot help but suffer from some flaws of judgment and even some name calling. Regardless of that, the history and the grounding in theory that the book provides is incredibly valuable. One can’t help but heed Jones’ warning that the news must be saved if democracy is to persist. If there is no effective way for the public, however that is defined, to obtain verified, objective information, democracy will
surely suffer.

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