COMM 337, 386: No class Monday; read "Elements of Journalism" for COMM 386 Wednesday (and think about the questions it raises)

In COMM 337, have a draft of the query letter for your feature story ready to bring into class Wednesday.

In COMM 386, skim-read "Elements of Journalism" by Bill Kovach and Tom Rosenstiel.

In COMM 386 we'll focus in class on the introduction, which just happens to be excerpted in the book's blurb on the Committee of Concerned Journalists' website.

"Elements of Journalism" grew out of a meeting of 25, well, let's call them concerned journalists. That's what they were. They included "editors of several of the nation's top newspapers, as well as some of the most influential names in television and radio, several of the top journalism educators, and some of the country's most prominent authors" at the Harvard Faculty Club in 1997. They were concerned because "they thought something was seriously wrong with their profession."

(I can't choke back the question: If it had been 25 public relations people or advertising creatives, would they have found a catchier name for their committee? Would it matter if they had?)

Said Kovach and Rosenstiel:

... They barely recognized what they considered journalism in much of the work of their colleagues. Instead of serving a larger public interest, they feared, their profession was damaging it.

The public, in turn, increasingly distrusted journalists, even hated them. And it would only get worse. By 1999, just 21% of Americans would think the press cared about people, down from 41% in 1985. Only 58% would respect the press's watchdog role, a drop from 67% in 1985. Less than half, just 45%, would think the press protected democracy. That percentage had been nearly ten points higher in 1985. (Footnotes deleted.)

Discussion that day centered on how bottom-line pressure was diluting news product, which the academics and newsies at the table said contributes to the lack of public esteem for journalism.

What was different that day in Cambridge was that many of the journalists in the room -- and around the country -- were beginning to agree with the public. "In the newsroom we no longer talk about journalism," said Max King, then editor of the Philadelphia Inquirer. "We are consumed with business pressure and the bottom line," agreed another editor. News was becoming entertainment and entertainment news. Journalists' bonuses were increasingly tied to the company's profit margins, not the quality of their work. Finally, Columbia University professor James Carey offered what many recalled as a summation: "The problem is that you see journalism disappearing inside the larger world of communications. What you yearn to do is recover journalism from that larger world."

Can you see Neil Postman's influence at work here? After all, the taught at New York University, and he was part of the same East Coast academic-Washington-New York nexus that produced the people who gathered at the Harvard Faculty Club.

As we near the end of the semester, these questions can provide us a focus for pulling together some of the strands of election coverage and media theory we've followed: Critics of the media like to say show-biz values have overtaken news values, and our politics and government suffer for it. This year we have a perfect opportunity to test that hypothesis, by looking at the coverage of an unusually issue-oriented national election. In class Wednesday, I want us to discuss this question and focus it a little further so we can evaluate this year's coverage in light of the critique of Postman and the people who gathered around the table at the Harvard Faculty Club and formed the Committee of Concerned Journalists.