OJR: The Online Journalism Review
December 20, 2011
By Robert Niles
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When "objective" journalism decays into a cowardly neutrality between truth and lies, we need advocacy journalism to lift our profession - and the community leaders we cover - back to credibility.
That's my response to a source quoted in an item posted by Jim Romenesko yesterday. The post linked a TVWeek.com/NewsPro survey that listed Syracuse's S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications as the nation's top journalism school. (USC Annenberg was listed fifth, FWIW.) What caught me eye was one of the quotes Romenesko selected from the original story to include in his post:
"One reply stated schools should teach 'objectivity. Too many schools are teaching advocacy journalism.'"
Let's dive in: Advocacy is not the antonym of objectivity. Objectivity is the goal of accounting for your own biases when observing of an external reality, so that your report accurately reflects that reality. By reporting objectively, the goal is that you be able to produce an observation that others, observing the same reality, can reproduce.
There's nothing about objectivity that prohibits you from advocating on behalf of your results. In fact, putting your work up for peer review, and being able to defend it, is part of the scientific method that influenced the journalistic concept of objectivity.
Every journalist advocates for their stories - anyone who thinks otherwise has never hung around an editor's desk or been to a front-page budget meeting. So advocacy's part of the job. And as journalism schools are supposed to be teaching their students how to advance their careers, they need to be teaching their students how to advocate for their work - whether that's getting an assignment approved, a freelance gig okay'ed, or a story onto P1 or into the first slot on the website's homepage.
When I've asked journalism students why they decided to get into the field, I've yet to hear anyone respond that they were looking for a big payday. Idealism motivates almost every journalism student - and journalist - I've met. We want our reporting to help make our communities better places and help our readers live better lives.
So we get into this field looking to advocate for worthy causes, and we use internal advocacy to get our stories heard. Allow me to suggest, therefore, that the problem some journalists have with "advocacy" is not the concept itself, but those who put advocacy ahead of the truth, instead of behind it, where it belongs.
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More about: ethics, Fox News, reporting
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December 15, 2011
By Aaron Chimbel
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Maybe the future isn't so bad for journalism, after all. There is hope, mostly because so many young journalists see a bright future for journalism.
It's the end of the fall semester and as I take a breath and take stock of the past 16 weeks I am optimistic. As a professor in the Schieffer School of Journalism at TCU, I have finished classes and turned in grades and feel pretty good, not about the job I've done as much as the excitement I found in 18 students.
The 18 made up an honors section of our Introduction to Journalism class, the first time in more than a decade we've taught an honors class in our program. I'm glad we did and that I had the opportunity to teach the class.
What I found with these high school high-achievers in their first semester of college is that they're excited about journalism and recognize the opportunities ahead.
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More about: entrepreneurial journalism, journalism education
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December 14, 2011
By Melanie Sill
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The University of Southern California Annenberg School hosted a panel on Monday called 'Opening Up Journalism: A Culture Change."
Here's my talk as part of the panel, outlining my thinking and some of urgency I feel about the need for journalism to become much more transparent, responsive, community-focused and participatory.
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More about: grassroots journalism, social media
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December 13, 2011
By Robert Niles
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If you're not careful, efficiency could kill your business.
That was the destination on a little mental raft trip I took on the stream of consciousness last week. I was waiting for an airport shuttle at the Hilton Tokyo Bay in Japan and happened upon this spectacular holiday model train display.
The next thing I noticed was the advertising - sponsor logos were slathered on every element of the display - trains, bridges, even hot air balloons "floating" above the scene. I suppose that recognition could have inspired several reactions, but mine was "I can't believe any of those companies would get any decent return on investment for this display."
Then I wondered what conditioned me to think that.
I looked more closely and found that the display was an annual tradition at the hotel, and this year was a benefit for children's charities supporting young people affected by the devastating earthquake and tsunami that hit Japan earlier this year. So return on advertising investment wasn't the primary objective of participating businesses.
But the charitable contributions weren't the only positive impact of these businesses supporting this display. Presumably, some of the people who designed, built and sold the trains and scenery in the display got paid. As did the salespeople who solicited the businesses' participation. That meant more income for those workers - income that not only helped support their families, but also provided income for the people whose products and services those families paid for.
It's Econ 101: Each amount of money spent in an economy creates several times its value as it circulates. That's why an increase in spending by one person or one business can reverberate in creating a bit of additional income for many. And it's also why a reduction in spending can reverberate and cut incomes for many, as well.
But it's also a lesson lost on managers and consultants who look only at the first level - the immediate impact of spending, forgetting the reverberation, forgetting the second- and third-level of spending that an initial investment can enable.
How does this affect the publishing industry, you might ask?
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More about: entrepreneurial journalism, management, revenue
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December 9, 2011
By Robert Niles
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You want to know the lesson of the Crystal Cox case?
If you're going to court, get a lawyer.
Crystal Cox is the Oregon blogger who got hit with a $2.5 million defamation judgment for a blog post wrote, critical of Obsidian Financial Group. According to the Seattle Weekly, she was unable to use Oregon's shield law to protect her sources for the post in question, because Oregon's law does not explicitly cover online publication. Since she was otherwise unwilling to produce any sources to verify her piece, the judge sided with Obsidian and hit her with the multi-million dollar judgment.
Cox represented herself in the case, and that was her biggest mistake. Remember the old saying: "He who represents himself in court has a fool for a client."
I don't care what Cox's motivation for writing was. (Heck, as I've written many times before, I wish journalists would get far more aggressive about taking a stand and going after the crooks and cons in their communities. Neutrality shouldn't be a requirement for journalism.) Nor do I care whether Cox followed SPJ or J-school rules when writing her posts, either. That shouldn't matter. There's nothing in the First Amendment about being a J-school grad or SPJ member. Or even a newspaper or TV station employee. Freedom of speech applies to everyone.
In case you haven't committed it to memory, here's the First Amendment, again:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
Obviously, though, we've got plenty of laws on the books abridging the freedom of speech and of the press - defamation laws being just a few of them. And ask the protestors at the Occupy encampments around the country about their right to peaceably assemble.
Fact is, the First Amendment, by itself, is pretty much meaningless today and is totally useless to anyone defending himself or herself in a court of law. The First Amendment is relevant only within the context of two centuries of case law that have refined its meaning within America's criminal and civil justice systems.
That is why you need a lawyer when you go to court. Because only someone with extensive legal training is going to be able to navigate that immense body of case law in order to tailor those decisions to influence a judge or jury to rule in your favor. And if there's no way to construct a winning case, a lawyer should have the experience to know how to craft you the best possible deal so that you can minimize the judgment or sentence you face.
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More about: media law, shield law
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