The State of Contemporary Journalism

 

by Tom Brant, Lilian Hughes, Kyle Dudley, and Ben Ehrlich

 

“What’s black and white and read all over?”
— traditional American riddle

“A good newspaper, I suppose, is a nation talking to itself,” said the American playwright Arthur Miller in 1961. Indeed, ever since James Franklin, Benjamin’s brother, used his New England Courant to criticize the local government, the newspaper has been the indispensible megaphone of democratic dialogue. Newspapers broke the Watergate scandal, but recent technological innovations and cultural shifts are dangerously outdating the so-called fourth estate. In the fifth season of his comprehensive urban drama The Wire, David Simon draws upon his personal experience as a journalist in order to represent the newspaper industry’s role in our national dysfunction. Alone, the dramatized portrayal tells a story of a troubled institution. But, as the fictional journalist Gus Haynes says in the fictional boardroom of The Baltimore Sun: “I think you need context to seriously examine anything.” This paper will provide historical, socio-political, and technological context that will supplement the viewing of The Wire in order to foster a fuller understanding of America’s newspaper industry.

 

The History of the Newspaper: The Baltimore Sun

The first issue of the Baltimore Sun rolled off the presses on Wednesday, May 17, 1837. Consisting of just four tabloid-sized pages, the paper was devoted entirely to the news. The content of the more literary-focused daily newspapers in other east coast cities did not interest Arunah Shepherdson Abell, the Sun’s publisher. Abell believed “in the concept of a people’s paper devoted to the news that most directly affected the lives of its readers,” and his paper, which sold for one penny, was exactly that.[1] The early incarnation of the Sun joined several other newspapers of the 1830s and 1840s in aiming to offer a lower price and broader appeal than established newspapers of the day, which tended to focus on political and mercantile news. The Sun and its fellow penny-papers such as Boston’s Daily Times (1836), the New York Sun (1833) and the Philadelphia Public Ledger (1836) was directed at middle-class Americans like clerks, accountants, and mechanics. Newspaper historian Richard Allen Schwarzlose explains: “Sold for one or two cents by street vendors, the penny paper entertained, informed, and instructed those new readers about the world around them, giving them a sense of class identity as well as introducing them to the business and political communities they were moving in to in growing numbers.”[2]

By the Civil War, many of these penny papers had daily circulations of 50,000 readers or more, and they were beginning to rival the mercantile papers’ in reporting and gathering factual news, thanks in part to the establishment of the Associated Press. The “AP” took advantage of the new telegraph wires that crisscrossed the nation to compile a daily news report that went out to all members, whether they were penny, political, or mercantile papers.

The first major upheaval in the American newspaper industry happened between the end of the Civil War and the turn of the twentieth century, a 35-year period during which papers assembled the staff organization and news-gathering techniques known to contemporary readers. The post-Civil War period was one in which newspapers became big business, and many papers that did not adapt to the new environment went bankrupt. The Baltimore Sun was not one of them, however; it joined the Chicago Tribine, Detroit Free Press, New York Sun, New York Herald, and the New York Times as pioneers of the new era.

Innovations both in the newsroom and in the other aspects of the newspapers’ organization gave rise to the modern paper. Besides increasing the size of the news staff and developing formal news-gathering techniques, the industry began “enticing greatly expanded advertising patronage onto newspaper pages, keeping the price per paper at two or three cents, depersonalizing editorial columns, becoming preoccupied with large circulations, and making greater use of eye-catching illustrations and large headlines.”[3]

Before and during World War I, American newspaper’s greatly increased their foreign coverage. As mentioned in The Wire, the Baltimore Sun at one time had an extensive foreign presence. Its first foreign bureau was opened in 1924 in London. The newspaper’s reputation for fine foreign reporting was due in part to Marguerite Harrison, whom the Sun sent to Europe in 1918. She was detained by Russian revolutionaries two years later, and wrote a book detailing the experience.

Throughout the middle of the twentieth century, The Baltimore Sun, like other newspapers, was subjected to the forces of social change that rocked America and the newspaper world. Three new ways of reporting the news, “new” journalism, “investigative” journalism and “interpretive” journalism each presented reporters with new opportunities, such as presenting clearer, more understandable accounts of current affairs. But these new forms of news also created controversy, with the terms “vigilante” journalism and media arrogance irking the ire of politicians and some readers as well.[4]

The decline of The Baltimore Sun portrayed by David Simon in The Wire had its origins in the 1970s, when modern technology appeared in the newsroom. The Baltimore Sun was an early adopter of technology, including the 1975 installation of a sophisticated electronic system of writing and editing news, which utilized five computers and 76 video typewriter terminals. But by the mid-1980s, the pace of technological advancement had quickened, and few in the newspaper industry were sure if they could control it or it would destroy them. Ultimately, the advent of electronic media, which became widespread in the mid 1990s, resulted in decreased readership and advertising of print newspapers.

In 1996, the same year that the Baltimore Sun’s website went live, the paper was acquired by the Times Mirror Company. In 2000, Times Mirror became part of the Tribune Company, a Chicago-based media conglomerate that currently has $13 billion in debt, largely from decreasing advertising revenue at the Sun and its other newspapers, which include the Chicago Tribune, and the Los Angeles Times. On April 29, Tribune announced that it would lay off 61 of the 205 staff members in the Sun newsroom, similar to the buyouts portrayed at the beginning of Season 5.

The Port Covington distribution center, featured in Episode 53

The Role of the Newspaper

The main function of a newspaper is to inform. It is supposed to report on daily occurrences in order to enlighten its readership.[5] In addition to reporting the news, answering the essential questions of who,what, where, when, and why, a good newspaper is expected to provide opinions. Moreover, a newspaper must entertain in order to sell copies. Theoretically, a newspaper exposes wrongdoing in order to defend the public. It should investigate things that people would want to know about. The journalists and editors of the newspaper should try and answer questions such as: What are people really interested in? Who are the readers and what do they want to know about?[6]

Today’s newspaper contains news, information, and advertising. The newspaper is a network. The information in the paper is divided into local news sections and national news. Most newspapers also contain editorials that provide personal opinions from the paper. All of these reporters are supposed to inform the public and feature articles about political events, crime, sports, entertainment, and business. The public is supposed to be able to trust that the news reported in the newspaper is factual. I open a newspaper expecting to gain factual knowledge about certain issues and events going on in the world.

In interviewing The New York Times writer William Rhoden, I discovered that several instances of plagiarism, or “bending the truth,” have occurred and continue to occur. Rhoden mentioned two different instances that immediately came to his mind that were monumental and changed certain policies at The Times. David Simon’s portrayal of Scott Templeton, then, seems accurate. Rhoden mentioned that certain policies were changed after instances of reporters’ cheating were caught.[7] One example is Jayson Blair. Blair resigned from The New York Times in 2003 after he was caught plagiarizing and fictionalizing aspects of his stories. Another case of plagiarism was the case of Rick Bragg who also worked for The New York Times. He was a Pulitzer Prize winner and resigned from The New York Times in 1996 after suspicion of fictionalizing his story. The function of the newspaper is to inform the public of news happening locally and nationally. However, how can we trust what appears to be factual when journalists seemed very concerned with winning prizes and making stories that help them get better jobs?

One of the major questions that journalists face is, “How much do you bend the truth?” For example, a sports writer may interview a professional baseball player if the journalist is writing on baseball. Many of the best professional baseball players are from foreign countries and do not speak English well. Should it be acceptable to alter quotations so that certain quotations make more sense or is it necessary to be completely precise? Another issue that journalists face is the legitimacy of anonymous sources.[8] When people read a newspaper do they trust anonymous sources as legitimate or do they assume that they are fictional? The public has become cynical about journalism because everyone is telling their own story.[9] What writers/stories should be believed? Can any newspaper article be trusted as 100 percent fact? Because of the questionable ethics of some of their reporters, newspapers have becoming increasingly unreliable. If the newspaper cannot be trusted, it will certainly not survive in the future.

Contemporary Journalism: Democratic Necessity vs. Consumerism

“People crave trustworthy information about the world we live in. Some people want it because it is essential to the way they make a living. Some want it because they regard being well informed as a condition of good citizenship. Some want it because they want something to exchange over dinner tables and water coolers. Some want it so they can get the jokes on the late-night TV shows. There is a demand, a market, for journalism.”[i]

–Bill Keller

Since the penny press of the 1830s, the vast majority of American news media have been commercial.[ii] Bill Keller, executive editor of The New York Times, states that journalism exists because there is a demand for journalism. This is true; American journalism has always operated under a capitalist ‘supply and demand’ economic structure. We have journalism because we demand journalism, but why does this demand exist?

The hype around the death of the newspaper has caused previous critics of newspapers to praise the American press as an institution necessary for democracy.[iii] Newspapers are a public service, they have a civic duty or “social responsibility” [iv] to uphold American values; they are society’s watchdogs, and democracy’s gatekeepers. This view, currently being voiced by the academy and activist circles, is to a certain extent contradictory to both The Wire’s perception of news media in season five and the academy’s perception of news media during the Bush Administration. In an interview conducted in April 2007, Bill Moyers, chairman of the Schumann Center for Media and Democracy, voices an opinion more typical of the time:

            …[W]e can’t make the case today that the dominant institutions of the press are guardians of democracy. They actually work to keep reality from us, whether it’s the truth of money in politics, the social costs of "free trade," growing inequality, the resegregation of our public schools, or the devastating onward march of environmental deregulation. It’s as if we are living on a huge plantation in a story told by the boss man.[v]

 

There is something to be said for Moyer’s opinion. Moyers suggests that newspapers work against democracy, and while this is an extreme standpoint, the view that newspapers are a necessity for democracy is equally flawed. This can be seen in The Wire’s portrayal of The Baltimore Sun. Democracy is not affected by the story of a serial killer or of a stadium opening, and even when political scandal is addressed, with the council president for example, this only fairs to increase cynicism, rather than stir action.

In contemporary journalism news stories on the White House dog, Michelle Obama’s arms, or which school Sasha and Malia will attend contribute to the destruction of private and public boundaries, rather than upholding the values of democracy. Nevertheless, journalism does play an important role in American culture and society. The role of the press is difficult to define. Broadly speaking, the press should serve the public interest. What ‘the public interest’ involves, however, is debatable. During the Regan administration Mark Fowler, chairman of the FCC, claimed that: “The public interest is that which interests the public,” [vi] (using this definition stories on the Obama’s private life are valid). This conforms to Keller’s opinion that journalism is a business, a market that controls and produces a product that is defined by the consumer’s demand. However, journalism is arguably more than a ‘supply and demand’ business model; regardless of the market, perhaps Americans have a right to receive news as citizens, rather than consumers.

 

 

Contemporary Journalism under the Bush Administration

 

The Wire is hailed for its gritty realism and portrayal of urban dissent, which continues in season five’s portrayal of The Baltimore Sun. Arguably the state of the contemporary journalism under the Bush administration, which was in power when The Wire aired on HBO, justifies the show’s dismal take on contemporary press. The Bush administration intimidated, manipulated, and distrusted the press. Among other incidents, The New York Times held information on the National Security Agency’s illegal wiretaps of American citizens for over a year, and after its publication was attacked by the Bush administration for its lack of patriotism and integrity. Keller argues that these attacks came from an administration whose mistrust of the press rivalled that of the Nixon administration.[vii]

Keller attacks the Bush administration for preventing what the American press prides itself on, informing the public. Keller states that:

“It [the Bush administration] has treated freedom of information requests with contempt, asserted sweeping claims of executive privilege, even reclassified material that had been declassified. The administration has subsidised propaganda at home and abroad, refined the art of spin, discouraged dissent, and sought to limit traditional congressional oversight and court review. The war in Iraq alone is a case study of the administration’s determination to dominate the flow of information – from the original cherry-picking of intelligence, to the deliberate refusal to hear senior military officers when they warned of the potential for chaos, to the continually inflated claims about the progress in building up an indigenous Iraqi army.”[viii]

Keller is clearly critical of the relationship between the Bush administration and The New York Times. However, blaming the Bush administration solely for the journalism produced during its reign would be misguided. The paper itself was guilty of failing to adequately fulfil its role as a reliable public informer. The paper published articles such as, “Intelligence Break Led U.S to Tie Envoy Killing to Iraq Qaeda Cell” , which strongly suggested connection between Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein.

In an article published in May 2004 Daniel Okent strongly criticizes The New York Times’ coverage of the lead up to the war in Iraq. Orkent identifies five “journalistic imperatives and practices”[ix] that led to the paper’s inadequate coverage of the period. The practices he identifies are as apparent in The Wire’s fictional news room as they are in The New York Times, and Orkent gives a valid reason for this: “The failure was not individual, but institutional.”[x]

Orkent’s Five Criticisms of Contemporary Journalism:[xi]

1.     The Hunger for Scoops: The shift from “Don’t get it first, get it right” to “Get it first and get it right”.

2.     Front Page Syndrome: Portrayed in The Wire through Alma’s character.

3.     Hit and Run Journalism: The failure to re-examine surprising stories as they unfold. Orkent writes that; “Stories, like plants, die if they are not tended. So do the reputations of newspapers.”

4.     Coddling Sources: Portrayed to the extreme in The Wire through Scott’s character, though Orkent interprets this more as The New York Times’ lack of discipline with unreliable, as opposed to fictional, sources.

5.     End-Run Editing: When reporters with substantive questions or substantial knowledge of a subject that counters the final edit are denied a chance to voice their opinions.

Discussing the state of contemporary journalism, as Gus would say, requires a lot of political, social, cultural, economical, and historical context. The Bush administration is not to fault for ‘Front Page Syndrome’, but their attitude towards and relationship with the press were far from democratic. The Wire’s portrayal of the press is largely tainted by David Simon’s time as a reporter for The Baltimore Sun. However, given the context of the time season five aired, it is obvious that the show’s criticism of the press is more than just personal.

           

 

The Future of Journalism

In a recent episode of “The Simpsons,” a cartoon version of Dan Rather introduced a debate panel featuring “Ron Lehar, a print journalist from the Washington Post.” This inspired the show’s animated bully Nelson to yell, “Haw haw! Your medium is dying!” “Nelson!” Principal Skinner rebuked the boy.

“But it is!” was the boy’s reply.

The American newspaper industry is undeniably on the decline. The instantaneity of the Internet has made the daily printed word seem as unacceptably slow as snail-mail. One-stop online advertising shops like Craigslist have dried up the financial lifeblood of the industry: classified ads. It seems that doom impends. Bill Keller, the executive editor of the New York Times, said recently in a speech in London, “At places where editors and publishers gather, the mood these days is funereal. Editors ask one another, ‘How are you?,’ in that sober tone one employs with friends who have just emerged from rehab or a messy divorce.”[10] Philip Meyer, in his book “The Vanishing Newspaper” (2004), predicts that the final copy of the final newspaper will appear one day in October of 2044. Moreover, despite his catastrophic prophecy, Meyer has even admitted to underestimating the velocity of the Internet effect, the major threat to the newspaper. In a 2008 article for the American Journalism Review, Meyer asserts that the Internet is now “as disruptive to today’s newspapers as Gutenberg’s invention of movable type was to the town criers, the journalists of the 15th century.”[11] Newspapers seem in danger of irreversible antiquation.

The statistics are indeed damning. The amount of time Americans spend with a newspaper is down to less than fifteen hours a month.[12] The percentage of Americans who buy a newspaper is half what it was in 1945, and the absolute number of papers sold has been declining since the mid-1980s. According to the Audit Bureau of Circulations, after falling about 2 percent annually, newspaper circulation in mid-2008 was down nearly 5 percent compared to the previous year. A study by the Pew Research Center for People and the Press finds that from 2006 to 2008 the proportion of Americans who say they read a newspaper the previous day in print alone (or both in print and online) dropped sharply, from 38 percent to 30 percent.[13]

The future is dim. The average age of the American newspaper reader is fifty-five and rising. A resurrection among a younger readership looks highly unlikely. As early as May, 2004, newspapers had become the least preferred source for news among younger people. According to “Abandoning the News,” published by the Carnegie Corporation, thirty-nine per cent of respondents under the age of thirty-five told researchers that they expected to use the Internet in the future for news purposes; just eight per cent said that they would rely on a newspaper.[14]

The industry has been forced to respond to the decreased demand. Daily print circulation has dropped from a peak of 62 million two decades ago to around 49 million, and online readership has risen faster, to almost 75 million Americans and 3.7 billion page views in January, according to Nielsen Online. Moreover, downsizing has become an epidemic in the newsroom. The Los Angeles Times still has one of the largest news staffs in the country, about 600 people, but it was twice as big in the late 1990s. The Washington Post had a newsroom of more than 900 six years ago, and has fewer than 700 now. The Gannett Company, the largest newspaper publisher in the country, eliminated more than 8,300 jobs in 2007 and 2008, or 22 percent of the total.[15] Just last week, on April 29, as part a shift away from traditional newspapering and toward multi-platform content, The Baltimore Sun announced sixty lay offs.[16] Every newspaper is scrambling to balance their books in order to move forward profitably in the uncertain future.

But some deny the coming devastation. Arianna Huffington, founder of the news aggregation website The Huffington Post, said that “people love to talk about the death of newspapers, as if it’s a foregone conclusion. I think that’s ridiculous.” But she believes that change is not necessarily a bad thing. “Traditional media just need to realize that the online world isn’t the enemy,” she says. “In fact, it’s the thing that will save them, if they fully embrace it.”[17] Huffington might be right; a medium that 40 percent of the public still claim to read should not yet be pronounced dead. Even if the end is near, some insist on a silver lining. The death of a newspaper should result in an explosion of much smaller news sources online, producing at least as much coverage as the paper did, says Jeff Jarvis, director of interactive journalism at the City University of New York’s graduate journalism school.[18] But even optimists cannot deny the disruption that time and technology have caused.

The future of the once-vibrant medium looks full of tumbleweeds. “In 2009 and 2010, all the two-newspaper markets will become one-newspaper markets, and you will start to see one-newspaper markets become no-newspaper markets,” said Mike Simonton, a senior director at Fitch Ratings, who analyzes the industry.[19] Phillip Meyer believes that certain newspapers might be able to survive, with the right specialization. “The niche will be local,” Meyer writes, “I still believe that a newspaper’s most important product, the product least vulnerable to substitution, is community influence. It gains this influence by being the trusted source for locally produced news, analysis and investigative reporting about public affairs. This influence makes it more attractive to advertisers.”[20] If the media dinosaurs can adapt to a new technological climate, perhaps they will outlive the apocalypse.

Now, with many stalwart American institutions failing, the government must decide whether the newspaper industry, too, might receive a bailout. On May 4, 2009, a reporter asked White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs about the government’s role in the newspaper industry’s future. “A quick question on The Boston Globe today, the news that they may have 30 to 60 days to live,” the journalist asked. “What’s the White House’s thinking on the newspaper industry right now and whether or not it may need a bailout, since there are a lot of jobs at stake just as with the auto industry; a lot of people talking about the impact on communities like Boston, Seattle, and places that are losing newspapers? How do you evaluate all that?” Gibbs responded: “Obviously the President believes there has to be a strong free press. I think there’s a certain concern and a certain sadness when you see cities losing their newspapers or regions of the country losing their newspapers. So it’s certainly of concern. I don’t know what, in all honesty, government can do about it.”[21] Nevertheless, lawmakers are trying to solve the problem. Senator Ben Cardin (D-Maryland) introduced legislation in March to make media companies into non-profit organizations to ensure survival. Called “The Newspaper Revitalization Act,” the law would “allow newspapers to operate as non-profits, if they choose, under 501(c)(3) status for educational purposes, similar to public broadcasting. Under this arrangement, newspapers would not be allowed to make political endorsements, but would be allowed to freely report on all issues, including political campaigns. Advertising and subscription revenue would be tax exempt and contributions to support coverage or operations could be tax deductible.”[22] On May 5, 2009, Senator John Kerry (D-Massachusetts), will hold hearings to determine the fate of the newspaper industry. In a letter to the dying The Boston Globe expressing his concern, Kerry wrote: "America’s newspapers are struggling to survive and while there will be serious consequences in terms of the lives and financial security of the employees involved, including hundreds at the Globe, there will also be serious consequences for our democracy where diversity of opinion and strong debate are paramount." Prominent politicians are taking notice, but no man can prevent the inevitable.

In the spring of 2008, the $450-million Newseum, an interactive museum of news and journalism, opened in Washington D.C. If recent trends continue, that which Bill Keller called “that lovable old-fashioned bundle of ink and cellulose,” the newspaper, will be only an artifact, ready for display under glass. And season five of The Wire, the examination of the newspaper industry, will quickly become a historical document.