What About the Stories?   

A two-time Pulitzer winner reviews the debate over the future of newspapers...and finds something missing.

The Freedom Forum recently invited a panel of experts to spend a day and a half ruminating about the state of journalism in the coming thousand years. A slick 34-page booklet reporting their musings ended up on my desk.

The report was representative of many I've seen lately, full of astute observations about what the industry's leaders believe are critical issues. It opened with the legal struggle between the news industry and the phone companies over information services, then turned to multiculturalism, the angst of advertising managers, the impact of computers, the globalization of our culture, the need for media education on a variety of issues--all the usual suspects, and the usual complaints.

The most conspicuous aspect of the report, however, was what wasn't there. Except for glancing references, there was no discussion of the actual product of a journalist's efforts--the news story.

It was almost as if the story, and the reporting that produces it, was too prosaic to mention. Implicit in this silence was that the foot soldiers of the profession have little, if any, insight into the changes taking place in their profession.

This attitude is all too common among the executives who delude themselves into believing that because they sit in the front offices, they define journalism. I suppose it harkens to the perennial complaints one encounters among the troops; if that were the end of it, my complaints would be just so much foxhole grumbling. But it's also true that the soldiers often understand long before the generals when a war is being lost, and why.

For openers, it strikes me as peculiar that the "leaders" of our profession are struck with a sense of crisis, doom and paralysis precisely as we move into a dynamic information age. Don't all indicators point to a culture in which information will be not only more valuable but more valued? Hello? Aren't we in the information business?

An innocent such as myself might have assumed that this would be a moment for celebration, an opportunity to implement our visions. Yet what we see instead is whining, internecine squabbling and turf protection. We see the industry shrinking its news hole, firing reporters, hiring lawyers to keep the Baby Bells from publishing electronic Yellow Pages, and generally circling the wagons. We do not see, in these high-level confabs, much attention to improving the product.

My guess is that this puzzling attitude has to do with the industry's traditional split as to what it sells and how it sells it. The journalist reports on news, which attracts readers; the publisher then sells the readers' attention to advertisers. It is a convoluted relationship that distorts both enterprises.

For example, the journalist wants to produce the best possible story he or she can. Such stories win prizes and lead to better jobs. It is in the reporter's best interests to cut no corners, to be thorough and careful--to be, if possible, spectacular.

To the publisher, however, a news story is something to be wrapped around a tire ad. It needs to be reported well enough to entice the reader and accurate enough to hold off the lawyers. Beyond that, quality is not a factor. I once overheard one publisher tell another that a story that's too good might be distracting. The reader might not notice the revenue-producing parts of the page.

This attitude was best articulated to me by the late Phil Heisler, who for decades was the managing editor of the Evening Sun in Baltimore. His favorite metaphor, when turning down reporters who wanted more time to polish stories was, "We make Chevrolets. We don't build Cadillacs. That's not our business."

As one of those reporters, I was infuriated by that. Now, with some distance and age, I see his wisdom. Quality is popular in the newsroom, but at some point it does not justify raising the price of ads.

If Heisler's Principle of Mediocrity was cost effective in those days, there are reasons to believe it may no longer be come the millennium. Information is becoming increasingly pivotal to the function of our society, and attitudes reflect that.

I can remember, for instance, when Americans thought information was as free as air. In those days, we wouldn't dream of shoplifting a Hershey Bar. But we thought nothing of taping records for our friends. More recently, we traded copies of computer programs.

But as more Americans move into the information business, fewer are willing to pirate intellectual property--at least without some pangs of conscience. Pirating is no longer a pseudo-crime, such as driving 5 mph over the speed limit. It's moved up a notch on the moral scale; now it's wrong.

This is the harbinger of a new-found respect for good information. It is the first glimmer of a new value system, one which appreciates informational reliability – a quality shared by well-crafted computer programs and well-written news stories. One benefit: People are more inclined to pay for the information they want, in the form they want it. Pay-per-view television relies on this principle. More to the point, readers are also willing to pay more for their newspapers.

These trends seem to contradict the changes so bemoaned by the industry's aristocrats. Advertising will dwindle and newspapers will have to rely more heavily on readers to pay the freight. As readers pay directly for information, rather than through advertising costs that manufacturers add to products, they are bound to become more discriminating about what they get for their money. This in turn means that the work we do will become more important and more demanding.

In coming years our stories--whether they are printed or transmitted via fiber optics--will be measured more and more in terms of their usefulness. Increasingly, we will be called upon to report the hard-to-get stories about business, technology, subcultures and social trends. We will be expected to supply context where it is needed and remove it when it's redundant. We will have to become more thoughtful reporters and much better writers.

Of all the signs of change, the most exciting is what's happening in the book market. Book journalism, for those who can cut it, is booming. It is no coincidence that this happens to be the lone market where the reader selects the work of a specific journalist and holds that journalist solely responsible for its quality.

Many reporters, having sensed a book boom, are busily developing techniques to capitalize on it. The literary journalism movement, for instance, aims at presenting a density of information within a narrative style that will entice readers. Academics and psychologists, as well as journalists, are developing new theories to quantify such aspects of writing as how the mind reacts to narrative and how to judge at what length a story is most effective.

These are exciting ideas arising from a very dramatic moment in history. It's clear that journalism is going to do well in the coming millennium – there will not only be more jobs, but more quality jobs. Yet I hear none of that excitement from the front offices. What I sense instead is self-deception that stinks of panic.

As I get more and more of my news from Nexis, and my friends hook up to that and other electronic information services, I listen to the people who own printing plants reassure one another, "There will always be a demand for a newspaper you can hold in your hands." My friends at some papers bring me horror stories of a dramatically cheapened product. And everywhere there is the pervasive gospel that Americans, who have plenty of time for television, videos, sports and even books, somehow can't find time to read the newspaper.

To me, that says something pretty obvious. When the Freedom Forum can publish a 34-page probe into the next thousand years of journalism and mention writing and reporting only in passing..perhaps that suggests why people don't read the product. And perhaps in the end it offers the best critique of where the profession is now, where it will be tomorrow, and who is and will remain at the cutting edge.

My students at the University of Oregon see the situation they're getting into, and of course they're apprehensive. But I don't fear for them; they're eager to make changes. I don't have the same confidence in the old guys.