But How to Define Quality?

It is both difficult and controversial to try to define, much less quantify,

the journalistic excellence that Knight’s creed described

It is both difficult and controversial to try to define, much less quantify,

the journalistic excellence that Knight’s creed described. You can

get an argument in any newsroom or any bar frequented by newspaper

people about whether a specific story or series of stories is ‘‘good

journalism.’’ Arguments about the relative journalistic merits of individual

newspapers are as endless as they are unavoidable, because

much depends on the subjective standards of the person doing the

judging. Sometimes the true excellence of journalistic effort isn’t seen

or felt for years after the act; often the result of journalistic excellence

is more cumulative than immediately specific.

However, some indicators are available, and the Pulitzer Prize is

one. That premier recognition is bestowed by Columbia University,

and the selections are made through a jurying process carried out, in

the case of the newspaper awards, by panels of journalists backed by

a board of trustees also composed of journalists. Any such process is,

of course, subject to the politics of the profession, and over the ninety

years of its history, the Pulitzer board’s decisions have often been

controversial.

The awards emphasize public service and extraordinary dedication

to sound journalism. Whether, in a given year, the awards go to ‘‘the

best’’ journalism is certainly subject to debate, but at a minimum, the

prizes recognize substance and relevance rather than superficiality

and exploitativeness. Thus, a look at the recent history of those

awards is both instructive and alarming.

Pulitzers are given for specific examples of outstanding journalism,

such as a series of investigative reports or coverage of a disaster, or

for an individual’s body of work over a given year. There is no Pulitzer

for an individual newspaper’s sustained good journalism over

time, so the awards do not reflect that important dimension of a newspaper’s

mission. Occasionally a major news opportunity—a plane

crash, a flood, social upheaval—will fall into a mediocre newspaper’s

lap and its coverage will earn it a Pulitzer. For the most part, though,

newspapers that win Pulitzers consistently are also consistently good

at their broader mission.

For this analysis, five major institutions have been grouped together:

The New York Times, The Washington Post, the Los Angeles

Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The Associated Press. Because of

their size, two-tiered stock (in the case of three of them), and operating

arrangements, these organizations are less susceptible to shortterm

financial pressures than most of the rest of the profession.We’ll

call them the Big Five. The number (and percentage) of Pulitzers

won, by decade, are as follows:

At least two observations leap from those figures: Domination by

the Big Five has grown over twenty-five years—or, put another way,

awards to non–Big Five organizations have dropped—and Knight

Ridder’s proportion of awards has dropped from significant to negligible.

Unavoidable questions suggested by those numbers include: What

is driving the shift in awards toward those relatively sheltered Big

Five institutions? Has that wide a performance gap opened between

the Big Five and the rest of American newspaper journalism? Why is

that? What is behind Knight Ridder’s declining Pulitzer performance

over twenty-five years? And what do those answers say about the

status and course of newspaper journalism in the United States?

Another way of judging quality, arguably at least from the standpoint

of public judgment and acceptance, is circulation. Weekday

newspaper circulation in the United States has declined since 1990 by

about 6 percent in absolute terms, but the situation is actually much

bleaker. Prior to 1970, more daily newspapers were sold than there

were U.S. households. About 1970, what is called the household penetration

ratio reached 1:1. By 1990, household penetration had fallen

to only 60 percent, and by 2004 it was at nearly 50 percent, meaning

that only half of the nation’s households read a newspaper daily.

Using those numbers to buttress an argument about quality, or lack of

it, is too simplistic however, because many newspapers and newspaper

companies have deliberately excluded, or are indifferent about, portions

of their potential audience because of bottom-line considerations.

Effect on Public Life

The implications of the decline in the public service orientation of

many newspapers and newspaper companies are profound for our society.

Journalistic performance and a viable democracy are fully interdependent.

So the decline in journalistic quality, as exemplified by the

erosion of foundational missions and dedication to public service, has

been accompanied by a decline in the quality of public life, which is

the way democracy is expressed and experienced. People ill served

by dollar-driven, market-oriented journalism become alienated from

public life, more inwardly focused, and cynical about the process of

democracy. Today’s journalism is clearly implicated in, and its freedom

threatened by, that alienation.

Thus a detailed examination of the forces acting on journalism has

meaning beyond one company and one set of newspapers, though this

examination uses one company as a framework and exemplar.

From the book of Knightfall

Knight Ridder and How the
Erosion of Newspaper Journalism
Is Putting Democracy at Risk

karya: David Merritt

We . . . do not sacrifice either principles or quality on the altar of the countinghouse.

— John S. Knight

ON ONE OF those delightfully fresh South Florida fall mornings,

Jim Batten is moved to get out of his office to start our conversation.

‘‘Let’s take a ride,’’ he said to an old friend of a dozen years, so

we left through the sixth-floor double doors freshly plated with a

new name, Knight Ridder Newspapers, Inc., picked up his car in the

parking garage, and turned onto Biscayne Boulevard, heading north

away from The Miami Herald building.

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We had much to discuss that morning in 1975 because each of

our lives had just taken turns of their own. I was, at thirty-eight,

only three months into the job of executive editor of two Knight

Ridder–owned newspapers in Wichita, Kansas. He, at thirty-nine,

had recently moved from the editorship of The Charlotte Observer to

the post of vice president of news for the one-year-old corporation

built by the 1974 merger of Ridder Publications, Inc. (RPI) and

Knight Newspapers, Inc. (KNI). The merger had turned two re-

14 / KNIGHTFALL

gional newspaper companies into the nation’s largest in terms of total

circulation, and it had opened exciting possibilities for thousands of

the companies’ employees.

The two of us shared much history, including years together as

reporters at the Knight-owned Observer and in Knight Newspapers’

Washington bureau; a tennis rivalry battled out on courts in North

Carolina, Virginia, and Maryland; southern upbringings; and wives

who had known each other as students at Queens College in Charlotte.

Most important, we shared a conviction that newspaper journalism

was an exciting and worthy way to make both a difference and

a living.

That conviction was matured and strengthened by our experiences

with Knight Newspapers, Inc., which was much more a collection

of newspapers than it was a corporation. Even after it went

public in 1969, Knight Newspapers was almost wholly an expression

of the values of John S. Knight (JSK), its founder, and Lee Hills, its

president. Fierce independence from commercial concerns and local

autonomy for editors were primary operating principles. The corporate

staff was minimal and of little moment as far as the journalists

were concerned, and many of the journalists’ Holy Grail was to be

the editor of a newspaper, for they believed, with JSK, that, ‘‘There

is no better or higher title than editor.’’

So on that morning I needed the answer to a question.

‘‘Jim, why in the world would you give up the editorship of a great

newspaper for a corporate job?’’ I asked, giving the word corporate a

disdainful roll off the tongue.

I anticipated a more measured James K. Batten answer, one typical

of his Virginia Tidewater mannerliness and habit of careful reflection.

This was not that.

‘‘Somebody has to watch the bad guys.’’

Newspapers and Coat Hangers

Publishing newspapers is a good way to make money.

Publishing newspapers is an important undertaking, and you can

make good money doing it.

WHY THIS MATTERS / 15

Both statements are true but describe totally different concepts.

On the one hand, setting out to make money by producing newspapers

expresses a specific objective, not unlike setting out to make

money by producing coat hangers or carpets. You decide to do it

based on a calculation of desired profit, what materials to use, how to

use those materials most efficiently, and how to market the result.

Eventually, you must decide what level of quality you want in the

product, lowest to highest, with the decision driven by your assessment

of the potential market. Decisions about how to react to market

changes and competition invariably refer to and are controlled by the

original objective: making coat hangers or carpets or newspapers in a

way that produces a profit of a certain level. Over time, the efficiency

of your operation determines your level of success. If your financial

goal is not being achieved, you must find new efficiencies or adjust

the quality of the product, upward or downward. (There is, after all,

a need for lesser quality carpets or coat hangers.) Quality is a manageable

variable in the calculation. Success is measured by whether the

profit goal is met.

On the other hand, setting out to produce a newspaper that makes

a difference in a community or a nation and to make money doing it

is unlike any other business enterprise one can imagine. All other

businesses begin, appropriately, with single-minded focus on the

bottom-line objective. Newspapers have a built-in conflict, a natural

and deep tension between the polar opposite, though not mutually

exclusive, objectives of public service and making a profit. In the best

newspaper operations, symbiosis exists, a comfortable, reinforcing coexistence

between the journalistic and business aspects. But as with

symbiotic relationships in nature, when one partner becomes dominant,

the other dies and the partnership fails.

The driving force in newspapers that have public service at the

core, in contrast to other businesses or newspapers published simply

to make money, is a qualitative calculation: You want to act in ways

that achieve certain nonmonetary goals, that reflect the conviction

that journalism is a public trust, an institution that serves, advances,

and protects the public welfare and supports a free democratic society.

The ability to make some level of profit doing it is a necessary

16 / KNIGHTFALL

supporting factor in the qualitative calculation. The acceptable level

of profit is a function of the owners’ desires, needs, and values. Because

the calculation began with a core decision about quality, profit

becomes the variable in that calculation rather than quality; profit is

an enabling force, not the driving one. Success is measured first by

whether the nonmonetary, public goals are met. The obvious problem

with this, of course, is that measuring profit is easy—it’s simply a

number—while measuring quality is complex and subject to facile

rationalization.

Of course, if you cannot manage to make a profit at all given your

qualitative goals, the newspaper will fail, but for most of the 220 years

of American newspaper history, making a profit by producing newspapers

was not particularly difficult for the people who owned them.

In fact, for most of U.S. history, failing to make a profit with a newspaper

required a high level of incompetence or inattention or truly

wretched luck. After all, until the middle of the twentieth-century

newspapers were by far the dominant news medium. Journalistically

good newspapers made money; journalistically bad newspapers made

even more money, at least in the short term until their failure to serve

the public well caught up with them.

Compared to most business ventures, operating margins in newspapers

have been incredibly high. Family dynasties lasting a century

or more were built on operating returns as high as 50 percent. Profits

of 20 percent to 30 percent were virtually automatic, leaving owners

free to take the profits or, as many did, plow them back into the

enterprise in the name of expansion or improvement in the newspaper’s

quality. Some people produced newspapers because they deliberately

chose that over coat hangers or carpets. Some chose it

motivated by the ideal of a public trust; some were motivated by the

power and prestige it could bring; some by the sensational margins.

Journalism and Democracy:

Fully Interdependent

The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution does not require that

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not confer special status on a form of business; it confers on every

citizen the opportunity to be heard without government interference.

It was designed that way because the people who wrote the Constitution

believed that truth, in a fair encounter with falsity, would always

prevail; that the open clash of competing ideas produces better outcomes

as a democracy seeks to answer the question, ‘‘What shall we

do?’’

A free press is essential to a functioning democracy. A functioning

democracy is essential to a free press. The synergy of those two ideas

is important because a free society cannot determine its course—that

is, self-determination does not exist—without three things: shared,

relevant information; an agora (that is, a place or mechanism where

the implications of that information can be discussed); and shared

values (at a minimum, a belief in personal liberty itself ).

To understand the threat to democracy posed by a press that does

not have public service as its driving force, it’s useful to examine the

synergy between journalism and democracy.

BANDUNG, (PR).-
Sanggar seni di Babakan Siliwangi (Baksil), Kota Bandung diminta segera pindah ke Pasar Seni, Jln. Tamansari, yang telah selesai dibangun PT Esa Gemilang Indah (PT EGI). Permintaan pindah itu, terkait projek pembangunan rumah makan oleh PT EGI akan segera dimulai. Kepala Dinas Pariwisata Kota Bandung, H.M. Askary mengatakan hal itu, saat ditemui di sela-sela pembukaan Festival Kuliner India di Hotel Horison, Bandung, Senin (25/8).

“Kami keukeuh merelokasi mereka. Sebab, para seniman itu dulunya juga ditempatkan di Babakan Siliwangi oleh pemerintah. Jadi, mereka menggunakan tanah milik pemerintah. Sekarang kalau pemiliknya mau pake, ya mereka harus mau dong direlokasi,” ujarnya dengan nada tinggi.

Pemkot Bandung menargetkan relokasi sanggar seni Babakan Siliwangi, selesai akhir tahun ini. Dari sisi lokasi, kata Askary, Pasar Seni Tamansari jauh lebih strategis, karena berdekatan dengan Kebun Binatang Bandung. “Selain itu, tidak terlalu jauh dari lokasi mereka sebelumnya,” katanya.

Sementara itu, para seniman yang tergabung di Sanggar Olah Seni (SOS) menyatakan penolakannya terhadap upaya relokasi. Menurut Ketua SOS, Syarief Hidayat, suasana di Pasar Seni tidak menunjang proses kreativitas. Lokasi itu hanya menunjang dari sisi fungsi display karya seni, karena letaknya di pinggir jalan. “Babakan Siliwangi ini ibarat Ubudnya Bandung lah. Sulit dapat suasana seperti di Babakan Siliwangi di Kota Bandung,” ujarnya.

Syarief menjelaskan, para seniman akan mendesak pertemuan dengan Pj. Wali Kota Bandung Edi Siswadi atau Wali Kota Bandung terpilih Dada Rosada. “Kalau negosiasinya dengan Diparda lagi, kami gak mau. Kami ingin langsung bertemu dengan wali kota,” ujarnya.

Menunggu

Ahli planologi ITB Denny Zulkaidi, menyatakan curiga terhadap rencana revitalisasi Babakan Siliwangi. Pasalnya, Pemkot Bandung juga meminta kerja sama dengan ITB untuk pembangunan sarana parkir tiga lantai di bawah lapangan tenis dan basket di Sasana Budaya Ganesha (Sabuga). “Alasannya untuk mempermudah akses mahasiswa dan dosen ITB. Hanya, jalan masuknya dari Jln. Babakan Siliwangi, bukan dari Jln. Dayangsumbi atau Jln. Tamansari,” katanya.

Kepala Dinas Tata Ruang dan Cipta Karya (Distarcip) Kota Bandung Juniarso Ridwan, mengaku hingga saat ini masih menunggu keseriusan PT EGI merevitalisasi kawasan Babakan Siliwangi. Sejak izin penataan diterbitkan 29 Januari 2007, hingga saat ini PT EGI belum berbuat.

Ia menjelaskan, penataan Kawasan Babakan Siliwangi tidak diperkenankan membuat bangunan baru di luar tapak bangunan bekas restoran milik Pemkot Bandung yang terbakar 2004. “Izin sudah terbit, tinggal menunggu keseriusan PT EGI. Tidak benar kalau izinnya untuk kondominium,” ujarnya.

Berdasarkan catatan “PR”, Wali Kota Bandung Dada Rosada (saat itu) dan Direktur Utama PT EGI, Willy Sunaryo, telah menandatangani perjanjian kerja sama penataan dan pembangunan Kawasan Babakan Siliwangi di Jln. Siliwangi, Kel. Lebak Siliwangi Kec. Coblong, Kota Bandung. Bentuk kerja sama adalah Build-Operate-Transfer (BOT), berlaku selama 20 tahun sejak ditandatangani kerja sama tersebut. Dari sekitar 8 hektare dikerjasamakan, yang dapat dibangun pengembang dan pusat budaya Sunda hanya 2,197 hektare. (A-156)***

http://newspaper.pikiran-rakyat.co.id/prprint.php?mib=beritadetail&id=29776

oleh: Agus Rakasiwi

Bisnis media menghadapi dilema. Kehadiran pemodal besar diyakini bisa menormalkan keuangan, tapi di sisi lain menjadi “Dewa” yang sukar ditentang.

Sepuluh tahun reformasi membuka tabir baru kehidupan pers Indonesia. Dicabutnya pasal-pasal pengekangan di surat izin penerbitan pers tahun 1999, mendorong pertumbuhan perusahaan-perusahaan media. Saat ini sudah ada 2000 stasiun radio, 11 televisi nasional, dan ribuan media massa cetak. (Tolong dicari di website Dewan pers jumlah pastinya)

Sebelum 1998, media massa cetak nasional hanya dikisaran 300 perusahaan. Media massa elektonik televisi masih didominasi Televisi Republik Indonesia dan lima statsiun televisi swasta (RCTI, SCTV, TPI, Indosiar dan Anteve).

Pertumbuhan tadi dianggap sebagai tanda munculnya era keemasan kebebasan pers. Sebagai pilar demokrasi keempat, pertumbuhan itu dianggap akan menjadi saluran lain aspirasi publik. Media massa bisa menjadi saluran alternatif kontrol publik terhadap negara saat partai politik belum menjalankan fungsinya.

Namun, ekspansi pemilik modal di media massa saat ini, tidak serta merta membuktikan asumsi tadi. Pemilik modal malah menjadi batu sandungan baru bagi insan pers menyuarakan kepentingan publik. Antara kepentingan bisnis dan kepentingan publik sering berbenturan di kamar redaksi.

Para pemodal media massa di Indonesia saat ini juga berada di lajur kekuasaan. Sebut saja Menteri Kesejahteraan Rakyat, Abu Rizal Bakrie. Dengan perusahaan Bakrie Brothersnya, saham TV One dan Antv diambil alih. Sebentar lagi mereka akan masuk ke bisnis media online dan cetak lewat penguasaan saham Surabaya Post.

Tim Blora Center yang menjadi tim sukses Susilo Bambang Yudoyono, juga menjadi pemodal baru di media massa cetak dengan terbitnya Jurnal Nasional. Sementara keluarga mantan presiden Soeharto masih mayoritas menguasai saham RCTI, SCTV, TPI, dan Global TV. Mereka disatukan lewat grup MNC.

Kehadiran para pemodal bercampur politisi ini menjadi pokok persoalan pada seminar “Bisnis Media dan Pengaruhnya terhadap Politik Nasional” yang diselenggarakan di Universitas Indonesia, Depok, Jawa Barat. Seminar ini menghadirkan pembicara, seperti Leo Batubara (Wakil Ketua Dewan Pers), Endy Bayuni (Pemimpin Redaksi Jakarta Post), dan Iskandar Siahaan (perwakilan dari SCTV).

Leo Batubara memberi gambaran keberhasilan televisi meraup iklan dengan berbagai progam tayangannya. Stasiun televisi milik konglomerat Harry Tanoewidjaja, RCTI, meraup pendapatan belanja iklan sebesar Rp 2,6 Triliun. Diikuti SCTV (Rp 2,2 Triliun) dan Trans TV (RP 2,0 Triliun).

“Tapi pendapatan iklan itu diperoleh dari tayangan yang tidak mencerdaskan, seperti, sinetron, gosip, dan tahayul,” ujar Leo.

Leo memaparkan bahwa hal itu ditopang oleh hasil rating Nielsen yang menempatkan tayangan “murahan” itu sebagai sesuatu yang diminati masyarakat. Sedangkan isi-isi siaran yang mengandung edukasi publik dan kontrol terhadap pemerintah cenderung tersingkir.

Iskandar Siahaan, mengakui hal itu. Menurutnya, orang-orang di dalam newsroom seringkali kalah dengan program entertainment. Sebagai contoh, program berita hanya memiliki slot tayangan selama 20 menit dari total slot waktu siaran selama 20 jam.

“Kalangan program menyebut entertaiment mendatangkan pengiklan,” katanya.

Namun, Iskandar percaya masih ada ruang negosiasi yang bisa mempertemukan kepentingan bisnis dan publik. Negosiasi bisa berhasil jika didukung oleh riset mandiri terhadap tayangan-tayangan yang non-entertaiment.

Menyinggung peran Komisi Penyiaran Indonesia (KPI), sebenarnya ada harapan besar ketika lembaga ini muncul. Melalui amanah Undang-undang Penyiaran, tayangan televisi yang tidak edukatif bisa terelemininasi sedikit demi sedikit melalui kontrol KPI. Tapi, sayang lembaga ini seakan kehilangan taringnya.

Leo Batubara mengatakan, peran KPI sebenarnya sudah cukup besar dalam hal pemantauan dan pengawasan terhadap tayangan televisi. Tapi, peran itu lambat laun diganggu dengan makin minimnya peran KPI dalam memutuskan sanksi bagi para pemilik stasiun yang melanggar aturan UU Penyiaran.

“Persoalannya ada di pemerintah pusat dalam hal ini Departemen Komunikasi dan Informasi yang masih kalah oleh kekuatan modal,” tegas Leo.

Bisnis Kepercayaan

Persoalan di media massa cetak hampir mirip dengan televisi. Malah bisa dikatakan lebih pahit ketimbang dengan televisi.

Sebagai contoh situasi media cetak yang terjadi di Amerika Serikat. Koran-koran besar seperti New York Times, Washingtom Post dan Times, tiap harinya dikhawatirkan dengan penurunan oplah. Lembaga riset media, Knight Rider di Amerika, menyatakan tiap tahunnya terjadi penurunan oplah rata-rata antara 10-20 persen.

Tudingan pertama kali ditujukan pada kehadiran teknologi internet pada awal 1990-an. Teknologi itu mampu menghadirkan ragam informasi dengan murah, cepat, dan efisien. Bill Gates pernah mengatakan, bahwa era cetak akan mati memasuki abad milenium dengan kedatangan internet.

Namun, hal itu tidak sepenuhnya bisa terjadi di berbagai negara. Penurunan pembaca yang terjadi di Amerika Serikat sendiri diasumsikan, oleh Knight Rider, karena beberapa hal. Diantara masalah-masalah itu yang paling utama adalah hilangnya kepercayaan publik terhadap media massa.

Menurunnya kepercayaan publik disebabkan karena elitisme media cetak. Lembaran koran dihabiskan oleh isu pertarungan elit politik ketimbang su-isu publik. Sebagaimana terjadi di televisi Amerika Serikat pada saat pemilihan presiden tahun 2004 dan setelah peristiwa 11 September.

Khusus penelitian terhadap media massa televisi di tahun 2004, Wall Street Journal merilis, 10 media massa televisi terburuk sepanjang sejarah. Stasiun televisi seperti CNN dan CBS menjadi contoh media partisan selama kampanye presiden di negeri itu.

Elitisme media mendorong munculnya gerakan indymedia di Seattle pertengahan 1980-an. Lewat isu citizen journalism, publik di Seatte mulai mengkampanyekan tentang peran warga mengontrol media massa mainstream dan elit politik.

Kondisi di Amerika Serikat memang tidak menjadi patokan untuk negara-negara lain. Media massa di Indonesia memiliki masalah yang juga. Tekanan modal dan interfensi pemililk modal terhadap ruang redaksi juga menjadi salah satu faktor. Pengaruh mereka bisa menurunkan kualitas berita demi kepentingan bisnis.

Di Indonesia, media massa cetak yang terjerembab dalam praktek politik partisan tidak sedikit jumlahnya. Leo Batubara, menuding, selama kampanye pemilihan umum, media massa bisa bermain mata dengan elit politik melalui editorial mereka.

Iklan calon presiden dan partai politik selama tahun 2008 ini serta merta dilahap demi keuntungan. Sedangkan tulisan-tulisan kritis mengenai calon presiden tidak mengiringi penayangan iklan tersebut. Sosok seperti Prabowo, Wiranto dan Soetrisno Bachir hampir tidak pernah diungkap lebih dalam.

“Ratusan juta mendarat di kantor media untuk tayangan iklan tapi tingkat kritisnya tidak pernah muncul,” ujarnya.

Endi Bayuni mengelak bahwa media massa tidak kritis dengan hal itu. Menurutnya, negosiasi dengan bisnis masih bisa dilakukan dengan mempraktekkan prinsip good journalism. Prinsip ini berarti kemampuan untuk rek dan ricek fakta, akurasi dan membangun informasi yang berimbang serta menempatkan etika.

Dewan Pers, menurut Leo, memang menerima banyak laporan mengenai ketidakakuratan pemberitaan media. Di meja mereka, tahun lalu hampir 1000 laporan masuk.

“Kita masih butuh banyak jurnalis yang bisa melakukan hal itu,” katanya.

Menurutnya, kedatangan pemodal bisa jadi malah menyediakan ruang praktek good journalism tadi. Ia melihat yang terjadi di Kompas dan Tempo yang dimodali konglomerat Ciputra. Selama ini, katanya, kedua media tersebut masih bisa melakukan kontrol dan memberikan pemberitaan yang baik.

Namun, kenyataan di Amerika sendiri bisa menjadi cermin. Sejauh prinsip good journalism dipraktekkan masih meninggalkan keraguan bagi pembaca. Letaknya pada isu apa yang diangkat dan bagaimana mengolahnya. Pengaruh modal untuk kepentingan bisnis dan politik sesaat masih bisa masuk ke dalam ranah good journalism tadi.

tulisan ini diterbitkan di www.mediabersama.com

]]> http://agusnews.wordpress.com/2008/08/18/kontrol-modal-terhadap-newsroom-media-massa/feed/ 3 agusnews http://agusnews.wordpress.com/2008/08/18/is-journalism-putting-democracy-at-risk/ http://agusnews.wordpress.com/2008/08/18/is-journalism-putting-democracy-at-risk/#comments Mon, 18 Aug 2008 12:50:22 +0000 agusnews http://agusnews.wordpress.com/?p=46 ]]>

Tulisan ini disalin penuh dari pengantar dalam buku
Knightfall
Knight Ridder and How the
Erosion of Newspaper Journalism
Is Putting Democracy at Risk

karya: David Merritt

INTRODUCTION:

CAN NEWSPAPER

JOURNALISM SURVIVE?

The central idea of this book is that newspaper journalism is endangered,

which puts American democracy in peril.

Given the inexorability and pace of technology, we may not need

newspapers in our media mix at some point in the future—perhaps

sooner than later. But we will need newspaper journalism, because

democracy can thrive without newspapers, but it cannot thrive without

the sort of journalism that newspapers uniquely provide.

The question is whether newspaper journalism can be successfully

migrated to new technologies—the Internet or whatever might succeed

it—before it becomes extinct, suffocated like the dinosaurs by

the impact of the twenty-first century giant meteor labeled greed.

It is a race against time and circumstance.

What is newspaper journalism if not simply journalism that is in a

newspaper?

It’s much more, and these are the characteristics separating it from

all other kinds of journalism and pseudojournalism:

◗ Its content is not shaped by a limiting technology, such as broadcast

with its time strictures and, in television and online, bias

toward the visual and against permanence.

◗ Its usefulness is based far more on completeness and clarity than

immediacy.

2 / KNIGHTFALL

◗ Its claim on credibility is based on its length and depth, which

allow readers to judge the facts behind a story’s headline and

opening summary paragraph and then look for internal contradictions.

◗ It has intrinsic value and relevance to people rather than merely

amusing or entertaining them.

◗ Opinions and analysis are labeled as such and are presented separately.

Those are, at least, the values newspaper journalism aspires to, if

not always achieves.

It is a form of journalism that emerged from decades of evolving

standards and practices and from newspapers’ deliberate and layered

process of collecting, sorting, writing, and editing information.

This book is an effort to explain what is happening to newspapers

and therefore to newspaper journalism in the United States, why what

is happening endangers democracy, and what steps might move both

back from the abyss.

The 300 million people who constitute our nation are unable, each

and on their own, to discover the facts necessary to make communal

decisions. Instead, they rely upon specialized collectors, processors,

and disseminators of information. For most of the nation’s history,

newspapers have been a constant and substantial, often dominant,

supplier of the facts that we use to make decisions about public matters.

Over those two-plus centuries, newspapers changed in form and

substance just as the society around them changed. One attribute persisted

through all the changes, however: A newspaper provided a set

of facts common to all who read it; a tangible record of shared information

on which citizens could base their deliberations and decisions

about what to do. Most cities of any size had two or more newspapers,

giving citizens more than a single source, and most American households,

at least through the early years of the twentieth century, read

more than one of them.

Newspapers built elaborate staffs and developed processes to collect,

sort, prioritize, and interpret information. Reporters were as-

INTRODUCTION / 3

signed to seek out information, particularly about the activities of

government, doing, as Walter Lippmann put it, ‘‘what the conscientious

citizen would do given the time and resources.’’ Editors were

appointed to evaluate and critique this flow of facts from city halls

and legislatures, police stations and battlefields, schools and businesses

and ballparks. The physical structure of newspapers provided

not only a repository for information but also a context for it. Editors’

choices about the placement of stories within the pages and the size

of headlines on the page provided a guide to relative significance, at

least as evaluated by the editors. Newspapers represented a sophisticated

and multilayered social transaction that was dependent for its

success on the good intentions, professionalism, judgment, and experience

of journalists and the willingness of readers to extend credibility

to the process.

The people who owned newspapers discovered early in the nation’s

history that you could make good money publishing them. For

some newspaper owners that was enough. Other, differently motivated

owners believed that publishing newspapers was an important

public service, and the fact that you could make good money doing

it only made the process that much more rewarding. For them, the

journalism that they did was the driving force; the purpose of the

business part of newspapers—the advertisements and the revenue

from circulation—was to make the journalism possible.Well into the

twentieth century, newspapers of both sorts held a virtual monopoly

on mass communication of information, but it was not to last.

Other methods of telling news were developed, and with each new

method came fresh predictions that newspapers were doomed. First,

radio would cause the demise, it was claimed, because newspapers,

with their long production times and clumsy distribution systems,

could never overcome the immediacy and intimacy of a radio broadcast.

And seven decades ago when television was developed, paving

the way for TV newscasts, there were similar, even more dire predictions,

because now broadcasting included pictures. And two decades

ago Ted Turner, the mogul who invented CNN and twenty-fourhour

broadcast news, proclaimed that newspapers would be extinct

4 / KNIGHTFALL

by the end of the twentieth century. Now, we hear, the Internet will

do the job.

Those predictions have not come about. Radio couldn’t kill newspapers,

nor could television, CNN and its copycats, nor, as yet, the

Internet. But greed can kill newspapers—and thus newspaper journalism—

and it is in the process of doing so. And if newspaper journalism

becomes extinct because the people who own newspapers do not understand

and appreciate its intrinsic and crucial strengths and its role

in democracy, much more will be gone than simply one particular

and traditional way of transmitting news and information.

With a handful of exceptions, American newspapers are being

eroded, their traditional values subverted, their journalistic resources

stripped away, their dedication to public service and local communities

hollowed out, leaving a thin shell of public relations gimmicks

that pretend to be public service and entertainment that pretends to

be news.

What’s going on is serial suicide on the part of the companies that

own most of America’s newspapers, not, as some apologists suggest,

serial murder by evolving technology, changed societal circumstance,

or altered public taste. If something doesn’t change in newspaper corporate

boardrooms, the source of the information that Americans

need to govern themselves at all levels will be an unreliable and constantly

shifting array of broadcast and Internet outlets that are often

irresponsible, untrained, understaffed, and driven wholly by profit or

ego. That information will be incomplete, unverified, and laced with

the poison of partisan bias and narrow interests, if only because it has

not been subjected to a rigorous editing process.

This period of decline did not arrive suddenly for America’s newspapers,

and its progress is gradual though, without major change, inexorable.

How the decline began and how it is proceeding is one

part of an immensely complex story, and saying with confidence and

specificity what the decline implies for the future is a difficult proposition

in a constantly shifting media environment. However, certain

things are clear:

◗ American democracy cannot succeed in the long term if the information

that fuels self-determination becomes unavailable or

INTRODUCTION / 5

is so narrowly held that only a tiny minority of citizens possess

the tools to make rational democratic choices. To answer democracy’s

‘‘What shall we do?’’ question—that is, to arrive at public

judgment—citizens need three things: shared, relevant information;

an agora (i.e., a place or method of discussing the implications

of that information); and shared values (at a minimum, a

belief in the value of democracy itself ). When citizens do not

have access to shared, relevant information and do not have an

active agora in which to act upon their values, democracy is left

in the hands of insiders and special interests and at the mercy of

their values.

Increasingly, American newspapers are failing to provide

those essentials of democracy because they are being strangled

by bottom-line concerns. For the last forty years, the consolidation

of newspaper ownership into publicly held companies has

increased. At the same time, accumulation of newspaper company

stocks by institutional investors has exploded. Most institutional

investors are not interested in the quality of journalism or

the communities it affects; they are interested in short-term,

ever-increasing profits. When newspaper profits fall, excessive

concern about the next quarter leads to quick fixes on the cost

side: hiring freezes, downsizing of space devoted to news, and

cutbacks in travel, training, distant bureaus, and staff. Fewer reporters

and copy editors and reduced news coverage reduce a

newspaper’s quality and erode its ability to provide relevant information.

◗ Newspaper journalists and the newspaper process, historically

and to this day, are the primary first-gatherers and sorters of the

shared information essential to democracy. The journalists, by

instinct and training, and the newspaper process, by its deliberate

and layered nature, are uniquely suited and positioned to

provide meaningful information.While a majority of Americans

tell pollsters that they ‘‘get their news from television’’ or, increasingly,

the Internet, the fact is that most meaningful broadcast

news and most ‘‘facts’’ bandied about the Internet, at all

6 / KNIGHTFALL

levels, national and local, originate with newspaper organizations.

(This is easy to verify. Read The New York Times, The

Washington Post, and TheWall Street Journal daily for a week and

watch national television news and news-magazine shows daily

for that week and the week following. Calculate the percentage

of broadcast stories on substantive matters that are original, untouched

by one or more of those newspapers. Try the same experiment

with your local newspaper and television stations. The

numbers will approach zero.) While the news organizations that

underlie newspapers continue to erode, broadcast, cable, and the

millions of individual Internet sites that trade in ‘‘news’’ simply

cannot afford to take over that first-gatherer-and-sorter role because

their economic models were built from the beginning on

cannibalizing newspapers, not on maintaining full, freestanding,

news-originating operations.

◗ Absent fundamental change by the people who run the corporations

that own the great majority of America’s newspapers, the

nation will become dependent for democracy’s plasma upon

three or four newspapers in the largest cities, and those will

maintain their missions only as long as they are in the right

hands.

◗ The narrowing of informational channels is an enormous threat

to personal and civic autonomy.

There is, however, hope. A slim chance exists that at least some

newspaper companies will successfully transfer their news-gathering

and sorting expertise onto emerging technologies before they fritter

away their once-deep pool of reportorial and editing talent and

thereby surrender their wondrous advantage and squander their primacy.

While most newspapers already haveWeb sites, those sites also

depend on the reporting and editing depth of their host newspapers’

staffs, and their operators have not yet figured out how to make

money in a medium where user expectations are to not pay for anything.

Figuring out how to make money on the Internet will require

INTRODUCTION / 7

substantial investment and experimentation, things that corporations

focused on ever-increasing profits are unlikely to do.

Some major newspaper companies, most notably the Tribune

Company and Media General, Inc., are experimenting with the concept

of ‘‘convergence,’’ which involves cooperative pooling of broadcast,

newspaper, and Internet reporters and editors who are trying to

develop ‘‘multiplatform’’ skills and understanding so that their work

can be effective in any of those mediums. Whether convergence will

be the savior of high-level journalism or just another step in its dilution

is the subject of much debate within the profession.

Whatever the future holds, understanding in detail what happened

and is happening to American newspaper journalism is important, if

for no other reason than to provide markers along the way back from

the abyss.

This book reflects the views of a journalist who spent forty-two

years as a reporter and editor for Knight Newspapers and Knight

Ridder, Inc. It is not the history of Knight Ridder, for no single point

of view can reliably and objectively encompass all of the complex dynamics

of a major corporation over nearly five decades. It is a story of

Knight Ridder told by an informed participant/observer with a specific

point of view.

The 1974 merger of Knight Newspapers and Ridder Publications,

Inc. began a journey by people and institutions through the elastic

labyrinth of the last third of the twentieth century and years of

complex technological, cultural, and spiritual twists and turns. The

journey transformed two mid-century family-owned newspaper companies

with vastly different cultures into a prototypical twenty-first

century American media corporation that is, like other companies in

other fields, now forced to redefine its place in a constantly shifting

financial and public service environment.

There are no pure heroes and no pure villains in this story. The

players were doing what genetics, background, training, and the immediate,

ever-changing environment urged them to do. But choices

have consequences, and when those choices arise between competing

foundational beliefs—that is, conflicting core cultural values—one

value system is bound to suffer and the other prevail. When the pre-

8 / KNIGHTFALL

vailing value system sees journalistic quality as an expense to be minimized

rather than an asset to be leveraged, the implications are

profound for our society.

More important, journalistic performance and a viable democracy

are fully interdependent, so a decline in journalistic quality caused by

the erosion of foundational missions and dedication to public service

has important and negative implications for public life, which is the

way democracy is expressed and experienced.

This story is part reportage, part memoir, part analysis and argument.

The reportage involves dozens of interviews with the participants,

as well as extensive reading and research. The analysis and

argument are capsulized in this introduction. The memoir portions

are designed to show firsthand how the forces at work on newspaper

journalists affected one life spent with one company, Knight Ridder,

and to contribute a narrative thread to the larger fabric of what has

happened to American newspapers.

My undeniable and inescapable bias will become clear soon

enough, but let me state it concisely at the outset: Newspaper companies

have an obligation to public service and a special obligation to

democracy that outweigh all other considerations, save actual survival.

When, as has happened, public service and democratic obligations

become secondary to profit considerations when actual survival

is not at stake, vital aspects of American life are put in great peril.

While such a retrospective bias comes easily and is comforting to

hold, it does not, and cannot, provide the answers to the difficult

underlying questions of how the current state of affairs could have

been avoided and what now needs to happen. All along the route of

this journey, choices were made by people who intended to make

what were, by their inner compasses, right choices. The consequences

of those choices were occasionally unpredictable, but in the main

were foreseeable because the choices were based in competing underlying

philosophies that led only in one direction or the other.

This book is not intended as a paean to the past, a yearning for

lost innocence or some supposed golden age of perfect public service

journalism. Such a time never was. It is an attempt to sound, through

one company’s example, a cautionary note—perhaps even an alarm—

INTRODUCTION / 9

about the future. If, as seems likely, current journalistic and business

trends continue, our democracy’s need for the relevant information

that is its plasma will be imperiled because the bulk of the nation’s

corporately owned daily press will not be able to meet that need while

its leaders are motivated more urgently by the profit demands ofWall

Street than by a desire to serve democracy,

The question—for citizens and for the nation’s public life—is

whether the environment that now molds the behavior and values of

newspaper companies will provide enough oxygen to keep newspaper

journalism alive long enough. The answer is crucial.