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Labels: fourth estate, journalism education, Whited Sepulcre

Labels: Cardiff School of Journalism, Cardiff University, fourth estate, journalism education, training

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The full text of Robert Picard's lecture explaining why journalists deserve low pay is available in pdf form from http:www.robertpicard.net/files/Why_journalists_deserve_low_pay.pdf

I read it when it first came out but given the chance to contemplate more fully, there are several points that can be pulled out and looked at in the light of magazine journalism and publishing.

Moral philosophers taught us that things and activities can have intrinsic or
instrumental value. Intrinsic value involves things that are good in and of themselves,
such as beauty, truth, serenity, and harmony. Instrumental value comes from things that
facilitate action and achievement, including awareness, belonging, and understanding.

From the standpoint of moral philosophy, journalistic activities produce
instrumental but not intrinsic value. Information and knowledge conveyed by journalism
has instrumental value that is external to itself, is relative to truth, and is related to its
USE not to its creation. Journalism as important not in itself, but because it of its
instrumental aspects in enlightening the public, supporting social interaction, and
facilitating democracy.

I would argue that a beautifully produced magazine (let's focus on print here, though the argument could apply to online) has an intrinsic value, inasmuch as it may be considered "beautiful" in and of itself; the contents – specially commissioned photographs, for example – may also be considered intrinsically beautiful; and a well put together magazine certainly radiates a harmonious whole. Research by academics and by the industry has shown that readers can have an emotional relationship with a magazine and this is surely an intrinsic value.

Closer analysis of one sentence in the block above – "Journalism as important not in itself, but because it of its instrumental aspects in enlightening the public, supporting social interaction, and facilitating democracy" – reveals that Picard is yet another commentator who has adopted the Fourth Estate definition of journalism and used it as if
a) "journalism" only ever takes one form, with one purpose
and
b) that definition applies to all forms of journalism.

Picard then seems to argue against his former position by stating:

To comprehend journalistic value creation we need to focus on the benefits it provides.
Journalism creates functional, emotional and self‐expressive benefits for consumers
Functional benefits include providing information that helps individuals and
society understand their place in the world, conveying ideas that help or create ease in
life, and supplying diversion and entertainment. Emotional benefits from journalism
include it engendering senses of belonging and community, providing reassurance and a
sense of security, conveying leadership, and creating escape. Self‐Expressive benefits
are provided when individuals identify with the voice, perspectives, or opinions of a
journalism enterprise or it helps provide them opportunities to express their own ideas
and to portray themselves directly.

Some of the benefits he identifies can surely be construed as "intrinsic" or tending towards intrinsic. This distinction is important because it may help to identify areas in which "journalism" can add value, and in which magazine journalism traditionally excels:

"Thus the real measure of journalistic value is value created by serving readers"

Exactly.

So how does journalism actually produce economic value?

Journalism is practice designed to produce breath of coverage of issues and
events, to provide quality control of information, and to promote social well‐being by illuminating issues and informing the public. In journalistic practice, economic outcomes
have low priority for journalists and may or may not be a high priority for proprietors or
managers of journalistic enterprises depending upon their motivations.

I think Picard is conflating and confusing "journalism" and "publishing" in this passage and elsewhere in the lecture.

To create economic value journalists and news organizations historically relied
on the exclusivity of their access to information and sources, and their ability to provide
immediacy in conveying information. The value of those elements has been stripped
away by contemporary communication developments. Because of the emergence of 24‐
hour news and information channels, parliamentary and government channels, talk
shows, and the Internet, individuals are able to observe events in real time, to receive
information directly from knowledgeable authorities, and to interact with sources of
information and news in a variety of ways not previously possible.

If you accept the Fourth Estate definition of journalism, the above may be true – but it is not true for all forms of journalism or for all journalists and especially not for magazine journalists. This is not because of the traditional "immediacy" issue – specialised consumer and B2B magazines have always been able to break news ahead of newspapers or even broadcast media because of their specialisation and their access to sources that other journalisms and journalists would not normally bother with.

Nonetheless, immediacy is increasingly becoming an issue for magazines, whose specialised readerships often want, or expect, up-to-the-second news. This is why magazines are exploring digital communication – websites, mobile devices, Twitter and Facebook all play a role in delivering immediate information to readers.

The value of journalists’ abilities to convey information is also being challenged
by technologies that allow individuals to distribute information on their own. Software is
incorporating essential linguistic skills (spelling, grammar, and translation), audio and
video production skills, and photography and graphics skills. The Internet and various
social networking applications are providing means for individuals to create and convey
information on their own. All of these factors are making traditional journalistic practice
less valuable in economic terms.

Picard has hedged his bets here by relying on the word "traditional". For one thing, it can be construed in so many ways that it is meaningless – how traditional do we want to get? Hot metal? Steam presses? Hand setting? Quill pens? All of these things have been "traditional".

It is clear that journalists do not want to be in the contemporary labour market,
much less the highly competitive information market. They prefer to justify the value
they create in the moral philosophy terms of instrumental value. Most believe that what
they do is so intrinsically good and that they should be compensated to do it even if it
doesn’t produce revenue.

This view is embodied in professionalism of journalism, especially in efforts to
improve practice and separate business and editorial activities that developed
throughout the 20th century and were designed to protect the creation of moral value.
However, journalists also used professionalism to create relatively comfortable
employment and economic conditions for themselves, to avoid any responsibility for
performance of their enterprises, and to shield themselves from changes in the market.

Actually, I think he has a number of very good points here, but only because he clearly states that he is talking about "news" journalism of the Fourth Estate variety ("the creation of moral value") and the type of journalist who believes advertorial or any other commercially-focused scheme to be the work of the devil ("to avoid any responsibility for performance of their enterprises, and to shield themselves from changes in the market").

In short, journalists will have to develop entrepreneurial awareness and skills. This is something that magazine journalists have, generally speaking, been better at than journalists working on other "traditional" platforms. There tend to be shorter chains between editorial and advertising, and the firewalls tend to be lower and more penetrable (which is not always a good thing, of course). Advertorial is a widely accepted concept, and spin-offs in the form of special issues, bookazines or associated titles published at greater intervals are all commonplace.

Journalism must innovate and create new means of gathering, processing, and
distributing information so it provides content and services that readers, listeners, and
viewers cannot receive elsewhere. And these must provide sufficient value so audiences
and users are willing to pay a reasonable price.

If value is to be created, journalists cannot continue to report merely in the
traditional ways or merely re‐report the news that has appeared elsewhere. They must
add something novel that creates value. They will have to start providing information
and knowledge that is not readily available elsewhere, in forms that are not available
elsewhere, or in forms that are more useable by and relevant to their audiences.

Here I have to admit that Picard is unarguably right – and this where the excitement starts. Journalists, particularly young journalists, those undergoing journalism education (or training, if you must) and those teaching them should be, must be, encouraged to experiment, to try, to fail, to fail better.

Finding the right means to create and protect value will require collaboration
throughout news enterprises. It is not something that journalists can leave to
management. Everyone, journalists and managers alike, will need to develop
collaboration skills and create social relations that make it possible. Journalists will also
need to acquire entrepreneurial and innovation skills that makes it possible for them to
lead change rather than merely respond to it.

I couldn't have put it better myself.

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Labels: fourth estate, political economy, readership, Robert Picard, training, Value theory

That's what it said on the newspaper placard. Sorry to dip into newspapers again but I think this could be important for the following reasons:

1) A new field of study
I think I may have stumbled upon a new field of study for journalism professors – the humble placard (I know there's a proper technical term for them and I'll look it up in a minute). The words used and what they convey about the newspaper and its understanding of its readers could yield a rich seam of research.

2) Slow news day
If the best that a paper (in this case the moribund South Wales Post, Cardiff's dying evening) can come up with is a jar of Marmite in which a 36-year-old mum thinks she can spot the delineation of Our Saviour (great guy, shame about his Dad), then not much has happened in the preceding hours. Here's the story – it was the splash online when I checked.

3) Plagiarism
When I Googled the term "Jesus face" one of the links led me to this story on the Daily Mail's website: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1189188/The-Marmite-messiah-How-mother-Jesus-ja.html Look familiar? You can check the times of posting for yourselves.

4) The internet is killing journalism
Who is going to pay 40p (or whatever) to check out this story when a Google search (other search engines are available) will bring up a lot of "Jesus face" stories: aubergines, cushions, cinnamon buns, potatoes, Kitkat bars– you know the drill.

5) But most of all, journalists are killing journalism
Viz, all of the above.

UPDATE
Just found this story via Nieman Journalism Lab: love the phrase "Big Iron" to describe press corporations.

UPDATE 2
Read Dan's comment(s) below and then feast your eyes on this story about a very tired fish.

Labels: fourth estate, Jesus, newspapers, Paul Dacre, print journalism

My sermon today considers two (former) magazine journalists and editors, Danny Kelly (NME, Q, Football365, etc) and John Lloyd (FT Magazine). But first ...

One side issue raised by the Westminster expenses furore is whether journalists get too cosy with their sources. I cannot believe that lobby correspondents and political editors did not have a good idea of what was going on before the data-whistle was blown but one reason why the storm has had such an impact is because it came out of a clear blue sky. On the other hand, I suppose it is possible that the Telegraph's reporters were able to do such a swift and thorough job because they did know where to look for the bodies (or rather, whose accounts to look at – after they had rubbished the Labour hierarchy, of course).

Naturally, stories have to be substantiated ("stood up") and perhaps it was the lack of hard evidence that prevented journalists from writing these stories before.

Or perhaps it was because every journalist, and especially those who have developed a speciality, fears losing access to good contacts. This can happen at an individual level, ("I'm not talking to you"), a corporate level (for example, Sir Alex Feguson not talking to the BBC) or a PR level (the subject is withdrawn behind a fortress of spin and obfuscation). Whichever, it means the same – no interviews, no quotes, no stories and your competitors getting an advantage.

This does not just happen in politics, of course – celebrity, showbiz, music, film, business (see yesterday's post on this topic) and sport are fields in which "access" is key. It was the latter that concerned Danny Kelly last night during his show on TalkSport radio. Within a wider discussion of whether football fans had the right to access/question/comment on players and managers, Kelly and his sidekick Stan Collymore (a man who has, with some reason, been hounded by the media at certain points in his career) discussed the issue of journalists and press conferences with veteran manager Bobby Gould.

Gould, who clearly knows how to answer a question, made some very perceptive points about the way journalists create a single narrative (ie they collectively decide what "the story" is) and follow that through. Anyone taking a different line is likely to be carpeted by their editor if rivals all go for the same angle. This leads to very uniform reporting and almost certainly allows a media-savvy manager to manipulate the coverage.

At the same time, Kelly pointed out how soft most questioning is, attributing this to a fear of losing access and/or not wanting to lose the "friendship" or "respect" of the person being questioned. No wonder, was his opinion, that fans want better information.

There is another aspect of this for small, specialised magazines such as the one I used to publish. Very often the sources you go to for the best stories are also the same people who run the businesses that your title depends on. We all know there should be a firewall between advertising and editorial and we all also know that without the ads our readers won't be getting any magazine at all. Tricky but not insuperable if carefully managed.

Where does John Lloyd fit into this? Well, back when he was editor of the FT's magazine he wrote a book called What The Media Are Doing To Our Politics. The main thesis of this book was that

Journalists and broadcasters have become self-serving, power-crazed hypocrites who exaggerate, sensationalise and distort almost every aspect of the news they supposedly 'report'. And their prime target is the honourable profession of politician, those selfless individuals whose only thought is to serve their country. (Taken from Frank Kane's Observer review)

Nowadays Lloyd runs the Reuters Institute For the Study of Journalism, at Oxford University, a body that has become well known for ... for ... Perhaps for not quite living up to expectations. I'd like to know how he views our politics in the light of our media's latest attack. (But then I can ask him directly in a few weeks because he is an external examiner at the place where I work.)

Labels: business_journalism, Danny Kelly, fourth estate, John Lloyd, political reporting, sports reporting

Thanks to Charles Arthur for leading me to this – a piece by Dean Starkman, former business reporter, that castigates business reporting and then comes in for a good kicking by Mother Jones's commenters.

The bigger point is how easy it is for specialised journalists (of any speciality) to get too close to the interests of their sources and forget about the interests of their readers.

However, Starkman captures something very important when he says, "Increasingly, business coverage has addressed its audience as investors rather than citizens, a subtle but powerful shift in perspective that has led to some curious choices." In the UK this is exactly what the Thatcher government did with the sell-offs of British Gas, BAA, etc. Enough people could buy enough small numbers of shares to feel that they were somehow really connected to all this stuff that was going on in the City of London and Wall Street. Share prices suddenly mattered to individuals who previously would have had no reason to be concerned, just as the expansion of house ownership (not necessarily a bad thing in itself, of course) hitched us all up to the chariot of perpetual property inflation.

This is part of the bigger picture of how the context for journalism and what journalists do has changed. It was not one of the political lobby who blew open the Westminster expenses scams, it was probably someone in the fees office who was put down once too often by a snotty MP and who has wreaked the best revenge possible – getting a good shilling from the Telegraph and bringing down his tormentors. (This is, naurally, pure speculation but it's a good story don't you think?)

Labels: B2B, business_journalism, fourth estate, share price, specialised

Three things to consider:

1) Professor Tim Luckhurst (University of Kent, formerly editor of The Scotsman) writes about newspapers' role as the Fourth Estate in Scotland and, whether he meant to or not, more generally:

The country's broadcasters are ill equipped to fill the vacuum left by its failing newspapers. Broadcasters can never do the job of a free press. At their best they provide balanced, informative news. It is to newspapers that citizens must turn for investigation, exposure and crusading zeal.

(taken from his article in the Independent)

2) Max Hastings (former editor of the Daily Telegraph and London Evening Standard) writes about the disastrous effects of financial market deregulation on his pension fund:

One of the illusions of the Thatcher era, now laid bare by the economic crisis, was that of "financial self-empowerment". Margaret Thatcher aspired to give individuals discretion over their finances, above all pensions. Even back in the 1980s, this notion rang alarm bells with some of us. I suggested to a financial journalist friend that most people were neither eager to accept responsibility for their own money, nor fit to do so. He, a good Thatcherite, shrugged and said that we would just have to grow up, wouldn't we?

(taken from his article in the Guardian)

Before we get to item 3), can anyone else see a disjunction in those two extracts? To me, they say, yes newspapers can be investigative crusaders, guarding the interests of the entire nation, but, actually, they usually choose not to be because ... well, because of all sorts of non-journalistic reasons. Proprietorial preference, perhaps; the desire to remain "one of us", maybe.

Was Mr Hastings not in a position to express his concerns to the Telegraph reading public? Perhaps he would like to tell us why he did not. Some people have tried to blame Robert Peston for precipitating the current crisis but it looks to me as though it goes back to the period Mr Hastings writes about, when newspapers such as the one he edited signally failed to act as a Fourth Estate.

And, despite Professor Luckhurst's protestations, perhaps that is one reason why people have turned away from buying information from newspapers - because they have come to realise that newspapers are rarely "at their best" and hardly ever offer "investigation, exposure and crusading zeal".

3) Peter Wilby writes about B2B/Special Interest magazines in the USA:

Most of their subscribers are members of professional elites. And in the US, at least, they are gradually taking over the coverage of politics. Press coverage is being remoulded to serve an elite that will pay a premium price to keep tabs on how politicians and civil servants are affecting elite interests. News of how democratic institutions work is being segmented and privatised. And this process began 20 years ago, long before the recession and even before the growth of the internet.

(taken from his column in the Guardian)

Although this segmentation and privatisation (which is how magazines work) is presented as a bad thing, surely it provides a model for newspapers? One reason the Daily Mail is successful is because it is so tightly focused on a particular segment of British society; the same principle applies to the Financial Times. As Vin Crosbie noted recently: "Wonder why there r no good suggestions how 2save traditional newspapers? Bcause that generic package of news has bcome obsolete." (It was a tweet, so forgive the txtspk).

The generic package of news has become obsolete:

• Most newspapers have abandoned their specificity (as Tim Luckhurst notes in his article mentioned above) and much of their content is available elsewhere for free.
• Too many newspapers have voluntarily abandoned their role as the Fourth Estate (as Max Hastings admits, albeit inadvertently).
• Media-savvy readers have twigged that all reported news is partial. Once they have discovered the possibility of plurality (via alternative narratives, link trails, blogs, tweets, etc) the traditional model seems inadequate. However, specific interest groups still want to be served with specific information: architects want to know about issues that affect architecture; lawyers about issues that affect the law. This is still Fourth Estate stuff but applied to an audience that is actively interested and concerned. (If anyone is interested in tracing the history of this, I recommend Richard Ohmann's Selling culture: magazines, markets, and class at the turn of the century (London ; New York : Verso, 1996), which provides a thoughtful and informative analysis (see Chapter 7 in particular for the rise of the Professional-Managerial Class – Wilby's "elite").
  

Labels: audience, fourth estate, magazines, newspapers, niche publishing, readership, specialised