WORKS IN PROGRESS

A Matter of Fact

12 Questions about the future of journalism

Has any institution in American life been more endangered by the rise of the Internet than serious newspaper journalism? What are the implications for American democracy if our best papers don’t pull out of the economic tailspin that has resulted in large buyouts or the layoffs of careful and experienced journalists? Where will the sort of reliable reporting that is now routinely poached by television and the Internet come from? Journalist Bill Kovach, who is a senior counselor to the Project for Excellence in Journalism and a founder of the Committee of Concerned Journalists, has long pondered these problems. He is a former Washington bureau chief for The New York Times, a former editor of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, and a former curator of the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University. He offers a dozen questions below on the future of journalism—and of our democracy.


1. Has language been freed of journalism’s unelected gatekeepers only to fall prey to those who proclaim and propagandize, who offer self-serving advertisements or self-referential assertions rather than the kind of independently verified information that emerged from the Age of Enlightenment?

2. Will political advertisements, YouTube videos, and television comedians such as Jon Stewart supplant the printed word as the preferred form of communication about public affairs?

3. When news devolves into a fragmented private dialogue among family and friends in cyberspace, can journalists think of new ways to help people make sense of overabundant, undifferentiated information?

4. Do journalists recognize that distribution is now determined by the portability of technology and by the end user, and that reported material and analysis must now be organized to serve many differing audiences?

5. Supreme Court Justice Learned Hand said that in a democratic society we “have staked everything on the rational dialogue of an informed electorate,” and philosopher Hannah Arendt added that “freedom of opinion is a farce unless factual information is guaranteed.” How, then, can journalists use interactive technology to help citizens participate in verification and discussion? Can new tools engage the knowledge and experience of citizens as reporters, analysts, advisers? Can journalists using synthesizing technologies help citizens solve community problems?

6. Will our public education system take on the responsibility of educating students to think critically about their role in self government and about the type of information that role requires?

7. Can journalists use images, sounds, data mining, narratives, and interactivity in ways that connect their most serious work to the public? Can journalists see this as an opportunity to help people unlearn some of what they are being taught by the popular culture?

8. How can public affairs be reported in a way that enables citizens to track its impact on policy or test alternative outcomes? How can journalists present engaging, verified information that diminishes messages of fear and self-indulgence?

9. Will Internet aggregators such as Google develop algorithms that filter out propaganda designed to mold rather than to inform public-policy decisions?

10. What would persuade bloggers and other citizen practitioners to develop a commitment to independent thinking, verification, and ethical standards?

11. Can newspapers find an economic model to replace the loss of advertising to finance the work of editors and reporters who substantiate what is reported?

12. Will the public realize that the news they now acquire for free will rapidly diminish in quality and value if a new way is not found to fund its production by careful practitioners?