It's great news for those of us who worked at CBS News to see one of our own back at the helm. I have high hopes that Jeff Fager, the immensely talented 60 Minutes chief who has just been elevated to the newly created post of chairman of CBS News, can do something to stem the slide at the Tiffany network.
But it's not going to easy. I don't want to single out the troubles of CBS News, because I still work there from time to time as a freelancer. But the current state of journalism in this country is pretty bleak. Economic pressures and budget cuts mean that these days, many media outlets simply aren't doing a very good job of covering the news. It's not unusual today to see foreign news covered by a correspondent who is thousands of miles from where the news is happening. Too many journalists are satisfied with parroting wire service copy instead of doing original reporting. And there's just too little watchdog journalism... the kind of reporting that may take weeks or months and thousands of dollars to accomplish, but is one of journalism's most important civic functions.
But that's not the worst of it.
No, the real problem lies in the two vicious cycles this trend creates. The first of these is the drop-off effect: As the quality of news outlets suffers, readers find themselves with still less incentive to seek out those outlets' content. The natural result is that circulations and ratings diminish even further. This loss of audience puts even more downward pressure on funding, which in turn continues to reduce the quality of the reporting, which further alienates readers and viewers...and so on.
The second of these cycles -- the knowledge gap -- is more insidious, but it's one I've found hard to ignore in my hours spent teaching journalism at Fordham University since leaving full-time employment at CBS News in 2006. I've found that too many young and aspiring reporters don't really know what journalism actually means -- much less how to actually go about the process of creating original, high-quality reporting. And who can blame them? When there are so few examples of real journalism out there these days, it's easy to understand why young people today might think that journalism consists of rewriting the Internet, or be baffled about how to embark on a worthy path in their own journalism careers.
How do we solve those problems? Part of the solution lies in coming up with new economic models to support quality journalism. But another part of it is much simpler: despite the terrible economic pressures they're facing, organizations and journalists that create high-quality, original reporting will become standouts in this environment. They'll pull in awards, acclaim, and readers, and escape the downward spiral that might engulf them otherwise.
Proof: 60 Minutes, which has managed under Jeff Fager's leadership to continue to do hard-hitting reporting, which has kept the show relevant and drawn viewers. The show is still in the top 10 after more than 40 years, because it has the resources and influence to do reports that others can't. Scott Pelley, the marvelous correspondent for 60 Minutes, told me that he spent more than $200,000 to report about atrocities in Darfur. That report, which won an Emmy, is exactly the kind of journalism that keeps 60 Minutes must-see TV.
More proof: Rolling Stone magazine has seen its circulation creep up in the past two years when most others' has been tanking, thanks to aggressive, groundbreaking reporting by the likes of Michael Hastings and Matt Taibbi. Theirs are the kinds of stories that win awards, that readers recommend to friends and family members... and that make Rolling Stone subscribers feel that they're getting something in return for their hard-earned cash, a sensation that's all too rare among magazine readers these days.
But what about the other part of the equation: making sure that today's generation of aspiring journalists is empowered to help fight this downward trend in the coming years? Put simply, how do we ensure that tomorrow's journalists have the skills and understanding needed to do groundbreaking reporting? By trying to get the very best journalists to tell them how it should be done.
And that's where Mike Wallace comes in.
Recently, I had the honor of collaborating with the legendary 60 Minutes star in writing a guidebook aimed at young journalists. Our book, Heat and Light, was written in the hope that we could help educate budding reporters on how to do journalism right. Our idea was to produce a readable, concise book that crystallizes the best practices in the business, and passes on some of the techniques that made Mike's storied career so remarkable. After all, Mike may be retired now, but arguably no living journalist has had as long or as meaningful a career -- or is more worth emulating.
While Mike has written two memoirs, he's never before explained his views on how journalism should actually be practiced. And as a CBS News producer-turned-journalism professor, I knew first-hand exactly which questions students most need answered, and how radically their experiences with today's media differed from best practices. So Mike and I created this guide for anyone who's starting out. We culled our own experiences, and incorporated tips from two dozen other people, including journalists like Scott Pelley and the top editors of the New York Times and Washington Post. And we try to help budding reporters not only by explaining those key concepts in journalism, but by providing step-by-step instructions young journalists can use as they prepare stories.
Why the title Heat and Light? Mike says the best journalism contains both what he calls heat -- meaning emotion and drama -- and light -- meaning fresh information. And it's the combination of both heat and light in a story that makes it truly great. In fact, that very combo has been the secret formula to the long-term success of 60 Minutes. And if Jeff Fager can work his magic and focus the whole news division on creating reports with Mike Wallace's sense of heat and light, it may just be what pulls CBS News out of the doldrums.
Beth Knobel is assistant professor of communication and media studies at Fordham University in New York. Before that, she was an Emmy-award winning producer for CBS News in Moscow. For more information on the book, please go to www.heatandlight.org, or join our group "Heat and Light" on Facebook.
Sen. Chris Coons: The Alternate Ending to my Congressional Correspondents Dinner Speech
Some stories suggested that just about anything that contained a microprocessor (automobiles were cited in one article) would, like Cinderella’s carriage, become useless at the stroke of midnight, New Year, 2000. There were other opinions of course, but it appeared to me that a great many journalists flocked to the more sensational ones.
We need to get journalism completely out of the commercial realm, it should be a budget item that insists on affirmative action, so it represents all communities, leave the stories about dieting, crime and movie star shenanigans to the commercial media. Before anyone says NPR, they are sponsored by Foundations who do have a political mission.....
The BBC does this they are constantly criticized, they make mistakes but there are few Brits who would have it any other way..... I can already hear the screaming State run media... this is not the Soviet Union... yeh..but is just the News the sponsors want to hear any better
"Heat" is the problem. When "emotion and drama" are incorporated in a journalism piece, the reporters own views, bias's, opinions are shown. This is fine for editorial pieces, but not for standard reporting, which is what I believe the problem with journalism is today. Journalists today seem uninterested in the 5 W's, but rather their interpretation of the event, which again is more editorialism than reporting. I read recently the most popular stated goal of young journalists' reason for going into journalism school was "I want to change the world". Activism, not journalism is what we get today.
The news will follow reaction to a candidate's single imprudent or ambiguous remark for days, pushing to the periphery (to the extent is is discussed at all) the candidate's related historical positions, the details (if any) of what the candidate proposes, and the often documentable degree of accuracy of what is said. I sometimes see separate "Truth Squad" breakout boxes, but not so many adult questions about the problems we are actually obliged to solve.
I do want to say, though, that Youth Journalism International -- www.youthjournalism.org -- is devoted to training the next generation to be a whole lot better. It has student reporters in more than 40 countries and has done some topnotch stuff over the years, including Jessica Elsayed's dispatches from Egypt throughout its revolution.
But Youth Journalism International, a nonprofit in Connecticut, is usually just another overlooked gem.
What's needed more than anything is to have more sites devoted to finding and showcasing the stellar work that regularly slips through the fissures of the global media landscape. The Huffington Post sometimes does pretty well at unearthing new sources of information, but it usually doesn't. And few other sites try at all.
In the meantime, everyone who cares about journalism would do well to support outposts such as Youth Journalism International that are trying to make sure the next generation has a good handle on what it means to be a reporter.
I worry about what will continue to support those sources and so I subscribe to the local newspaper more to support that industry than to use as a principal news source. Obviously that is not enough. I want and need news that makes a difference in my life, and/or in the lives of others. A lot of TV and published "news" doesn't actually make all that much difference; or while it may point to portentous circumstances, does not offer much of a basis for understanding.
But after 18 days of marathon coverage in Cairo, Mubarak's decision to step down tested all journalist's understanding of the tentative relationships penetrating the Middle East. It is on days like this when it is so painfully obvious that most of the journalists today really could learn a lesson from the journalistic forces that came before them.
It was history, and people and comparisons, and you the person got to decide what you thought.
Can we bring those types of reporters BACK somehow?
Soon the quality of journalism slipped enough that opinion based "news" became the norm and we just look at news as being geared towards selective audiences without questioning whether we're getting the truth.
Another problem is that, with editors thinned out or just missing (Wash. Post is the top example), all of the gaps in knowledge and skill of fledgling reporters is gratingly apparent. The Metro section of the Post is awful, and the national news coverage is a shadow of its former self, with weakness painfully visible.
The basic question is who gets to put all of this crap out there? End of story.
News flash, 10 killed on I81, details at 11:00...Stay tuned for the details... Oh, even better than that. A boil water advisory is posted for "whatever county you live in", details at 11:00.
It is downright criminal that they get away with this BS.
Arrgh, it's just insane ↨ . Which way is up?