SAVE American Journalism

The business model of American journalism is collapsing. Fast. Should you care? And if you did, could you do anything about it? Yes. Yes. Oh, my, yes! That's why I'm here -- to invite you to join me, in this scary but promising time, to do nothing less than SAVE American journalism. Grandiose? Yes. So is the title of my Manifesto [pdf]. But suitable to the scale of the challenge. Or so it seems to me, after 35 years in the business of American journalism. But wait ­ this is no old-timer's brief for Journalism As We Have Loved It; I've been at least something of a rebel. I've issued (not to mention elicited) plenty of criticism.

What a challenge, to talk about Traditional American Journalism to a community of folks on the Web ­ where journalism's many flaws are all too well known. So the Boston Globe is losing money. So NBC is cutting staff. So Knight Ridder is gone. There is a whole new world out there being born, and citizens' voices to be heard. This is an exciting time, not one for wailing and gnashing of teeth.

Nonetheless. All of us who care about our communities, our social interactions, our country's place in the world ­ all of us rely on a sound and steady supply of information. That supply will be made up of all kinds of streams, from presidential pronouncements to community carwash press releases, from advertising to the wide woolly world of those who mull and meditate and pronounce. But we will always need this thing called journalism. This craft undertaken at newsrooms across the country from which reporters go forth to nose around in courthouses and schoolrooms and boardrooms. This creation of original content, mediated and moderated, shaped and distributed in the public interest.

Yes, yes, journalism is flawed. Nobody knows that better than those of us who've long done it (and then critiqued it!). But its high points are no less indisputable. The decoders of tax bills and of budgets, the witnesses to war, the diggers-out of state secrets that the powerful yearn to keep. This is expensive stuff, this kind of work, and it is now genuinely threatened. The media model we came up with over time in this country ­ commercial media companies underwritten by advertising ­ is failing. Eyeballs and advertisers are moving over here to the Web. New models are emerging, but that takes time. Meanwhile, how do we guarantee the continued production of original work in the public interest?

As everybody reading this is straining to say, there are lots of answers: We are going to see different kinds of media ownership. Citizens will play stronger and stronger roles. Journalists will have to rethink their relationship with the people they serve. And on and on. And that's my point. There are lots of answers. At www.annenbergpublicpolicycenter.org you'll find 50 or so. They're ideas, really, to get discussions started among different communities. There are roles aplenty ­ for investors and educators, for newsmakers and news consumers, for the most rebellious of bloggers and the most intractable of journalists.

Please meet me there, oh fellow citizen of this unsettling time, at my immodestly named Manifesto, and check out those Action Steps. Typical of us legacy-media types, we haven't quite gotten our site interactive yet, but we will, very soon. We'll be posting progress along these various paths. We'll need your views on the action steps we've thought of, and your suggestions for others. I hope you'll join us.