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Giving a Speech?
You're willing... but when are you going to find the time to write it?
Well, we may be able to help. We have prepared five speeches that are
available to member newspapers free of charge.
Challenges Facing the Newspaper Industry (written before 9/11)
I wanted to start off with a joke about newspapers, but the only one I
could think of was "What's black and white and read all over?"
Unfortunately, in these days of four-color process printing, that's
really not relevant any more, so I guess I'll just jump right into my
talk.
The French have a saying, "Plus ce la change, plus ce la meme chose"
(ploo SLA shanzh PLOO SLA mem shos), which is a fancy way of saying
"The more things change, the more they stay the same." I mention this
because I recently read an article by a former editor of the
Chattanooga News who wrote "All over the world springs of discontent
are feeding rivers of doubt and our readers' doubt for realistic
interpretations of the stream of news is thoroughly understandable."
This editor goes on to say "They want to know -- they have a right to
know -- what is really going on; to get some sense of the moving
current rather than the surface eddies... They sense that we are in a
period of social upheaval and economic stress. They want a
three-dimensional picture of it, so that each can make a personal frame
of reference for a world of change."
George Fort Milton wrote those words in a symposium on public opinion in a democracy in 1938.
The world of the 21st Century is a vastly different place than the
pre-World War society Milton wrote about, but his words ring equally
true today. And we are a little more fortunate than the citizens of his
time, because we have so many more options to choose from for getting
our picture of what is going on around us.
But as the world embraces new technology such as the Internet,
newspapers are still as central to information transmission as they
were then. In fact, while some futurists predicted that the World Wide
Web would be the death of newspapers, print media have not only
survived, they have flourished. We have cemented a place on the web
because newspapers are uniquely suited among media to translate their
product to this new communications tool. Sure, there is streaming video
and MP3 files and graphical user interfaces that feature flashy,
spinning logos, but the web is still mainly a text-based medium for
most users who don't have the high-speed access that video feeds
require.
The web hasn't killed newspapers, if anything it has made them
stronger. There will always be newspapers, but someday that very term
-- "news paper" -- may be as anachronistic as the telephone "dial" and
the "tin" can. Perhaps someday there won't be any paper involved in
making a newspaper, but the news, the kind only a local newspaper
reports -- birth announcements, engagements, drain board meetings and
obituaries, for example -- will still be delivered in your hometown by
people who live there and raise their families there.
That's the good news.
But there is bad news. And that bad news is bad enough to threaten the core liberties that define the American civilization.
The threats to newspapers don't come from how the news is delivered, but rather how it is gathered, reported and edited.
The first threat is what we can call the "privacy paradox."
Privacy, in highfalutin' legal terms, is defined simply as "the right
to be left alone." It is the right of the people to have some aspects
of their lives not open to public discussion. In the midst of the
recent Monica Lewinsky scandal, we heard former President Clinton
assert to the American public that even presidents have private lives.
Maybe they do, my task tonight is not to debate that point.
As compiling data on private citizens becomes easier thanks to advances
in technology, we are seeing a paradoxical shift toward more jealously
guarding that personal information. But which institution has the most
useful personal information about us? Besides the local credit bureau,
it is probably the government, and government by its very nature must
be open and accessible to everyone.
Should your neighbor have the right to know whether you have a
concealed weapons permit? Maybe, maybe not. Should you have the right
to inspect the personnel file of the guy in the transportation
department who paints the yellow stripe down the middle of the highway?
What about your child's teacher?
Recently, Michigan passed a law that shields certain information about
crime victims. Few people would argue that crime victims don't have a
right to be treated with respect for their dignity and privacy -- in
fact, that's in our state constitution. But don't you want to know if
three homes on the next street over have been burglarized in recent
weeks? What about the alarm company that wants a list of all recently
burglarized homes because they may be interested in buying an alarm
system?
How can we balance the right of the people to know just what their
government is up to against the right of those same people to be left
alone?
Those are the kinds of questions we all -- not just those of us in the
media -- must struggle with as information becomes a more valuable
commodity.
The second threat is one we can call "Give the people what they want."
Like it or not, we are each attracted in some sense to the lurid,
gossipy details that make up the news. Importance is not the issue
here. Crime stories or the foibles of newsmakers make more interesting
reading than city council budget stories and Congressional tax cut
packages. Since before the time of John Milton, philosophers have been
talking about the sanctity of the "marketplace of ideas," where thanks
to freedom of speech, differing opinions and beliefs can be compared,
faulty ones discarded and correct ones embraced.
Newspapers, whether they care to admit it or not, are businesses.
Without readers, there are no advertisers; without advertisers, there
is no newspaper. But news is not just crime stories or lifestyles of
the rich and famous. Like it or not, city council budget stories and
drain board hearings have to be covered and those stories should be
read and understood. It would be easy to sell a newspaper that is
filled with nothing except gossip -- the supermarket tabloids prove
this.
Newspapers must not fall victim to this Siren song. Newspapers serve
their readers and themselves when they accurately report and accurately
portray the events in society. J. Roscoe Drummond, one-time executive
editor of the Christian Science Monitor summed it up this way:
"We must recognize that news must not only be written and selected on
the basis of its social importance, but it must also be headlined and
displayed in the perspective of its social importance."
Readers have an obligation to make sure their newspapers follow this
dictum. If your local newspaper is taking the easy way out by merely
repeating the police blotter and not carrying through on its
responsibility to accurately report on the events in the community, let
them know your displeasure. They will get the message. As Drummond
summed up: "Publishers, editors and subscribers may well reflect on the
failure of too many newspapers to use to good purpose the freedom which
is theirs and which is ours."
Finally, we are threatened by mediocrity.
Ask any newspaper publisher what is the most pressing problem facing
their newspaper and they will unequivocally respond, "finding and
keeping qualified people."
The crisis of competency is acute. That is not to say that the people
who work in journalism are hacks. They are not. The problem is that as
a career, fewer and fewer people are willing to enter into a job that
frankly, offers long hours, hard work and low pay. And who wants to
choose a career where you consistently fall at the bottom of the trust
and respect scale?
Scared off by this, or attracted by more lucrative professions, skilled
writers and editors are a scarce commodity in journalism. What they
don't know is that few jobs offer the chance to be a productive member
of society on a daily basis the way newspapering can. Every story a
reporter writes, whether it is an obituary or a "scoop" is important to
some reader, and we in the newspaper business need to do a better job
of communicating this to prospective employees.
We need to do a better job of training young people for the rewarding
career in journalism, too. How to identify, report on and write about a
news event are specialized skills that require training and we're
taking steps to adjust to the new world. But we have more work to do.
And the readers can help, too. When a reporter writes a story that
touches you, let them know it. Readers usually only contact the
reporter when something goes wrong and few professions require the
worker to place their creation out for public display like journalism.
I'm not saying that we should treat reporters and editors like
celebrities. That's counterproductive and facilitates the separation
between the reporters and the people they write for. But take a moment
to let them know when they get the story right, just like you would if
they got it wrong.
The threats that I've outlined here are not just threats to the
newspaper business. They are threats to our way of life. Newspapers are
an important part of society; the rights newspapers enjoy like access
to information and freedom of the press are the same rights you enjoy
as citizens of this great country. If newspapers fail, then we all fail.
I am confident that newspapers will not fail because everyone --
whether they are public officials, advertisers, readers or even
newspaper carriers -- recognizes that as newspapers go, so goes society.
Thank you.
Challenges Facing Newspapers Following 9/11
In December, 2001 Sacramento Bee Publisher Janis Besler Heaphy was
booed off the stage halfway through her commencement address to
graduates and California State University at Sacramento. The topic of
her talk was a healthy skepticism toward government. Apparently
students, still hurting from the September 11 tragedy were uninterested
in hearing anyone speak ill of the United States and their government.
It is astounding that adults -- and college graduates are by any
definition adults -- would treat a commencement speaker in such a way,
but it is even more shocking that such educated people would freely
choose the path of blindly following their government leaders.
I'm not preaching sedition or treason here. We all have a
responsibility to respect our duly elected legitimate government
leaders and to obey the laws they create. After all, we, the people,
chose those leaders or at least participated in the electoral process
that elected them. But respect for government does not mean blind faith
in that government, for eventually that blind faith will turn to fear
when we discover how much authority we have surrendered to the state.
The old saw about give them an inch and they'll take a mile holds
especially true for civil liberties. Time and time again, we've seen
what happens when citizens stand idly by as their liberties are eroded.
Had those California college grads not forced Janice Heaphy to end her
speech prematurely, they would have heard her conclude with the
admonition: --quote "Freedom of expression is one of our most cherished
American values. It sets us apart. It makes us great. ... But it can't
be taken for granted.
"America was founded on the belief that the freedom to think as you
will and speak as you think are essential to democracy. Only by
exercising those rights can you ensure their continued existence."
--unquote.
In order to practice freedom of expression intelligently, we need
information. Often, information comes from the government. The data the
state controls allows us to hold our public servants accountable. And
not only does that information protect us as citizens, it protects us
as consumers, too.
Consider these facts: In 1971, the federal government, prompted by a
FOIA request and subsequent lawsuit, released information proving it
knew Red Dye Number 2 was a carcinogen. The dye was removed from the
market.
In 1972, after a FOIA request, state and federal government agencies
turned over thousands of documents which resulted in the resignation of
Vice President Spiro Agnew.
In 1978, prompted by a FOIA request and lawsuit, the federal government
released information proving that it knew the Ford Pinto had a
potentially fatal flaw in its gasoline tank. The car was recalled.
In 1982, after a FOIA request, the federal government produced research
linking aspirin and Reye's Syndrome in children. The result was a
mandatory warning label on aspirin bottles.
Freedom of Information Act requests are not simply the purview of
journalists. In 1991, the last time anyone counted, the General
Accounting Office reported 1.9 million FOIA requests had been filed
with the federal government in the preceding year. Those requests came
from people who wanted to know things like "What does the FBI have on
file about me?", "What chemicals were found in the ground around the
old gas station near my house?", "How good is my child's teacher?" or
more whimsical requests such as "What documents does the National
Security Agency have concerning flying saucers?" By the way, the answer
to that FOIA request was simply "No records exist." Do you believe that?
Access to information doesn't necessarily require a FOIA request. In
World War II, journalist Ernie Pyle wrote some of the most touching and
insightful news articles while accompanying soldiers at the front. In
fact, Pyle died at the front lines of that war. In Vietnam, journalists
were free to travel wherever they wanted, and often their stories
portrayed government ineptitude or misconduct as well as heroism and
sacrifice.
The generals learned their lessons from allowing reporters free rein
and began restricting access to wartime information. During the
invasion of Grenada back in the 1980s, journalists were forbidden to
travel to the Caribbean island and were instead briefed by Pentagon
press aides. During the Gulf War a decade later, journalists were
literally spoon-fed information that the military wanted them to have.
We heard about how successful the Patriot missiles were at shooting
down Scuds, only to learn years afterward -- from FOIA'd government
reports - that what we saw and what we were told were untrue. The
Patriots were useless against Scuds -- a World War II-era rocket.
In the aftermath of September 11, access to government-held information
has been severely curtailed under the guise of protecting the citizens.
To be sure some of the information that was freely available before the
attacks can be useful to terrorists, but that same information is
useful to schoolchildren, businesses, newspapers, and those same
citizens the government seeks to protect.
I think James Madison said it best when he wrote -- Quote "A popular
Government without popular information or the means of acquiring it, is
but a Prologue to a Farce or a Tragedy or perhaps both. Knowledge will
forever govern ignorance, and a people who mean to be their own
Governors, must arm themselves with the power knowledge gives." --
Unquote.
Can you imagine what Madison would think about the CIA's denial of a
FOIA request for the recipe for invisible ink our country's spies used
in 1919? I wonder what he would say about the law that says for twelve
years after he leaves office, the President of the United States has a
monopoly on access to his papers. In other words, Presidents then are
free to peddle their memoirs, use their papers for money. President
Clinton sold his memoirs for $9 million. At the end of twelve years,
however, those papers -- which were generated with public funds, by
public servants, belong to the public.
I bet Madison would be shocked and saddened.
The people and their government must all work together to ensure that a
citizen's desire for privacy and the state's need to protect residents
do not fall victim to a reckless pursuit of information. But
notwithstanding these legitimate concerns, we must be careful to not
draw the curtains of secrecy so that citizens are prevented from
evaluating the performance of their public officials.
In short: we must not destroy public trust in government in the process.
As U.S. Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis said in the case of
Whitney v. California, -quote "Those who won our independence
believed...that public discussion is a political duty... it is
hazardous to discourage thought, hope and imagination; that fear breeds
repression; that repression breeds hate; and that hate menaces stable
government..." -- unquote.
Withholding information -- even in the name of state security -- can
breed distrust. In this time of uncertainty, leaders should work to
instill confidence and faith in our institutions.
The next time you hear of a government official who wants to deny
access to public information, stand up and tell them how you feel. Make
sure they understand openness, not further closure, will help preserve
the American tradition of democracy. Remind them that they derive their
power from the people, and that the people deserve, no, demand to be
informed of the actions of their public servants. To do any less would
allow the forces of evil to gain an even greater foothold in our
society.
Diversity in Reporting
Increasingly, newspapers are faced with the question of how we can
bring a diversity of subjects, news sources and viewpoints, not only to
news holes but also to feature sections -- comics, books, movie and
theatre reviews, obits -- sections in the entire paper.
Newspaper publishers must be concerned about ensuring that the picture
of America's nation, and for that matter the earth, is fully diverse
and fully represented. In a world where media is converging, where
increasingly even local publications are getting international
readership via the Internet, we simply cannot present ourselves as a
parochial service.
Take for example, the use of sources in news stories. As Christie
Haubegger of Latina magazine recently pointed out: "What fascinates me
is the lack of balance, and by that I mean how encouraging would it be
for me, as a reader, to see a Dr. Sanchez quoted in a story about heart
disease?
"You need to know your market, not just the total market. Look closer
and find your Latino lawyer's association. Do they have sources for
you? What about the Latino medical association? What about the Latino
nurses association? We have all of these groups. There are directories
of them. They all have Web sites. You can find tons of resources. It
just takes the courage to break out of your current Rolodex."
In the 1947 Hutchins Commission report on journalism, Hutchins talked
about the need for constituent groups to be able to recognize
themselves. That's exactly it in terms of coverage -- to be able to
recognize yourself. It's more than saying "well, 40 percent of my
audience is African-American, so 40 percent of the stories should be
about them."
Clarence Page once wrote that "let's not forget the "hyphen" when we
talk about diversity. We are African-American, Irish American, Asian
American, Native American, but we are American...Too many editors talk
about how to include blacks in the paper as if blacks were like Natives
Americans on a reservation, a sovereign nation. We are still part of
the American story, and I think we need to have black voices on the
pages for the same reason we need to have Native American voices."
We, in the press find that we can be very aggressive in tracking down
the fire department that doesn't have enough African-Americans or
Hispanics or Latinos or Asians, or if there are not enough in the FBI.
And, as newspapers took great pleasure in pointing out that although he
may very well have brought together a diverse staff to the White House,
President Clinton's top seven advisors were all white. How many of the
top positions at those newspapers were filled by whites? Not just the
publishers, but the executive editors and editorial page staffs and
especially in the metro desks?
If we don't use the op-ed and the editorial pages to reflect the
diversity of the communities we cover, then we're cheating ourselves
and our communities. Newspapers trying to reach out to stay alive, to
be a part of changing America, need to have these voices. We talk about
community journalism a lot now. It's a great opportunity to lower that
wall with our local communities, to include local voices in the paper,
to encourage people not just to write letters to the editor but also to
write op-ed pieces. The most common complaint a publisher hears is "My
newspaper doesn't care about local news." The editor may look at the
paper as a journalist and say there's lots of local news there, but
life and politics are 85 percent perception. If the public doesn't
perceive the paper as caring about the community, then the paper
doesn't care about its community.
In conclusion, the answer is fairly simple but the execution will be
difficult: Instead of trying to sweep race under the rug, we need to
confront just how much it has to do with our way of thinking as
Americans every day -- and make that part of the story.
Thank you.
What the Heck Do We Do at a Newspaper, Anyway?
My task this evening is a simple one. The assignment I have been given
is to tell you, without boring you to tears, how we manage to fill our
paper with news every day, in the same community where your children
come home from school and you ask them "what happened in school today?"
and they respond "nothin'" and your spouse comes home from work and you
ask "How was work today?" and they answer "fine" and you drive around
and think "nothing ever changes here, this is the most boring place on
earth."
Believe it or not, we encounter the same problems. Our children tell us
"nothing ever happens in school" our spouses say "nothing happened at
work," and we drive the same roads you do and think "nothing ever
changes here."
But we have the unique job of coming up with something new every day
and regardless of how we feel we know that tomorrow we'll have another
16 or 20 blank pages to fill and it will look pretty silly with nothing
but white space between the ads.
So, as reporters, we dig. We talk to people. We train ourselves to see
how things change even when the change is infinitesimal. We also go
places most people don't go. Some of us are regulars at county drain
board meetings. Others know the names of all of the members of the
township library board. That's OK. That's our job.
Change is inevitable -- except from a vending machine -- and reporters
are taught from the beginning to look for trends and to report on them.
A good reporter doesn't wait for the news to happen, he or she goes out
and finds it before it happens. In the business we call those "trend
stories" and they are some of the most difficult to write. These are
the stories that should make the reader think and go "hmm." A trend
story is more than reporting on the latest fad, it's noticing that a
lot of the birth announcements released by the hospitals list single
mothers and finding out if our community is different from similar
communities in that regard. A trend story is noticing that the same
graffiti keeps turning up on street signs and talking to police to see
if we have a gang problem.
[INSERT RECENT TREND STORY FROM YOUR NEWSPAPER HERE]
Another type of news is the feature story. You've all read them -- the
stories that make you smile or cry or want to help. Features are the
stories that highlight the unusual or notable people in the community,
or the events that just don't qualify as "hard news."
Most reporters have a love-hate relationship with feature stories. When
they find the subject and want to do the feature, it gives them a
chance to shine. When the editor finds the subject and assigns it to a
reporter, it turns into work.
Hard news stories are the ones that usually get the big headlines. They
are the stories that reporters don't usually have to dig to find. These
are the court and crime stories, the fires and government meetings.
Most hard news stories are formula-driven. Tomorrow morning, take a
look at the front page of the paper. It will be filled with hard news
stories written locally and globally. Almost all of them will begin
with a one sentence paragraph we call the lead. It summarizes the story
as succinctly as possible, telling who, what, when and where. The next
paragraph -- again probably one sentence long -- usually answers the
"so what" question. The third graf is probably a quote from someone
involved in the story.
Those one sentence paragraphs can explain why journalists do so poorly
in traditional English composition classes -- who ever heard of an
English teacher letting a student get away with a paragraph that had
less than three sentences?
All good hard news stories are written in what we refer to as the
inverted pyramid style. The most important material goes at the top,
the least important at the bottom. That's because sometimes stories get
cut for space. You've probably seen the real short stories inside the
paper that just seem to end without a conclusion? Chances are those
stories are the type that fit into the category of "all the news that's
printed to fit." The editor had a hole to fill and that story looked
good. Too bad there wasn't enough room to print the whole thing. Every
reporter has a story about how their masterpiece was butchered to fit
into a news hole that was too small.
Each section of the paper has its variations on the types of stories I
have described, whether it's the sports, business, lifestyle,
international news or local pages.
So, the next time your children come home and say "nothin'" happened at
school today, attack the problem the way a reporter would. Ask them,
what did the teacher do that made you laugh? What did he or she do that
made you mad? Did your friends do anything that deserved praise? What
was the most fun about school today? What was the least fun?
You'll probably find out that "somethin'" really did happen at school that day.
What is News?
As they were for Charles Dickens, so they are for American journalism: the best of times; and the worst of times.
The worst of times because of the nature of the big story that defines
our time: this new world war between the ideals of western civilization
and the dark and bloody interpretation of Islam by a growing number of
its most zealous followers. A war that transcends political boundaries
as it is waged in a cunning and cold-blooded fashion by fanatics
willing to make themselves the instruments of death. It is a war
without front lines that next could involve biological weapons or worse.
It is the best of times, for American journalism, because after the
attacks of 9/11 our profession--which had been undergoing a painful
identity crisis--regained its place as a critical component of a free
people to make enlightened judgments about their lives and the
direction of their government. The place of relevant, credible
information is unassailable in a civilized society. Within the work we
do, there is of course also a place for entertaining, distracting,
titillating, even silly information. But it should always be secondary
and not primary.
That is the compact that we have with you, our readers, and it requires
your commitment as well. I believe that among the many changes post
9/11 is a heightened awareness of and a greater appetite for the
substantive stuff of society and not merely the distracting.
These then are the objective facts of our time. We are at war, around
the world. That war is profoundly affecting the way we live at here
home. It is re-ordering priorities across a broad spectrum--political,
cultural, economic and personal.
Moreover, the war comes at a time when other defining issues are
reaching a critical mass in our society: the place of race in our
future and especially in our determination of who qualifies for what
jobs, what classrooms and what housing; the capacity of this nation of
immigrants to sort through the crush of people from other lands
desperate to come here for either work and or citizenship; the true
value of a corporate entity and the credibility of the capital markets
as they reflect the financial health of institutions; the reliability
of our health care delivery system in a nation with a rapidly expanding
population of geriatric citizens; a public education system that we
know is failing in too many places in its most fundamental mission;
natural resources--from the land to water to air and all the creatures
who exist there--in a struggle for survival against the pressures of
the population and an instinct for alteration instead of preservation.
Any poll of public concerns will place any one or combination of those
issues in the top tier of the survey. Yet in too many newsrooms,
they're widely regarded as too complex or too boring or too risky to be
worthy of much investment.
We in the media cannot long keep the compact that we have with the
American people if we choose only form, ignoring substance. Yogi Berra
was right: if we come to a fork in the road, we should take it. Form
and substance.
We have mastered the form. Now the imperative is to use that mastery to
connect the viewer to the matters and issues that most affect their
lives. In this new, more crowded news universe in which we toil, the
brightest stars will be those that shed the most light, not just the
most heat.
We all lived through the trial of O.J. Simpson and the funeral of
Princess Diana. The Lindbergh kidnapping trial, the Sam Sheppard murder
case and the marriage of Wallis Simpson to the Duke of Windsor created
the same climate of frenzy in American journalism at the time.
We may have known too much about Bill Clinton's sex life but not enough about John Kennedy's.
Even as this quantitative expansion of the news universe is
breathtaking in scope, it is the qualitative nature of this new reality
that draws us to this occasion and others. Does it represent a step
forward in the unending quest to know better the perils and
possibilities of the precious time that we have in this life, or is it
a retreat to the lowest common denominators of fear and titillation?
The short answer: it is all of the above.
However we organize our journalistic efforts and present the finished
product, we have an obligation to each other and to our readers to be
guided by certain well-defined and understood principles. Just as there
are fundamental principles of astrophysics that govern the behavior of
the real stars and real planets, so, too, are there fundamental
principles that govern--or should govern--our place and behavior.
First, news is change. What's new, what's different? But that alone is not enough. Is it important? Is it relevant?
Then, if it is new and important, is it also true? How do we determine and demonstrate the truth of what we're finding out?
If it is new, important and true, what is the effect and the context of
it all? Also, where does it fit? After all, daily journalism is also
about "Omigod, look at that!" The arresting picture, the unexpected and
riveting event that may not have lasting consequence, the moment of
humanity that is reassuring.
Finally, if it is new, important and true, how do we present it in a
way that our readers can be engaged by it and recognize it as something
they should know and want to know. Those principles are neither staid
nor toxic. They are critical to the health of the profession. They have
not disappeared, but their place is in danger of being diminished in
the daily struggle to master this new, so much more crowded and
competitive, universe.
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