Can serious journalism survive?
Veteran journalist John Stackhouse explores the industry’s future in new book
For those of us living through the digital revolution that has shaken media in ways few could envision even a decade ago, journalist John Stackhouse’s new book, Mass Disruption: Thirty Years on the Front Lines of a Media Revolution, may well be a downer.
But for journalists and readers, too, this book is an important recent — and uniquely Canadian — history of the global forces that have upended our media industry, particularly newspapers, and changed journalism forever.
Stackhouse, an award-winning veteran newspaper journalist and a former editor of the Globe and Mail and its Report on Business, has produced an insightful, elegantly written work that brings together his personal perspective from that lofty perch with smart analysis of the central question that matters much to journalists, readers and, indeed, to democracy itself: Can serious journalism survive?
Stackhouse, who shared his views on journalism’s future this week at a Canadian Journalism Foundation “J-Talk” with Buzzfeed Canada editor Craig Silverman, responded in advance to my questions. (Disclosure: I am co-chair of the CJF’s programming committee).
Following is an edited version of our email interview. The full interview can be found at thestar.com and on StarTouch, the Star’s new iPad app. Your book poses the question of whether “serious journalism” can continue? How do you define serious journalism?
Serious journalism is the pursuit of unknown truths about the events and issues that shape our society. Some of it is expository, some of it is explanatory. If there is a litmus test, perhaps it is consequence. As the late, great CBC journalist Barbara Frum once put it, journalism means telling us something we don’t know about something we care about — or should care about. Of course, that was a few decades ago, and the shape and style of serious journalism has changed, even if the substance hasn’t. Not only must consequential journalism be well told, and compellingly told, in 2015 it must strive for a visual dynamism and multiple dimensions and be immediately sharable. You repeatedly stress the longstanding importance of newspapers in producing serious journalism. Why is it so important that newspaper organizations find a way through this digital disruption?
I was surprised in my research to find that newspapers are still the leading actor in the journalism ecosystem. Compared to all media organizations, newspapers employ the most journalists, and spend the greatest share of revenue on journalism. In fact, one of the ironies for newspapers is that over several decades they spent a lot on journalism and not enough on technology, and have paid the price by losing ground to purely digital news operations.
It’s not just money, however. Because of the size of their newsrooms, most newspapers were able to establish a system of news beats and sections, each with their own discipline. Add to that the rigours of libel law — the sword hanging over every print newsroom — and you tend to get news operations that are well-suited to pursue the biggest and toughest stories, and do so responsibly. A critical challenge for newspapers is to transport their historic strengths from the analog past to the digital present. Optimistic, pessimistic, fatalistic, hopeful? Which word sums up your view of journalism’s future and why?
Hopeful. There is clearly a strong demand for excellent and unique journalism, and a good supply of it, although it can be harder to find. It’s just a matter of getting the economics right. Media need to make harsher choices around what they cover to ensure it is both excellent and unique. Media also need to do better gathering data about their audiences, to help advertisers see the value of their readership. And they need to enhance their engagement with readers and viewers, through events, extended publications, even merchandise. At a time when our relationship with most media outlets is more fleeting that ever, those media outlets need to use every means they can to deepen that relationship. publiced@thestar.ca