EDITOR’S NOTE: Listen to the complete story and learn a lot more about this topic on my Politics and Prejudices podcast, available now on Apple Podcast, Stitcher, Spotify, and available with video on YouTube and Lessenberryink.com.
**
Journalism: Downstream or Downhill from Here?
They say that living well is the best revenge, and Charles Eisendrath’s story is one of the best examples I know of a life well lived. He found a way to have a distinguished journalism career, and still have a rewarding life during and after it. When he dies, hopefully many years from now, I don’t think that on his deathbed he’ll wish he had worked just one more year at the Baltimore Sun.
And while I’m worried about what’s happening to journalism in this country, but I also aware that in some ways I am mentally and emotionally guilty of being set in my ways. Yes, I have to admit that secretly, I sometimes long for a world that would essentially be 1985 with Google.
But at least I have the good sense to know that I am, in many ways, an old fart. The FCC doesn’t regulate podcasts, and I am paying for this one, so I think I can get away with saying that. Still, I also try to keep in mind two sage observations:
When Ed Koch was first running for mayor of New York City, an elderly woman came up to him and said “Please make the city like it was.” Koch looked at her and said “Lady, it was never like it was.” More recently, Ariana Huffington, founder of the Huffington Post, was being grilled by a Congressional committee as to whether her internet publication was hurting journalism as a whole.
In her famous charming accent, Huffington said that while she hadn’t been around when Gutenberg first built his printing press, she imagined that the makers of stone tablets felt he was ruining publishing.
There is an explosion of access today, and I can find out more on the internet and see more on cable and Smart TV in my den tonight then anyone in 1980 ever dreamed possible.
But as I see it, there are two major problems facing journalism. The decline of traditional advertising-based revenue has hurt nearly all forms of old media, but has been hardest on local newspapers. There were plenty of bad newspapers in the old days, owned by cranks or characters who covered up for their crooked friends.
However today, there are a growing number of towns without any newspapers at all, which means no watchdogs to watch those city councils and school boards and others who have control over public policy and funds.
That’s less of a problem on a national or even a statewide level. You can, if you want to, find out more about what’s happening in Washington or Lansing or Columbus than ever before. But what is a problem is that there are no universally trusted news presenters, arbiters or even universally agreed on standards of truth,
Everyone can be a publisher, but there are few impartial editors.
Paul Krugman, the Nobel Prize-winning economist said last week “the GOP is now a thoroughly corrupt party … overwhelmingly fanatical, corrupt or both.”
He believes “the big question is whether America as we knew it can long endure when one of its two major parties has effectively rejected the principles on which our nation was built.” Journalism knows how to expose corruption.
But we don’t have any answers if the people elect not to pay attention. This is Jack Lessenberry. Thanks for listening; I hope to see you again soon.
