The Bluegrass and Beyond

The boss’ email popped into my BlackBerry just as the smiling young lady walked into the school office to escort me to her journalism class. I would have to read it later.

I spent the next hour talking with the smart, engaged students who produce The Lamplighter at Paul Laurence Dunbar High School. They wanted to discuss ways to make their monthly newspaper more interesting, relevant, inclusive and professional. I had a wonderful time.

Afterward, as I walked to my car, I read the boss’ email. It was an update on the latest round of job cuts at the Herald-Leader, which will be announced soon. It also said that, for the first time, most of those who keep their jobs will have their pay cut.

I was glad the high school students didn’t want to talk about the future of journalism, because adults ask me about it all the time. They hear about the Rocky Mountain News closing and the San Francisco Chronicle on the brink and they ask, “What’s happening to newspapers? Will the Herald-Leader survive?”

It’s complicated, I tell them. It has to do with changes in the economy, technology and the ways people communicate. Nobody knows how it will all turn out.

The irony, I tell them, is that there has never been a bigger audience for Herald-Leader journalism. Print circulation has slipped, but online readership has soared.

The Herald-Leader staff’s work is no longer confined to once-a-day, regionally distributed ink on paper. We now report news and tell stories instantly to a worldwide audience with as much copy, photos, audio and video as we can produce.

What’s more, readers comment on stories as soon as they’re published online, offering additional information, corrections and their own views. It has made journalism better and more interesting.

But as technology has changed the way journalism works, it also has changed the way advertising works. That has dramatically changed the news media’s business model.

You see, the money to pay for journalism has never come from journalism; it has always come from advertising. Companies now have more ways to advertise and, in a bad economy, less money to do it with.

That means revenues have fallen for newspapers, radio and TV stations. Online advertising isn’t as profitable as with print or broadcast. Online ad revenues are growing, but not fast enough to make up the difference.

Blogs, social networking and video-distribution Web sites have given everyone a voice, and that’s great. But journalistic reporting and commentary have been swept up into a larger universe of “media” that has blurred the lines between journalism and entertainment, marketing and advocacy.

Much popular “journalism” these days isn’t journalism at all; it’s show business, more focused on maximizing profit than in seeking truth, informing the public or promoting healthy discussion.

Take, for example, Fox News Channel’s flag-waving, rah-rah coverage of the Iraq War, or the CNBC “personalities” who touted stocks and glorified CEOs rather than doing in-depth reporting and skeptical analysis.

It’s no wonder people are confused, because journalists haven’t done much to expose these frauds or explain journalism’s values to the public. It’s sad that some of the best media criticism lately has come not from journalists but from a comedian — The Daily Show’s Jon Stewart.

A decade ago, the Herald-Leader’s news staff stopped growing and started shrinking.

The same thing happened at radio and television stations. Lexington TV news has largely abandoned public affairs reporting to focus on crime, tragedy, sports and weather. There’s precious little reporting on commercial radio anymore; it’s all “talk.”

WVLK still has talk show hosts who discuss local issues, often based on the Herald-Leader’s reporting, but WLAP seems to have redefined its mission as right-wing political advocacy.

When people ask me if this newspaper will survive, I tell them I’m confident it will. The Herald-Leader remains profitable because no other advertising vehicle in this market comes close to its reach. As long as it has the journalistic muscle to be a must-read for Kentucky’s engaged citizens, it will maintain that reach. As the economy improves, advertising will return.

Much of the Herald-Leader’s current financial squeeze is the result of debt the newspaper’s parent, The McClatchy Co., took on a couple of years ago to buy its previous owner, Knight Ridder. I can’t complain; I welcomed the McClatchy deal.

Some people think local media ownership is always best, but I’m old enough to remember when the Herald and Leader were locally owned — and not very good. Outside ownership has some disadvantages, but it also can insulate journalism from powerful local interests and protect a news organization’s credibility.

I’m proud of the Herald-Leader. Reports about wasteful spending at Blue Grass Airport are the latest of many examples of local public-service journalism you won’t find anywhere else. I expect that work will continue, even with fewer people left to do it.

Newspapers aren’t about the paper, they’re about the news. As the old sayings go, good newspapers afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted, print the news and raise hell. They celebrate success, shine a light on problems and hold government accountable to the public. They tell a community’s stories, and they provide informed commentary that sparks public discussion and makes democracy possible.

Good journalism is too important to disappear. So what’s the new business model to support it? I don’t know, but I’m confident somebody will figure it out. I’m also confident there will be plenty of young people — at Dunbar High School and elsewhere — with the intelligence and commitment to do the work.

The national perspective

The Pew Research Center puts together an annual State of the News Media report. The latest report was published his week. Click here to read it.

Last week, we marked the seventh anniversary of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. This week, we should note an even more significant milestone.

Wednesday marks the 221st anniversary of the signing of the U.S. Constitution, the document that is the foundation of America’s bold experiment in self-government.

Ironically, when the Constitution was signed on Sept. 17, 1787, it didn’t include the most important part: The first 10 amendments, known as the Bill of Rights. That’s because many Founding Fathers didn’t think it was necessary to spell out citizens’ rights and liberties.

James Madison, the future president, was among those who insisted that a Bill of Rights was essential. He waged a tireless four-year political battle that has been chronicled in the book James Madison and the Struggle for the Bill of Rights by Richard Labunski, a University of Kentucky professor.

It’s a good thing Madison succeeded.

Over the years, some presidents and other powerful officials have found the Constitution an inconvenient obstacle to achieving their goals. In most cases, the U.S. Supreme Court reeled them in, as it did with some of President Bush’s efforts to subvert the Constitution.

While I worry about rogue leaders who trample on citizens’ rights and freedoms, I worry even more about citizens who don’t seem to care.

The University of Kentucky’s Scripps Howard First Amendment Center will mark the Constitution’s anniversary Tuesday and Wednesday with programs highlighting the First Amendment.

I’ve always considered the First Amendment the most important part of the Constitution. In many ways, its 45 words sum up what makes America great: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

I’m shocked by how many people think the First Amendment gives Americans too much freedom. You know who I mean: the people who think religious freedom should apply to one faith but not another, and those who think some speech should be silenced, or that the government should be able to tell journalists what they can or can’t report.

Such attitudes are reflected in an annual poll conducted by the First Amendment Center at Vanderbilt University in Nashville. The 2008 poll will be released Wednesday, but the center’s executive director, Gene Policinski, gave me a preview. The national telephone survey of 1,005 adults was conducted between July 23 and Aug. 3, and has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.5 percentage points.

Policinski said 21 percent of Americans think the First Amendment goes too far in the rights it guarantees. And about 40 percent think the press has too much freedom.

I find that frightening, not so much because I’m a journalist, but because I’m a citizen.

Still, it’s an improvement over what people told pollsters during those scary post-911, Patriot Act days, when twice as many people thought First Amendment freedoms should be curbed.

Policinski attributes much of the public’s negative attitudes toward press freedom to well-publicized incidents of bad journalism. “But, then, newspapers are one of the few institutions in our society that correct their problems in full view of the public,” he said.

Another factor is perceptions of “bias” in the media, both left and right. Those perceptions have increased in recent years as the role of journalism has been blurred — especially on cable TV and talk radio — by media companies and personalities more interested in advocacy, ideology, entertainment and profit than good journalism.

This is a tough time for the traditional news media — newspapers, magazines, television and radio. Digital technology and a slumping economy have taken away some of the advertising revenue that has always supported good journalism.

Nobody has figured out yet how to make much money with Internet journalism, but the technology itself could prove to be best thing that ever happened to free speech and press. Anyone with a computer and an Internet connection can now have a worldwide voice.

The First Amendment Center’s poll found that the percentage of Americans getting most of their news online has grown from 2 percent in 1997 to 17 percent. And most of those polled said online news can be just as good as news delivered in more traditional forms.

That’s good news for news organizations as they shift more content online. But it also means citizens must become more sophisticated and able to sort credible information from spin and propaganda.

Most of those surveyed thought bloggers deserve the same rights as traditional journalists. In many ways, bloggers are the 21st-century equivalent of the 18th-century pamphleteers the Founding Fathers had in mind when they ensured freedom of the press.

Our nation’s challenge now is to protect Internet free speech from government censorship and business manipulation. But for that to happen, citizens must understand that it matters — and that the future of American democracy may depend on it.