9 Journalism FROM INFORMATION TO PARTICIPATION John V. Pavlik Rutgers University Shawn McIntosh The College of Saint Rose Learning Objectives ¢ Describe journalism and its role in mass communication and society. * Outline important historical developments in journalism that affect how it is practiced today. + Discuss journalism today, including different types, and the effects of convergence. « Outline legal and ethical issues in the practice of journalism, particularly ethicalissues in the digital world. Explain some aspects of the business of journalism and how they affect the practice of journalism. Examine how convergence is affecting business models and careers in journalism. ‘Ten break and enters reported in North York last, ‘week (Oct. 25) The news industry has arguably experienced some of the biggest disruptions in the digital age.Between 2008 and 2020, U.S. newspaper newsroom employment fell by 57 percent,+ with many newspapers closing, greatly reducing staff, going to digital-only formats, or doing all three. Artificial intelligence, or Al, is the latest digital tool that simultaneously holds great promise for journalists even as it potentially threatens even more reporters’ jobs. The threat comes from the fact that many types of news articles follow a standard formula in terms of presenting information. The most important information goes in the first paragraph, or lead, and less important information follows using simple sentence structures and straightforward writing that is free of literary flourishes. Certain stories that rely heavily on data, such as sports, crime, or financial news, lend themselves easily to automated news story generation that produces written stories that are indistinguishable from what a human writer can do. With the increased use of Al-written news stories, some foresee even more layoffs of journalists. However, others see AI as actually helping revive journalism because it would free journalists from doing mundane yet labor- intensive work and let them focus on more complexand nuanced stories that only humans can do adequately. One principle that both human reporters and Al share is the access and quality of data that they retrieve. Reporters work on developing sources, using their knowledge and expertise and professional codes of ethics when critically examining the validity of the information they get. AI depends on the quality of the databases it draws from when generating automated stories, and if that information is incomplete, out of date, or inaccurate then it degrades the quality of the news story created from that data. Local crime stories are one arena in which some newspapers have been using AT. In April 2022, the Toronto Star newspaper started publishing automated crime stories on break-ins in the city using data from the Toronto Police Service, an organization required by law to protect privacy and to make data public. Advocates of the automated stories say the automation helps mitigate some of the low-quality human-created crime coverage of the past, claiming that too much crime coverage is racially biased and fear-based clickbait.# News organizations walk a thin line between providing a vital public service and thriving, or even surviving, as businesses that aresupposed to make profits. News organizations that are run as commercial enterprises have been accused of becoming too cozy with powerful business and political interests, and media critics argue that the public good would best be served if journalism was publicly funded to better meet its self-described role to “comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.” How well journalism is fulfilling its roles as public advocate and watchdog while providing impartial and thorough information remains a topic of debate in newsrooms and among the general public. These heated debates should be viewed as a sign not of the profession’s inherent failure but, rather, of its enduring importance in the digital age, as events in recent years show that journalism needs not only to inform the public but to encourage public participation. The many experiments being tried now with types of journalism and journalism business models attest to how relevant journalism continues to be. In addition to mobilizing the public, news is integral to three of the four main functions of mass communication: surveillance, correlation, and cultural transmission. To a lesser extent, journalism also serves the entertainment function. And because news consumption or participation is not a civic duty, many will engage only if it is an enjoyable leisure activity. Video 9.1 [Please note: You must be using an online, brow: eReader in order to view this content. ]9.1 What Is News? “Man Bites Dog,” an oft-cited headline in introductory journalism classes, suggests that news becomes news when it is extraordinary. News does indeed embrace the unexpected. But most news is largely predictable a day, a week, a month, or sometimes years in advance. Consider the types of news stories about any annual event, such as advice on holiday shopping or what the stars will be wearing to this year’s Oscars—a glance at news archives will likely uncover a very similar story the previous year and the year before that. Stories that affect the public interest also clearly constitute news: fires, accidents, recent discoveries, and corporate or political corruption, for example, such as in the case of the Panama Papers. Although defining news may seem easy, several issues arise when examining the nature of news. First is the frequent complaint that news dwells too much on the negative—crime, accidents, wrongdoing, and so forth. Although positive news, such as human-interest stories or new business openings, may also be criticized as “puff” pieces that do not adequately address significant concerns, an abundance of negative articles may send a distorted message that things are worse than they actually are. A focus on events rather than trends amplifies this problem. Although the overall annual crime rate may be falling, coverage of particular crimes, especially sensational ones, will stillbe pervasive. Trends are not as readily accommodated by the narrative structure of journalism that tends to rely on people, what they did or had done to them, and the consequences. Trends involve data, which journalism has not historically presented effectively, although this has improved with the growth of data-driven reporting and effective graphics. Critical media consumers understand that diverse people and particular forces, notably advertising and public relations, influence and manufacture the news. It doesn’t just happen. Historian and Pulitzer Prize-winning author Daniel Boorstin describes what he calls pseudo-events, events staged to attract media attention and influence news coverage, such as press conferences, marches, and rallies. What appears as news depends on various factors, including the newsworthiness of other events that day, the type of news organization, and even in some cases the political views of the owner. On a soft news day, when editors consider the day’s events not especially newsworthy, they will air programming or include human-interest stories. A flood in a distant country killing hundreds may appear on a “World News Brief” page on a slow news day but be omitted if there is important local news. How do editors decide that a popular local high school athlete killed in a traffic accident is more significant news than five hundred killed overseas? They try to determine what is of most interest to their readership. Journalists have an agenda-setting function, meaning their news choices influence what the public will deem important and discuss.Despite its strong public service mission, journalism is nevertheless subject to economic realities. Advertising has been by far the main source of revenue for news outlets for well over a century, and newspapers especially have had to resort to a number of strategies as they have lost advertisers to digital. These strategies include reducing the number of pages, publishing less frequently, reducing coverage, and laying off newspaper staff. Falling advertising revenues in traditional media outlets have still not been outweighed by the gain in digital advertising, forcing experiments in new journalism business models. Press conferences are held specifically to garner attention from the news media. View larger image