Who Defines Journalistic Narcissism?

At the Aspen Ideas Festival this week, Andrew Sullivan said,

Journalism has become too much about journalists.

True. It’s not just that newspapers are covering their own demise as thoroughly as Michael Jackson’s. This is about the mythology that news needs newspapers – that without them, it’s not news.

In an offhand reference about the economics of news, Dave Winer wrote,

When you think of news as a business, except in very unusual circumstances, the sources never got paid. So the news was always free, it was the reporting of it that cost…. The new world pays the source, indirectly, and obviates the middleman.

This raises two questions: both whether news needs newsmen and whether journalists and news organizations deserve to be paid.

I tweeted Winer’s line and Howard Weaver then started a discussion with this tweet:

Is it news if it’s not reported? I don’t think so.

I don’t think he’s saying that the reporting needs to be done by a professional, but he is saying that reporting is what makes news news. Does news need the middleman?

Steve Yelvington just tweeted that

The Washington Post ’salon’ debacle is a clash between myth and reality on so many levels: 'The select few who will actually get it done.’ Being needed.

The realization of that myth – the myth of necessity – hit me head-on when I read an unselfconsciously narcissistic feature in The New York Times this week about the room where the 4 p.m. news meeting is held. Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger has likened that meeting to a “religious ceremony.” The Times feature certainly acted as if it were taking us inside the Pope’s chapel:

The table was formidable: oval and elegant, with curves of gleaming wood. The editors no less so: 11 men and 7 women with the power to decide what was important in the world.

Behold the hubris of that: They decide what is important. Because we can’t. That’s what it says. That’s what they believe.

I was trained to accept that myth: That journalists decide what’s important, that it’s a skill with which they are imbued: News judgment. I worked hard to gain and exercise that judgment. The myth further holds that no judgment of importance is more important than The Times’; that’s why, every night, it sends out to the rest of newspaperdom its choices. News isn’t news until it’s reported and it’s not important until The Times says so.

But why do we need anyone to tell us what’s important? We decide that. What’s important to you isn’t important to me. Why must we all share the same importance? Because we all shared the same newspaper. There is the wellspring of the myth: The press.

I am trying to cut through these many myths about news so I can reexamine them. In something I’m writing now for another project, I say:

To start, it is critical that we understand and question every assumption that emerged from old realities – for example, that news should be a once-a-day, one-for-all, one-way experience just because that’s what the means of production and distribution of the newspaper and the TV broadcast necessitated.

And:

Owning the printing press or broadcast tower used to define advantage: I own and control the means of production and distribution and you and don’t, which enables me to decide what gets distributed and forces you to come to me if you want to reach the public through news or through advertising, whose price I alone set with little or no concern for competition.

No more. The press has become journalism’s curse, not only because it now brings a crushing cost burden but also because it led to all these myths: that we journalists own the news, that we’re necessary to it, that we decide what’s reported and what’s important, that we can package the world for you every day in a box with a bow on it, that what we do is perfect (with rare, we think, exceptions), that the world should come to us to be informed, that we deserve to be paid for this service, that the world needs us.

The journalistic narcissism that extrudes from the press extends to so much of the journalist’s relationship with her public. Jay Rosen just tweeted his headline for Plain Dealer Connie Schultz’ return of spitball (below):

A blogger was mean to me so that means I’m right.

John McQuaid tweeted that he feared I was

only abetting Connie Schultz’s effort to turn a real debate into a bloggers vs. MSM culture war.

He’s right. Schultz didn’t address the substantive objections to her hare-brained and dangerous scheme; she made it about her.

Oh, I know, this is all a big set-up for your punchline: A blogger is talking about narcissism? Heh. Isn’t blogging the ultimate narcissism? But who called it that, who made that judgment? Journalists, as far as I’ve seen. When they talk, it’s important. When we talk, it’s narcissism. What we say can’t be important – can it? – because we’re not paid and printed. But I don’t want to replay the blog culture war, which I keep hoping is over. I want to question assumptions, to find the cause and effect of myths.

And that’s what Winer is trying to do when he reminds us that the important people in news are the sources and witnesses, who can now publish and broadcast what they know. The question journalists must ask, again, is how they add value to that. Of course, journalists can add much: reporting, curating, vetting, correcting, illustrating, giving context, writing narrative. And, of course, I’m all in favor of having journalists; I’m teaching them. But what’s hard to face is that the news can go on without them. They’re the ones who need to figure out how to make themselves needed. They can and they will but they can no longer simply rest on the press and its myths.

: LATER: Good discussion in the comments already. I particularly like this from Craig Stoltz:

At the WaPo, where I used to work, the story conference room was decorated with (1) the metal frame with sticks of backwards type that was used to print the “Nixon Resigns” front page [it is said that that wall had to be reinforced to bear its weight--myth?]; (2) a framed Post advertisement from the early 70s reading “I got my job from the Washington Post,” which Gerald Ford was good-natured enough to sign; (3) two columnar shelves of important tomes written by Post staffers over the years; and, yes, (4) a polished wooden table whose craftsmanship and sheen suggested the Pedestal of Truth.

No coffee was allowed in the room.

Confession: Every time I was in that room I felt inspired, breathed in the myth, absorbed the history and mission that made the Post such an extraordinary institution [and which makes these week's "salon" disaster so heartbreaking].

That room and the myth it conveyed may have made me a better journalist.

I suspect it made me a more arrogant, and therefore ultimately vulnerable one.

: In Twitter, Aaron Huslage asks:

How is curating journalism different from the NYT editorial meeting? isn’t it, at heart, picking ‘what’s important’?

And I responded:

Now it doesn’t have to be one-for-all. And it’s not necessary what’s ‘important’ (as the NYT says) but ‘relevant’ (Google’s goal).

: Juan Antonio Giner takes apart the Times room: an analog space for a digital age.

: Tim Russo responded to Schultz, though she refused to respond to him.

: ANOTHER great comment, this one from David Weinberger:

May I add one more, related, myth to your collection, Jeff? Here goes: It’s possible to _cover_ the day’s events.

This is just a different way of putting your formulation “One man’s [sic] noise is another man’s news.” But I think it’s worth calling out since the promise of global sufficiency is a big part of traditional newspapers’ promise of value to us: “Read us once in the morning, and after going through our pages, you will know everything you need to know.” (Do radio stations still make the ridicule-worthy “Give us 8 minutes and we’ll give you the world?” claim.) Yeah, no newspaper would ever maintain that claim seriously if challenged — they know better than their readers (or at least they used to) what they’re leaving out — but it’s at the base of the idea that reading a paper is a civic duty. The paper doesn’t give us _everything_ but it gives us _enough_ that reading one every day makes us well-informed citizens.

The notion that newspapers give you your daily requirement of global news — which works to wondering, along with Howard, if there is such a thing as “news” — seems to me to be as vulnerable as the old idea of objectivity. Like objectivity: (1) It’s presented as one of the basic reasons to read a newspaper; (2) it hides the fact that it’s based on cultural values; and (3) it doesn’t scale well in the age of the Net.

Ultimately, this myth is enabled –as so many of the myths of news and knowledge are — by paper. Take away the paper and the newspaper doesn’t become a paperless newspaper. It becomes a network. That’s what’s happening now, IMO. From object to network … and networks are far far harder to “monetize” (giving myself a yech here) than objects….

Comments

[David H. Deans:]

Frankly, local TV newscasts are the most puzzling to me, and I live in a state capital. Is a traffic accident, a small apartment fire, or yet another act of domestic violence the "most newsworthy" insight for that particular day? Nothing else happened that topped these events, really?

Jul 06 09:16 AM

[swaps:]

In recent yeas we have seen prominent politicians pilloried in the press for taking a wife to a sexy night club (the Illinois senate candidate opposing Obama), paying for a pricey prostitute, having a child out of wedlock, having a mistress, going to Argentina to meet a soul mate not the wife. etc etc.
It is ironic you discussed media in Colorado because the establishment media in that state a few years ago agreed to cover up the fact that the sitting governor had sired two children out of wedlock with his girl friends. He agreed in turn not to run for office again.
Yet, the same media played up former Gov. Roy Romer meeting his girlfriend BJ at an airport parking lot, which caused him no harm for he was in his second term.
What was not probed by the Colorado media was whether the two paramours of the protected governor were state employees or if state money was involved. It goes without saying that covering it up still left the governor open to control and manipulation due to this "secret" which was never seen fit to print.
The Rocky Mountain News recently shut its doors. Are the people of Colorado now less informed? No.
One of my sources for the stud muffin governor agreement was an officer of the Denver Press Club.
Journalists are two-faced and unaware of the fish bowl in which they swim.
I disclose that I am a retired newspaper reporter and editor myself.

Jul 06 10:35 AM

[patriotaxe:]

"But why do we need anyone to tell us what’s important? We decide that. What’s important to you isn’t important to me. Why must we all share the same importance?"

That statement troubles me. It is an echo of the philosophy of Fox News - no other news source is giving you the "truth" you want to hear, so we will.

Tailoring news gathering and delivery to suit narrow audiences is a dangerous trend. Blogs do that, cable networks now do that, and the "mainstream media" (and why is that phrase now uttered with a sneer?) respond to the narrowly targeted sound bites by repeating them, word for word, without further exploration or challenge.

Yes, a newspaper or a news magazine can be just as narrowly focused. What we're losing are the regional and local newspapers that offered a wide variety of viewpoints on a breadth of international, national and local issues.

I firmly believe that our democracy is best supported and sustained with a highly-informed citizenry, voters who understand several different facets of an issue. It requires trained and ethical journalists to found and operate newspapers like this - we are watching it all slip away.

Jul 06 11:55 AM

[Darrell Tod...:]

I like your post a great deal and have written my own commentary on it, though I realize I'm drawing conclusions that go beyond your intent.

pulaskicountyweb.com/s...

While the post-1920s professionalization of the news media through formal journalism training certainly had its advantages, homogenization of opinions certainly was not one of them. We professionalized legal training in the 1800s through the creation of law schools rather than "reading for the bar" through apprenticeships with already-practicing lawyers, but we certainly didn't make all lawyers into cookie-cutter conservatives or liberals.

So what went wrong with journalism schools?

Answering the "what," "why" and "how" of that question is less important than dealing with the massive change in access to information that is giving basically any competent reporter -- well-trained or otherwise -- access to as many people as want to read his (or her) website.

We're well on our way toward the free-for-all of journalism that happened in the 1800s and gave us newspaper wars and "yellow journalism." Long term, that's probably just a return to the way American politics have been conducted for most of our history until the last century, and especially the last half-century with only one newspaper in even our large cities. But short-term, it's going to create some major political uproars as people get used to everybody from Matt Drudge and NewsMax on the right to the Huffington Post and Daily Kos on the left being able to inject unfamiliar voices that wouldn't have made it through the gatekeepers of the traditional media.

Jul 17 11:54 AM