Citizen Pained

A colleague of mine forwarded this article from the Christian Science Monitor this morning, thinking that me and my fellow reporters would be incensed by it. In his piece, Robert Picard, a media professor at a Swedish university, claims that journalists should quit arguing that their work is inherently sacred and that they should be compensated accordingly. In Picard's view, mainstream journalism offers consumers little value over and above what they can get from the ever-growing number of alternative information sources, and thus journalists deserve the low pay that they generally receive.

Thing is, I wasn't incensed at all. In fact, I mostly agree with Picard. Mainstream media outlets have become complacent, unoriginal, repetitive and dull. They've been almost comically slow to adjust to the digitization of the world. And, faced with competition and the pressures brought on by decreased advertising revenues and a generally awful economy, they've mostly elected for safe, antiseptic storytelling or mindless partisanship. In a time when innovation, creativity and risk is required, the MSM has instead chosen to double down on the exact type of drivel that's rendering it obsolete.

Where I diverge from Picard is the placement of responsibility. His article focuses on journalists themselves, whereas I believe the problem lies higher up, at the ownership level, where the bean-counters count beans. It's all well and good to demand that reporters produce more value, but the suits have to understand that "value" in the journalistic sense isn't as easy to determine as it is for any old widget. The survival of the MSM in the digital age will require a fair amount of trial and error, as journalists slowly learn what they can do to differentiate their content and make it more valuable to consumers. That kind of experimentation tends not to go over well in boardrooms where the horizon extends no further than the next quarterly report. 

And as snobbish and bitter as it sounds, some blame also lies with consumers themselves. While entities like The Huffington Post have shown us that determined citizens can produce high-quality reportage and commentary, they've also highlighted the limits of citizen journalism. Sure, it's nice to know what Alec Baldwin thinks of the illegal sex trade and the crumbling auto industry, John Cusack's thoughts on Obama and terrorism and Kim Cattrall's support of military veterans, but what new light, beyond the glare of the celebrity spotlight, does their HuffPost work shed on these topics? I don't disagree that famous faces can generate welcome attention for important issues, but beyond that, the real value is created by seasoned reporters armed with reams of sober, relatively anonymous research. Even though HuffPost features many journalists who fit this bill, how can they compete with the celebrities and the trash? As I write this, two photo features - one debating the relative "hotness" of different celebrities while soaking wet, the other a "name-those-celebrity-breast-implants" guessing game - top the list of the site's most popular articles. If this is what consumers want to read, then maybe mainstream journalism really isn't marketable.

But ultimately, I don't subscribe to that pessimism. I agree with Picard that journalists need to do more to earn their keep, but I believe that, if given the mandate, the resources and the freedom from media owners to create more value, they will.