The 20th century “hardened an artificial distinction between professional journalists and everyone else.” The 21st century has crashed that down.
That’s from “We’re all journalists now,” a book written almost 20 years ago in 2007 by lawyer and constitutional law scholar Scott Gantt. As he wrote: “In a sense, we are returning to where we started.”
Gantt’s thin volume is a valuable representation of what was changing then. Below I share notes for future reference.
My notes:
- 2007: “The lines distinguishing professional journalist from other people who disseminate information, ideas and opinions to a wide audience have been blurred, perhaps beyond recognition, by forces both inside and outside the media themselves. Whatever the causes, it is harder than ever to tell who is a journalist.”
- Shield laws extend to only professional journalists
- “Yet even without a federal shield law, the national government has scores of rules and regulations that favor professional journalists over others. These include: Department of Justice guidelines that impose higher standards for subpoenaing “members of the news media” than other citizens; federal regulations that limit or prohibit travel to certain foreign countries (such as Iraq) but exempt ” recognized newsgathering organizations”; and even the Supreme Court’s own rules that for years permitted no audience members other than journalists credentialed by the Court to take notes during oral argument. Although many thoughtful observers embrace the view that professional journalists should be routinely afforded rights and privileges unavailable to others, I believe it is misguided. The circumstances in which it is necessary and justifiable to extend preferential treatment only to them are few. We should no longer accept the routine extension of special perks and protections to professional journalists that are denied to others seeking to engage in essentially the same activities. The First Amendment is for all of us–and not just as passive recipients of what the institutional press has to offer.”
- AJ Liebling in May 14, 1960 New Yorker: “Freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one”
- these technological advances are converging with a series of social and economic forces to transform journalism. This transformation should help bring into focus a reality we somehow lost sight of — that journalism is it endeavor, not a job title; it is defined by activity, not by how one makes a living or the quality of one’s work. Although we are not all engaged in the practice of journalism, any one of us can be if we want to. In that respect, we’re all journalists now.”
- Examples of journalists going to jail to protect sources
- “The center of thinking within journalism in not completely within the newsroom anymore.” Lew Friedland Wisconsin Madison
- 1792: postal subsidy for periodicals
- Penny Press started in the 1830s, as production let big numbers at low cost relying on advertising (New York times, Chicago Tribune and Baltimore sun all started as penny press) penny press popularized domestic news
- By 1830s: 1200 newspapers, 90 of which were dailies, and newspapers were 95% of weight of material mailed through the postal system
- Fact gathering techniques like the interview were widespread by 1900, other accountability trends accelerated after WWI
- Objectivity had cemented itself by WW2 (as I’ve written about)
- As Michael Shepardson wrote in his book The Sociology of News “objectivity seemed a natural and progressive ideology for an aspiring occupational group at a moment when science was God, efficiency was cherished and increasingly prominent elites judged partisanship a vestige of the tribal 19th century. “The National Press Club was formed in 1908, the first chapter of what is known today as the Society of Professional Journalists was organized in 1909, in 1922 the American Society of Newspaper Editors started. The first journalism school, the Missouri School of Journalism, was founded in 1908 by Walter Williams, who also authored the Journalist Creed (1914). Within a decade after the Missouri school opened, there were 80 more journalism programs around the country. As early as the 1950s, the press was described as the fourth branch of government. The truly adversarial press reputation emerged in the McCarthy era and grew stronger during the Vietnam war in Watergate
- The transition from independence to objectivity to adversaries of the government was a defining feature of the journalism that emerged the last century
- Prestige 20th century journalism formed at a time when they didn’t have to make money, they fulfilled brand lift for companies that owned several publications and for broadcasters fulfilled FCC requirements. Corporatization required profit at a time it was going away
- Downie and Kaiser in 2002 News about News: “too little news in the news”
- Elements of Journalism: the “ new danger is that independent journalism may be dissolved in a solvent of commercial communication and synergistic self promotion”
- James Fallows: “quiet consumers’ boycott of the press”
- A 2006 study led by Indiana university: 2004 presidential election coverage by Jon Stewart was as substantive as broadcast TV newscast
- The web is inexpensive, unregulated and many to many, unlike the telegraphy and radio and TV transitions of the past
- 2005 America Online survey: 16% of bloggers said they were interested in journalism; 2006 Pew Internet and American life project: 34% of bloggers considered blogging a form of journalism
- Jan and Feb 2007 polling: 30% view blogging an important source of news and information (over 40% for those 18-29), 55%+ say it’s important for future of journalism. (65% for those 18-29)
- Center for Citizen Media
- “Dozens of citizens have taken workshops on reporting basics as part of the Madison Commons, a project led by a journalism professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Another professor, at Ohio University’s Scripps School of Journalism, is recruiting and training citizens in three rural villages in southeastern Ohio to create a monthly newsletter and a Web site on local government, schools, business and organizations, as part of the Route 7 Report. The University of South Carolina School of Journalism and Mass Communication has joined with the Hartsville Messenger, a twice-weekly publication serving an area of twenty thousand people in that state, to form Hartsville Today, a project to involve citizens in “community storytelling” and “community conversation,” envisioned as a pilot to develop insights for other smaller papers that consider “bringing in readers as journalistic collaborators.” J-Lab: The Institute for Interactive Journalism, at the University of Maryland’s journalism school, has partnered with the Knight Foundation in forming the Knight Citizen News Network, a self-help Web site that seeks to guide “citizens who want to start their own news ventures” and “open the doors to citizen participation for traditional news organizations seeking to embrace user-generated content.”
- UGC is showing up in new places, like “cable giant Comcast, which joined forces with the Web site Facebook.com to create a series from user generated content that will appear online and through Comcast video on demand service”
- Matt Drudge breaking the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal (over Newsweek opting not to) was to online what Kennedy assassination was to TV, says Michael Kinsley
- The 20th century “hardened an artificial distinction between professional journalists and everyone else”
- “In a sense, we are returning to where we started”
- Nicholas Lemann 2006 New Yorker article “Amateur Hour” on “journalism without the journalists”: “According to a study published last month by the Pew Internet & American Life Project, there are twelve million bloggers in the United States, and thirty-four per cent of them consider blogging to be a form of journalism.”
- Apple vs Doe 1: who gets journalist privilege?
- In 2006, blogger Josh Wolf imprisoned for not sharing video with police (no journalism shield law)
- James Madison wrote that “a popular government without popular information, or the means of acquiring it, is but a prologue to a farce or a tragedy or perhaps both “
- This is called the “structural model” of the press, in which it is a necessary component of government; the related “watchdog” mode puts it as a surrogate of the general public ; the “speech model” is about exercising the first amendment (supreme Court Justice, William Brennan wrote that the press is often just “simply a collection of individuals who wish to speak out, and broadly disseminate their views” ) or “open press model”
- Douglas Carter’s 1959 book first called journalism the fourth branch of government
- First amendment’s legal protections were fuzzy early on: freedom of speech and of press were phrases once used interchangeably and it was largely for books and pamphlets; justices themselves said little important decision making until 1919; the clause technically says Congress can’t limit but the 1868 14th amendment equal protection clause seemed to usher in our sense of widespread freedom of speech ; it was all about freedom of expression first not speech or press