Columbia Journalism Review

America’s growing news deserts

As local newspapers have closed across the country, more and more communities are left with no daily local news outlet at all. Rural America isn’t the only place local news is disappearing. It’s also drying up in urban areas around the country.

In search of a local news solution

[Commentary] This issue of the Columbia Journalism Review is about what has happened—and likely will happen next—to one of America’s great national institutions, its local press. Just as the local-news financial picture seems more daunting than ever, new energy is building to address the problem. Is it fixable, or are America’s local newsrooms going away for good? What are the implications for open records, for accountability—for our democracy? This issue of CJR is one step toward answering those questions.

Legal thinking around First Amendment must evolve in digital age

[Commentary] The internet in its halcyon days was lauded as a open space that could promote free speech in the US and worldwide, but it is now a realm that has settled into domination by a few companies. As we enter an age in which the internet is fully integrated into our daily lives, the main channel by which we access information, a reconsideration of the values of the First Amendment is required.

This was the motivation for a symposium on May 1 at Columbia University called Disrupted: Speech and Democracy in the Digital Age. Attended by a mix of legal professionals, academics, and journalists, the message was clear: Legal thinking around the First Amendment must renew itself in the new era.

[Nausicaa Renner is editor of the Tow Center for Digital Journalism’s vertical at Columbia Journalism Review. ]

Reporter firing shows real threat to public-media independence

[Commentary] Not enough public media outsiders seem worried about the constituency that, in my personal experience and according to my reporting, actually does compromise editorial integrity: the organizations that hold stations’ Federal Communications Commission licenses. And there’s no better example of the cause for concern than the recent firing of Jacqui Helbert.

Helbert, a reporter at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga’s WUTC public radio station, angered some of the state legislators who hold the university’s purse strings. As Helbert pursues a lawsuit against the university, ShameOnUTC.org—a site launched after her termination—has provided jaw-dropping documentation of Helbert’s saga, including her surreptitious audio recordings of meetings with colleagues. The relationship between Helbert, WUTC and the University of Tennessee offers the public a laundry list of everything that can go wrong in a system where universities hold the licenses of—and therefore effectively own—47 percent of the public radio station organizations and 34 percent of the public television orgs. (Figures were provided to me by the Station Resource Group.) In the wake of Helbert’s firing, people across public media are reckoning with a serious ethical hazard that was built into their system—and that may be impossible to fully exorcise.

[Adam Ragusea is a journalist in residence and visiting assistant professor at Mercer University’s Center for Collaborative Journalism and hosts Current.org’s podcast The Pub.]

Spare the indignation: Voice of America has never been independent

[Commentary] Voice of America still operates under its congressionally-approved 1976 Charter, requiring it to report accurately, objectively, and comprehensively, and reflect a range of opinions. It carries what are called “editorials” reflecting US government positions, written by a special policy office at VOA. Over the decades, VOA has succeeded, to varying degrees, at making the case that its government-paid reporters are no different than those working for commercial media. But any notion that “whole of government” approaches can exclude participation by VOA, challenges common sense.

A recent Washington Post editorial, in support of a new agency TV program that is clearly part of the counter-disinformation effort, said staffs at VOA and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty are “made up of professional journalists … [who] do not want to be US propaganda tools.” Good for them. But the fact remains that every two weeks they accept government paychecks. And at the end of the day will be progressively more enmeshed with the national security and foreign policy objectives of the United States. Government-paid journalists can no longer pretend they are just like their friends at CBS, NBC, AP, NPR, Reuters, and others, or expect to be seen as such by those working for non-government media. That’s simply living in delusion.

[Dan Robinson had a nearly 35 year career at the Voice of America, serving most recently as senior White House correspondent from 2010 until 2014, congressional correspondent based in the US House of Representatives from 2002 to 2010, and chief of VOA's broadcasts to Burma from 1997 to 2002.]

The Platform Press: How Silicon Valley reengineered journalism

The influence of social media platforms and technology companies is having a greater effect on American journalism than even the shift from print to digital. There is a rapid takeover of traditional publishers’ roles by companies including Facebook, Snapchat, Google, and Twitter that shows no sign of slowing, and which raises serious questions over how the costs of journalism will be supported. These companies have evolved beyond their role as distribution channels, and now control what audiences see and who gets paid for their attention, and even what format and type of journalism flourishes.

This report, part of an ongoing study by the Tow Center for Digital Journalism at Columbia Journalism School, charts the convergence between journalism and platform companies. In the span of 20 years, journalism has experienced three significant changes in business and distribution models: the switch from analog to digital, the rise of the social web, and now the dominance of mobile. This last phase has seen large technology companies dominate the markets for attention and advertising and has forced news organizations to rethink their processes and structures.

In West Virginia, a state financial crisis poses the greatest threat to public media

While public radio stations across the country fret over the threat of federal-level funding cuts, West Virginia Public Broadcasting has its mind on other matters. A state-level proposal to zero out half of its $10 million budget had the network on the defensive this month. In West Virginia, which national media often portray as Trump Country Ground Zero due to its high proportion of Trump voters, you might expect that the rift is ideological. But the $4.6 million cut was proposed by Gov Jim Justice (D-WV) —a billionaire coal operator who coincidentally owes $4.4 million in back taxes to the state—and some Republicans in the legislature have been quick to come to the network’s defense. Instead of partisan rancor, the debate over public broadcasting here comes back to the state’s underlying financial crisis.

The Apprentice: Donald Trump and Joe McCarthy

[Commentary] Donald Trump was four years old when the word “McCarthyism” first appeared in print as shorthand to describe Senator Joe McCarthy’s penchant for lying, bullying, and trying to stifle dissent. A review of McCarthy, McCarthyism, and the ways in which the senator battled important media of his day shows how closely Trump has hewed to the McCarthy playbook in matters of style and substance, using similar tactics to polarize the country, pitting Americans against each other. That may help explain but not excuse the irony of President Trump accusing his predecessor, Barack Obama, of “McCarthyism” when he tweeted, without evidence, that Obama had wiretapped his phones at Trump Tower just before the 2016 election.
[Norman Pearlstine is vice chairman of Time Inc.]

Q&A: Garry Kasparov on the press and propaganda in Trump’s America

A Q&A with Garry Kasparov, former world chess champion, Russian pro-democracy leader, and chairman of the New York-based Human Rights Foundation since 2012.

Asked, "What do you see as the greatest threat to press freedom right now in Russia and the US?" Kasparov said, "As for America, the greatest threat is apathy. Trump may end up saving American journalism for a generation, indirectly of course, much as the resistance to him is already educating Americans about the separation of powers and why participating in politics matters even in the affluent free world. Market forces worked against quality journalism in the US because civic responsibility has been waning for decades. The extremists, the entertainers, and polemicists, were winning that free-market battle because the stakes in quality journalism were seen as very low by a majority of Americans. Suddenly the stakes have been raised very high, and I hope this means US citizens and institutions will continue to react by defending democratic institutions like the free press, and not by polarizing even further. Americans have taken their democracy and their affluence for granted for so long that they were vulnerable to someone like Trump. You can say the same for the media, which is still figuring out how to report on Trump accurately. If they don’t figure it out, Trump will only be the beginning."

US public broadcasting, target of Trump cuts, found its voice amid presidential scandal

The much-discussed President Donald Trump federal budget proposal zeros-out the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, along with the National Endowment for the Humanities and National Endowment for the Arts, both of which also support some public broadcast programming. What not everyone may realize is that the partisan threat to federal funding is at the core of public broadcasting’s origin story a half century ago—and that its first, and unlikely, prime-time stars won fame by allowing the most significant presidential scandal in our history to unfold right in America’s living rooms.

When it was proposed by the 1967 Carnegie Commission, an essential recommendation was that public broadcasting not be subject to the unpredictability and political pressures inherent in the annual congressional budget process. But President Lyndon Johnson'’s decision not to push for a dedicated, politically insulated funding source—like the kind of trust fund supported by an excise tax on television purchases that funded the BBC—meant the creation of a small but highly visible political football that has been kicked around Washington ever since. The Corporation for Public Broadcasting was established to provide a “heat shield” protecting stations and producers in the system from political pressures that could come with congressional appropriations—an approach that seemed especially wishful after President Richard Nixon took office.

[David M. Stone is executive vice president for communications at Columbia University.]

Relying on federal funding might be a fatal mistake for public media

Public media operations—and loyal listeners—are expected to put up a fierce fight against potential funding cuts. But hanging on to the hope that federal funding will always be around could potentially be a fatal mistake for local stations, former NPR President and CEO Vivian Schiller says. All public media players, she says, ought to double down on efforts to court listener support and philanthropic giving as a hedge against the continued, and perhaps complete, reduction of government support.

Schiller notes stations should move aggressively to pursue non-governmental revenue streams. “It would be irresponsible not to have those contingency plans in place, and even without the threat of federal dollars being pulled, it would be irresponsible to not begin to act on ways to replace that money through other sources,” says Schiller.

Is journalistic solidarity savvy or short-sighted?

[Commentary] A spectre is haunting journalism—the spectre of solidarity. For ages the idea of reporters banding together against a common adversary has seemed thoroughly alien to the character of American journalists. We’re back-stabbing, iconoclastic individualists. Could the Age of Trump finally change all of that? Can—and should—journalists join with reporters from other news organizations to meet the journalistic threats posed by Trump? Or to use the phrase of political activism, should reporters “resist”?

There’s a long history of attacks on the press that cried out for collective action, especially during the dark days of McCarthyism during the 1950s. Yet the experiences of the past are instructive—even heartening. They provide a road map of sorts for the rocky terrain that lies ahead.

[Gary Weiss is a New York-based investigative journalist.]

Journalism after Snowden: A new age of cyberwarfare

[Commentary] In the end, what kind of change did Edward J. Snowden bring about? In the realm of privacy protection, not much—at least so far. For all the talk on Capitol Hill in the summer of 2013—immediately after the Snowden leaks—about a reassessment of the balance between security and privacy rights, no significant legal changes to the authorities of the National Security Agency or the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court have passed Congress since the Snowden leaks...

In the end, Snowden’s legacy will be mixed. He wanted to be known for the changes he would bring about in altering the government’s monitoring of American citizens. That seems unlikely. But he opened the world’s eyes to a new world of surveillance and cyberwarfare. There, what he revealed cannot be stuffed back into a black box—and will change the way we view American power over the next decade.

[David E. Sanger is chief Washington correspondent of The New York Times.]

Breitbart editor slams mainstream media in Pulitzer Hall

A Breitbart new editor called the publication he recently joined “the most innovative and exciting source of journalism in America”, calling out mainstream media bias and inaccuracy while accepting no similar responsibility for the misleading and at times incendiary work for which his organization is criticized. “The real threat to public confidence in the media is all these demonstrably false stories that our colleagues have produced,” Breitbart economics editor John Carney told a packed audience at Columbia Journalism School. “I don’t think you’re reading a lot of false news in Breitbart.”

Carney asked his fellow panelists, “Do you think you have enough people who understand and sympathize with Trump’s worldview in your news organizations or do you think you are predominantly staffed by people who view Trump’s point of view as not just wrong but probably also evil?” To which, New York Times Washington Bureau Chief Elisabeth Bumiller responded, “Do you have enough people in your organization who disagree with Trump’s point of view?”

Study: Breitbart-led right-wing media ecosystem altered broader media agenda

[Commentary] The 2016 Presidential Election shook the foundations of American politics. Media reports immediately looked for external disruption to explain the unanticipated victory—with theories ranging from Russian hacking to “fake news.” We have a less exotic, but perhaps more disconcerting explanation: Our own study of over 1.25 million stories published online between April 1, 2015 and Election Day shows that a right-wing media network anchored around Breitbart developed as a distinct and insulated media system, using social media as a backbone to transmit a hyper-partisan perspective to the world.

This pro-Trump media sphere appears to have not only successfully set the agenda for the conservative media sphere, but also strongly influenced the broader media agenda, in particular coverage of Hillary Clinton.

[Yochai Benkler, Robert Faris, Hal Roberts, and Ethan Zuckerman are the authors. Benkler is a professor at Harvard Law School and co-director of the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society at Harvard; Faris is research director at BKC; Roberts is a fellow at BKC and technical lead of Media Cloud; and Zuckerman is director of the MIT Center for Civic Media.]

Putin, Politics, and the Press

The 2016 Presidential election, which upended voters, journalists, politicians, and special-interest groups, was remarkable for a number of reasons—not least Trump’s unconcealed contempt for the press, whose role was challenged again and again on the campaign trail.

The New York Times went further in a December 13 story detailing Russian efforts to disrupt the 2016 presidential election, describing “every major publication, including The Times,” as “a de facto instrument of Russian intelligence.” Running more than 7,000 words, the story broke down how, in 2015, hackers linked to the Russian government compromised at least one Democratic National Committee computer system; how those hackers later accessed the DNC’s main network and targeted people outside the DNC, most famously Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta; and how “by last summer . . . Democrats watched in helpless fury as their private emails and confidential documents appeared online day after day—procured by Russian intelligence agents, posted on WikiLeaks and other websites, then eagerly reported on by the American media.”

A recipe for journalism that works

[Commentary] The White House’s vicious attacks on the press and the often-timid response from journalists stem from the fact that, as a business, the press at this moment couldn’t be more exposed: Most of the biggest media companies in the country still haven’t settled on a business plan that works (and the smaller ones, in ever-larger numbers, are simply closing up shop); reporters continue to lose their jobs; and magic-bullet answers that once offered hope for turning things around—video or live events or virtual reality—seem to disappoint by the day. No wonder the ridicule from Sean Spicer and Steve Bannon, propelled by historically low approval ratings for journalists, has turned into an existential threat to journalism that is gleefully fanned by the commander in chief.

There’s nothing new on the horizon, no business-model savior set to rescue media companies at the very moment they are facing their most critical journalistic test. There are, though, strands of hope, little bits of ideas that are working, albeit in limited ways. By mixing and matching them, we can begin to compile a recipe for a new journalistic model that may work—emphasis on the may.

Q&A: Floyd Abrams on the battle for the soul of the First Amendment

A Q&A with attorney Floyd Abrams, who represented the New York Times in the 1971 Pentagon Papers case and went on to become America's leading First Amendment litigator.

Asked, "Shortly after the election, you said Donald Trump 'may be the greatest threat to the First Amendment since the passage of the Sedition Act of 1798.' Why is he a threat?" Abrams responded, "I don’t think we’ve had anyone who ran for the presidency in a manner which suggested the level of hostility to the press than did Donald Trump. And we certainly haven’t had any president who has made as a central element of his presentation while in office a critique of such venom and threat as we’ve heard in the last month. Now, we don’t know how much is talk and what if anything he may do as president apart from the impact of his words. That in and of itself is important. Any effort to delegitimize the press as a whole and any recitation of statements such the one just a few days ago, saying that the press “is the enemy of the American people,” itself raises serious issues even if he never took any legal steps against the press. Words matter. And the words of the president matter particularly. So a president that basically tells the people that the press is its enemy is engaged in a serious—and deliberately serious—threat to the legitimacy of the press and the role it plays in American society."

Can donor-funded newsrooms be truly independent?

[Commentary] Around the world, media outlets are taking millions of dollars from private donors and foundations in order to pay for news. But in a world where news credibility has become a burning issue and government leaders in Hungary, Turkey, Venezuela, and the US (among others) have gone on the attack against journalism, the question of funding sources and the effect they have on media independence is an important one.

Funding quality journalism and giving reporters the resources to carry out important work is critical. Many of the publications that receive donor funds uncover important stories overlooked by mainstream publications, and many wouldn’t exist without foundations. But as donor-media relationships increase and with it editorial influence by foundations, it’s crucial to have a thorough understanding of how this financial model influences news coverage. Best practices may help to make the model of donor funding media better for both sides and help protect independent media.

[Anya Schiffrin is the director of the Technology, Media and Communications specialization at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs. ]

4 steps newsrooms are taking to boost diversity

Here are four steps newsrooms are taking to boost diversity:
Design fellowship, internship, and classroom opportunities geared towards people of color.
Open up new pipelines for talent.
Connect with the communities we cover.
Train your internal talent and groom them for leadership roles.

Journalism and Race: ‘Everyone genuinely seems to care. Collectively, not much changes.’

[Commentary] The decade of the 1980s brought more diversity to the New York Times and most American media than at any point in the nation’s history. It was a tough fight against strong foes, we found: It turned out that all efforts and programs to fight and reduce racial discrimination in the workplace faced interminable resistance that rendered questionable results. I cite my career in journalism, particularly my work in affirmative action, as living example of the contortions that the battles to break down racial and racist barriers have gone through the past few decades. I, for one, never dreamed my chosen profession would be confronting the exact same racial issues in the 21st century as it did in mid-20th century and earlier periods.

[Paul Delaney is an award-winning reporter, editor, and journalism educator. He worked for 23 years at The New York Times, and was a founding member of the National Association of Black Journalists.]

How Mark Zuckerberg could really fix journalism

[Commentary] What independent journalism needs more than ever from Silicon Valley is a significant transfer of wealth. Publishers agree with this notion, although the loudest proponents are often those who would benefit the most from it. It is not necessarily enough just to re-energize existing institutions (although the involvement of Jeff Bezos and his money at The Washington Post has been, from a civic and journalistic point of view, wholly beneficial). Mark Zuckerberg has a taste for grand gestures and “moon shots,” in Valley parlance.Now, he has a chance to make a generational intervention which will dramatically improve the health of America’s journalism.

Remaking independent journalism requires funding that is independent of individuals or corporations, has a longtime horizon built into it, and offers complete independence and as much stability as possible.

[Emily Bell is Director at the Tow Center for Digital Journalism at Columbia Journalism School.]

What does Trump have in common with Hugo Chavez? A media strategy.

President Trump is an avowed admirer of Vladimir Putin, and his administration is under investigation for its ties to Russia. But Trump’s governing style in the first few weeks has more in common with the Latin American populists who have risen to power in the last several decades. In particular, Trump’s unrelenting attacks on the media and attempts to undermine its credibility and paint it as an opposition force are straight out the Latin American populists’ playbook. Feb 16’s press conference, in which he railed against “very fake news,” was a case in point.

Flynn resignation shows leaks under Trump are working. Keep ‘em coming.

[Commentary] National Security Adviser Michael Flynn was forced to resign Feb 13—just three weeks into the job—following the revelation that he lied to both the Trump administration and the public when he said he did not discuss outgoing President Obama’s sanctions on Russia with that country’s US ambassador just after the election. But here’s the important part: It turns out it wasn’t the lying that got him fired; it’s that his lying leaked to the press.

The Washington Post reported that the acting attorney general told the White House weeks ago that transcripts showed Flynn likely misled administration officials. It wasn’t until the public found out he lied—based on a torrent of leaks from inside the administration in the past week—that Flynn was forced out. Speaking to the press about confidential and classified material is a risky and often courageous move. Many people, especially those close to the Obama administration, were highly critical of whistleblowers like Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden in the past. But it’s now more clear than ever that we will need more people like them in the next few years if we really want to hold the Trump administration accountable.

[Trevor Timm is the executive director of Freedom of the Press Foundation]