Olympic spoilers, journo-fundamentalism, and civic value
The influential new media thinker Dan Gillmor today took offense after some readers requested that The New York Times stop putting the names of Olympic winners in headlines and blurbs on the main page of its website. He was put off by the suggestion that NBC’s TV rights and the network’s decision to air the most popular events during the evening should affect the way other media organizations do business.
I am usually on the side of defending the principles of journalism, but I found myself disagreeing with Gillmor’s construction of “real journalists” versus the money-motivated “fantasy world” of tape-delay television. I put some thought into a comment on his site, and thought I would put it here as well.
I think there’s a difference between sports and entertainment news and news on public affairs. I, for one, neither watch NBC’s coverage nor read more timely coverage of the Olympics: I don’t care who wins! But I am a graduate of a journalism school and a young veteran of reporting in several media. I understand the drive to put things out there quickly. Timeliness, I was taught, is an important element of newsworthiness.
The argument that allowing people to structure their information in a different bundle is offensive to journalism, however, depends on the idea that timeliness trumps other values in news. I think the most important value of news is its civic function.
Do entertainment and sports news serve a civic function? If you believe that community identity and cross-cutting ties are a key element of U.S. democracy (which puts you in the company of de Tocqueville and Robert Putnam), then the answer is yes. But does timely reporting online matter in this context? I think there may be a civic, social capital-based argument for letting people wait for the NBC coverage, so that they will watch these things together.
Is timeliness more important than the civic outcome? Elements of newsworthiness do not always serve us well; witness the speed- and conflict-fueled daily political crossfire. My point here is that if “journalism” is a form to be defended, we must ask why. To the extent that fundamentals of journalism were developed in an era of daily newspapers, I think it’s important to ask whether a reliance on the fundamentals serves the same purpose now.
I know I am not alone in reevaluating the pillars of newsworthiness that the late Professor Dick Schwarzlose introduced me to as an undergraduate journalism student. Gillmor is far more forward-looking than most. I think we do, however, need to keep in mind that the defense of journalism as an institution is motivated by civic outcomes. (Paul Starr last year in The New Republic gave eloquent voice to this perspective.) Fundamentals of journalism are intermediary goals and must be adjusted if conditions change.
