Pajamas Media: News Without Reporters

March 23, 2008 12:15 AM

Unnecessary?

Reporters are a dying breed, says Steve Boriss, and that’s a good thing. America got along fine without them once before.

by Steve Boriss

One of journalists’ recurring put-downs of bloggers is that they are simply recycling someone else’s news — that there will always be a need for reporters to produce it. Yet, America had a reporterless past and will likely have a reporterless future. And, news will be better for it.

We have lost perspective on what a reporter actually is — a middleman. On one side are news events. On the other are audiences who want to know about them. A reporter’s job is to move “the truth” from Point A to Point B as accurately as possible.

This middleman function, with reporters serving as mere links in a news supply chain, was never needed until fairly recently. Before the printing press was invented, we were all receivers and transmitters of news, spreading it by word-of-mouth. Soon after its invention, multitudes of mostly one-man print-shops, as a sideline, printed newspapers to supplement this word-of-mouth process. These printers wrote their own articles blending facts with opinion, much like bloggers do today. Others also contributed, often without receiving compensation or attribution — citizens, gossips, letter-writing “correspondents” from other towns, and similarly-operating foreign and domestic newspapers whose stories were simply lifted.

Since this is what news looked like at the time of the Founding Fathers, they gave no particular mandate to reporters, a function that did not even exist at the time. The “freedom of the press” they cited in the First Amendment was not about “the press,” but about everyone’s right to freely use a printing press to express their views without government interference, supplementing the free speech clause that allowed everyone to express their views orally.

The first full-time reporter in America did not appear until the 1820’s, after steam engines were integrated into printing presses. Suddenly, newspapers had to be run like businesses to achieve consistently high circulation levels to pay for equipment and keep newsstand prices low. Reporters provided the needed constant flow of consistently well-written articles.

For the first century of their existence, the public had a realistic view of what full-time reporters actually did and awarded them the appropriate, low level of status. Legendary editor Walter Lippmann wrote in 1919 that “reporting is not a dignified profession for which men will invest the time and cost of an education, but an underpaid, insecure, anonymous form of drudgery, conducted on catch-as-catch-can principles.”

But Lippmann was also determined to turn reporting into a profession. He urged us to “make up our minds to send out into reporting a generation of men who will by sheer superiority, drive the incompetents out of business” to be replaced by “patient and fearless men of science who have labored to see what the world really is.” He called for “professional training in journalism in which the ideal of objective testimony is cardinal” with reporters conducting “as impartial an investigation of the facts as is humanly possible.”

But at the same time Lippmann created a puffed-up image of reporters that has lasted for decades, he was planting the seeds of the role’s destruction. Despite their self-image as objective professionals, reporters have yet to create methodologies to back-up their claims. This is painfully obvious in the book The Elements of Journalism, the closest thing there is to journalism scripture, which shrugs-off an admission that every reporter has his own methodology for verifying facts. Now with alternative, challenging voices from cable TV, talk radio, and the blogosphere, the public increasingly understands that reporters are often biased and inaccurate, just like the rest of us. We are also relearning what Thomas Jefferson intuitively understood — the truth is more likely to emerge from a multitude of voices competing in a freewheeling marketplace of ideas than from elites offering their views of the truth drawn from their own limited knowledge and perspectives.

Now, the Internet is eliminating the reporter as middleman by connecting audiences directly with the real sources of news — politicians’ offices, PR firms, whistleblowers, think tanks, courts, police departments, and everyone else with a news ax to grind. These entities have always been capable of writing their own stories in a usable form, but have previously needed reporters to get their stories distributed. Nor will we miss investigative reporters, who had always been dangerously untrained in the skills needed to do their job properly (e.g. forensics, law) and often unfairly destroyed the reputations of innocents. Society has many alternative, more responsible ways to right wrongs, and the blogosphere can easily fill this void.

We will continue to have news middlemen, but those that survive must create real value for their audiences. Editors can create value by aggregating, analyzing, adding opinions, and gathering like-minded audiences for advertisers. Bloggers do the same. But, reporters are repeaters. They, not bloggers, are unnecessary recyclers of news.

Steve Boriss blogs at The Future of News. He works for Washington University in St. Louis, where he is Associate Director of the Center for the Application of Information Technology (CAIT) and teaches a class called “The Future of News.”

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Comments (22)

OmegaPaladin :

What about correspondents? Ernie Pyle was a reporter, Michael Yon is a blogger. The difference is insubstantial. Reporters don't go away if you simply call them another name. Investigative reporters can be replaced by bloggers like Confederate Yankee, but that doesn't really change the essential nature of what they do. If I want to hear news about a military story, I check out Blackfive just like I would a military correspondent.

Mar 23, 2008 02:07 AM

Harvey Levy :

I think we need reporters/journalist. What has changed is the exponential increase in access to news and opinions which the internet has provided. This has had the effect of removing the phony image of impartiality which modern media outlets - such as the major print media, over the air news networks and weekly magazines such as TIME, Newsweek and US News - have used to spin news. Those who are honest observers know that ABC, CBS, NBC and CNN slant the news with a leftist perspective while FOX does with a rightist perspective (regardless of their motto ; We Report. You Decide). What I want is unapologetically biased news and that's what I get from the internet.

Mar 23, 2008 06:58 AM

Steve Boriss :

OmegaPaladin, But what is very different is that the new "reporters" do not work for traditional news outlets. They've got to find ways to fund themselves, and their work appears everywhere, not just at a single outlet. The new news outlets will need editors/aggregators, not reporters.

Mar 23, 2008 08:38 AM

Steve Boriss :

Harvey Levy, I agree with virtually everything you said. So now the question is, is someone who "reports" news in the biased way that you like a "reporter"? I'd say they were really an "editor/aggregator." And I think that's a formula that works.

Mar 23, 2008 08:42 AM

John the Libertarian :

Agreed, journalism has become tremendously more diffuse. The need for aggregators is vital. It all comes down to public trust in brand. Unfortunately, many traditional journalism products have squandered their brands over the last 20 years with shoddy and biased reporting. But there are still excellent products; I pay for the WSJ and Daily Variety, for example, while I would not read the LA Times if they paid me.

One can argue that journalism is and will remain mostly entertainment, for other than local politics, stock market tickers and weather reports, isn't most news inconsequential to our daily lives? So we purchase those writers who entertain us most.

The rise of Fox News, talk radio and Internet bloggers redefined where the journalistic political Center is in this country. Almost overnight traditional journalism outlets, who were convinced they defined the political Center, were stunned to find they were further out on the Left.

Mar 23, 2008 09:34 AM

RE :

We'll always need good reporters.

Subject matter experts that have taken a writing course (or not) do a far better job than those who skillfully write about a subject they're clueless about. It's the 'School of Journalism' trained 'journalists' that we can do without.

Mar 23, 2008 12:29 PM

Steve Boriss :

RE:, Yes, we will have "expert journalism." Note that this is the opposite of "citizen journalism," a fad that will soon run its course.

Mar 23, 2008 01:04 PM

Mike Perry :

Those who'd like to read the premier text on why journalism ought to be a university-trained profession much like medicine and law should turn to the classic work on the topic, Joseph Pulitzer's The School of Journalism.

And yes, I am the guilty party. I did bring it back into print in the hope of stimulating lively debate on the topic.

Personally, I suspect that journalism's problem isn't its attempt to spin it as a profession, but the absolutely shoddy work that journalism does pass off as professional. You see that best in their demand to be treated, they say, like lawyers and priests, able to keep mum about their sources. The argument is so absurd, it's difficult to imagine how any profession with a scrap of intelligence or integrity would advance it. When a lawyer or a priest invoke their right to silence, it's about something they are NOT telling us. No lie is being spoken. Only one particular category of truth, that from certain conversations, is being denied the public.

But when a journalist attempts to invoke what their profession asserts is their right, it's often about claims that are being broadcast to millions, claims whose source we cannot find out and whose veracity we cannot check. Its intent can only be to deny us the evidence we need to determine whether the journalist was lying to us. And in that journalism isn't asserting professionalism, it's claiming that we must regard it as infallible. That's not something a genuine profession does. Genuine professions always hold themselves accountable for their deeds.

The closest parallel would be for medicine to assert the right of any physician to prohibit absolutely any post-mortem examination of any patient he's treated who has died. The chief reason for giving physicians that power would be to permit them to cover up their mistakes and blunders. The chief rationale for journalists being able to hide their sources is much the same.

Because it really is a profession, medicine has a much sterner and less subjective perspective on the truth. I worked for a time in a hospital with children being treated for cancer. I was impressed that the physicians involved were continually tested their treatments, seeing if they could develop something better.

In contrast, journalism rarely tests itself and rarely questions its assumptions. Once story has developed a certain spin, that spin will continue in defiance of the facts. Over time, it isn't getting better are arriving at the truth; if anything it's getting worse. To give but one example, why hasn't the Internet led to a central clearing house for facts, where someone wrongly treated can go, present their evidence, and clear their name, a source that a journalist must consult before running a story. (Medicine has numerous, carefully checked, authoritative sources like that.) That is not the case. Journalism is mired in the state medicine was in when for centuries it practiced odd theories of disease and treatment derived from the ideas of Greeks and Romans, ideas it never tested for truth.

Or to make a different comparison, during WWI the British discovered that only 10% of the bombs they dropped at night came within two miles of their attended targets. They were essentially flying over German cities and bombing them at random, blowing up homes and killing civilians. Today, the British and the American military can drop a bomb down the chimney of a specific building with near 100% accuracy. The US military has gone to great effort to reduce the number of innocent people they hurt. Journalism has made no such effort. Their failure rate is as bad or worse than it was half a century ago. Someone slandered by the press has little effective recourse. Unless they sue and, after spending huge sums of money, win, they can be nearly certain that other journalists will continue to repeat those lies without end. As one reporter told me, all the new technology has done is make it easier for lies to stay alive.

The real issue isn't whether journalism should be a profession or not. It's that regarded as a profession, journalism's standards are pitifully low and indefensible.

--Michael W. Perry, Seattle

Mar 23, 2008 02:16 PM

John More :

Society would be a lot better off if we abolished all "schools" of journalism (and education). Both are bogus professions, as has been shown by their pathetic results in the United States.

Mar 23, 2008 03:33 PM

Joan of Argghh! :

Reporters who report? Yes, we need that. Plenty of good people can be an eyewitness.

But, reporters who spin like politicians? A pox on 'em.

The Media is more to blame for racism than any other political body. They stir it up because it sells.

Mar 23, 2008 04:03 PM

Pyrthroes :

Like two-year "teachers' colleges", journalism schools impart rote mechanics, attract candidates least capable of "reporting" anything. As certified ignoramuses, their so-called "news" degenerates to crass and vulgar personality profiles. Absent "editorial" appreciation of context and perspective, drivel reigns... absolute lack of coherence or integrity plus veritable contempt for audiences or readers combines to produce vicious frauds aka Dan Rather or ongoing propagandistic disgraces such Pinch Sulzberger's egregious voice-trumpet.

Bloggers as "co-respondents" develop reputations for expertise, intelligence, beyond the sadsack scope of newsroom payrollees. AP, Reuters et al. sleepwalk like zombies into open tombs.

Mar 23, 2008 07:21 PM

But not so fast... :

Now, the Internet is eliminating the reporter as middleman by connecting audiences directly with the real sources of news — politicians’ offices, PR firms, whistleblowers, think tanks, courts, police departments, and everyone else with a news ax to grind.

I think the above sentence makes reporters even more important, because every single one of the sources above will only presented a slanted view. I don't fault them for it. But are we really to think each one of these sources is going to provide a fair and balanced analysis of a situation? Sure, reporters may not always do it, but you're placing your trust in these people? Reporters are paid meager salaries to be skeptical of people's claims for a reason.

Just because all these sources now have a platform on the Internet doesn't make them transparent.

Mar 23, 2008 08:23 PM

Steve Boriss :

But not so fast,
The slanted views of these real sources of news will be balanced out by the slanted views of others with a news ax to grind in the marketplace of ideas. The new news outlets will be editors/aggregators (not reporters), who will moderate the debate.

Mar 23, 2008 08:57 PM

richard miniter :

I think Boriss' argument ultimately fails because he misunderstands what big-city daily journalists actually do.

He thinks all reporters are simply "repeaters," telling you the game score, the number of dead in the air crash, the name of governor caught canoodling and so on.

Basically, "event news" is written by wire reporters, who are more like "repeaters"--although there is more skill in this than Boriss seems to admit.

Small town papers and most weeklys are also repeaters in Boriss' terms. They tell you whether the zoning board decided to let the car wash expand and so on.

But most big-city dailies have reporters who work beats. Their job is not to cover events, but to develop sources and break news. Would unpaid bloggers spend thousands of dollars wining and dining staffers are city hall or the defense department--just to learn how the institution works and where to squeeze to get stories no one else has? These beat reporters are also the guys who comb through miles of documents to find surprising trends or criminal malfeasance.Remember "computer-aided reporting"? They also have the experience and a fully powered b.s. detector to challenge public officials. They turn down a lot of phony stories. And by and large, they do a pretty good job that no blogger seems prepared to do yet.

In other words, these reporters are more like "editors/aggregators" in Boriss' world. But once you grasp that, his argument collapses. Because even he admits we need more "editors/aggregators."

Are there some bad apples? Yep. And the web helps us spot them faster. But bad doctors and bad lawyers are not weeded out.

Mar 23, 2008 09:31 PM

Steve Boriss :

Richard Miniter,
"Would unpaid bloggers spend thousands of dollars wining and dining staffers...?" If these staffers have a story they want told (and who doesn't?), the Internet allows them to tell it themselves. These staffers can also "comb through miles of documents" better than reporters can. Actually bloggers with specialized knowledge can, too. Think the typewriter font experts who busted Dan Rather and his forged documents.

Mar 23, 2008 11:28 PM

Allison :

I agree with what Richard is saying - and I'm both a journalist and a blogger. I've never bought into the either-or dynamic - maybe I will when, say, education blogging provides living wages with benefits.

Mar 23, 2008 11:37 PM

Parker :

Journalists resent bloggers for the same reason prostitutes resent nymphomaniacs...

Mar 24, 2008 05:52 AM

sbw :

Steve, I know you think you are saying something significant, but this really ought to be simpler than you make it:

1) You need consider what is in one's best interest to understand in the world.

2) Then you need to read more Adam Smith on Division of Labor.

Mar 24, 2008 10:29 AM

Steve Boriss :

sbw, Actually, I do think my explanation is pretty simple and is very consistent with Adam Smith. The free hand of the marketplace will squeeze out the reporting function because it lacks sufficient value for its cost.

Mar 24, 2008 01:06 PM

jaimeshawn :

Excellent comments. I especially liked Mike Perry's contrast of Journalism with 'real' professions like being a doctor or an attorney. Most people outside the field do not realize how many lawyers are disbarred and how that acts as a real deterrent. Perhaps not to Spitzer, Clinton, Nifong, or Kwame Kilpatrick, but for attorneys that intend to practice law for the rest of their lives, the ethical culling performed by the bar is not trivial.

Mar 24, 2008 03:28 PM

but not so fast :

Steve,

I understand what you mean about how editors will be the aggregators of the information, but you're essentially going to see a jumbled mess of viewpoints. One thing the Internet has cursed us with is shortened attention spans. I don't think people are going to sift through these myriad viewpoints. You're going to have to have someone boil it down, which in your model, is a reporter by a different name. I just don't see how this will both save people time and advance the discussion.

Mar 24, 2008 04:43 PM

Windingstad :

I think you analysis is more a portrait of your ideal future than an accurate prediction. Traditional media are experiencing an enormous growth online, that can not only be attributed to the internet growth itself. There clearly are a demand for professional journalism (yes that is the "school of journalism style") out there.

Mar 24, 2008 04:52 PM