Journalism is central to democracy: Both citizens and the media must have access to the information needed to make important decisions. Conventional journalists will fight ferociously for the principles that underpin journalism’s basic tenets—questioning the government, freedom of the press, the public’s right to know, and two sides to every story. These are mostly worthy ideals, but they do have limitations. For example, they do not generally acknowledge any moral or ethical duty for journalists to improve the quality of daily life. Rather, conventional journalism values its news-gathering capabilities and the well-constructed news narrative, leaving the improvement of civic life to political groups, nonprofit organizations, business philanthropists, individual citizens, and practitioners of Internet activism.

Social Responsibility

Although reporters have traditionally thought of themselves first and foremost as observers and recorders, some journalists have acknowledged a social responsibility. Among them was James Agee in the 1930s. In his book Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, which was accompanied by the Depression-era photography of Walker Evans, Agee regarded conventional journalism as dishonest, partly because the act of observing intruded on people and turned them into story characters that newspapers and magazines exploited for profit.

Agee also worried that readers would retreat into the comfort of his writing—his narrative—instead of confronting what for many families was the horror of the Great Depression. For Agee, the question of responsibility extended not only to journalism and to himself but to the readers of his stories as well.

Deliberative Democracy

According to advocates of public journalism, when reporters are chiefly concerned with maintaining their antagonistic relationship to politics and are less willing to improve political discourse, news and democracy suffer. Washington Post columnist David Broder thinks that national journalists like him—through rising salaries, prestige, and formal education—have distanced themselves “from the people that we are writing for and have become much, much closer to people we are writing about.”²¹ Broder believes that journalists need to become activists, not for a particular party but for the political process and in the interest of reenergizing public life. For those who advocate for public journalism, this might also involve mainstream media spearheading voter registration drives or setting up pressrooms or news bureaus in public libraries or shopping malls, where people converge in large numbers.

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Public journalism offers people models for how to deliberate in forums, and then covers those deliberations. This kind of community journalism aims to reinvigorate a deliberative democracy, in which citizen groups, local government, and the news media work together more actively to shape social, economic, and political agendas. In a more deliberative democracy, a large segment of the community discusses public life and social policy before advising or electing officials who represent the community’s interests.

The Troubled Future of Journalism and Journalism’s First Home

While pondering the future of the newspaper—and of our democracy—we must recognize that a free press isn’t free, nor is its survival certain.

As newsroom cutbacks accelerate; as state, national, and foreign bureaus close down; and as industry consolidation continues apace, we must ask ourselves where we will get the thorough reporting we need to make informed choices and present well-considered viewpoints—two hallmarks of a vibrant democracy. A host of current developments in print journalism undermine the newspaper’s role as a bulwark of democracy. Many cities now have just one newspaper, which tends to cover only issues and events of interest to middle- and upper-middle-class readers. The experiences and events affecting poorer and working-class citizens get short shrift, and with the rise of newspaper chains, the chances that mainstream daily papers will publish a diversity of opinions, ideas, and information will likely decrease. Moreover, chain ownership—often concerned first about the bottom line and saving money—has tended to discourage watchdog journalism, the most expensive type of reporting. This means that we, as citizens, must remain ever mindful of our news sources and consider the motivations and interests concealed behind the news we’re receiving and ask ourselves why we’re receiving it.

As news increasingly reaches us through a wide range of digital distribution channels, print journalism is losing readers and advertisers and may eventually cease to exist. Editor John Carroll described the situation in no uncertain terms. Having presided over thirteen Pulitzer Prize–winning reports at the Los Angeles Times as editor from 2000 to 2005, Carroll left the paper to protest deep corporate cuts to the newsroom. He lamented the apparently imminent demise of newspapers, proclaiming: “Newspapers are doing the reporting in this country. Google and Yahoo! and those people aren’t putting reporters on the street in any numbers at all. Blogs can’t afford it. Network television is taking reporters off the street…. Newspapers are the last ones standing, and newspapers are threatened…. Reporting is absolutely an essential thing for democratic self-government. Who’s going to do it? Who’s going to pay for the news? If newspapers fall by the wayside, what will we know?”²²

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