A rchive Date
[ 16-08-2000 ]
Category
[ International Relations ]
sub-Categoy
[ Canada ]
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[Lots of content, not enough inspiration
By VAL SEARS
Ottawa Sun
August 16, 2000
Once it was a rather proud declaration: "I'm a reporter. . . a newspaperman."
Clifton Daniels of the New York Times said journalism was "a calling - not a trade, not a profession, but a calling."
Indeed, 20 years ago at the time of Watergate, Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward, we were heroes. They made movies about us. Journalism schools were jammed to the doors.
Now, as darkness descends with the dreaded "convergence" we are proud no longer. We are not reporters, we are "content providers" or conprovs.
We are hired to provide "product," materials to fill the Internet.
Newspapers are bought or begun not for fun (John Bassett, the Telegram; Doug Creighton, the Sun) or to advance a political agenda (Conrad Black, the National Post) or simply to make money on their own, but to offer words and images to the news, entertainment and advertising engine of the future, the Internet.
Some newspapers may survive well into this century.
But the concept of words on pulp, delivered by a boy on a bicycle seems ridiculous and pointlessly romantic.
No, the New Age conprovs will be a different breed, born into a time of the rising image and the dying word.
In a way, I suppose, with the death of idealism we will get purer information from the screen as conprovs are instructed to offer people what they want and forget offering what they need. Bias will be replaced by bland because with such an immense and diverse audience the Internet cannot afford to irritate anyone if it wants to make money.
A man called Jenkins Lloyd Jones, editor and publisher of the Tulsa Tribune, once wrote: "Without inspiration and idealism, the profession of journalism is merely a sorry form of diary-keeping, and endless succession of statements of fact, like the log of a dull captain on a very dull voyage."
We are still bound to get opinion on the Internet because it's both entertaining and saleable. And we will get a certain amount of bias among the conprovs because it is bred in the bone. But somewhere already we have lost the idealism, the professionalism that insists that good reporters be warmed by their own fire, not the publishers.
Twenty years ago when newspapers were considered important enough to require a Royal Commission to check on them, the commission researchers concluded that papers "reflected the dominant ideology of the Canadian economic elite.
'PLAY BY THE RULES'
"In mainly indirect ways, newspaper proprietors reinforce this pattern by rewarding journalists who play by the rules."
But now the rules will surely change. Internet conprovs will be guided by marketing polls of potential viewers, not by what Bay Street wants or the Rideau Club says. It is hard to imagine any one in Izzy Asper's family will give a damn about the economic elite, compared to assessing the wants of people who watch Survivor.
It seems to me we have already reached the stage in our news presentation that is throwing sand in the gears of democracy. We are simply not being given enough truthful information upon which to make intelligent decisions about our political lives.
This is partly the result of a competitive and ideological climate that insists newspapers concentrate on the abuses of government, rather than a reasoned assessment of their policies.
I cannot see that this will improve with convergence and the triumph of the bland. Perhaps there will not be so much destructive competition when three or four guys own everything that tells us anything. But there will be very little essential material that is hard to digest.
Perhaps it's best to put down the paper, light up the screen, and comfort ourselves with my mother's political philosophy: They must know what they're doing or they wouldn't be where they are.
Sears can be reached by e-mail at valsears@magi.com.
 World Fact Book (CIA)]
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