Not really, but close. Last week comic-book fans the world over learned, via Twitter no less, that the Daily Planet’s ace reporter – Clark Kent (aka Superman) – will be leaving the venerable fictional paper for the world of blogging and citizen journalism. The break comes after Clark lambastes his editor for pressuring him into producing shoddy sensationalism instead of hard news.
The mild-mannered reporter even lays into Superman’s long-time main squeeze, Lois Lane – who is now a TV news producer. In the comic, a fed up Clark declares he’s surprised Lois even “recognized news anymore” given that the latest edition of her program consisted of a transcript of the White House press briefing – where no questions were asked — followed by an extensive segment on celebrity gossip and entertainment news. Clark then decides to jump ship and report what he sees as the important stories – by becoming an independent (read unemployed) citizen journalist. Luckily, he’s got that superhero gig to fall back on.
Art, it is said, reflects life, and the rupture between Superman’s alter ego and his editor comments upon a tragically real American media landscape. For at least two decades, American media has shed hard news coverage in favor of easy-to-produce fluff pieces, corporate propaganda and partisan scream matches as news outlets have searched for both profit and relevance in the digital era. The result, as Superman could attest to, is not a triumph for “truth, justice and the American way,” but a decimated Fourth Estate that largely fails to inform the public.
Journalism in America
To be sure, American journalism in the past was never perfect. Indeed, as media critic Noam Chomsky has pointed out, the news business has always been more about manufacturing content than informing the public of objective facts. But, of late even the relatively poor job the media usually does has been scandalously bad. From the media failures that allowed the Iraq War to occur to the poor job it did in conveying information about health care reform or climate change, the press today does such a bad job that nearly no one trusts it. This is a long way from the days when Walter Cronkite was so beloved that he could declare a war to be “unwinnable” and thereby shift opinion overnight.
What happened? First, the profit motive, though always present, has become particularly important. During Cronkite’s time, the major newspapers and broadcast outlets had relatively cozy monopolies that subsidized loss-making news divisions. As technology reduced the cost of distribution to near zero, these monopolies crumbled. Forced to actually compete, the first casualty of the competitive marketplace was hard journalism for the simple reason that it is expensive to produce and adds very little to the bottom line.
One solution to this problem of collapsing costs leading to profit-gutting competition has been consolidation. As readers of this column should know, the U.S. media landscape has increasingly fallen into the hands of fewer and fewer actors over time. Companies like Time Warner, Disney, News Corp, Viacom and Clear Channel have, like vultures, gobbled up struggling outlets in the hopes that economies of scale and multi-platform content provision will increase profitability. It has, but one effect is that news is now produced by fewer providers. Fewer providers mean fewer voices, and the voices that are out there are effectively market-tested and approved. Honesty, integrity, knowledge and a discerning news judgment are no longer the primary assets of media corporations. Instead, what is valued is the ability of the news division to market itself to lucrative demographics so as to bring in the advertising dollars.
This has created two catastrophic follow-on effects that have reshaped our media system well away from the standards set during the Cronkite era. The first is that the demographic most coveted by advertisers are young people, age 18-35. The reason for this is obvious – if you catch consumers at a young age and attract them to your brand, you will likely develop a relationship with them that is increasingly profitable over time. The unfortunate side effect is that young people are notoriously uncaring and unengaged when it comes to public affairs – thus news has to be leavened with “fluff” in order to attract them. When you turn on the news only to hear information about the latest entertainment fad, this is the reason why. It is also why John Stewart’s the Daily Show on Comedy Central is now considered news.
The second is that if you can strongly appeal to a certain niche demographic, profits will also roll in due to your built-in competitive advantage. This is how Fox News and talk radio became a de facto arm of the conservative movement – by building up brand awareness of and loyalty from conservative consumers by telling audience members exactly what they wanted to hear. That what conservatives want to hear is often demonstrably wrong is beside the point. In a world where profits are everything, what matters is how much you sell, not what you sell.
So what can be done?
First, the solution will not come from existing media outlets or models. Competition and digital technology has essentially killed the old media industry either outright through financial bankruptcy or indirectly through content corruption. A few of the legacy outlets that have brand recognition and credibility stored up from days past will survive, but not many. Instead, we should expect a better media system to bubble up from below as entrepreneurs take advantage of cheap technology to build new, more efficient online outlets.
Second, non-profit models such as that proffered by ProPublica will likely become crucial content providers in the future. Non-profit status gives journalists the maneuvering room they require to work on long-term investigative stories that the public needs to know about. Editors can work on directing investigations, not pleasing shareholders every quarter. A variation on this model might include worker/journalist-owned cooperatives where the outlet is held in trust by the journalists who work there. The key here is to turn journalism into a guild that votes on who is included as opposed to a cheap commodity bought by the highest bidder.
Third, news consumers can play a role by supporting quality outlets – wherever they may be found. Every click matters. Every shared link demonstrates that an outlet, no matter how tiny, has an audience. Similarly, when the news is shoddy, demonstrate your market power by turning off the channel, ending a subscription or complaining to an advertiser. Companies DO listen – especially when their bottom line is threatened.
American journalism may not be in a great place right now, but we don’t need to wait for Superman to come save us. We can build a new media system without the Man of Steel all on our own. I just hope Superman will blog about us when we do.