The Old vs. A New Model of Journalism

The Old vs. A New Model of Journalism

That old style of journalism reflects how our communities did business 20 years ago. But it doesn’t do the job any more. It is no longer able to capture the new changes. So isn’t it only logical that the practice of journalism should change as well?

As with any proposed change in institutional behavior, there are many questions. Is the answer to change the people or change the practice? Are those who still do business the old way necessarily “bad” people? Are old-style journalists, for instance, bad people? Did that style of journalism ever work?

From the perspective of one who works with communities as they change their culture and behavior, my answer is that the old model of journalism isn’t inherently bad, it simply fit the times and reflected how our communities did business.

The Old Model

Let’s look at the old and new models. American communities were formerly both governed and covered based on four simple principles.

• First was that government owned the public agenda. In this world, it was government’s job to solve problems and improve the quality of life, so the focus of the media and the community was on the proactive role of government, the work of elected officials, and the politics of elections,

• Second was that all progress was a zero-sum game and came through victory, and the ever-accompanying defeat. That meant that news stories always focused on conflict and the anger and confrontation that came with it.

• Third was the notion that most activism was interest-based. That meant that journalists no longer had to deal with ordinary citizens, they simply needed to talk to someone representing the interest of neighborhoods to report that perspective. Thus was created a class of “gatekeepers” — professional citizens who belonged to a special interest or advocacy group.

• Fourth was the simple fact that, in the end, very few voices really mattered. Regardless of a community’s size, there were only a handful of people who could really make things happen.

  
  

All of these truths contributed to what some now call the “old” style of journalism. It focused on conflict, it focused on the workings of government, it focused on votes and campaigns, it quoted a few people very regularly and it deferred to (or sometimes, conspired with) those it considered the most powerful.

That style of journalism might still work today if our communities had not undergone such a dramatic transformation over the past 20 years. In fact, many believe that the level of conflict and distrust that currently exists between communities and their news media can be traced back to these journalistic conventions. While communities are evolving a new set of standard operating procedures, they are still being viewed through the lens of the old journalism.

Shifting Communities

The truth is that we are in the process of a dramatic shift in the way our communities are structured and the way our democracy works. Consider that:

• Government no longer solely owns the public agenda. The most prominent change of our time is the delinking of government from democracy. And the national government is handing back to states and local municipalities the responsibility for change. Progress comes when the public, private and non-profit sectors work collaboratively with the citizens of a community to address its challenges. This means that the news media need to move beyond covering just government or even public-private sector partnerships and realize that, in particular, the non-profit sector is potentially the most important change agent in the community.

• Progress is no longer a win-lose scenario. Communities that have found ways to get things done realize that collaboration and consensus are the only ways to move forward. This means the media must find ways to cover stories that don’t involve dispute or the outcome of a vote. It may be harder to write an article about a collaborative process than an election, but the future is in consensus-based solutions. There may be consensus and collaboration in a community or at a meeting, but if reporters go back to their editors and say there is no story, that people only “talked,” they will miss the point.

• Much community activism is now based on broad community values rather than narrow special interests. The debate is not as calculating as it used to be. When the fight was an interest-based fight, the media presumed that much of what was said in the fray of community decision-making was calculated for its effect. The presumption was that people say things to bring the compromise in their direction rather than to truly advocate a point of view. Value-based activists want, more than anything, to be heard and understood. Differentiating between interest-based and value-based advocacy will become a critical skill for the media.

• The voices that matter are diverse and many. The “power brokers” of yore still exist in communities, but they lack the muscle they once possessed. And while it is still appropriate to quote them, get information from them and nurture them as sources, the truth is that they know less and less about what is going on in the community. Now coalitions are put together that look like a crazy quilt of people from all sectors, from all parts of town and from all walks of life. Most of these civic players do not resemble who we think about when we think of a person in power, but their power is very real.

  
  

So, as we shift from a system that leaned toward representative democracy to one that more closely resembles participatory democracy, the media will have to find a way to keep up with that change. From a community’s perspective, the civic journalism movement represents a welcome and long-overdue opportunity to break out of the unhealthy and unproductive relationship that currently exists between citizens and their media.

While these citizens need to understand that civic journalism doesn’t mean that their press releases will always be printed word for word or that the newspapers will no longer play the role of community watchdog, those in the media need to understand that they are part of the community too and that, like it or not, their work plays a part, positive or negative, in making their community work.

The National Civic League is based in Denver, Colorado.