24 Jun 08 Dan Rather: ‘American Journalism is in a Crisis’

In a short commentary in AdBusters Dan Rather, former anchor of CBS Evening News and broadcast journalism icon, had some terse words for American journalism and the “international conglomerates” that own it:

I believe the American people want to stand up to political pressure and say, “Report the news the way we want you to report it and if you don’t, you will be made to pay a price.” It has led to a situation where the red beating heart of a representative democracy, a free press, is run by large multinational conglomerates. They work in myriad ways, particularly in secrecy, and their influence is far too great in newsrooms.

Be that as it may, I think Dan is a bit bitter.

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24 May 08 Quotable

Dean Nicholas Lemann, Columbia School of Journalism

Our job was to improve on the old model. Your job is to create a new model. You shouldn’t be daunted by this: newspapers in particular, and news in general, have been changing in non-incremental ways for three centuries. Benjamin Franklin’s Pennsylvania Gazette and Joseph Pulitzer’s New York World (the profits from which endowed this school) had almost nothing in common except that they were printed on cheap paper and distributed in cities, and neither had much in common with a big-city newspaper today. On your watch, newspapers will be primarily digital, but the primary task for you is not to switch delivery media, it’s to invent a new social compact with a community around the gathering and presentation of information.

Read full transcript.

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09 Apr 08 Quote of the day

Jeff Jarvis of Buzzmachine: “…the Pulitzer Prize is bad for journalism, turning the profession into a circle-jerk of mutual self-love.”

Gawker’s Nick Denton agrees, and he cleverly uses a screen grab from season five of David Simon’s ‘The Wire.’ That season’s focus on the fictional version of the Baltimore Sun and its Pulitzer-chasing ways exemplified what Jarvis is saying. If you haven’t seen ‘The Wire’ yet, A) I’m not your friend, and B) You still have time, do and buy it, download it or steal it from a friend. All five seasons are worth your time, but I digress.

I have to say, even being relatively green in the business still, that I have to agree with both Denton’s and Jarvis’ sentiment about Pulitzers.

Pulitzer Prizes should be an ancillary benefit to good journalism, not the endgame. Journalists, online and print, radio and TV, should not approach a story or a package with the twinkle of the prize in their eyes. It should be approached with the desire to tell a good story and do good journalism. If that desire is genuine, it will shine through and the prize(s) will come in.

Yeah, my idealism has yet to be washed away or beaten into submission by the nastiness that can exist in this business.

Don’t get me wrong however, if something I did or was part of ever won a Pulitzer Prize I would accept it with nothing but gratitude and shit-eating grin.

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