The sad irony of the predicaments facing newspapers today is that their troubles are not a function of loss of audience. In fact, the total readership of the content of the New York Times and the Washington Post has grown more than fivefold since the emergence of the World Wide Web. My statistics are not up to date, but the Washington Post and New York Times Web sites combined have in excess of twenty-five million unique monthly users. Several million of these readers live overseas. The problem is that the business model that created the newsrooms that made this journalism so popular has been shattered at the same time. New readers are, per capita, less profitable than the old ones. That is hardly a reason to allow the destruction of the journalism that attracted them to these newsrooms in the first place.
Second, the sheer scale of legacy newsrooms creates strength—an independence of mind, an imperviousness to deep pockets and political pressure. At the height of the Washington Post’s powers, I was working as an investigative reporter in London and got into a dispute over my reporting with an exiled Russian, er, businessman. The Post’s lawyers never blinked. They shelled out in the range of a million bucks of cash and insurance to defend our reporting, sent private investigators to Russia to acquire files that proved our case, and handled the matter without ever breaking a sweat. The powerful institutions, whether private or public, that journalism should report on simply dwarf those smaller entities that will emerge in the coming era of self-publishing and philanthropic journalism. We need a few big dogs with enough money to choose principle even when it does not make economic sense.
Third, and perhaps obviously, ambitious reporting is expensive. Foreign bureaus are expensive. Investigative projects can take a year or more. You have to be willing to drill dry holes. Some of this sort of reporting can be replicated on a smaller scale by groups like Voice of San Diego. The deep, sustained international reporting that crosses borders and travels to refugee camps and civil wars without an advocacy agenda; multifaceted investigative reporting disciplined by continuous contact with audiences; expert beat reporting where the writers’ instincts about what matters and how to document difficult, hidden facts has built over many years—all of this is now in jeopardy unless it is endowed.
Finally, and to me, most importantly, there is the talent. Our generation in the big newsrooms enjoyed extraordinary privileges. We were trained in languages and area studies and sent abroad for years at a time with nothing on our minds but journalism. I was overseas during a recession and I can’t remember the downturn back home ever entering my work. The last generation that is likely to enjoy such careers is the one just behind mine—people like Rajiv Chandrasekaran, Anthony Shadid, and Dexter Filkins, and many others now in their late thirties or early forties, who started in time to have a good, full run. How are these careers and the bodies of work they have produced going to be funded in the future? Places like the New America Foundation can try to help a little with fellowship programs, but that is no substitute for a long career forged in a big, confident newsroom. Maybe the smaller, bloggier, digital groups will find ways to replicate the training, informal mentoring, trial and error, discipline, multiple tours, internal competition, cross-pollination and lateral teaching, and above all, the sustained emphasis on hard reporting against hard targets, that the legacy newsrooms cultivated at their best. I’m sure the smaller digital groups will attract aspirants of the same quality as every other generation, and perhaps better; I just don’t see how they will be able to afford to support journalists so they can reach their full potential over a lifetime unless they are endowed to do so.
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Full article: http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/stevecoll/2009/01/more-on-nonprof.html
