1998 Batten Awards Keynote Address

Jennie Buckner
Editor
Charlotte Observer

It is a very special honor to be with you as we celebrate some of journalism's finest work, work that's made a difference in the lives of people across this country. The stories have had impact and left a legacy: of community betterment and citizen involvement.

Amid the good wishes and warm feelings tonight I'd like to take just a few minutes to talk about legacy. The awards being given carry the name of James K. Batten, an extraordinary leader who left a remarkable legacy.

The work we honor is the kind of journalism encouraged by Jim, the late CEO of Knight Ridder. Jim didn't encourage civic journalism because he thought the idea would set Wall Street on fire. Certainly, as a CEO, Jim believed in delivering the bottom line. But he also believed in another bottom line -- the one which measures one's contribution to society. That bottom line defines journalism as not simply an act of communicating but also as a set of responsibilities. To Jim, publishing newspapers was always more than just a business.

Somewhere during the course of the 25 years I knew him, Batten became a hero of mine. Because he lived his values. Because he used his power for good and helped us remember to keep our sights trained on the grand opportunity journalists have.

There's a quote of Jim's that sits framed in my office. It says: "Newspapers, well edited, well published, are wonderfully situated to be instruments of helping America find its way, solve its problems, seize its opportunities. And that is an ennobling way to spend one's life."

In a cynical age and in a hard-bitten business, Jim Batten appealed to our nobler selves. Remember the readers, he reminded us. Don't be afraid to care about your communities, warts and all. Always remember why you're in this business.

Jim's legacy is alive tonight. But for it to live on, we must become stronger leaders. We must become better advocates for the values suggested by civic journalism. For civic journalism gives us a more credible way to fight for a distracted reader's attention. We must be better fighters, for there are troubling trends in American media these days.

You know what they are. They are much in discussion. I'm pleased to see that the reformist talk started by the civic journalism crowd has deepened and broadened.

The American Society of Newspaper Editors has begun a multi-year credibility project. The Project for Excellence in Journalism has been launched. These are important efforts driven by journalists, demanding that we look hard at what we stand for.

What's worrying us?

Number One: A drift toward the tabloid and the trivial. We saw it in O.J. overload. In front-page stories on Marv Albert. In a breathless rush to judgment and almost hysterical tone in the early days of l'affaire Monica.

Although crime is dropping nationally, crime news continues to dominate many newscasts. If it bleeds, it leads. And hey, if there's not enough crime from your own hometown, there's something terrible happening somewhere. (Thank goodness for satellite feeds!)

I'm not saying these aren't legitimate news topics. I am saying they've been way overplayed, overhyped. Such overkill is killing press credibility.

People will rubberneck, but they distrust a press that entices them into rubbernecking. A 1996 poll found that only 21 percent of readers have a great deal of confidence in newspapers, which is down from 31 percent in 1989.

Is that the kind of legacy we want?

Phil Scheffler, executive editor of "60 Minutes," gave this discouraging view in a panel discussion last year. "Attracting an audience is now the most important activity in television news departments. Separation of church and state? Not anymore. There's only one umbrella now and it's called money."

What does this all-about-ratings news judgment get us? An entertainment-addicted society that is starting to care less and less. It gives us a crime-drenched, distrustful society. It creates a nation of increasingly isolated individuals who do not see the point of venturing out to attend a PTA meeting or a public hearing. And it leaves us with increasingly uninformed people lacking the basic tools to make informed choices.

Ed Fouhy, former director of the Pew Center, warned of this in a speech a few years back. Ed saw clearly where news was headed. "Unfortunately, much of today's market-driven journalism leaves out the real information needs people have. In their increasingly desperate efforts to shore up their rapidly eroding audience, many journalists have substituted entertainment values for journalistic values."

Thankfully, public journalists began a conversation about values that continues today. Perhaps the best thing about public journalism has been the debate it stirred up in our industry. I'd suggest that we carry these discussions about values deeper into newsrooms, then on into boardrooms and out into our communities.

Also, I'd suggest we focus our colleagues on the real challenge before us: Making the important also interesting, relevant and lively. It's not as easy as O.J., but is O.J. the legacy we want?

Our journalistic failures feed societal failures and they play out in a kind of downward spiral. We justify our tabloid tactics by saying: Not that many people are interested in government, or politics, or public policy any more. Let's just give 'em what they want.

The downward spiral may have worse consequences than we realize. Educator and communications theorist Neil Postman warned of them in his 1985 book Amusing Ourselves to Death.

"When a population becomes distracted by trivia, when cultural life is redefined as a perpetual round of entertainments, when serious public conversation becomes a form of baby-talk, when, in short, a people become an audience and their public business a vaudeville act, then a nation finds itself at risk; culture-death is a clear possibility."

Postman contrasted two different threats to democracy -- one as envisioned by George Orwell in his book 1984 and another chilling vision: Aldous Huxley's Brave New World. Postman saw us moving toward the Huxley vision.

"What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture, preoccupied with some equivalent of the feelies, the orgy porgy, and the centrifugal bumblepuppy..."

So the trend toward trivial journalism is not about mindless, but essentially harmless, entertainment. It's about journalists doing harm, if you believe Postman.

Is that a legacy we want to risk?

There's one more trend that worries civic journalists and other reformers: A deepening gulf between an elitist press and the people we say we serve. We know too well that reporters are seen as arrogant, aloof and distant.

Fred Allen said it: "To a reporter, a human being is an item with the skin wrapped around it."

There is a desensitizing and a distancing that can happen in our business. It's something we must actively fight. For that distance feeds another big problem of the press: Bias.

Peter Bhatia of the Portland Oregonian in summarizing the results of an ASNE survey about bias said: "More than anything, we hear that we are the voice of the elite."

Almost all reporters are college educated, many from Ivy League schools. But less than half of Americans have finished college. That certainly causes us to see the world differently than our readers do. Then we talk to newsmakers more than we talk to readers. We're victims of our limited experience.

Newsrooms need to reach out more to develop a journalism that, as the Pew workbook says, is of the people, by the people, for the people and with the people.

Civic journalism offers us a way to fight these troubling trends toward the trivial, the tabloid and the elite. It offers us a way to win back respect by doing more respectful work.

There's still a lot of misunderstanding about what civic journalism is. It's not feel-good journalism, as its critics charge, or editing by poll taking.

It is about starting where the citizen starts -- and taking his concerns into account.

So, civic journalists work hard to get real people's voices into stories. So-called ordinary people are seen as important resources, not just passive consumers or bystanders.

Civic journalists try to show not just life's problems, but the possibilities that exist as people seek solutions.

Civic journalists want wholeness in their stories. They know that all news does not have to be a conflict between black hats and white hats.

Civic journalists seek to empower readers. The civic approach can work. All of you here know that it can. From citizen exchanges in New Hampshire to front porch forums in Seattle, media outlets are engaging folks in serious talk on serious subjects.

And, guess what? People are listening and reading and watching.

I can speak from personal experience. We ran a series over four years ago that people still talk about in Charlotte. It was called "Taking Back Our Neighborhoods" and it offered a different kind of crime coverage. We profiled neighborhoods in deep trouble and ones working to change. We found examples where activists had turned back crime's tide. Thousands of individuals and groups got involved. And we listed how individuals and groups could take on some of the root causes that fostered crime.

Charlotte learned a lot about itself. And we learned some things in our newsroom. Mainly this: When you start with citizens, they guide your journalism wisely. The stories are simply better.

And this: When we do journalism that gives people the tools to make smart decisions, when we highlight ways to get involved, the response can be huge.

A month ago we ran a series called "Hunger in the Land of Plenty." The series introduced readers to North Carolina's hidden underclass. Through achingly detailed reporting and powerful photos, our readers looked straight into hunger's haunting face. We accompanied each sad piece with articles about programs that help. We told kids what they could do. We ran lots of lists. We asked readers for their ideas. We got a community conversation going -- and lots of folks decided to do more than talk. They've signed up to volunteer by the thousands.

In another public journalism effort, we wrote about suburban sprawl in a series called "Exit 25." We set up a special web site for people who live in high growth areas to discuss their concerns. It gave people without a strong sense of community a chance to reach out and find like souls. We ran stories on what they had to say -- and it was great stuff. They had advice for planners and city officials who deal with growth. The amazing thing was this: They urged us to provide even more depth in our coverage of growth and development. These folks are hungry for more about zoning, not more about tabloid topics.

To me, the best definition of "journalist" is connection maker. Efforts like the ones we honor here tonight reaffirm that journalists are in more than just the information business. We are in the connection making business. One of the reasons newspapers exist is to help us see that common ground is so important to our common good.

Readers, I believe, are hungry for a way to be part of something.

A writer named Richard Goodwin has thought a lot about that. He's studied why there's a surge of people moving out of big cities and returning to smaller towns.

"What America hungers for," he says, "is not more goods or greater power, but a manner of life, a restoration of the bonds between people that we call community, a philosophy that values the individual rather than his possessions, a sense of belonging, of shared purpose and enterprise."

A sense of belonging, a shared purpose. Now is that a legacy that a newspaper might want to leave?