Civic Catalyst Newsletter
Spring 1997

Elite Journalists and Their Communities: The Gap Has Widened

I grew up in the golden age of newspapers. There were seven dailies published in the Boston of my youth. The city editor of one of them was my cousin Bob. As the civic journalism movement has developed, I have thought a lot about Bob and what cross currents have changed the world of journalism since he sat in the city editor's chair. Perhaps in those currents we might find the answer to why readers, viewers and listeners so rarely find their voices and their concerns reflected in the pages of the daily newspaper or on the 6 o'clock news.

Part of the answer, I think, lies in the growing elitism of journalists and the distance we have put between ourselves and the people we serve.

Cousin Bob never had to worry much about whether he was in touch with his readers. He knew he was because he faced them every day. He lived in the neighborhood where he was raised, married a neighborhood girl whose father worked at the newspaper too, then went off to the Army with the other men of his generation. When he came home and the kids were born, he sent them to the neighborhood school. As he went up the ladder at the paper he didn't change much. He still went to church every Sunday and sat on his front porch on summer nights so he could talk to the neighbors passing by.

They told him what they thought about the paper and what was on their minds and didn't care much about the niceties. Views were strongly held and vigorously expressed. He was their neighbor and their equal, and woe to him if his racy brand of journalism got a little too racy or if he got a little too highfalutin about his news judgments.

It was a two-way conversation. He gained first-hand knowledge of what was on his neighbors' minds, a sure grasp of their agenda, and a sense of whether the newspaper's coverage of the news of the day was getting through -- whether it was making sense to its readers and helping them navigate the cross currents of the day's news.

Fast forward 30 years. Boston now has two daily newspapers. Elitism has been sighted in the nation's newsrooms. Most every journalist is a college graduate and many have advanced degrees. Salaries for top editors and producers now separate them from the people for whom they report. There is simply no doubt that those big salaries affect the way news judgments are made. It's hard to relate to waitresses, bus drivers, plumbers, or clerks when you make twice the salary they do. At the television networks the gap between journalist and viewer is even greater. Top anchors make seven-figure salaries, so do the best producers. Lower level producers and reporters routinely earn mid-six figures. A house in a posh suburb and private school for the kids are not only affordable, they are considered essential.

No one builds houses with front porches anymore and, if they did, we would probably stay inside in the air conditioning with the television set on anyway. Most of us moved out of the old neighborhood long ago and wouldn't recognize the people walking by. In the newsrooms I worked in most of my life, there weren't many churchgoers.

The big media companies that own most of the papers and stations put their top people on such a fast track that they never have time to sink their roots more than a few inches into the town where they work. It's not unusual to visit a newsroom and find a city editor who not only doesn't have any roots in the community but is just passing through on the way to the next big job. The gap between journalist and community has widened.

There is still an old-fashioned notion that good editors can make good news judgments from their guts, that they don't need any help to stay in touch with their readers, that polling and focus groups are artificial and good editors don't need them, that editors who rely on them are letting the public dictate what they should cover or that they are somehow losing the sense of control they have come to relish.

Cousin Bob certainly didn't need them but times have changed. Somewhere along the line, the sense that a newspaper represents the interests of the citizens of a community has been lost.

Perhaps one reason why civic journalism has taken hold in so many newsrooms is the conviction that it's time to get that connection back.