Journalism. Michael Schudson

Bridge Street

      Cambridge CB2 1UR, UK

      Polity Press

      101 Station Landing

      Suite 300

      Medford, MA 02155, USA

      All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purpose of criticism and review, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.

      ISBN-13: 978-1-5095-3856-0

      A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

      Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

      Names: Schudson, Michael, author.

      Title: Journalism / Michael Schudson.

      Description: Cambridge, UK ; Medford, MA : Polity, 2020. | Series: Why it matters series | Summary: “Why, in the age of Trump and fake news, journalism matters more than ever”-- Provided by publisher.

      Identifiers: LCCN 2019042874 (print) | LCCN 2019042875 (ebook) | ISBN 9781509538546 (hardback) | ISBN 9781509538553 (paperback) | ISBN 9781509538560 (epub)

      Subjects: LCSH: Journalism--Philosophy.

      Classification: LCC PN4731 .S2485 2020 (print) | LCC PN4731 (ebook) | DDC 070.401--dc23

      LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019042874 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019042875

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Dedication

      For Noah

Acknowledgments

      I am grateful to John Thompson of Polity Press for inviting me to do this book. Since the 1970s I have been studying and writing about aspects of the news media, especially the history and sociology of American journalism. Putting what I know or what I think I know about journalism into a form suitable for young men and women seeking a quick tour of the field, and in a way that might also interest journalists and scholars, was a challenge I was interested to take on. It would force me to articulate in a more complete way than I had yet done what I think about journalism and why I think journalism, at its best, is so important. I am grateful also to John for honestly telling me a couple of drafts ago when he thought I did not have journalism’s story quite right.

Other trusted critics of earlier drafts include Julia Sonnevend, my wife and a media scholar in her own right. Julia was the first brave soul to make her way through the manuscript. I am grateful to her for pretty much everything in my life but, in this case, for her intellectual acuity and honesty.

Polity’s three anonymous reviewers were excellent – appreciative of the draft they saw but critical, too. Justin Dyer, Polity’s outstanding copyeditor, cleaned up so many sentences I had judged perfect and clarified so many passages I knew were crystalline – well, dear reader, thank heaven you do not have to read what he did! Adelina Yankova, a current Columbia Ph.D. student, helped with some eleventh-hour research and offered astute comments on the whole manuscript. My former doctoral student and now director of the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, Rasmus Kleis Nielsen, read the manuscript and steered me clear of some pitfalls. I have benefited again from his informed and realistic assessment of journalism, as of democracy itself, and about what these two institutions can – and cannot – achieve. My Columbia Journalism School colleagues and students are visible in the text and the endnotes and I am grateful to Nicholas Lemann for having persuaded me to join the Columbia faculty in the midst of journalism’s digital transformations and the School’s attendant curricular changes. The very corridors of Pulitzer Hall reverberate with the ideals of journalism that this book tries to honor.

1 Introduction

      It is hard to imagine a human community anywhere in the world, and at any point in human history, where people did not bring news to one another. Hard to imagine a setting in which people did not anticipate – with hope or foreboding or simple curiosity – news from travelers or others who had been away from the village during the day, or news from others close by with gossip to share.

But all human communities through most of the history of the species have managed without a specialized occupation for gathering and disseminating information and commentary on contemporary affairs directed to general audiences: that is, they have been communities without journalism. Indeed, historians typically trace back the origins of journalism only about 400 years, while journalism as a full-time occupation for a contingent of news-gatherers goes back only about 200 years.

      For most of the human past, people raised families, worked the soil, gathered nuts and seeds and berries, established governments, conducted diplomacy, raised armies, went to war, developed religious beliefs and practices, built bridges and canals and cathedrals without headlines or tweets, reporters or editors. People wrote songs and poems, love letters and contracts, long before they wrote news stories.

Journalism has not mattered eternally but journalism matters. Many things matter enormously that are as new as or even newer than journalism. Consider electricity. Yes, people can live without it, as they did until about 100 years ago, and as many people in poorer communities still do. In the electrified world, some people intentionally live without electricity on camping trips or religious retreats. Still, most people most of the time in electricity-dependent societies would feel bereft without it. Power outages make normal life impossible even for brief periods. When there is an extended power failure from massive weather events like hurricanes or floods, or through extreme political dysfunction, it is an emergency. It puts lives in danger. There may be disruption of communications, destruction of ongoing experiments in scientific labs or of patient treatment in hospitals, looting in commercial areas, and accidents, crimes, and deaths in darkened homes and streets.

      In the modern, urban world, electricity has become a necessity. But what use is journalism? Who really needs it? This is not immediately obvious, at least it is not obvious what journalism uniquely brings. Certainly it brings entertainment, but so do many other things, from video games to a deck of cards to watching or participating in sports to playing with our kids. It brings information, but so do teachers and coaches and physical therapists and books and many other sources. What does journalism do more than or better than or more uniquely than all these others in the information or entertainment it provides?

Some industries or occupational pursuits are selfevidently vital to a good society. Good societies need good doctors, teachers, bus drivers, supermarket cashiers, computer tech support staff, accountants, people with the skills to repair tractors or to prune trees. We depend on many people doing many different jobs every day, from the people who maintain a purified water system to the government officials who inspect the hygiene in restaurants or the safety of bridges and tunnels. The one part of journalism people regularly consult to organize their lives is the weather report. Weather forecasting in most places is undertaken by government agencies, but it gets relayed to the public