Elements of Journalism: Making News Comprehensive And Proportional

Journalists should keep the news comprehensive and in proportion. Think of journalism as cartography (the science of mapping). Journalism creates a map for its audience to navigate society (e.g., how much is tuition going up? When is the football game? Is it a good idea to plan another Cedar Fest?). That is its reason for being.

And the value of journalism, like a map, depends on completeness and proportionality; accuracy and the ability to see the whole community in coverage. Otherwise, it's like a map with whole parts of town missing. It leaves the audience poorly informed because so much was left out, and vulnerable to making poor decisions about their needs and societal trends based on what they don't know.

This is why we need to show people not just what they want to know, but also what they need to know and what they don't know.

It's also important to have the ability to see yourself and every-day people in your coverage (that is, your needs, values, interests and that of the community at large reflected by the types of stories presented and issues tackled), and a fair mix of what most people in your community would consider interesting, significant, relevant and/or useful.

In judging the wants and needs of an audience, traditional market research does not work very well, like focus groups and surveys. Usually, those ask people to choose between predictable alternatives, like different brands of a certain product. News is harder to market-research because it changes every day.

And news may not be significant until you know about it. For example, personal safety may not be on your radar as a reader. Unless, that is, The State News has a story about muggings on campus. The news creates interest that wasn't previously there.

Journalism requires a more open-ended approach. Simply pay attention to your community and its people. Find out more about their lives. Ask about and look for broad trends. Focus on everyday people and their problems, and not big-wigs and theirs.

Try to understand how to design a news package that is comprehensive and proportional to their community, their needs and their concerns by asking yourself questions like;

What are people talking about? For example, at MSU they may be talking about how high their student loan debt will go, or whether they will have jobs after graduation.

What are they complaining about? Like tuition hikes and off-campus rent getting more expensive.

What are they doing? Like, working multiple jobs while in school, or getting out of Michigan after graduation.

Getting answers allow newspapers to design coverage that responds directly to your audience. And such coverage rings authentic with readers (because they are seeing issues being addressed that actually appear in their daily lives), who then build trust in you.

Elements of Journalism: Responsibility To Conscience

There are no laws, regulations, licensing or formal self-policing of journalists. All that is prohibited by the First Amendment. So, where does responsibility lay? With each news organization, and the ethics and judgment of individual reporters and editors.

Why is self-policing important? Because a news organization's relevance in a community is based on whether readers trust the authority,honesty or judgment of the journalists who produce it. After all, the audience is free to choose other media, or none at all.

So, everyone in a news organization must have a personal sense of ethics and responsibility, and an obligation to exercise their conscience. We have an obligation to challenge superiors, advertisers, and the audience if fairness and accuracy require that.

(But know the difference between an act of journalistic malfeasance and a journalistic disagreement! You need to find a way to fight the former, but if there's no ethical concern and it's simply a fight over two ethical ways of doing something, then don't push back and do your job as asked.) 

This is another reason intellectual diversity is important to a newsroom. The advantages of cultural diversity are stifled if people from different backgrounds adhere to a single mentality. A newsroom needs to be open and honest so that diversity can function journalistically.

Problem is, there are real-world pressures against individual conscience.Like human nature. In hiring and promotions, editors may select people in their own image, and not take risks on people outside the mainstream.

Plus, there is bureaucratic inertia, in which an environment exists where it is preferable to do what is routine and expected as opposed to what is right and necessary. And there is putting process over product; e.g., running a story simply to fill space, rather than the story having any merits of its own.

Conformity is a risk, in that it's easier to just get along with the mainstream. And unfortunately, there is sometimes the risk of "influence-peddling," where stories are pushed or killed by editors to support a special interest. This is bad journalism.

So, what are we supposed to do? Unfortunately, there are no easy and obvious answers. Doing the right thing is great, but you still have rent to pay and you need your job. Still, it's up to you to find a way to do the right thing. Each reporter is a steward of good journalism. It's up to us.

Elements of Journalism: Introduction

Why is news important? Because it satisfies a basic human impulse to know what's occurring beyond your direct experience. News feeds something called a "hunger for awareness" or the "awareness instinct." 

Being aware of events engenders a sense of security, control and confidence. For example, if you know a tuition increase is coming in advance, you can start saving money or protest school officials before the decision becomes final.

Also, people form relationships, choose friends, and make character judgments based partly on whether someone reacts to information the same way you do. For example, whether someone roots for the same sports teams as you do, or supports the same politician you do, or whether someone is pro-abortion or anti-abortion of doesn't care about the issue.

Why is journalism necessary? Traditional media no longer holds a monopoly on information. Many sources of information are available today: YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, TMZ, ESPN, blogs, Google, email, advertising online and by mail and on billboards, direct information from government, businesses, special interest groups, ect.

But journalism uniquely provides independent, reliable, accurate and comprehensive information that makes it possible for citizens to take part in governing themselves.

For example, one spring a few years back The State News reported on MSU planning to hike fall tuition by 7 percent. MSU said that was only an option, even though The State News found the number in an MSU planning document that has been around for about one month. If journalists didn't tell readers that such a hike was possible, who would have? (And yes, the hike went through, as-is.)

How does journalism fulfill its goal to provide people with information they need to be free and self-governing? In several ways: by having an obligation to the truth; by being loyal to its audience; by a "discipline of verification" (applying a rigorous scientific-style standard in verifying facts); and by maintaining an independence from those who are being covered (journalists are representatives of the audience; publicists -- and NOT journalists -- are representatives of news sources).
  
Also, by serving as an independent monitor of power (by watching how government treats citizens, taxes and laws; by watching how businesses treat customers, stockholders and employees; and by watching how schools treat students, staff and tuition money); by providing a forum for public criticism and compromise (through reader letters, online comments, and the seeking of broad relevant viewpoints from various sources); and by making significant stories interesting and relevant to readers' lives (for example, if writing about a tuition increase, write about how it may impact students, how students can blunt the effects of a hike, ect.).

Also, by keeping news comprehensive and in proportion (by reporting all you know and not hyping a story when the interest and relevance just isn't there); and exercising your personal conscience (by doing the right things for the right reasons, not simply to get a story or do what the boss wants you to do).

How do those principles help keep traditional journalism viable? By breeding clarity of purpose, confidence and execution, and public respect. That is, by becoming a trusted and reliable source of information relevant to the lives of your audience, as opposed to simply being a site with information that may or may not be correct, complete or relevant.

Elements Of Journalism: What's Journalism For?

What's journalism for? Helping citizens define the communities the live in and helping create a common language and common knowledge rooted in reality, as well as identifying a community's goals, heroes and villains.

For example, how does The State News do this? By covering events and happenings interesting, relevant and useful to MSU students, staff and faculty and East Lansing residents; by telling the truth so that people will have the information they need to act in their own best interests; and to sere society by informing the people.

Why do people want to be informed? It's because of the "awareness instinct." History shows that people crave news out of basic instinct. People want to know what's going on in their world and beyond their world. Like at MSU, people may be wondering if another tuition increase is brewing. Or if there's another Cedar Fest being planned. Or if the campus is safe to walk at night.

Knowledge of such unknowns help give people security (for example, you can avoid unsafe places). It allows them to plan and negotiate their lives (you can save up or get a bigger loan to blunt a tuition hike). It becomes the basis for creating community and making human connections ("Hey, you going to Cedar Fest?").

How does this help society? History shows the more news and information a society has, the more democratic it is. Knowledge truly is power, and knowledge to the people is power to the people.

How does a free press fit into an electronic age? The Internet specifically and technology in general has dissipated the means of mass communications to the people. People are moving from being passive consumers of news into active participants, with many choices in where to receive news.

Twenty or so years ago, consumer choices were limited by technology. There was not much of an Internet, so choices were print or broadcast or get on a plane and see for yourself. Today, the Internet allows people to choose local media, out-of-town media, social networks, alternative media, whatever.

What's the effect? Journalists no longer control the flow of information. The classic role of "gatekeeper" is irrelevant. News can go around journalism "gates" via the internet. Now, the role of legacy journalism is to make sense of the massive sea of information that's available to the audience. We verify what information is reliable and then order it so people can grasp it in a useful, meaningful way.

(In a way, it's the difference between going to the supermarket and trying to make a great meal, or going to a great restaurant and having that meal made for you. People don't necessarily have the time, desire or skills to sort through all the food choices out there to make a great dinner. In teh same way, they don't necessarily have the time, desire or skills to sort through the flood of information choices now available, so they go to a media professional for that.)

If journalism is to survive, then it must become a force in empowering citizens to shape their own communities based on verified information. You may learn of something from a tweet, but you find out if it's true and what it could mean from a journalist. 

How does mass media stay relevant in an era of niche media? Before we can answer that, let's first explore the Theory of the Interlocking Public. It's the idea that everyone is interested and even expert in something. Niche media exploits this by catering to niche interests. For example, sports people go to ESPN. Gossip junkies go to TMZ. Political junkies go to Politico. MSUers go to The State News.

The theory implies that there are three broad levels of public engagement on every issue; that is, on any given issue, people are members of one of three groups:

The involved public: people who have a stake in an issue.
The interested public: people with no direct role in the issue but who is affected by and responds to the issue.
The uninterested public: pays little attention and will join, if at all, after the issue has been laid out by others.

We are all members of one of these three groups. For example, if the issue was a tuition increase at MSU, the involved public would include students and parents of students. The interested public would include staff, faculty, alumni, and people who will be attending MSU in the future. The uninterested public would include people not in school and/or who don't know anybody in school.

Our challenge is to write stories that may be meaningful and useful to those involved and interested, and interesting and understandable to those who on the surface are uninterested; and to offer a sufficient mix of stories in every newspaper and on every TV newscast that every member of the audience would be interested in at least one of them.

Elements Of Journalism: Truth, The First And Most Confusing Principle

Journalism's first obligation is to the truth. The desire that information be truthful and accurate is elemental. Since news is the material that people use to learn and think about the world beyond themselves, the most important quality is that it be usable and reliable.

(For example, will there be a tuition increase? If so, how large? When's the next home football game? Who's playing?)

If the audience can't rely on what you say -- if you get the tuition increase wrong, and list the wrong date for the football game -- then you are of no use to them.

What is truth? The most basic form is known as "functional truth." That is a society's developed procedures and processes aimed at arriving at a literal truth. For example, MSU writes a budget plan. Police officers write police reports. Statisticians keep track of football games. There are all records of functional truth.

And this is the truth that forms the backbone of journalism. It's a truth by which we can operate on a day-to-day basis by reviewing such documents.

But it's only a starting point for journalists. Bare facts can miss context. We need to get the facts straight, and then make sense of the facts. For example, functional truth like a scoreboard may tell us the football team won a game, but that doesn't necessarily mean they played well. We need to investigate beyond functional truth to set context and meaning.

That doesn't mean facts don't matter. Accuracy is the foundation on which everything else -- like context and debate -- is built upon. If the foundation is faulty, everything else is suspect, including context and meaning.

So, the first responsibility is to concentrate on verification. Sift out rumor and spin, and concentrate on what's true and important about a story. Then build context and meaning only once you've established facts.

Truth is a process. It begins with the first story and builds as follow-ups are written in which we correct mistakes, clarify details, add new or missing elements, dismiss or confirm rumors and innuendo, build context, allow for public debate through online commenting, ect.

For example, in covering the Cedar Fest riots a few years back, initial reports detailed the crowd actions and tear-gassing. This was the foundation. Later reports included additional details, arrest information, public reaction, all built upon the foundation. The, the public chimed in on how students and the authorities handled themselves and why this happened.

In the end, various angles were covered, and the search for truth became a community conversation.

What is fairness and balance? Those are abstract terms that can be tough to define. Are we trying to be fair to who we're reporting on? Not exactly. We're primarily trying to be fair to the truth and the public's truthful understanding of the interview subject.

Likewise, balance isn't fair to the truth if both sides don't deserve equal weight. For example, if you're writing about 9/11, do you give equal time to a 9/11 survivor and a 9/11 denier? Actually, no. Based on the functional truth like documents and witness accounts, the survivor has proven insight on the matter. That same functional truth would indicate the denier has no legitimate insight at all.

False balance can become distortion. Giving unsubstantiated credence to a denier in this case only distorts the truth.

Elements of Journalsm: Who Journalists Work For

Journalism's first loyalty is to its audience. There is an implied agreement with the public that was is reported is true and in their interests. For example, The State News can't have a story on MSU that's slanted in favor of the school just because The State News is MSU's paper. And a story can't be slanted because the subject is a friend of the editor.

And that agreement is in the best financial interest of the news organization. That's because it's necessary to tell the news not only accurately, but persuasively. It's the basis of why the audience believes a news organization. If the audience doesn't trust a newspaper, they will quit reading the newspaper, and the newspaper would be unable to sell ads which are bought by advertisers not because they believe in journalism, but because the newspaper has lots of readers whom the advertiser would like to reach.

If you thought or think The State News is a shill for the administration, would you rely on it in the same way if yo thought it was independent? So, journalists have a social obligation to the news and audience, and must maintain a freedom from all obligations except that of the public interest.

We also must maintain an independence from isolation. There is a danger that having a professional detachment from outside pressures -- such as politicians and lobbyists -- could evolve into disengagement from the community.

Ironically, as journalism became more professional, it became more of a clique, with professionals lacking local connections and becoming free agents, hopping from town to town. Also, journalism became more subjective and judgmental after Watergate and the advent of 24-hour cable TV news. Coverage became increasingly focused on mediating and arguing instead of reporting and explaining. There was a growing focus on motives of public officials, instead of actions that affect readers. Plus, there are business strategies to target affluent households that advertisers most want to access, instead of the general public as a whole.

There has been a backlash to that detachment. People on the business end of journalism want greater accountability from reporters and editors. They want to use research to find out what the audience wants. They see themselves as fighting to keep journalism relevant.

But writers and editors fear that approach can intrude on independence. They fear that may allow advertisers, rather than news value, to dictate coverage. They see themselves as fighting to protect the public interest. This tension is still playing itself out, and the resolution seems unclear.

Citizens are not customers. The business relationship of journalism with its audience is different that other businesses with their customers.  Traditional businesses sell services and products to customers. Journalists build a relationship with their audience. That is not a nit-pick difference; the relationship is built upon values, judgment, authority, coverage, professionalism and commitment to the community. That creates a bond with the audience. Then, the news organization rents the bond to advertisers, via ads.

The advertiser is the one buying goods and services (in the form of advertising), and not the audience. The trust with the audience is what creates something the advertiser finds worthy of buying. Hence, the traditional "wall" between advertising and news content, and a deference to the newsroom to make journalistic decisions independently.

JRN 200: Welcome To The Fall 2015 Edition!

Seriously, welcome. I'm glad to have you here. Let's talk about this class in greater detail.

First, a little about me. You can just call me Omar, since (as you can see from the syllabus) my last name is a mess. I've been at MSU for the past eight years, formerly advising at The State News and currently teaching JRN 200, 300 and 400. Before that, I was a professional journalist for 17 years, most recently in Las Vegas, and I've covered everything from car crashes to Hurricane Katrina.

And in those 17 years I learned a lot, namely this: in journalism we learn by doing. That is, we report and write, then we review what we did well and what we could have done better, then we put those lessons in practice the next time around. Each day in those 17 years I got better, some days more than others. You don't learn journalism passively.

To that end, during this semester we will have many writing assignments called practice stories. In these assignments, we will work on a particular area of news writing (which will always be preceded by a text reading assignment and an online lecture or lecture summary) by giving you a set of facts, and then asking you to write a story based on those facts (using the techniques mentioned in our readings and lectures).

Then, we will learn from those practice stories in two ways: first, you will get a personal evaluation of your individual work, where I will go over key points, both good and bad. Second, we will look at prime examples of each others' work via the blog (with names stripped out to protect the innocent), where you will benefit two ways: first, by seeing how your peers handled the exact same assignment; and second, by the blog highlighting good techniques and common mistakes and ways to avoid such errors.

Because we do learn by doing, practice stories will be weighed relatively minimally as to your final course grade. And that's by design. We want you to have the opportunity to make mistakes without seeing a serious dent to your final grade. So if you feel you didn't do well in a few practice stories, don't fret.

What we're building up to will be out-of-class stories, which will be a big part of your final grade. But the goal is to use the practice stories to build good habits and identify and weed out bad ones, so that by the time we get to out-of-class stories you are in a position to kick ass.

With all these writing assignments, we are going to be strict in two particular ways. First, ANY factual error -- even just one misspelled name or incorrect number! -- will automatically result in an assignment grade of 1.0, no matter how well you otherwise did the work.

That's not an arbitrary thing because I'm mean. Rather, it's to emphasize an important point: journalism isn't about writing, it's about getting it right. We write in journalism not for personal expression, but to share information that is relevant, interesting and/or useful to your audience. And if the purpose is to share information, it must be accurate. Wrong info is hardly interesting, relevant or useful to anyone.

Also, errors can be dangerous to your career. When I was working in Vegas, my paper had a five-error-per-year rule. After the first error, you'd get a verbal reprimand. The second one got you a letter in your file. After the third, you had to outline a corrective plan of action. The fourth got you an unpaid suspension. And the fifth got you fired. And this was while I was writing over 200 stories a year! Gulp.

I'm not saying this to scare you; rather, it is to motivate you to have good fact-checking habits in place so it never gets that drastic. (I was never fired during my professional career and I'm not a genius, so I know it can be done, and done easily), and to impress upon you that truth is the cornerstone of what we do.

Odds are you're going to have a few "fatals" (as we call 'em) in your practice story. That's okay; virtually everyone who has taken my JRN 200 class has had multiple fatals, especially in the first half of the semester when everything is new and good habits are still being built. Don't be scared of 'em and don't fret; just learn how you can do a better job of fact-checking, and become aware of some common traps that lead people into fatals.

Second, we are going to enforce deadlines to the second. So, let's say an assignment is due at 9 a.m. sharp, and it's time-stamped on my email as having been received at 9 a.m. and four seconds. I will unmercifully grade that assignment as late, and late assignments automatically get a 0.0.

Again, I'm not doing that to be a jerk. There's a journalistic reason for that. And that this is a deadline business in which we can NEVER miss a deadline. Ever. If you're writing a script for the 11 p.m. news, the scripts have to be in before 11 p.m., each and every time. After all, you've never flipped on the news and hard the anchor say, "Welcome to the 11 o'clock news. Just give us a minute and we'll get back to you." It's because people who blow deadlines are immediately exiled, so we have to start building a habit of never missing deadlines.

I'd rather have you learn that lesson here than during your first (or would it be, last?) job.

Okay, I know all of this can sound intimidating. And I can't promise that you won't have frustrations, especially early on. But these things I can guarantee you: first, YOU CAN DO THIS! I'm not asking you to lift a two-ton truck over your head; I'm asking you to master skills that have been mastered before. And I know you can master them because you are a student at a Big Ten school. That tells me all I need to know about whether you have the talent. You do.

But that doesn't mean that you'll come out firing on all cylinders on the first day. Starting something new is hard, even when it's something you have the talent in which to shine. I mean, the first time Michael Phelps ever went swimming, he probably needed floaties and such. It didn't mean he wouldn't eventually become the greatest swimmer of all time. It just meant that he had to learn how to bring his skills out. That's what we'll do here, too.

Second, I AM NOT ASKING YOU TO DO THIS ALONE! I'm here to help. I'll offer you tricks and techniques on how to avoid fatals and get assignments in on time and structure your stories properly and do kick-ass reporting. We're in this together, and I've shepherded plenty of people through this class before. I know we can do this.

So if you have a day that's frustrating, don't get frustrated. Don't punch a wall or drop the class. Just learn the lessons on how to do better the next time, and then do just that.

Again, that's how we learn in journalism. And that's how we'll learn this semester. Just stick with it, and I'll be there for you.