Journalism, culture and the trustee/ transmission model

Thanks for sharing Joli Jensen's book review of Herbert Gans book Democracy and the News. Jolie wrote a very insightful book chapter on John Dewey (“Art, the Public, and Deweyan Cultural Criticism,” in American Pragmatism and Communication Research, David K. Perry, editor, Longman’s, 2000). Perhaps she would consider working with us sometime in the future.

Her insight that news is more an expression of culture than a transmission of information is another good one. I think she too narrowly construes the transmission model. (It's been a while since I read Gans' book, so he may be guilty of the same narrowness.) The transmission model can subsume a cultural cast as well as an information cast: A set of elites -- sources, officials, journalists -- acting as trustees transmit information, cultural knowledge, norms, etc. through media channels, including news media. That's why contentious debate over media bias persists -- it is not so much over what information is transmitted, but which cultural norms and stories and templates are privileged. (I prefer the compound "trustee/transmission model," pulling from Michael Schudson's work.)

John Storey, professor and director of the Center for Research in Media and Cultural Studies at the University of Sunderland, offers this definition of culture in Inventing Popular Culture (Oxford: Blackwell, 2003, pages ix-x):

Culture is an active process. … It is the practice of making and communicating meanings. Culture is not in the object but in the experience of the object: how we make it meaningful, what we do with it, how we value it, etc. “Culture is ordinary” (Williams, 1958a): it is how we make sense of ourselves and the world around us; it is the practice through which we share and contest meanings of ourselves, of each other, and of the world. … To share a culture is to interpret the world – to make it meaningful – in recognizably similar ways.

Storey says further that cultures are not “harmonious, organic wholes” but “shared and conflicting networks of meanings,” “arenas in which different ways of articulating the world come into conflict and alliance.” That sounds a lot like the world of news. Storey’s definition of culture can be adapted, slightly, to describe journalism and news:

Journalism is an active process. It is the practice of making and communicating meanings about recent occurrences and events. News exists not in the occurrence or event but in how we experience it: how we make it meaningful, what we might do about it, how we value it, etc. While we talk about news as being about the extraordinary, journalism – encompassing both news production and consumption – is ordinary in that it is one way we routinely make sense of ourselves and the world around us; it is a practice through which we share and contest meanings of ourselves, of each other, and of the world. To share news is to engage each other in interpreting the world – in making it meaningful – in recognizably similar ways.

Storey notes that culture comes into being through both cultural production and consumption. Consumption becomes production in that what we consume helps produce our culture and our identity. Borrowing from Antonio Gramsci, Storey argues that culture is produced through a never-ending negotiation between elites who control much of the means of production (issues of “structure”) and ordinary people who produce and who decide what to consume and what to make of what they consume (issues of “agency”).

Three topics journalists and cultural-studies scholars could discuss: Should we enlarge journalism’s definition to include news consumption as well as news production? Should we privilege journalism as superior to other forms of meaning-making (and, if so, why)? How does journalism as either a professional practice or academic discipline account for issues of structure and agency in news production and consumption?

So your what-if model speaks to journalism as culture, journalism as production by citizens as well as consumption by citizens and therefore journalism as social practice, not just professional practice.

So what if we tried your approach beginning July 31?

Democracy and the News

Our conversation with Michael Briand Friday about the role of journalism in a democracy has got me thinking about ways to reconceptualize and reorient journalism. We all agreed that American democracy is experiencing serious stress and that journalism as it is generally practiced often contributes to governance problems, rather than improving our ability to effectively govern ourselves.

I found a book review of Herbert Gans Democracy and the News by Jolie Jensen that seemed particularly relevant and insightful to Friday's conversation and prompted an internal what-if game. I'm sure others have plenty of their own "what-ifs" to describe and play with. I'm wondering if we could collect a variety of these 'what-if' scenarios to help us rethink ways to orient our journalism and that we could explore in our new graduate program.

Here's one 'what-if' --

What if a news organization adopted as its mandate an obligation to foster the self-government of the people in its community. It had no responsibility to facilitate government or institutions, but was completely focused on providing ordinary citizens with the tools necessary to create a better life for themselves. It could create a value statement about the kind of community the journalists in that organization were dedicated to fostering (which could be designed with the collaboration of the community or not), and then put it on the masthead/broadcast/web site every day -- and every civic/collective action in the community would be evaluated as to whether it helped foster responsible self-government or harmed it. The news would be how much progress that community made each day in achieving self-government and the betterment of the community and its citizens.

Educational issues could be covered from the viewpoint of parents and children, with experts and administrators sought out solely as resources to specifically help parents and children create better schools. Environmental issues could be covered as discussions about what we want to leave future generations for them to self-manage. The conversations about these issues would not emanate just from the
journalists, but would be a daily report by citizens throughout the community, adding to the community record of what happened that day and the conversation about what it means.

Scale could be a problem, so most people would probably focus on the key space/place/issues of most importance to them. As long as an 'editor's pick' page and "most read stories" information was available, most people would still be exposed to a variety of news stories. With tagging, it would be easy to organize the day's news around the few keywords that are most important to each individual. Rather than beats, we could organize the news in databases easily searchable by issue/entity/person/place.

It could be financed by micropayments or a subscription fee -- or advertising done in a way very different from the current model. Advertising would be in its own section easily searchable and built around the same principles as the news -- how these products will help you create a better life.

Sean Penn on Citizen Journalism

Here's an example of broadcast citizen journalism that shows:

(1) citizen journalism is coming to TV (this is just one of several efforts I've seen in the last week)
(2) journalism as social practice
(3) journalism as defined by people outside newsrooms

Click on Sean Penn to hear his description of journalism:

Current Journalism

I'm curious what the faculty think of this approach. Will efforts like this gain any traction? What does it say about the environment our students are working in? What if our students were asked to publish a story to a site like this as part of an assignment?