Last week, I surprised my newswriting class by announcing that we were going on assignment together. Our assignment was to report on a sustainability conference being hosted by Southern Oregon University's Institute for Environmental Studies.
Since coming to Southern Oregon, I've been longing to teach journalism in a more substantial and sustainable way. The Institute's environmental conference on campus provided such an opportunity.
It is true that the best way to learn how to do journalism is to go out and do it.
Sitting in a lab for 2 hours at a time doing exercises and grammar drills is important, but getting out and really experiencing what it is like to report on the world is another thing all together.
What I learned from the conference confirmed what I already assumed was true about my feelings for the local media -- I was ill-informed on local issues and that I knew so little about regional and community initiatives.
At the conference, I found out that there are communities and projects in this region that provide alternative sources of news and information as a public service -- news that not only serves a niche audience but also news that has implications to the larger society as a whole.
Although, many of these alternative sources do not adhere to traditional journalistic tenets in terms of always providing the most balanced of perspectives, they do touch on issues rarely raised in the mainstream press.
Today, I read a commentary in the Boston Globe from Lawrence Bacow, the president of Tufts University . Although he was addressing higher education specifically, he could have also been talking about journalism.
Bacow argues, "The notion that universities can act as catalysts to accelerate the trend toward more constant and widespread civic involvement is not new. But until recently, people didn't grasp the potential power of the world's higher education community -- power that stems from sheer numbers and the inherent optimism of youth."
The same thing can be said about the role of journalism in society -- journalism as a catalyst for change in the world. How is journalism engaging "the inherent optimism of youth"? I do not think it is.
Democratic civics and social responsibility should be one of the most cherished tenets of higher education across the curriculum. These concepts should also be held high in journalism. These tenets should be passed along to our younger generations to work with.
We should not have to wait for a crisis like Hurricane Katrina or a conflict like hate speech on campus to become motivated and engaged in civic life. Many professors, of course, already know this and use community affairs and grassroots initiatives to engage students in "real-world" and "real-time" learning.
Journalism is as much of a public service as it is a business. Teaching students to understand the dialectical tensions between the two functions is of paramount importance.
On one hand, the idealist in me believes that journalism and universities can act as catalysts to speed up and sustain more widespread civic involvement in the world. On the other hand, the pragmatist in me understands how economics and ideological forces continue to undermine these ideals.
Tying the cost of doing journalism or education in this country to turning quarterly profits or just staying in business is problematic. In journalism, having profit margins dictate how news in covered along with an insidious trend toward media consolidation and ownership has been undermining its function as the Fourth Estate and public servant for a long time now.
The notion of sustainable journalism is a good one.
Creating an open space for the exchange of ideas is sustainable in journalism today through the Internet as well as traditional media.
Sustainable journalism means that reporting must continue to be ethical, responsible, balanced and fair, but it must also do more. Doing sustainable journalism might also mean that coverage of issues impacting our communities be conducted with the understanding that collective action and civic engagement could be fostered.
Some journalism does foster collective action and civic engagement, but I would say that it could do more. Journalism can become more involved in so many ways.
The biggest concern I have about how journalism is done in this country is again tied to the economic pressures of making news into a money-making business . In the interest of profit, many news sources have had to cut back on staff and resources.
Many news organizations simply do not have the means to cover all going concerns adequately. Coupled with a trend in soft news, corporate attitudes toward content production, and what appears to be the searchlight effect in news coverage, journalism is in crisis in this country. The searchlight effect means that many in the mainstream media focus on an issue for a limited time and then move on. An issue may gets its fifteen minutes of attention, that is all. In most reporting today, we are rarely provided with a full and more engaging context in which to understand the sociological and historical roots of an issue. And if we are given if information, it is buried in the last paragraph.
The big news of today is replaced by the big news of tomorrow.
We live in a world of distractions and the way news is reported in this country is symptomatic of this.
Sustainable journalism could change this.
Sustainable journalism would place greater emphasis on fostering collective action and providing more of an open space for civic affairs.
The emphasis, therefore, would be on process and not just about product. Although sustainability has become something of a buzz word, I think the definition fits well for doing journalism in the 21st century.
Sustainability, in this context, means that journalism continues to meet the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.
How is journalism today engaging young people? What message is journalism sending to the leaders of tomorrow?
More importantly, how is the type of journalism we see being done today sustainable for the future?
Sustainable journalism is not the sort of "hit and run" reporting we get off the news wires or even in our local media. Sustainable journalism, means a prolonged engagement in civic affairs that moves beyond reporting what the city council said last Thursday night.
Sustainable journalism meets the needs of a community by engaging in truth-telling behind the official lines.
Sustainable journalism reports truthfully but is also concerned with how the truth is used to foster collective action and civic responsibility.