My first summer in New York, a professor of mine set me up to meet an old student of his, now a New York Times Editor, to chat about my journalism degree and her career path. After a tour of the newsroom, and some elbow-rubbing with the masthead, she sat me down in a conference room and advised me to pick a new career. It was Red Smog Day in New York, and journalism was dead.
The Current Temperature.
My reaction around such industry cynicism was less shock and more disappointment. In my own undergraduate classes, I have been bombarded with other forms of apocalypse propaganda—collapsing job markets, professors advising careers in corporate comms and PR over chasing reporting internships. I did not imagine working journalists, especially those at the Newspaper of Record, to be ready to jump ship themselves, and even be so sure as to advise the same to a young journalist. However, as I said, I was not shocked.
Journalism, an already unpopular major, has become an even less desirable career path. The median annual earnings of a bachelor’s of journalism graduate within three years of graduation is $40,800. It doubles for master’s degrees, but only for graduates from the top programs. Of those undergraduate journalism majors, only about 15% become editors, news analysts, reporters, or correspondents early in their careers. The evidence of a shrinking industry seems clear, but I always assumed that active professionals would be more optimistic about their own careers. With advice to jump ship from some of the most successful journalists in the country, I wonder where have all the journalists gone?
All Roads Lead to Tech.
The sentiment around newsroom layoffs and newspaper closings offers one, bleak narrative about where journalism is headed: down the sinkhole of technological innovation. Since 2008, newsroom employment has sunk by 26% in the US. Of those, midcarrer news workers (those ages 35 to 54) were hit the hardest. But while newspapers have steep job losses, digital news and broadcasting companies have actually grown, according to Pew Research Center. Alongside digital news, freelancing is the growing trend. From 1987 to 2016, the number of journalists hired as freelancers increased from 5% to 17% of the total group, thus permanent contracts are fewer and farther between. With AI’s invention and exponential progress, the future looks even darker. The AP uses AI for “event detection.” A study by Young and Hermida in 2015 found that the LA Times was engaging in what the authors called “computational journalism”, the use of the newspaper’s Homicide Report and Data Desk to generate material for news stories, if not always the final copy.
As audiences flock to online forums, journalists seem to follow them. Whether through reimagining physical newspapers to online articles, or actually changing the writing styles to reflect attention economies, and therefore click-bait culture, the industry is rightfully panicked about the slippery slope of writing for the sake of growing readership rather than protecting, informing, and empowering a readership.
The panic ensuing is reminiscent of the 2016 election cycle and calls of the death of democracy. Journalism’s new business model, supported heavily by freelancers, paired with the threat of robot-journalists formulating news briefs is too easy of a dystopian fantasy for us to fall for.
AI has the most powerful implications for the entire industry of journalism since the invention of the internet. Its research capabilities will maximize production and speed, and revolutionize what it means to write clean copy. A news startup, Semafor, is using AI to proofread stories, a job typically reserved for a copy editor. Journalists, especially student journalists, are wondering what happened to that copy editor.
However, while AI will effectively replace many intern duties, it will not replace true reporting. Some may call the advent of AI the death of print. Others, like Pulitzer-Prize finalist Les Zaitz, call it an “evolution.” Zaitz maintains technological advancements will strengthen journalism’s reach and quality. This new assistant will help create the modern format, but we will always need solid community reporting, done by people who understand the human need for communication.
We are social beings. We live on the stories we tell ourselves, and those we tell others. Journalism serves to scale this human need, and thus it has to adapt as we do. Victor Pickard wrote for the Columbia Journalism Review, “We need a paradigm shift so we’re not just seeing journalism as a business, but we’re seeing it as an essential public service, which democracy absolutely requires regardless of whether the market will support it.” Truly, the modern format is a dynamic idea, and will adapt as our society and systems grow.
Tech is just another tool, and it won’t replace us, not even interns. “I reject the premise that there aren’t journalism jobs, " says Zaitz. “I think people who are making those kinds of assessments aren’t out in the field.” Zaitz mentions how many papers, including his own, Oregon Capital Chronicle, regularly scout for young talent. “The newspaper business has been its own worst enemy when it comes to recruiting, " says Zaitz, and he’s right.
Publications simultaneously report on AI’s capabilities to replace itself while putting up job postings. All that this catastrophizing coverage does is confuse audiences, and push them away— a lesson we should have learned after the last election cycle.
Lack of Trust in the Media
What we cannot expect out of readers is to be avid and motivated patrons of the press after the 2016 election cycle. Since news media shifted to 24-hour news cycles, there has been a lean towards a narrativization of facts. Narrativization occurs when a journalist injects a more fantastical, more digestible, more marketable story onto a news piece that simply does not have that tone in reality. It sensationalizes reality in an attempt to elicit emotional responses from audiences, and ultimately promote views. One paper even called this as “manufactured hysteria.”
This is largely due to a business model relying on constant views and constant clicks, to fund stations and publications. While it is natural to storyline, doing so motivated by what will get readers to open a story or stay on a channel creates a subtext of dramatization due to the “if it bleeds, it leads’' methods left over from the 1890s. This method seeped into the political coverage of the presidential elections because the news media over emphasized each fact in order to keep readers engaged, but rather hooked, on each step of the primaries, debates, and election nights.
Narrativization is also seeping into journalistic writing as the debate around objectivity arises. Generations of journalists have been raised on the idea that articles should simply be collections of verified, relevant facts, presented to the public to help inform them as citizens. However, my generation of journalists has been taught that objectivity can be the guise underneath real bias and both-sides-ism lives. The reality is that many facts can be valid, and yet not properly contextualized, or representative of larger themes. Journalists can also report quotes from both sides of a debate, and weigh them equally in an article, leaving readers to believe that equal footing is representative of the support behind each view. Popular in the 2016 election, giving journalistic coverage to certain underground opinions, becomes a tactic for gaining free press if one’s voice is inflammatory enough. It is a journalist’s job to pursue information beyond the quickest, easiest expression. Beyond facts, there is truth.
These years muddied the waters of what it means to trust your local and national broadcast and paper. With trust gone, even fewer have faith in journalism’s longevity. But to examine trust, is to examine truth, and that should be the larger concern of journalists.
What’s in a Journalist?
The first thing you learn in journalism school is that fact is king. Facts, objectively provable, are the touchstones of any good story, and should anchor every piece. What the most recent election, alongside the internet revolution, proved to journalists and audiences alike is that fact and truth differ. Facts are numbers, names, places, and dates. Facts are confirmable, searchable, or undeniable. Truth, however, is a much larger burden on a writer to find. Truth requires knowledge, context, compassion, and humility to find. What we have come to know now, is that facts have a shelf-life. As the internet expands, the possibility to collect and manipulate data has left journalists susceptible to lazy research and one-dimensional coverage. Any single idea can be proven with dozens of reference links to support it, so how can truth ever be found in the noise?
Finding truth among all of the facts and perspectives is about having a broader understanding of people and how they work. Journalists must be uniquely prepared to see people for their motivations and flaws. Truth must be accomplished out of a duty to inform, not a cash-grab at headlines. Truth is not easily found, and requires due time to parse. The 24-hour news cycle convinces writers and readers alike that any news now is better than quality news later. In many facets of modern life we are impatient, but in our news cycle, for our own sake, we must prioritize getting the story right before letting it falsely fester within the culture. A correction is never heard as loud as the story. The burden of truth is a heavy weight to place on any one group, but this is why the journalists have an exceptionally noble profession, one we should not take likely to being laid off by the hundreds, replaced by robots, or completely mistrusted.
With Journalists Gone, Who’s Going to Remember You?
With all of these perceived threats to journalism, I wonder if we are aware of the necessity of cultural communication and reporting. Journalists, whether they are all laid off this year or not, are important to society. We have a core skill beyond simply gathering information and making it digestible. Journalists are the keepers of history which is alive. The privilege and responsibility to note history as it unfolds is valued beyond pendulum swings that favor business models over cultural needs. Journalists help people matter. Writers expose, afflict, comfort, and aid those whom otherwise may become forgotten. “A well-functioning democratic society is always going to be hungry for credible sources of information,” Zaitz added. I argue, even a poorly-functioning anything is hungry for credible, relevant information to keep wheels turning. Communication is the modern currency because the knowledge is power. Without knowing, we are unimportant.
Where to?
In my own journey to understand the value of my journalism degree, I have sought guidance from older peers and inspiring alumni. While some encouraged me to jump head first and deny the cynicism, others were content with assuming their journalism career would be short-lived and were soon preparing to enter corporate comms or PR. Thinking back to my meeting with the editor at the New York Times, I wonder how lost we may be if even the Newspaper of Record has hopeless editors. I have found I disagree with this editor. Journalism is important whether or not the New York Times closes. Even if every paper shut down, journalists are needed. The business model is uncertain, but do not fold underneath capitalist or even modernist pressures that the world will never be the same. Human beings need to communicate, and now that we are older, we will find new ways to do it. Set soft goals for humanity. We may not always have the paper hard copy, but we will always have muck-raking, eager, good-willed writers trying to tell you what you need to know.
Correction: Previous story stated “From 1987 to 1026″ the number of freelancers increased from 5% to 17%. It was between 1987 to 2016.