Abstract
The edited volume Rethinking Journalism examines how the profession defines itself – or more precisely, how it needs to redefine itself – by focusing on issues of public trust and engagement. The chapters take the conversation beyond the recent woes of technological and economic changes in the news industry and instead concentrate on its apparent waning relevance.
The compelling introduction, written by editors Chris Peters and Marcel Broersma, highlights the need for changes in journalism based on the fundamental shift in the ways we seek and receive information today. The public’s expectations of journalism have been transformed, and the industry must adjust to this new reality.
Peters and Broersma outline three areas in which scholars and practitioners need to rethink journalism: (1) its business model, although the topic is not addressed with more than a mention in most of the chapters and no substantive proposals are offered for a way forward; (2) its production processes, which are primarily addressed in the context of technology changes that enabled the rise of user-generated content and citizen journalism; and (3) the ‘paradigm that guides journalism practice and … its societal function’ (p. 5). This final area receives the most attention because, in part, changing the idea of journalism is the foundation for changing the business model and production processes. Of the three, it is also the element that exists as ideology and not as tangible reality. Professional journalists likely would argue they are not in need of new definitions (although modifications, if not outright transformations, are needed for the normative approaches to journalism that have endured for decades and are being outpaced by public expectations of the news as an institution). Instead, journalists would emphasize their need for sustainable new business models and refinements of their production processes. They certainly are in need of such proposals, which are beyond the scope of this book.
Throughout the chapters, readers receive a thorough synthesis of literature on public trust in the media, as well as on entrenched journalistic job roles that include public service, objectivity, autonomy, and transparency. The various histories offered in the chapters provide explanations of the crisis in journalism today and examine public trust of journalists and journalism through multiple lenses. The authors largely agreed upon established journalism paradigms, but several highlighted questions of whether objectivity remains feasible and/or desirable.
Central to the book’s theme, the chapters often diverged on what needs to change (or be rethought) in journalism. The big question is how to redefine the profession and its normative values, or if they really even need redefining? Broersma, in Chapter 2, argues that repairing the fractured paradigm may be impossible because ‘the crisis of journalism is thus one of vanishing authority and vaporizing trust because citizens have more access to information and can access alternative representations of social reality’ (p. 44). He asserts that the threat to journalists’ authority is based upon audience access to information but does not explore whether journalists can bolster their relevance; one avenue suggested by others, including Brian McNair in a later chapter, is through journalists’ ability to interpret the news and provide greater context to it. In contrast, Stuart Allan used WikiLeaks as an example of an organization providing more access to original material so citizens can interpret the significance of such documents for themselves and to draw upon the expertise of others. However, aside from interpretation, the authors did not give consideration to rising functions that are expanding the definition and relevance of journalism, such as news curation.
Michael Schudson offers a counterpoint to Broersma’s hypothesis that journalism is a profession so fractured that it suffers from osteoporosis; Schudson believes journalism’s flexibility allows it to weather storms and even questions the assumption that high levels of public trust in journalism are healthy for the profession or for democracy. Similarly, Thomas Hanitzsch points to the robustness of journalism’s ‘social contract’, which aligns with the normative paradigms of journalism that the book seeks to question. He holds up the notions of public service, objectivity, and verification of facts among others as enduring elements that will continue to define professional journalism because citizen media producers largely do not self-identify as journalists nor do they see what they do as ‘journalism’.
Rethinking Journalism delivers on its title – it offers a sound argument for the need to redefine journalism at its core: What makes something ‘journalism’ in today’s changing media landscape? If we unchain journalism from its paradigms, what should the emerging structure look like? Each chapter presents a different vision and although consensus may not be possible, the book offers a starting point from which we can begin to build an invigorated news sphere with trust and truth at its core.