Teaching old-school journalism in a new world

I have been the first to bid good riddance to dead tree news sources. Newspapers folding? Good! This is 2009, after all. If you can't find it on the Web, is it really even worth reading?

Obviously, I'm being a bit tongue-in-cheek here, but the point remains: Newspapers kill trees, nobody's reading them, and anyone who still isn't publishing online needs to have a darn fine reason for it. We're in a recession in the 21st century; something needs to change.

What we often forget, however, is what goes by the wayside when a newspaper folds or lays off more journalists. I read an article tonight that reminded me in no uncertain terms and convinced me that we need to build some curriculum and student interest around real, old-school journalism. We simply have to engage our students in applying time-honored journalistic skills to modern media and communications channels.

The article, published in this Sunday's Washington Post, was titled "In Baltimore, No One Left to Press the Police." Having lived and worked in Baltimore for several years, the article caught my eye, as did the double entendre in the title. Who will push on the police, "press" the establishment, and otherwise dig for information, if not the press?

The author, David Simon, recalls his years covering the crime beat for the Baltimore Sun, along with a handful of other journalists, investigating graft, corruption, and coverups, using whatever connections were necessary to get to the truth behind a story. It conjured up a fairly romantic image, but clearly the system of checks and balances embodied by the press was doing its job. Thomas Jefferson is often quoted about the importance of freedom of the press: "Our liberty cannot be guarded but by the freedom of the press, nor that be limited without danger of losing it."

In contrast, Mr. Simon paints a picture of a much different Baltimore Sun today, in which there simply isn't the manpower to keep people honest.

In January, a new Baltimore police spokesman...came to the incredible conclusion that the city department could decide not to identify those police officers who shot or even killed someone...

Unfortunately, as he points out, the blogosphere hasn't stepped in to press back against the establishment in cases like this.

Well, sorry, but I didn't trip over any blogger trying to find out McKissick's [an officer who shot a man under shady circumstances] identity and performance history. Nor were any citizen journalists at the City Council hearing in January when police officials inflated the nature and severity of the threats against officers [to justify the policy noted above]. And there wasn't anyone working sources in the police department to counterbalance all of the spin or omission.

So where do we go from here? It's hard to debate the utility of trained, hardened journalists, set apart from the sensationalism of ad-driven TV reporters. It's even harder to debate the demise of newspapers in this economic and technological climate. What is less difficult is to convince our students that the press is alive and well, just in new and exciting forms. The press is in need of trained, hard-hitting reporters, not Googling pundits who talk about what they read on the Interwebs.

Will our students be publishing in newspapers when they graduate? Probably not. However, Mr. Simon's article convinced me that they better be publishing somewhere, somewhere that has the sort of reach newspapers used to and the sort of clout that kept government transparent and on its toes.