Week Eight Reading Refleciton/Essay Three (11/18/08 Political Journalism)
Articles:
Leubsdorf, B. (2008). Can Print Newspapers Survive?
Vasquez, D. (Oct 7, 2008). What newspapers must do to survive?
Cook, T. E. (1998). Governing With The News. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
Are the news media the political institution?
Cook discusses the politics in journalism in this chapter and he suggests that the news media can be seen as a political institution but is more like an intermediary institution like parties and interest groups, but not like the three constitutional branches of legislature, executive, and judiciary, which is called the “forth branch” of government by some people. Yet news media are still different from the parties and the interest groups because they don’t have clear rules and collective actions to reach a political goal like the latter. News media do affect our politics in an implicit way because they are not just mirroring the facts, but report news selectively to the public.
On the other hand, news media in modern US are more governmental than political because of the biases of the new media. News media have an emphasis on the official news and thus favors only certain political actors, political events, and political issues.
Where the news companies should go?
Both Leubsdorf and Vasquez mention the crisis in the major metropolitan U.S. newspaper industry and give suggestions to media companies when they enter into a digital era. Vasquez indicates that the metro dailies should maintain the local advertising market share and develop their interactive strategies. Vasquez’s explains that journalism is not only about the newspaper. His discussion on how to make the money from the websites is quite inspiring. I agree with his argument that online information providers can be a role which news companies can play in the future. News companies can collect the information which is important in human beings’ daily life.
What will the politics in journalism be like in the future?
We have read the how the journalism will be like from Leubsdorf and Vas’s articles and it seems that the metro news companies will be like the community information providers in the future when the big news companies will keep the same for a while. In the other hand, the digital technology benefits the civic journalism and almost everyone can be the contributor to post news and information online. It may seem like that there will be fewer biases of the news in the future; however, I wouldn’t say so. The credibility is an important issue in journalism, and it is also one of the reasons why journalists have preference on official materials. Although digital media can bring more channels for people and provide the news from different perspectives, how to keep the credibility is still important for companies who want to sell news. The big companies still own the advantage of credibility while the metropolitan newspapers maybe will lose its advantage of credibility if they become the community information providers in the future.
