Media: window to the world or mirror of the world? (Vote in a poll.)

In my theory of mass communications class this week we talked about Walter Lippmann’s notion that newspapers give people a window to the world. (Naturally, this was in the context of framing theory.) Then, in my producing community journalism class, we discussed the idea that a mirror could represent the role of the press in reflecting community. (Hey, some mirrors have frames, too.)

The images that each metaphor evokes help us construct valuable models as we try to discover the nature of the transformation taking place in journalism.  One, however, gives the impression of the media being apart from the world it is revealing to its audience (the window), whereas the other claims media are the very part of social reality that we can see (the reflection in the mirror). I would have to go with the latter, because media are not simply floating above or outside their communities. In fact, they are more than just shaped by society; shaping them is the very process of negotiating meaning of our social reality. I’m glad to come to this realization because it means that I am engaged in something that is fundamental to human advancement.

So, please take a quick second to answer the poll. It will interesting to see the different thoughts out there.

Window or mirror?

I’ve shared parts of the following quotes before. They are some of my favorites and offer insights into the meaning and usefulness of the media-as-a-mirror metaphor.

Quote No. 1:

“In this Day the secrets of the earth are laid bare before the eyes of men. The pages of swiftly appearing newspapers are indeed the mirror of the world. They reflect the deeds and the pursuits of divers people and kindreds. They both reflect them and make them known. They are a mirror endowed with hearing, sight and speech. This is an amazing and potent phenomenon.”

(This next part makes me think of cleaning the mirror…)

“However, it behoveth the writers thereof to be purged from the promptings of evil passions and desires and to be attired with the raiment of justice and equity. They should enquire into situations as much as possible and ascertain the facts, then set them down in writing.”

-Baha’u'llah, Tablet to the Times

Quote No. 2:

“The primary, the most urgent requirement is the promotion of education. It is inconceivable that any nation should achieve prosperity and success unless this paramount, this fundamental concern is carried forward. The principal reason for the decline and fall of peoples is ignorance. Today the mass of the people are uninformed even as to ordinary affairs, how much less do they grasp the core of the important problems and complex needs of the time.

“It is therefore urgent that beneficial articles and books be written, clearly and definitely establishing what the present-day requirements of the people are, and what will conduce to the happiness and advancement of society. These should be published and spread throughout the nation, so that at least the leaders among the people should become, to some degree, awakened, and arise to exert themselves along those lines which will lead to their abiding honor. The publication of high thoughts is the dynamic power in the arteries of life; it is the very soul of the world. Thoughts are a boundless sea, and the effects and varying conditions of existence are as the separate forms and individual limits of the waves; not until the sea boils up will the waves rise and scatter their pearls of knowledge on the shore of life.

“Thou, Brother, art thy thought alone,
The rest is only thew and bone. [Rúmí, The Mathnaví, II 2:277]

“Public opinion must be directed toward whatever is worthy of this day, and this is impossible except through the use of adequate arguments and the adducing of clear, comprehensive and conclusive proofs. For the helpless masses know nothing of the world, and while there is no doubt that they seek and long for their own happiness, yet ignorance like a heavy veil shuts them away from it.”

-Abdu’l-Baha, Secret of Divine Civilization

Do a search for “saving journalism”

If you’re like me and the recent news about the New York Times job cuts made you type into a search engine “save journalism”, then these are some of the top search results you got:

1. Columbia Journalism Review: Saving Journalism, how to nurse the good stuff until it pays (An essay by the same author of The Vanishing Newspaper: Saving Journalism in the Information Age with a rather traditional media perspective)
2. Journerdism.com was also prompted to blog an S.O.S. for journalism following the avalanche of job cuts in newsrooms across the nation and the disappointing “negativity and dog-fighting among journalism blogs“
3. WebProNews.com explains How Bloggers Will Save Journalism addressing the many answers new media offers the 21st-century challenges: new technologies (such as Amazon’s Kindle), investigative journalism with shrinking staff, the need for purists and romantics to adapt, market saturation, high overhead, craigslist and more.  The suggestion for “government bailout” is questionable, however.
4. Buzzmachine.com sprouted two results on my search. One challenged the assumption that saving journalism means saving journalism jobs. This suggestion that media progress is synonymous with newspaper job cuts makes me nervous because it plays into greedy shareholders’ hands.
5. And the second buzzmachine.com result was a (looong) blog on the Norg UnConference  held at the Annenberg School of Communications in Philadelphia. Although the title of the post sounds combative, Saving Journalism and Killing the Press, the principles guiding the “unconference”were great: cooperation, mutualism, continuing the conversation, and more. Jeff Jarvis even writes,
   

   I say this is the day that the war ends. This isn’t journalism against bloggers anymore. It never was, really. This is journalists and bloggers together in favor of news.

Media mutualism

If traditional journalists could be found on-line, then perhaps the world would know whether or not they refute the bloggers’ claims that the professional media are worried about news migrating to the Internet.

For example, Alfred Hermida’s blogs from the Knight Science Journalism Symposium painted pictures of new-media champions lecturing to old-world reporters squirming in their seats and asking ridiculous questions.

The fact that there is almost no blogger voice giving a traditional media perspective makes the old-school reporters and editors look guilty as charged. It’s no wonder, then, that the new generation of media who are trying to carry journalism into the future see them as an impediment to advancement and a force to be reckoned with.

That is, unless there are traditional journalists who might agree with the way new-media advocates envision this future… We’ll never know until they blog about it either way, or leave a comment on this post.

As Hermida outlined in his blog on Tom Rosenstiel’s presentation at the symposium, journalists will soon learn to operate as part of a network rather than a final destination by assuming the roles of authenticator, sense-maker, navigator (yes, friends in the traditional media, it is OK for your readers to follow links away from your site…they will be back) and forum leader. These sound like better options than unemployment, so why wouldn’t a journalist support a way to preserve her livelihood?

Such potential responsibilities are also summed up in Daniel Conover’s foundations of 21st century journalism,

MAINSTREAM RETRENCHMENT
“Mainstream media” today are in decline, with “the people formerly known as the audience” fragmented. Future media will separate into market-driven grades of information. The “mainstream” will become a smaller subset of the total media flow, generally associated with less-sophisticated technology and users who: 1. Produce little content; 2. Profit only marginally from higher grades of information; and 3. Choose a passive lifestyle. Mainstream media will not dominate, but will represent the most significant media plurality.

Bloggers don’t seem to deny that professional journalists have a place within their shared information sphere. They actually thrive on taking news that’s run in the mainstream media and then “opensourcing” the information on their blogs. In fact, the investigative reporting job by political blogger Joshua Micah Marshall, of Talking Points Memo, just won him the George Polk Award for legal reporting. Part of his Web site’s process of covering the firing/resignation scandal of eight United States attorneys was to follow the news in the traditional media. But if the TPM staff and its readers hadn’t been paying attention and noticing patterns, their scrutiny of the scandal may never have been picked up by the mainstream media.

To recognize this media mutualism, both the traditional news companies and their employees will have to swallow their pride as well as the reality of smaller profit margins. Unfortunately there are signs that, well, this recognition may be further away than we’d like. In the New York Times story about Marshall’s award, a fellow blogger is quoted suggesting Marshall will win a Pulitzer someday. However, NYtimes.com writer Noam Cohen writes,

“It won’t be this year. Sig Gissler, the administrator of the Pulitzer Prizes, said in an e-mail message that online articles are eligible for the awards, but they must have been published on a weekly or daily newspaper’s Web site.

‘A freestanding Web site does not qualify,’ he said.”