Keeping the watchdog alive

By Deborah Brasket/Looking Forward

Last month, SB CAN was privileged to co-host a highly topical panel discussion called the “Future of Journalism: Keeping the Watchdog Alive in Santa Barbara and the Nation.”

The discussion focused on two primary themes — the decline of the traditional newspaper business and the potential benefits and challenges of new online trends, including blogs, Web sites and online newspaper editions.

The high-powered panel, moderated by popular local blogger Craig Smith, featured Jim Rainey, a journalist with the Los Angeles Times; Susan Paterno, journalism professor and director of the journalism program at Chapman University; Jerry Roberts, co-founder of Calbuzz and former editor of the San Francisco Chronicle and Santa Barbara News-Press; Nick Welsh, Santa Barbara Independent columnist and news editor; and Dick Flacks, community activist and sociology professor emeritus.

The panelists agreed that journalism faces a perfect storm of problems — declining readership, declining advertising support and competition from new online news sources. Print newspapers have high costs and depend upon subscriptions, and even more heavily on advertising.

On Web sites, by contrast, the first instinct of news sources was never to “monetize them,” as Jim Rainey pointed out. People expect online sites to be provided free. Once any service has been provided free of charge, it is going to be an enormous challenge to get customers to pay for it — in this case, to access the news, and even more so if not all news outlets agree to charge. Even if newspaper owners could agree to do this, they would still be constrained by antitrust regulations. The challenge for newspapers and online news sources is to find innovative ways of making money and staying in business.

These problems have an important connection to the survival of our democracy, which depends on an informed citizenry. Given the choice between no newspapers and no government, Thomas Jefferson declared that he considered newspapers more important.

The panelists agreed that online journalism, despite its problems, had many positive features. Paterno noted that it had lowered barriers of entry to citizen journalists. Roberts added that online journalism provides immediacy in reporting, less censorship and greater diversity of voices and democracy. The growth of online sources permitted people to find and read what mattered to them, creating niche audiences rather than a one-size-fits-all paper for a general audience. With social networks such as Twitter and Facebook on the rise, and the ability for many to use this technology as an additional means of communication, the possibilities of the online communication were obviously only beginning.

Taking a slightly different tack, Welsh urged the necessity of creating accountability in journalism. He explained that good journalism meant not just reporting an isolated event, but also providing context. In order to get context, you needed paid reporters who sit at school board and council meetings, day in and out. The only way to make this happen would be to provide sufficient money to keep quality reporters employed.

Flacks ended the discussion on a positive note, mentioning the success of non-profit public broadcasting networks such as NPR, PBS and Pacific, and online journalism outlets such as ProPublica, the Center for Public Integrity and the Center for Investigative Reporting. These organizations offered another model for newsgathering and public discourse.

The panel offered a vivid demonstration of the vitality of contemporary journalism. Despite its many problems, it is a crucial local, national and international resource for all of us, worth strengthening and preserving.

We all need to do our part in helping to keep this vital watchdog barking.