• Great journalism is accuracy, impartiality, context and depth; it is unyielding curiosity and having the instinct of a sleuth; leaving nothing unturned.
• While great journalism matters, how the audience experience journalism matters even more.
Image: FILE
News media is in trouble globally. More than 500 dailies in the United States of America went out of business between 1970 and 2016. Surviving dailies have cut news coverage or reduced the paper’s size. Even digital-native news outlets such as BuzzFeed are in trouble. The Huffington Post has failed to turn a profit.
Here at home in East Africa readership of print media is in decline. Even television viewership is in turmoil. Advertising revenue, where it still exists, is vapourising at lightning speed. Journalists are overworked and grossly underpaid. News media establishments are haemorrhaging top journalistic talent to public relations and marketing agencies.
Audiences – television viewers, readers of newspapers and magazines, those who listen to radio and podcast – are staggered by the deplorable quality of media news products. The quality of writing is atrocious. Storytelling is a ghost that visits the newsroom only infrequently. There is no fidelity to facts or accuracy or balance. Reporting has been stripped of ethics; anything goes.
The tough business environment, with declining revenues and vicious contraction in staffing, makes the situation even more dire. It means that media houses lack the resources to invest in high-quality reporting. It means media houses do not have well-trained journalists to assign to complex and interesting assignments. It means media houses can only cater to the demands of low brow short-term news cycle stories. Hence, the news genre of 'she-said, he-said' presents exceedingly exciting value.
It is interesting that news media is struggling when we have the highest levels of literacy and a significantly higher per capita income than at any time in our history. Why are newspaper sales down? Why are paywalls for online newspapers not driving subscriptions for digital content?
Political reporting in this part of the world constitutes by far the largest traffic of the 'she-said, he-said' reporting format. In an environment where resources for assembling content are scarce, reporting politics takes minimum resources, both human and financial. Hence, editors believe political stories are the staple; that somehow political stories sell newspapers and draw large television viewership. I doubt that there is data to support this conjecture.
I am mindful that the emergence and the ubiquity of digital platforms continue to make the business of media more complicated. However, it is interesting that news media is struggling when we have the highest levels of literacy and a significantly higher per capita income than at any time in our history. Why are newspaper sales down? Why are paywalls for online newspapers not driving subscriptions for digital content?
We must not look any further. The answer to declining readership and waning viability of media businesses can only be found in the media houses. Declining readership is merely a symptom of a serious malaise in the media business. At the heart of what ails news media is the decline in the quality of journalism.
Uncompromising excellence in writing is the lifeblood of journalism. Great journalism is accuracy, impartiality, context and depth. Great journalism is unyielding curiosity and having the instinct of a sleuth; leaving nothing unturned. While great journalism matters, how the audience experience journalism matters even more.
More importantly, we must train excellent journalists. Universities must work hand in hand with the industry especially, to raise the standards of investigation, storytelling and writing.