Prospects for the American press under Trump, part two

["Dave Farber" <dave () farber net>]

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From: Dewayne Hendricks <dewayne () warpspeed com>
Date: Sun, Jan 1, 2017 at 5:25 AM
Subject: [Dewayne-Net] Prospects for the American press under Trump, part
two
To: Multiple recipients of Dewayne-Net <dewayne-net () warpspeed com>


Prospects for the American press under Trump, part two

Winter is coming. But there are things that can be done. The second half of
my post on the American press under threat. (Part one is here: <
http://pressthink.org/2016/12/winter-coming-prospects-american-press-trump/>

By Jay Rosen

Dec 30 2016

<http://pressthink.org/2016/12/prospects-american-press-trump-part-two/>



In part one of this post, I described in 17 numbered paragraphs a bleak
situation for the American press as a check on power, now that Donald Trump
has been elected. My summary of it went like this:



Low trust all around, an emboldened and nationalist right wing that treats
the press as natural enemy, the bill coming due for decades of coasting on
a model in political reporting that worked well for “junkies” but failed to
engage the rest of us, the strange and disorientating fact that reality
itself seems to have become a weaker force in politics, the appeal of the
“strong man” and his propaganda within an atmosphere of radical doubt, the
difficulty of applying standard methods of journalism to a figure in power
who is not trying to represent reality but to substitute himself for it as
a show of strength, the unsuitability of prior routine as professionals in
journalism try to confront these confusing conditions, a damaged economic
base, weak institutional structure and newsroom mono-culture that hinders
any creative response, and a dawning recognition that freedom of the press
is a fragile state, not a constitutional certainty.



This is a crisis with many overlapping and deep-seated causes, not just a
problem but what scholars call a wicked problem— a mess. You don’t “solve”
messes, you approach them with humility and respect for their beastliness.
Trying things you know won’t “fix” it can teach you more about the
problem’s wickedness. That’s progress. Realizing that no one is an expert
in the problem helps, because it means that good ideas can come from
anywhere.



Being willing to start over is good, too. If I were running a big national
desk in DC, I would try to zero-base the beat structure. Meaning: if you
had no existing beats for covering national affairs in Donald Trump’s
America, if you had to create them all from scratch, what would that system
look like?



Is that going to fix what’s broken in political journalism? Nope. But
trying it might reveal possibilities that were harder to see before. So let
me be clear about this: I don’t have solutions to what I described in part
one. And I’m not saying my suggestions are equal to the task. They are not.
Rather, this is what I can think of. I have a series of small ideas that
might be worth trying and a larger one to spell out.



I wish had better answers for you.



Measures worth taking (not “solutions.”)



27. Uncouple the news agenda from Trump’s Twitter feed. I don’t agree with
those who say the press should ignore Trump’s tweets. Even calling them
tweets is in a way an illusion. These are public statements from the
president-elect. Bulletins from the top. Naming them for their means of
delivery (Twitter) doesn’t help. They can’t be ignored any more than an
announcement on whitehouse.gov can be disregarded.



But it is true that Trump uses his Twitter feed to deflect, distract,
intimidate, monopolize and confuse. The press should find a way of handling
— and fact-checking — these bulletins that shrinks them into a sidebar, or
weaves them into a larger story originated by journalists rather than
Trump’s Twitter finger. (One option: annotation.) Don’t let his feed set
your agenda. And learn to be more careful with your headlines! That may be
all he wants: your lazy headline.



[snip]



Dewayne-Net RSS Feed: <http://dewaynenet.wordpress.com/feed/>



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