Journalism as a Democratic Art

Description

Journalism as a Democratic Art is an edited collection of 16 essays by Cole Campbell (1954-2007), former newspaper editor, dean at the University of Nevada School of Journalism, and a colleague of the Kettering Foundation. These essays reflect Campbell's effort to rethink some of the underlying assumptions that he believed kept his craft at a distance from citizens. To Campbell, readers were not just consumers of information but citizens facing common problems.Campbell believed that newsrooms too often sidelined the concerns of citizens by narrowly considering who was a newsmaker and what was newsworthy. In his essay "Journalism as a Democratic Art," Campbell asks, "What if we reoriented our journalism away from the sources of news and toward the recipients of news?" He was concerned that market journalism, oriented to appeal to consumers rather than citizens, focused too much on transmitting knowledge from experts to a helpless citizenry. This model deeply conflicted with one of the main premises of Cole's work: "In a democracy, citizens are experts in their own lives and in their common aspirations," and journalism should help promote those aspirations.Included in this book is a partly completed "Dictionary for Journalists." In it he addresses the tendency of journalists to adopt overly technical language from their sources, and other problematic frames, sidelining the ways citizens discuss problems and their aspirations in the process. In all, Campbell's writings are a good example of the disconnect Kettering often highlights between citizens, communities, and professions. For other professionals, Campbell's essays offer many transportable questions to carefully tease out where and why misalignments occur.In addition to Campbell's essays, the volume includes a foreword by Richard C. Harwood, and remembrances of Campbell by Catherine L. Werner, Tony Wharton, and Kettering Foundation president David Mathews.

Informations

• Publié par: Kettering Foundation
• Date de parution: 01 janvier 2012
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781945577369
• Langue: English

Extrait

JOURNALISM AS A DEMOCRATIC ART

S ELECTED E SSAYS BY
COLE C. CAMPBELL
E DITED B Y T ONY W HARTON

Kettering Foundation Press
©2012 by the Kettering Foundation
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Journalism as a Democratic Art: Selected Essays by Cole C. Campbell is published by Kettering Foundation Press. The interpretations and conclusions contained in this book represent the views of the author. They do not necessarily reflect the views of the Charles F. Kettering Foundation, its directors, or its officers.
For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to:
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Kettering Foundation Press
200 Commons Road
Dayton, Ohio 45459
This book is printed on acid-free paper.
First edition, 2012
Manufactured in the United States of America
ISBN: 978-0-923993-40-5
Library of Congress Control Number: 2012930719
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Cole Charles Campbell ( Aug. 10, 1953 — Jan. 5, 2007) was a leading voice in American journalism for more than 20 years .
At the time of his death, he was dean and professor at the Donald W. Reynolds School of Journalism and Center for Advanced Media Studies, University of Nevada, Reno, Nevada. He served as a director of the Kettering Foundation, Dayton, Ohio, and as a fellow at the Poynter Institute for Media Studies, St. Petersburg, Florida. During his newspaper career, he was editor-in-chief , St. Louis Post Dispatch, St. Louis, Missouri; editor, the Virginian-Pilot, Norfolk, Virginia; associate managing editor, Greensboro News & Record, Greensboro, North Carolina; assistant city editor, the News & Observer, Raleigh, North Carolina; editor, the Daily Tar Heel, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, North Carolina; and Pulitzer Prize juror, 1993, 1994, 1997, and 1998 .
He is survived by his widow, Catherine L. Werner and their son Clarke; a daughter, Claire, by a previous marriage; and his sisters Constance C. Brough and Catherine J. Campbell .
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CONTENTS
Foreword: Fighting the Good Fight by Richard C. Harwood
A Remembrance by Catherine L. Werner
Cole C. Campbell: An Appreciation by Tony Wharton
Meanings of Place; Places of Meaning
On Work
An Interview With Cole Campbell
Journalism as a Democratic Art
“Cash-Cow” Journalism and the Sigmoid Curve
Dictionary for Journalists— and Those Who Pay Attention to Them
Journalism, Philosophy, and the Editorial Page
Framing: How Journalists—and Citizens— Make Facts Make Sense
From Imperiled to Imperative: How Journalism Might Move from Necessary- But-Not-Sufficient to Necessary-and-Sufficient
Journalism and the Public: Three Steps, Three Leaps of Faith
Deliberative Democracy as Nested Public Spheres
Reifying, Deifying, and Demonizing “The Public”: Let’s Call the Whole Thing Off
Journalism’s Moral Authority
Journalism and Public Knowledge
Meaning and Connection
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I F N OT N OW , W HEN ?
Introduction
Chapter One
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Recalling Cole C. Campbell: A Postscript by David Mathews
F OREWORD : F IGHTING THE G OOD F IGHT
By Richard C. Harwood
T HE MOMENT I THINK OF COLE CAMPBELL, a smile comes over me. He was a delightful person—a savvy conversationalist, instantaneously ready with an insightful quip, a sharer of anything he had. And he had so much to share.
But then, quickly, something deeper comes over me. For what I loved about Cole, and why I came to so deeply admire and respect him over the years, is that he was always in dogged pursuit of something meaningful, something vital, about our individual and collective lives.
We live in a time when so many of us are trying to run harder and faster just to keep up; when we feel unrelenting pressure to focus on our daily to-do lists; when our own urge within ourselves to step forward in life can be discarded, denied, or denigrated by others.
And yet, there was Cole Campbell, in dogged pursuit of some larger mission in life.
In this collection of his writings, you will come across some of those pursuits—his thoughts about the contours and public purpose of knowledge, the role of journalism and the journalist in society, and conceptions of public life and community, among others.
As a society, we need these writings—perhaps even more now than when Cole originally wrote each of them. For our politics has reached new levels of toxicity. Public discourse writ large is driven by acrimony and divisiveness. There are few institutions or organizations or leaders Americans trust nowadays. In many respects, many of our communities lack the very capacities—the leaders, organizations, networks, and norms—necessary to create the kind of community that reflects people’s shared aspirations and focuses on their chief concerns.
And many communities lack the healthy information environments people need to engage, become informed, and work together.
Journalism and journalists are pivotal in this changing environment. In people’s daily lives, they are struggling to see and hear one another, especially those different from themselves. Amid the deafening noise of public life, there is the hope to make sense of the issues and shifting conditions around them. And people long for a sense of possibility; they are tired and wary of all the negativity and gridlock, and they want to hear different perspectives on ways to move ahead.
These are basic human yearnings. They involve how people see themselves and their relationship to others and the ability to form effective and resilient communities together. These yearnings are about how people bring themselves to the public square and engage and connect with others.
Basic human yearnings: these are the matters of Cole’s work and life.
But his work was not always easily understood or embraced by others. Still vivid are my own memories of watching individuals and crowds of people listen to Cole speak about such pursuits. Some thought that he was operating outside the nitty-gritty of reality, others that his head was up in the clouds. While a fair share of his fellow journalists applauded his efforts, many more scratched their heads and wondered aloud about what all the talk and debate was about. It wasn’t always easy to bring Cole’s ideas down to ground level, or to readily make the implications clear, or to translate them into immediate, practical use.
Cole knew all this. And yet he kept going.
Over the years his own momentum and trajectory and influence would grow and deepen—notwithstanding some of the hard personal and professional falls he had along the way, many in plain sight for others to see.
But each time he got back up.
His pursuits—those matters of the heart and mind that drove him at his core—weren’t about empty ruminations, or idle notions, or lofty ideals. Nor did they spring from some youthful naiveté about life, or fanciful vision of a society untethered from reality.
Cole insisted that his work be practical and relevant.
Simply put, Cole’s work was about people, their lives, and the relationship of his profession to them. He did not see himself as a passive bystander in these pursuits. He never envisioned himself as a detached observer. He always had skin in the game.
For Cole, this was a fight .
It was a fight about the kind of society people want to create together. In his mind, as in my own, this was a process that could happen only when people came together to identify their common concerns; to argue and debate and deliberate on the choices they face, and the differences among us, even the deep-seated conflicts. It was about people in communities determining for themselves how they wished to move ahead. For Cole, democracy was not for the faint of heart, or for mere cheerleaders, but for active and engaged citizens.
It was also a fight within journalism about the heart of journalism. What was the purpose and role of journalism? How could journalists examine their own conventions and habits and the ways in which they could best contribute to society, knowing full well that old habits die hard?
When it comes to journalism and its relationship to public life, Cole was brave enough to be among a small cadre of catalysts to bring about a larger conversation in the nation about these matters. Then, amid much pushback, he was there to help keep the conversation going, to maintain a level of engagement with others, and always— always —to bring his full self to the table. This was not always easy for Cole, because as a thinker and change-agent himself, he had to withstand barbs and criticisms and distortions about his own motives.
But Cole never ran from the work at hand.
If you were to follow him around in his various daily jobs and listen in as he wrestled with ideas and practical applications, you would experience a man who strived to operate with a special kind of intentionality. This is an important topic in my own work. I am partial to a definition of intentionality that is made up of two pieces:
First, that we are wakeful in what we do, attentive, “in the game,” present—that we are visible to ourselves and others;
Second, that we see and embrace a moral responsibility for what we say and do—that we understand that our actions matter and there are consequences, which ripple out in all directions from them.
Cole operated intentionally because he believed change in society—namely, in journalism and public life—was so necessary. Anyone who came into contact with Cole knew immediately that he held little interest in working at the margins, or in fiddling around, or, worse yet, in pretending to be doing something of value.
I know this because over a span of 20 years or so, beyond the many conversations we had together, I also found myself working with him in the trenches of newsrooms and news operations. For instance, when my colleagues and I worked with Cole at the Virginian-Pilot , one of the early efforts in the news industry to deepen a newspaper’s relevance and significance in the life of a community, Cole didn’t simply dep