Journalism needs to communicate its value (and values) beyond being defenders of democracy

Journalism has been under economic pressure for most of my career, and it is under increasing pressure now both in terms of relevance in a broken Attention Economy and in terms of legitimacy from anti-democratic, authoritarian leaders.

The economic pressure has been almost constant through most of my career. In the mid-90s, I was looking for my first full-time journalism job, only to find hiring freezes everywhere because of the lingering effects of the recession in the first part of the decade. But after the turn of the century, things have become much, much worse economically for news organisations, especially newspapers. We all know the situation. More than 3,200 newspapers have closed in the US since 2005. In the UK, the three major newspaper groups - Newsquest, National World and Reach - now employ a third of the journalists they did in 2007.

I went to the International Journalism Festival in Perugia, and as you can expect, there was a full-throated defence of journalism and its role in democracy. And what I’m about to say is in no way to say that journalism, especially local journalism, is not important to democracy.

Josh Stearns of the Democracy Fund makes this case compellingly:

• More local political coverage translates into higher local voter turnout.

• More local newspapers translate into more ‘down-ballot’ voting, voters fill out their ballots more fully.

• Local news boosts young voter turnout.

• Consuming local news correlates

We have lost so much local journalism capacity, but the loss of newspapers and local radio stations has come against a backdrop in the US of a collapse in trust of journalism delivered by newspapers, TV and radio. While this is usually driven by a loss of trust in national outlets, network and cable TV and major national titles like the Washington Post and New Times, it affects trust in local outlets. I know first as during my work in local journalism in the US that people would call me up when I was a local newspaper editor and complain about stories on CNN.

As you can see from data from Gallup, data has been declining for decades, with an acceleration between 2004 and 2016. The collapse is most pronounced amongst Republicans.

Decline in trust in journalism tracks with decline in other institutions since the turn of the century, including a decline in satisfaction with democracy. In the US in 2024, only 31% of voters are satisfied with how democracy is working, down 10 percentage points from 2021, according to the Pew Research Centre. The US is not alone in a decline in satisfaction with democracy. In the UK (the other country where I hold a passport), satisfaction with how democracy is working is down 21 points, from 60% to 39%. And Pew has found declines across all other democracies - France, Germany, Japan, South Korea, Greece, the Netherlands, and Canada.

Doing more to explain our values

Trust in journalism is a complex issue, but I am going to focus on one issue that I think is getting in our way of regaining trust and re-engaging audiences. With all of the pressure on journalism, we reflexively restate our professional values and the value of the role that we play in democracy. I get it because they are my professional values too, and I’m a dyed-in-the-wool Jeffersonian, believing in the core values of the Bill of Rights. However, it is wrong to assume that our professional values are universal social values, especially in this era when views are not only polarised but multi-polar.

I could write a book about this, but in the interest of brevity, I agree with Joy Mayer of the Trusting News Project. We need to engage in much more transparency, not only about our process as journalists but the values that inform the process.

A small example of this: I love how the Christian Science Monitor has a box in stories that explains why they did a story. With President Trump’s recent executive orders targeting high-profile law firms, they wrote about how the British had targeted lawyers who represented “causes it didn’t like”. They highlighted the case of the Boston Massacre, when John Adams, who would become the second president of the United States, chose to represent the British soldiers who were accused of killing five colonists.

They had a box explaining why they chose to cover the story in an act of radical transparency.

It’s a small thing, but I think journalists should do it more often. Explain why we are covering something. Connect the story to our professional values but also the wider values of society.

I used to tell journalists who I worked with or who worked with me that in addition to the 5 Ws of classic journalism - who, what, where, when and why - we should include why people should care. We can’t assume background knowledge. We can’t assume that people will intuitively connect the dots that we are connecting about our story choice. And frankly, story choice is one of the most important elements of journalism. The construction of a news agenda, almost more than how stories are written, speaks to the values of a news outlet. And we need to ground that news agenda in the needs of our audiences, not just the user needs framework, but in their needs. These are things that will restore trust and demonstrate the value that we place in the relationship that we have with our communities and the broader audiences we serve.

A closure of a US non-profit newsroom and the sacking of the editor who wrote it

I met Sewell Chan years ago when he was working at the New York Times, and I was the blogs editor at The Guardian. He was writing the City Room blog, and he wanted to talk about audience engagement and blogging. I’ve followed his career since, from the New York Times to leading the newsroom at the Texas Tribune and finally to editing the Columbia Journalism Review.

The piece that he wrote recently about the closing of the non-profit Houston Landing is a good explanation of why the site failed. They failed to find an audience, and it is unclear the leadership was right to address this.

Sewell was just fired from his role as the executive editor at CJR. The New York Times links to a post written by someone who worked as the digital editor at CJR about his experience working with Sewell.

I first found out about it from a lengthy post that he wrote and posted on Facebook and LinkedIn. He said the firing came after “three pointed conversions”, which he detailed.

The AI discussions at the International Journalism Festival

I went to a couple of AI panels at Perugia, but most of them were from product managers and how they were navigating AI decisions in their newsrooms. I heard about some heated presentations about AI. From some of the things I heard, one fault line was not about how AI was applied in journalism organisations, but anger towards AI companies. Journalists were angry at platforms that had led to a loss of income and stability. David Caswell is one of the smartest people working on AI in journalism, and he calls for a truce.

A final link for the newsletter on one of my favourite topics - membership. The folks at Media Voices have a great interview with the strategic partnerships manager at Memberful. Membership is a powerful strategy that leverages the relationship you build with your audience, but it takes effort and finesse. At the start, she advises simplicity, but additional tiers can be added later.