Of progress and negative rulers

The crowd hushed as the photographer approached the
podium.  He wore a button down shirt, his going to
town pants, a blue tie with elephants and a pair of
very clean tennis shoes.  Charles Mason grinned and
introduced himself as "someone who worked in the
journalism department." 

I smiled to myself and thought about reindeers as photographer Jim
Barker sat next to me.    

Mason introduced the speaker of the evening and the
audience applauded as Joel Shurkin walked on stage.
With trembling hands he shuffled through his notes,
fumbled his water bottle and cleared his throat as he
said good evening to the audience. 

He then began. to. read. his. speech....nervously 

He spoke about the death of the newspaper.  He is
perturbed.

The lecture reminded me of something I heard once,
*progress can be measured with a negative ruler."

For every step forward we take, there is something
lost.  It's like the circle of life..  :) 

--Kaitlin Wilson

Internet opportunities overlooked in nostalgia?

Is Thomas Jefferson “spinning in his grave,” like Joel Shurkin argues? I walked out of his Tuesday, November 20^th lecture on at the Noel Wien Library appalled and dismayed with the state of American journalism. I’ve given his talk some time to sink in, and today, I’m not completely convinced with his argument, granted he had some good points.

Shurkin blamed the state of today’s journalism on “rampant capitalism.” He argued that Wall Street is undermining good newspapers and other news organizations, saying that by focusing on quarter profits, investors aren’t seeing the whole picture. He also blames monopolization. For example, Disney owns ABC News. Therefore, the executives at the top of the company probably aren’t as concerned with producing good news because they are largely separated from it. Reasons like these are linked to declines in journalism. Shurkin argued this by talking about permanent overseas correspondence. Africa, he says, only has one permanent American journalist stationed there. This reduces the quality of the news the public will be receiving from the region. Without good information, a good democratic system falls apart. And thus, Thomas Jefferson is spinning in his grave.

Is it quite that bad? Maybe. The part about one remaining permanent foreign correspondent in Africa is truly frightening. However, I detected a large amount of nostalgia in Shurkin’s talk. Technology advances and the infrastructure in which we receive information changes. I think that Shurkin understands this, but is unwilling to really latch onto it.

The vast amount of different ways we can get information today is astounding. Yes, perhaps the quality of newspapers and TV news isn’t quite what it used to be. But there are many different mediums to find information. The Internet has opened up doors to an incredibly vast amount of information. It’s just a matter of finding the right website. Over time, it seems like things will even out. I don’t ever think newspapers will die out, but they’ll probably get smaller and concentrate on longer stories that are harder for people to read on computer monitors.

I think that the growth of different news mediums is ultimately a good thing. However, I think more and more responsibility will be on individuals themselves rather than news organizations in finding good information. People need to seek information in several different mediums. In a sense, everybody needs to be their own journalist.

--Shawn Biessel

Emphasis on newsroom profits depressing

Joel Shurkin, who earned a Pulitzer Prize reporting on the Three Mile Island disaster, seemed like the perfect candidate to inform the Fairbanks public about the problems involving today’s press. He went on to say that Jefferson is spinning in his grave because press isn’t as free as it once was due to corruption of journalism. He said Wall Street is looking more for instant gratification, therefore they create their own reality about the stock annalists, when these “annalists” actually have no idea what they are talking about. When these networks sell out the quality of news soon declined. There is also a lot of questions regarding the effect new media have on print. With new media combined with family companies selling out, managers are cutting foreign news. They have decided that people are more interested in community news, so they get most of their news from less reliable sources to replace foreign news.

Overall, the speech was depressing and left me with a hopeless feeling regarding news. With all these large stations only worried about profits, and the managers firing the editors on a stock annalists’ word, seems like a downer for young journalists seeking inspiration. He has been in the business a long time, and so it’s easy for me to know that he understands these things from experience. It seems he came to the university to inspire journalist majors so they can do their best to change things within these systems and worry more about than the story than the profit and stocks. The Jefferson quote Shurkin ended with was brilliant as well as inspirational, “any country that is both ignorant and free simply can not be.” So what can the next generation do to make changes to this system?
--Jessica Hill