Panel: Push for Profits Hurting Newspapers, Journalists and Readers

As long as profit-hungry media owners and shareholders continue to treat journalism like any other Wall Street investment, newspapers will continue to see their readership and quality decline, panelists agreed Thursday at a Washington, D.C., event co-sponsored by CWA's Washington-Baltimore Newspaper Guild.

"With the rise of mass-media corporate ownership, we have seen the decline of newspapers," TNG-CWA President Linda Foley said, citing statistics showing that daily newspaper circulation has dropped by 8 million over the past 20 years.

Over roughly the same period, nearly 300 daily newspapers have disappeared and many of the surviving newspapers once owned by families or small chains have been gobbled up by giant mass media companies.

Moderated by syndicated columnist Harold Meyerson, the panel discussion looked at the upheaval in the newspaper industry and how economic and political pressures are affecting journalism — including the Federal Communications Commission's latest attempt to relax media ownership rules. Three years ago, the FCC's pro-corporate, anti-consumer scheme backfired when TNG-CWA and NABET-CWA helped stir a public outcry.

Panelists said consolidated and corporate ownership have led newspapers to cut staff, reduce local news coverage and slash investment in research and investigative reporting while increasing canned entertainment and light features.

Vanessa Williams, a Washington Post editor, said that in the quest for profit too many newspapers have abandoned their core values, which once meant covering communities, local issues and local people. "Too often we're trying to entertain instead of inform," she said.

Media owners may think they're giving the public what it wants, but panelists said the anger against changes in FCC media ownership rules shows that people still care about quality journalism and a diversity of voices in newspapers, TV, radio and now the Internet.

In 2003, several million Americans — from peace activists to the National Rifle Association — wrote letters, took part in town meetings and otherwise helped battle against the last round of FCC rule changes.

Ben Scott, policy director of Free Press, which seeks to involve the public in media policy decisions, said people are still fired up. A town hall meeting his organization sponsored this week in the small city of Asheville, N.C., drew 400 people, he said, a standing-room-only crowd that stayed until midnight through five hours of testimony before two FCC commissioners.

"That's a profound statement about the importance of the media to the public," Scott said, noting similar forums Free Press (online at www.freepress.net) has held across the country. "Every place we go, it's the same results."

The panel discussion also featured Joseph Torres, deputy director of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists, Rem Rieder, editor of American Journalism Review and Carl Sessions Stepp, a University of Maryland journalism professor. The school co-sponsored the event with TNG-CWA Local 32035.

Opening the forum, Local 32035 President Bill Salganik said it's vital for a union of journalists to "speak not just about wages and benefits but about the condition of the industry."