The Partcipant PressThis is a featured page



Lauren Passalacqua, Posted December 12, 2007

Earlier this month, Jay Rosen met, at New York University, with Professor Mark Dery’s undergraduate media criticism class, in which this reporter is enrolled. Rosen’s an associate professor at NYU’s journalism department and the prolific author of the blog, PressThink. His inaugural post in 2003 expressed interest in “the consequences in the world that result from having the kind of press we do.” He’s written about the industry’s struggle and change like the decline of newspapers, citizen journalism, or the new press. But, before students could ask about these issues, Rosen posed a question of his own: “how participatory does the press have to be to be strong in a participatory country?”

Rosen’s notion of a participatory press inverts the usual talk about journalism and society. The Project for Excellence in Journalism (PEJ) and its former affiliate, the Committee of Concerned Journalists (CCJ), identify professional goals and principles that they describe as “the theory of journalism.” Their website states that “the central purpose of journalism is to provide citizens with accurate and reliable information they need to function in a free society.” This treatise on journalists’ work for the public does not make the public part of news-making process. The distinct flow of information from reporter to audience indicates that participation may include reading, listening, and viewing, but not producing the news.

The PEJ and CCJ’s “theory of journalism” mirrors the traditional press scheme that took hold in the early twentieth century. Media critics and scholars, Robert McChesney and Ben Scott, map the development of media in their introductory chapter of Our Unfree Press: 100 Years of Radical Media Criticism. By the late 1920s, muckrakers’ social critiques, like those of Ida Tarbell and Upton Sinclair, had lost the spotlight. Special interest journalism that promoted publishers’ interests took their place (McChesney and Scott 13). McChesney and Scott connect this change with the public’s view of the press: “In short, it was widely thought that journalism was corrupt and straightforward class propaganda” (14).

Without the public trust, the papers would not sell and advertisers would not pay, presenting a problem to owners like Joseph Pulitzer. “[He] realized,” write McChesney and Scott, “that journalism needed to have the trappings of neutrality and balance in order to regain its sullied credibility” (15). The authors relate commercial motives with the start of formal press training; overt special interest reporting gave way to professional objectivity. The concentration of ownership reduced the number of newspapers; but professionalism justified this diminution of sources because the media that remained allegedly improved on earlier forms. In the newsroom “a wall stood between the interests of the publisher (both commercial and political) and the integrity of the news column” (15). In essence, journalists were trained represent only the public’s interest.

McChesney and Scott refer to “the idea of professionalism” as an enduring legacy in American journalism (15). It’s one part of the debate surrounding the participatory press.
Neil Henry, professor and interim dean at UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism, wrote about the effects of informal “new” media in a San Francisco Chronicle op-ed. He mourns the decline of newspapers, distinguishing them and their reporters from the “idolaters of web-based news and information sites, ‘citizen’-produced journalism, and the blogosphere.” His message: “new” media, “including bloggers opining about the news,” think they can replace traditional journalism. Henry worries for “the craft of reporting the news fairly and independently” and foresees the decline of “professional journalism, practiced according to widely accepted ethical values.” He echoes the PEJ and CCJ that uphold the boundaries between reporter and public.

The State of News Media 2007 supports Henry’s point that paper’s have cut their staff because of lost revenue, notably the Dallas Morning News (111 staff members), The Washington Post (70 senior staff), and The Philadelphia Inquirer (68 staff members). Yet, as Rosen notes in this PressThink reply to Henry, no one “advances the [replacement] thesis” that bloggers can and will unseat news organizations.

Nor, writes Slate Editor Jack Shafer, should “we mistake the decline of newspapers with the decline of journalism.” Blog anxiety provided the topic for another PressThink entry. Rosen makes it clear that bloggers aren’t necessarily journalists, but they “are speakers and writers of their own invention, at large in the public square. They’re participating in the great game of influence called public opinion.”

This is participatory journalism’s most revolutionary feature: it breaks down the monopoly on public opinion. This potential– more than redefining the journalist or rethinking newspapers – poses the greatest threat to what we’ve called mass media.

Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky don’t see the press that the PEJ and CCJ strive for in Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media. Instead, the two media analysts count at least five constrictions, called filters, “that narrow the range of news that passes through the gates” and comprise their “propaganda model” (31). Instead of supplying the public with an array of sources and diverse opinions, the propaganda model depicts the effects of “wealth and power … on mass-media interests and choices” (2). Accordingly, traditional media like the network and cable channels, radio, and newspapers and magazines, fall prey to these filters and compromise their intended public service.

Yet, as residents and neighbors of Brookyln’s Atlantic Yards know, the participatory press can undermine the filters’ effectiveness. In 2003, New York City real estate company Forest City Ratner announced it plansTo return to Professor Rosen’s question. It’s more than a strong participatory press – it’s also that a strong participatory press that fortifies its participatory country. to develop a 22-acre section of downtown Brooklyn called Atlantic Yards. Residents like Norman Oder and Jonathan Cohn grew frustrated with the lack of press coverage that the project received and filled the void themselves. Oder’s Atlantic Yards Report offers extensive coverage of the project and events surrounding it, from public hearings to newspaper clippings. Cohn’s Brooklyn Views blog also features “ideas about the proposed Atlantic Yards project,” focusing on the architectural design and its implications for Brooklyn residents. Both their archives date from late 2005 though this year and boast well over the 69 articles that The New York Times logged during the same period. Incidentally, the Times joined with Forest City Ratner in the development of The New York Times Building that opened this past November.

The Times featured the people behind the Atlantic Yards counter-attack. Reporter Nicholas Confessore wrote about “the first large-scale urban real estate venture in New York City where opposition has coalesced most visibly in the blogosphere.” Joining Oder and Cohn were a variety of participant-press who worked independent of a formal news agency in the service of informing, including Lumi Michelle Rolley for her work on nolandgrab.org.

Participant press like Oder, Cohn, and Rolley break free from Herman and Chomsky's propaganda model.

The first filter, limiting media ownership to the very wealthy does not constrain what the authors write (Herman and Chomsky 3). The Internet provides a low-cost, accessible forum to post their investigation and initiate discussion. Outside of the time and resources they invest in their stories, Oder, Cohn, and Rolley maintain low operating costs as compared to that of mass media companies. The participant press is also free from the investor’s profit expectations. The bloggers may focus on their subjects and proceed without the effect of the first filter.

The second filter’s reliance on advertisements as means of income also misses its mark with the participatory press (Herman and Chomsky 14). Chomsky and Herman argue that because advertisers look for media with the highest circulation or audience, smaller operations are effectively squeezed out. Advertisers may influence media content – limiting what’s said to ensure wide appeal or focusing on topics that appeals to an audience with buying power (Herman and Chomsky 16). Again, these bloggers aren’t dependent on advertising revenue and may focus on their specific beat, the Atlantic Yards. The bloggers produce, collect, and check on news that’s relevant to a specific geographic region. Still, the specificity and readership buying power do not factor into these talks.

The third filter may affect the blogs’ operations referring to the reliance on “expert” or “official” primary sources (Herman and Chomsky 9). Covering a public project involves local and state representation, public and private figures, as well as professional commentaries from law to design. The lack of accreditation could prevent the participant press from accessing sources reserved for professional journalists. However, their investigations remain thorough and integrate their own expertise. Oder closely follows what the Ratner group says and does, as with his latest post, to point out any discrepancy. As an architect, Cohn’s uniquely suited to critique the Atlantic Yards project and assess its design. All three bloggers include data and document their sources.

The final two filters, the discipline of flak and the anticommunist value-system express the vulnerabilities all media have to the public opinion (Herman and Chomsky 21, 26). Media giants would avoid the controversy that public backlash and unpopular belief systems would produce. Oder, Cohn and Rolley are susceptible to their readers’ viewpoints, but remain activist in the campaign against the Atlantic Yards project.

The participant press that cover the Atlantic Yards show that nonprofessional reporters and journalists complete real acts of journalism. More importantly, they also invigorate participation. Confessore marvels at the “ferment of community advocacy” in the wake of the blogs.”

Though construction at the Atlantic Yards site began earlier this year, the Brooklyn bloggers continue to report on events and happenings related to the sight. Their awareness challenges their neighbors, press, and government to remain knowledgeable about the site and its controversy.

The participatory press does not answer the questions about who qualifies as a journalist or what ethics remain applicable in a changing media world. It doesn’t even abolish the Herman and Chomsky’s propaganda model. But it does make it better. Participant journalism legitimizes the content, discussion and attention paid to issues. It continues to educate, but broadens the scope of the educator and invites collaboration with more people and more knowledge.

In answer to Rosen's question. It isn’t just that the participatory press has the potential to make jouralism stronger is a participatory country. It's that the participatory press can also enliven a neighbor, engage a state and make for a more participatory country.

Sources

Herman, Edward and Noam Chomsky. Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media. New York: Pantheon Books, 1988.

McChesney, Robert W. and Ben Scott. “Introduction” Our Unfree Press: 100 Years of Radical Media Criticism. Eds Robert McChesney and Ben Scott. New York: New York Press, 2004. 1-30.


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