“Journalists” Items

Future of Journalists in 21st Century ( via 1994)

In 1994, the American Society of News Editors (ASNE) in partnership with the Freedom Forum  provided a report on journalism’s evolution into the 21st century. The document contains insights regarding the anticipated transformations within the industry, particularly in response to technological advancements and shifting audience behaviors. However, some projections were either only partially realized or did not materialize as expected.

Key Insights the Report
  1. Digital Transformation & the Internet
    The report correctly foresaw the growing importance of digital platforms, predicting that online news consumption would reshape journalism. It acknowledged the potential of the internet to expand access to news and create new journalistic formats.
  2. Ethical Challenges & Credibility Concerns
    There was a strong emphasis on maintaining journalistic integrity in an increasingly fragmented media landscape. Concerns about misinformation, the speed of news dissemination, and editorial responsibility were highlighted—issues that have become even more pronounced in today’s digital age.
  3. Changing Audience Expectations
    The report predicted a shift in audience engagement, recognizing that readers would demand more interactivity, customization, and multimedia elements in their news consumption.
  4. Corporate Ownership & Commercial Pressures
    There was an awareness of the growing consolidation of media ownership and the risks of editorial independence being compromised due to commercial interests.
Assumptions That Did Not Materialize

Just as interesting as to the insights, were the assumptions that did not come to pass.

  1. Sustained Dominance of Print Media
    While the report acknowledged the rise of digital media, it underestimated the rapid decline of traditional print journalism. It assumed newspapers would remain a primary news source, supplemented by digital rather than largely replaced by it.
  2. Public Willingness to Pay for Quality Journalism
    The expectation that consumers would sustain journalism through paid subscriptions proved only partially correct. While paywalls and digital subscriptions exist, the widespread reliance on free content and advertising-based models was not fully anticipated.
  3. Journalists as Gatekeepers of Information
    The document maintained the assumption that professional journalists would retain their role as the primary arbiters of truth. However, the rise of citizen journalism, social media influencers, and decentralized news distribution has significantly altered the landscape.
  4. The Role of Traditional News Organizations in Shaping Public Discourse
    While legacy media outlets were expected to remain central to public discourse, they now compete with a vast array of alternative news sources, many of which operate outside traditional journalistic norms.

The summary was produced using ChatGPT and reviewed by a human [Howard Finberg].

Big City Newspaper: Chicago Tribune in 1975

The Chicago Tribune Marketing Department, sometime in 1975 [my guess] produced a guide to the newspaper for the educational services department of the company. It was a look, written for consumers [young ones] about how the Tribune was created — from reporter to editor to presses. The guide even had instructions on how to fold a newspaper page into a pressman’s hat. What’s nice about this guide is the photographs of so many of the people I remember working with. [And it does have a picture of me looking at a picture page.]

The Tribune at this time was publishing both morning and afternoon editions.  We called it the 24-Hour Tribune.  There were even t-shirts. Here’s a bit about that unique time:

In 1974, the Chicago Tribune became a 24-hour newspaper with fresh editions morning, afternoon and evening. The shift from being a morning newspaper to the24-hour publication cycle meant that The Tribune was available whenever a reader wanted it.

The publishing cycle begins in late afternoon with the Green Streak edition which contains late stock market quotations. Next off the press is the Midwest edition, designed primarily for circulation outside Chicago and suburbs.

The Three Star Morning Final comes next–it’s the edition you’ll find delivered to your doorstep in the mornings. The Four Star Morning Sports Final follows; you’ll find it on the newsstands in the morning with the night’s sport results. The Five Star Morning Turf Final is available later in the morning. Completing the 24-hour publication cycle is the afternoon 7 Star Final for afternoon home delivery customers and afternoon newsstand sales.

The publisher at the time of publication was Stan Cook; the editor was Clayton Kirkpatrick. Kirkpatrick was the person who hired me in 1972. There a nice picture of Bill Jones, one of the best editors at the paper during my tenure. Jones, who became managing editor, died way too early at age 43.

If you want a look at what it took to produce a daily newspaper, this is a good guide. For me, it is fond memories.

Constant Training: New Normal or Missed Opportunity

As part of the grant to The Poynter Institute for the creation and running of News University, an online training program, the Knight Foundation asked that we conduct studies as to how effective training was and better understand the training needs of journalists. One study was called “Constant Training” and it was based on a survey of newsrooms and journalists.  Here’s what I wrote in the introduction:

These results are from an anonymous survey of staff members from 31 newsrooms around the country conducted by The Poynter Institute on behalf of the Knight Foundation.

The survey was conducted in newsrooms that ranged in size from 20 to 150 staff members. More than 1,650 staff members were possible participants for the survey, which achieved a 72.5 percent response rate. The survey was conducted online in June-July 2014.

Is the glass two-thirds full? Or, more important to ask, is it one-third empty?

A third of the journalists in the survey [34 percent] said they received no training in the past 12 months. But the numbers varied widely in different newsrooms. While in some newsrooms, nearly everyone had gotten training, in one newsroom, only 17 percent reported receiving training. In six of the newsrooms, less than half of the staff members had received training. Considering the abundance of free or low-cost training available, those numbers seem strikingly high.

One of the key findings was the hunger journalists had for training.  However, then, as in now, time or the lack of time, was a key factor as whether journalists got the training they needed or wanted.

This raises the point that everyone, especially journalists, lives in a world of constant learning. Each new technology creates new opportunities and new challenges. Which create new openings for training. To be successful in the digital world, a journalist needs to embrace the idea of “constant training” to meet the changing demands of the workplace.

Other results from our training survey are more troubling.

Actually doing the training presents a significant problem. Lack of time was cited by 62 percent of the participants as the number-one factor that prevented them from getting the training they needed or wanted. That’s twice as many responses as lack of funds, the second-place factor, which was selected by 34 percent.

One final point involved the focus of newsrooms in 2014:

The survey also provides an unsettling insight into the focus of the newsrooms surveyed. The journalists surveyed still see their newsrooms as print-centric or straddling the fence. Only one in 10 said that their newsrooms are thoroughly
“digital-first.”

Eric Newton wrote the introduction to the report.

Celebrating The Republic’s Centennial: How We Worked

In 1990 The Arizona Republic celebrated its 100 years — its centennial. There were many different projects that I had role in editing and/or coordinating. It was a once in a lifetime project. One of the projects involved a full page timeline [called “Paper Route”] of how a story is reported, written and edited. In addition, how do photographers and others in the newsroom work to create the still ‘daily miracle.’

Poynter NewsU Registers 100,000 Users. First Big Milestone

When I wrote the original grant request to the Knight Foundation to create an e-learning program at The Poynter Institute, I put in estimate about how many people would take courses.  It was one of my greatest lapses in predicting success, as I thought we might have 35,000 users by the end of the five-year grant.

After four years, we passed the 100,000 registered user milestone.  In March we launched a marketing campaign thanks to the efforts of Susan Crain of LTV Marketing and Vicki Krueger, my deputy. Part of that campaign involved a press release and a paper called “NewsU Servcs Global E-Learning Audiences.”

We also ran a contest to gather stories about how NewsU change the lives of its users.  My favorite was a reporter at newspaper in the northwest:

“I credit NewsU for helping me do my job better than I could on my own, giving me courage to try new things,” says Sheila Hagar, a reporter for the Walla Walla (Wash.) Union Bulletin. “I don’t feel alone when I take a class.”

One of my goals, not yet realized, was to find a way to create a community around people who took NewsU modules.  I still have hopes that this will happen.

“The idea is to create a sense of community for those who want to share and ask questions of their fellow participants,” says Howard Finberg, director of interactive learning at The Poynter Institute. “You could call it a learning network. Your training should be much more than what’s on the screen.”

Saying Goodbye to Great SF Chronicle Photographers

One of my great joys working at the San Francisco Chronicle was the photography department.  I was the first real photo editor at the paper and one of my goals was to improve the opportunities for the photographers to contribute to the paper’s journalism.  [Before I arrived at the paper, photos were often dropped off at the news desk into a wooden box.  I like to joke that I put that box out of a job.]

The photo department did a visual goodbye when I left for The Arizona Republic in June, 1987. It was a great team of friendly and hard-working journalists.  These photos are by Gary Fong, the chief photographer.  Gary and I remain friends.  He is in the front row, in the center.

On the far left side is another friend, Bryan Moss.  I hired Bryan as a food photographer, with no experience in food photography. But that’s another story.

 

Journalists in Charge of Their Own Training

As part of the push to launch Poynter News University, aka NewsU, I wrote an article about the new site for the American Society News Editor publication, the American Editor (November-December 2005 edition).  The key point then (and now) is that journalists needed to be in charge of their own training.

The article explained our philosophy about e-learning and talked about some of early courses, such as “Cleaning Your Copy,” the module created by Vicki Krueger, Poynter director of interactive learning/NewsU.

Here’s what I wrote at the end of the article

Ultimately, NewsU will succeed because journalism will take control of their own training needs and recognize that small investments in time – and money – can make them better at their jobs.

If you want to read the full article, here’s the PDF.

 

Cover of the Media Research Center special report Media Bias 101, last updated October 2009

Media Bias 101: Twenty Years of Research

A special report from the Media Research Center, marked “Last Updated: October 2009,” collecting two decades of polling into a single argument. The booklet is organized in three chapters: what journalists think and how journalists vote; what the public thinks about the media; and what journalists themselves say about media bias — divided into those denying it and those admitting it.

Chapter one runs 16 exhibits, from the 1981 Lichter-Rothman study The Media Elite through the Weaver and Wilhoit surveys at Indiana University, the 1985 Los Angeles Times poll of 2,700 journalists at 621 newspapers, ASNE’s 1996 The Newspaper Journalists of the ’90s, Pew’s 2004 survey of 547 journalists and media executives, and Slate’s pre-election staff polls in 2000, 2004 and 2008. The MRC’s framing is explicit about the provenance of the data:

These surveys of journalists were conducted by professional pollsters, academics or news organizations, not by conservatives trying to score a political point against the press.

Chapter two turns the lens around, with 19 exhibits of public opinion research — Pew, Gallup, ASNE’s 1998 Journalism Credibility Project, Rasmussen, Harvard’s National Leadership Index, the Sacred Heart University Polling Institute, the Missouri School of Journalism. The chapter’s thesis:

These polls document a crisis for the news media. Years of skewed reporting has squandered the public’s trust.

The third chapter is a clip file of quotations, arranged as “Journalists Denying Liberal Bias” and “Journalists Admitting Liberal Bias,” running back to 1989. Among the admissions, New York Times Public Editor Daniel Okrent’s July 25, 2004 column asking “Is The New York Times a Liberal Newspaper?”:

Of course it is…. These are the social issues: gay rights, gun control, abortion and environmental regulation, among others. And if you think The Times plays it down the middle on any of them, you’ve been reading the paper with your eyes closed.

And, from the same chapter, Seattle Times Executive Editor David Boardman in an August 15, 2007 e-mail to his staff:

If we wore our politics on our sleeves in here, I have no doubt that in this and in most other mainstream newsrooms in America, the majority of those sleeves would be of the same color: blue.

The closing page describes the organization: founded in 1987, based in Alexandria, Virginia, with divisions including the Business & Media Institute, the Culture & Media Institute, TimesWatch.org, NewsBusters.org and CNSNews.com.

Reading this in 2026, the numbers are a period piece but the argument is not. Every trust-in-news survey since has kept measuring the same gap the MRC was documenting here, and the partisan split in who believes which outlet — which this report flagged in 2009 — has only widened. Worth having in the archive as a primary document: this is how the case was assembled, exhibit by exhibit, at the end of the first decade of the century.

Opening page of William P. Cassidy's 2005 Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly study on the role conceptions of print and online newspaper journalists

2005 Study of Print & Online Newsroom Roles

This is William P. Cassidy’s article “Variations on a Theme: The Professional Role Conceptions of Print and Online Newspaper Journalists,” published in Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, Vol. 82, No. 2, Summer 2005, pages 264-280. Cassidy was an assistant professor in the Department of Communication at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater; the data came from his 2003 Ph.D. dissertation at the University of Oregon.

The question behind the study was one the industry was arguing about at the time without much evidence: were online journalists a different species from their print colleagues, or the same people working at a different speed? Cassidy went at it with a national Web-based survey, sending 3,330 invitations between July 15 and August 25, 2003, and getting 655 usable responses — 456 print newspaper journalists and 199 online newspaper journalists — from 271 newspapers in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. The response rate was 23.1%.

He measured the responses against the four role conceptions Weaver and Wilhoit had established: interpretive/investigative, disseminator, adversarial, and populist mobilizer. The headline finding, from the abstract:

A national survey (N=655) examining the professional role conceptions of print and online newspaper journalists revealed the print group perceived the Interpretive/Investigative role as significantly more important than the online group. No significant differences were found between the groups in their perceptions of the Adversarial and Populist Mobilizer roles. Results were mixed for the Disseminator role. The online group rated getting information to the public as quickly as possible as significantly more important than the print group.

In other words: print journalists scored higher on investigating government claims, analyzing complex problems, and discussing national policy (6.10 versus 5.74 on a seven-point scale). Online journalists scored higher on speed (6.46 versus 6.03). But on staying away from stories where the facts cannot be verified — the accusation most often aimed at online newsrooms in that era — there was no significant difference at all. Both groups took it seriously.

That last result matters, because the surrounding literature Cassidy reviews was full of the assumption that online publishing had corroded verification. He quotes Ann Brill’s characterization of the problem:

rush to production has allowed rumor to pass as reporting and electronic processing to pass for editing

Cassidy’s own reading of his data is gentler: “Perhaps online journalists are simply getting a bad rap from these journalists.” He suggests the online journalists in his sample, working for daily newspapers rather than Web-only operations, had absorbed the same newsroom norms as everyone else in the building.

I have a personal stake in this one. The credibility research Martha L. Stone, Diane Lynch and I did for the Online News Association — the “Digital Journalism Credibility Study,” published January 31, 2002 — is cited twice in the notes, in support of the point that the public rated online news about as credible as news from other sources. It is a small thing to find your own work in someone else’s footnotes, but it is a reminder that the arguments we were having inside newsrooms were also being tested, carefully, by people outside them.

The article also offers a useful bit of chronology for anyone dating the online news era, noting that in May 1992 the Chicago Tribune, in partnership with America Online, launched Chicago Online, and that by 1998 more than 1,600 newspapers had an online presence.

Reading this in 2026, the striking thing is that the study’s central dividing line no longer exists. There is no “print group” and “online group” to compare; there is a newsroom, and everything it publishes goes out digitally first. What has survived is the tension Cassidy measured — the pull between interpretation and speed. Twenty years on, with AI-generated summaries and an endless publishing clock, that tension hasn’t been resolved so much as industrialized.

Editor & Publisher clipping by Jim Rosenberg reporting the closing of JForum, the Journalism Forum on CompuServe

JForum Ends: Where the Digital Pioneers Went to School

This is an Editor & Publisher story by Jim Rosenberg, published May 17, 2001, reporting the end of the Journalism Forum on CompuServe. JForum was merged with CompuServe‘s PR Forum into a new service called MediaPro, and the old forum stopped operating.

Rosenberg’s account is a short obituary for something that mattered a great deal to a small number of people. JForum began, as he wrote, on a Radio Shack laptop:

Launched on a Radio Shack laptop in 1985, the then-300-baud journalists’ computer bulletin board eventually served thousands of members worldwide, with job listings and messaging in four languages on a variety of topics.

It was also, the story notes, the first online home of the Society of News Design, the National Press Photographers Association, Investigative Reporters and Editors, and other organizations — and the subject of an early ’90s ruling in which a U.S. judge found CompuServe not responsible for messages it was unaware of that were posted in JForum.

Former NBC News manager Jim Cameron, who started the forum, said he

founded JForum … for the dwindling number of radio news people to share survival tips.

He credited the section leaders and assistants “who really ran JForum as editors.” I was one of them, and Rosenberg quoted me at some length about what made the place work — the effort required to participate at all, and what that effort produced:

You really had to commit to be a member of this community. At that point, you realized the possibility of community was not a geographical issue … It was about shared interest.

And on what its closing meant:

This is a passing of a forefather of a lot of what is going on right now. This was an educational experience for the digital pioneers. This is where we went to school. We learned from each other.

The story closes by noting that Cameron would stay on in an interim capacity, with MediaPro to be operated by PR Forum’s Mike Bayer. Rosenberg was then a senior editor covering newspaper technology for E&P.