The Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy
Working Paper Series
The Growing Importance of Nonprofit Journalism
By
Charles Lewis
President, The Fund for Independence in Journalism
Shorenstein Fellow, Fall 2006
April 2007
Introduction
"Never in our lifetime has there arguably been a greater public need for independent, high quality journalism in the United States. At the start of a tumultuous new century, with the public’s need for credible, unvarnished information as vital as ever, the news-gathering business, in all its commercial media forms, is undergoing an historic transformation. Public confidence and trust in news and the news media are at disconcerting levels. Mass market consumer interest in news from traditional, for-profit, newspaper, magazine, television and radio media outlets have been steadily eroding literally for decades, which has not gone unnoticed by advertisers and investors....Of course, meticulous information-gathering and editorial quality-control essential for serious, high quality news require time and money – finite resources that many news organizations are increasingly unable or unwilling to expend. Indeed, in recent years nearly all of our media corporations have been actually reducing their commitment to journalism, reducing their editorial budgets, early “retiring” thousands of reporters and editors from their newsrooms, in order to keep their annual profit margins high and their investors happy, harvesting their investments from a “mature” industry. The net result of this hollowing out process: There are fewer people today to report, write and edit original news stories about our infinitely more complex, dynamic world....
As news organizations have reduced their commitment to serious journalism, there has been an incalculable cost to communities, to citizens’ ability to monitor those in power, and of course to those professionals directly impacted in the profession of journalism itself. The mere reciting of grim layoff statistics does not adequately convey what has been and continues to be lost, year in and year out. Perhaps most disconcerting of all, there is little evidence the American people are remotely aware or particularly concerned about what is and has been happening. But of course, that is part of a much larger problem, of a disconcertingly uninformed populace, in which more people can identify the names of the Three Stooges than the three branches of the federal government. Almost six months after the invasion of Iraq at the end of 2003, 69 percent of the American people thought Saddam Hussein and Iraq had something to do with the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. James Madison warned that, “A people who mean to be their own governors, must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives.” If that is true, it would seem that we have an extraordinary number of unarmed Americans, less and less knowledgeable about public affairs or news. To what extent can a democracy ostensibly “of the people, by the people and for the people” exist without an informed citizenry?"
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'... the practice of investigative journalism, which can be defined as “serious journalism that takes a comprehensive, exhaustive look at issues that have significant impact on the lives” of the public. Some, but not all and not this author, would narrow this definition further as a type of journalism involving “matters of importance which some persons or organizations wish to keep secret.” However it is defined, it is painstaking, very time-consuming work, usually taking weeks, months and sometimes years to complete, with the possibility of not finding a publishable story at the end of the process.
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"... investigative reporting did not seem to be particularly valued at the national level, regardless of media form. That frustration had mounted over several years and two television networks as national news organizations only reactively reported the various systemic abuses of power, trust and the law in Washington – from the Iran-Contra scandal to the HUD scandal to the Defense Department’s procurement prosecutions; from the savings and loan disaster to the “Keating Five” influence scandal to the first resignation of a House Speaker since 1800. In Washington there was very little aggressive investigative journalism about these or other subjects, and equally galling to me, smug denial instead of apologetic humility by the press corps despite its underwhelming, lackluster pursuit of these major instances of political influence and corruption. To compound matters, internally at the networks, occasionally I had seen my own and colleagues’ investigative stories or proposals rebuffed, reduced or merely ignored for what appeared to be non-journalistic reasons."
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"Joseph Pulitzer once said, “Our Republic and its press will rise or fall together. An able, disinterested, public-spirited press, with trained intelligence to know the right and courage to do it, can preserve that public virtue without which popular government is a sham and a mockery. A cynical, mercenary, demagogic press will produce in time a people as base as itself. The power to mould the future of the Republic will be in the hands of the journalists of future generations.”
Charles Lewis is a journalist-in-residence and professor at American University in Washington and founding president of the Fund for Independence in Journalism. From 1989 through 2004, he founded and directed the Center for Public Integrity in Washington, where he co-authored five books, including The Buying of the President 2004. Previously he did investigative reporting at ABC News and at CBS News as a producer for 60 Minutes. Tim Coates and Julia Dahl, graduate students at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government and the American University School of Communication, respectively, provided valuable research.
The entire 52-page pdf can be downloaded from the web site of the Center for Public Integrity [ http://www.publicintegrity.org/default.aspx ].