Columbia Journalism Review

[Commentary] Can the media fight the prospect of cultural death through entertainment? It won’t be easy. Surely we need more reporting on the infrastructure bill, on the prospects for job retraining, on cyber-security and the chances that upcoming elections will actually render something like the will of the people. We could hear more about prisons, more about poverty, more about the environment. But as long as readers are clicking Dopey Donald stories, this will not be easy. Journalists will have to be willing, in effect, to fight their readers for control of the media.

[Commentary] Based on our research, we have identified key strategies local newsrooms should be considering to reinvigorate themselves.

[Commentary] The biggest potential hazard [for public stations in the aftermath of the incentive auction] is that some stations might not even get the money they’ve won. Remember that half of public TV stations are licensed to some bigger organization, like a university or government, which presents a number of editorial conflicts of interest. Here, it also presents a financial conflict: The license-holder gets the spectrum auction money, not the station. In the best-case scenario, a handful of organizations that were lucky enough to own expendable spectrum in electromagnetically crowded places will be able to use their proceeds to permanently endow their existence. That presents one more hazard: complacency.

[Adam Ragusea is a journalist in residence and visiting assistant professor at Mercer University’s Center for Collaborative Journalism.]

Anyone seeking further confirmation that Donald Trump’s presidency is primarily a media story need look no further than the surprise firing of FBI Director James Comey. According to Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, Comey was essentially let go for talking to the press. That’s almost surely not the real reason he was fired, but in this case, the media is both a smokescreen and a clue.

Comey’s ouster falls perfectly in line with the administration’s broader positions on media control, leaks, and leakers. It also offers more evidence, in case anyone needed it, of Trump’s overweening desire to control the news cycle.

[Commentary] "What's it like to work at a local newspaper?” That’s the question we asked journalists across the United States at the end of 2016, as part of a new study supported by the Tow Center for Digital Journalism at Columbia University.

The conclusions, derived from an online survey of 420 journalists at small-market newspapers (with a circulation of under 50,000), reveal a cohort that is actively embracing digital technologies and wants to know more about their potential. As a group, they’re also more optimistic about their future than might be expected and keen to challenge the “doom and gloom” narrative about the local news industry.

[Christopher Ali is an assistant professor in the Department of Media Studies at the University of Virginia. Damian Radcliffe is the Carolyn S. Chambers Professor in Journalism at the University of Oregon.]