I'm on a Columbia Journalism Review roll tonight; I have been reading it since I was a very young journalist, and I sometimes take it for granted. Then, all of a sudden, I'll pop it open--or more likely these days on the other side of the world where snail-mail subscriptions are far more than just problematical, click it open--and feast upon its insight into what I do everyday but not always as well as I should.
Toward a More Honest Job Description For the Political Press
What is the proper job description for a journalist during campaign season? You don't find much discussion about it. Whether the press is doing its job consumes our attention, as it should. But we cannot know how well the press is doing unless we know -- and sort of agree -- on the job to be done. I am not sure we do.
I know this: the standard job description needs work. It does not include all the tasks the press has accumulated since 1960, when the modern media campaign began. Horse-race handicapper is not in there, but the press does it. (And not very well, either.) Press language needs to stay current, not only with trends "out there" in the world, but also with roles and responsibilities journalists themselves have taken on -- sometimes without announcing why, or thinking it through fully.
David Shaw writes in the Los Angeles Times: "When political journalists predict the future, their predictions often seem to eclipse -- and at times substitute for -- the reporting they're supposed to be based on. Worse, those predictions can become self-fulfilling prophecies. Look at the coverage of Howard Dean's post-caucus speech in Iowa."
You will want to continue reading this, I know David Shaw, and while we don't always agree on media issues, he is almost always provocative; and Jay Rosen is also a gifted journalist and colleague. It's at the Columbia Journalism Review
