Fear and Loathing (or not) in Montclair

     Back in the old days, people got their news from a kid on a bicycle stuffing a daily newspaper into a metal tube wired to a telephone pole or mounted on a stake in front of their house.  They paid for the newspaper and they left a big tip for the kid on the bike to make sure the paper made it into the tube and not stuck on the gutter or buried deep in a rose bush requiring extrication by someone wearing heavy work gloves.

     Nobody considered it terribly expensive. People believed news of their town, their county, their state, their country and their world was worth paying for. They would never have thought about getting that for free. Even when they got their news from radio or television, they were cognizant that the news wasn’t free, it was just being paid for by Phillip Morris and Lincoln/Mercury and CocaCola. Knowing what’s going on in the world is worth paying for. Or at least putting up with tap dancing polar bears.

     Suddenly, enter the internet, and news is free. But is it news?

     Too often, no.

      I’m not saying you have to have a journalism degree, or even any degree, to write journalism. I’m saying you have to practice not-so-random acts of journalism.

     A roomful of journalists, journalism teachers and others interested in the future of news made up the New Jersey News Summit at the NJ News Commons on the campus of Montclair State University. Facilitator (or in this case, cat-herder) of the unruly, noisy and opinionated group (meaning typical journalists) was Chris Satullo, a consultant with the News Commons who had a distinguished journalism career in newspapers and radio.

     Chris asked us what our hopes and fears for local news were and, naturally, the demonstrated unwillingness on the part of the public to pay for news came up. Frequently. Loudly.

    Other fears are that we have become a click-bait-driven world. We are more interested in cat videos (ok, well, yeah), quizzes that tell us we are actually Batman or that the person most likely to bail us out of jail is Great Aunt Tillie or recipes for wasabi tequila parfaits than in news.  Well, we aren’t (except for the cat videos), but we are worried that other people are.

    We are also worried that people are losing the ability to distinguish fact from agenda.

    I hear otherwise bright, intelligent, professional people cite “facts” that just aren’t facts. They form an opinion of a political candidate based on a movie made by a director whose only noticeable interest is in blowing things up. They actually read the comments on a Facebook post as if they are fact rather than the ramblings of someone with too much time on his hands. We are bombarded with “agenda” verbiage.

     Unfortunately, much of what is attempting to pass as local news is agenda.  Many people who run hyper-local news sites are hard-working, concerned people who are attempting to cover their municipality while selling ads (which is a lot like selling air) to local businessmen who are overworked and have limited money. But, some are people with a particular political bias who are trying to pass their agendas off as news. And people are buying it.

    That is scary.

    Also scary is the obsession with speed.  Even after news outlets identified the wrong suspect in the Boston Marathon bombing case. Even after news outlets identified the wrong brother as the possible Sandy Hook shooter, they rush to get something, anything, on the air.

    Sure, we all want to be first. But, it’s more important to be right. Speed kills. It kills credibility.

    Another fear was that people are consuming trashier “news.”

    Does that mean we aren’t making real news interesting? Or does it mean people just want trash? Neither is a good thing.

    Adolescent girls always read celebrity news. I remember perusing any magazine featuring Paul McCartney. But, I was in junior high. Today, celebrities have “reality” television shows. And, I’m not sure why most of these people are celebrities. They don’t appear to have any talent. Or to have done anything important. They just are. Weird. And people seem more interested in them than in actual newsmakers.

    Did this group of distinguished journalists actually fix anything? Well, no. But we started a dialogue. And we will continue meeting and talking and supporting real journalism and real journalists.  Because, we have hopes as well as fears.