Week 2 Readings

Why and How? "The Dark Continent of American Journalism"

Journalists are "tellers of stories," of all kinds whether they got the story or not. The stories that are told are less in truth than in the point that it attempts to make. All writing, narrative and art depends upon dramatic unity which brings together plot, character, scene, method and purpose. The "omission" of the how and the "insinuation" of the why are the standard practice of journalism. How is less important than the what or who, it fills in a space: tells us how "the why" becomes "the what." How mergers in why: the description becomes the explanation. Why answers the question of explanation and searches for the deeper underlying factors. How and why are the most problematic aspects of American Journalism. This is explained in tons of detail throughout the entire article. It is told through many previous articles that have been covered and controversial that James Carey uses to illustrate his idea. The how and why are rarely in any individual story. Journalists try to keep the story alive long enough for interpretation, explanation and description to be added but marketers and editors make the front page look like a new chapter in human history. So it seems as if they don't really work together in this process. As readers we want more than facts, we want to know how to feel about events and what to do about them. We not only want to know but to understand. Why and how provide depth that satisfy us. After explaining a story in which Greider exposed Stockman and Ronald Reagan, Carey went on to explain that journalists don't write for the public but for one another, their editor, for their sources and for other insiders. The Atlantic article broke through the coded text and presented the private dialogue of government that was supposed to remain private. Following this Carey explains that when the news reported is broken down to daily fragments, important descriptions and explanations of journalism are lost. Journalists speak in an invented code and participate in the making of fiction or storytelling. The Newspaper presents a disconnected and often incoherent narrative with its individual stories and its total coverage. He then speaks about the partisan press and how it made sense and gave news meaning and that it was a matter of time. Following the partisan press is the Penny Press. This did three important things: It was a consumer good for a consumer society, it displaced partisanship and explicit ideological context in which to present, interpret and explain the news, and it imposed the cycle and habit of commerce upon the life of society generally. The telegraph was involved in shaping the news in that is got rid of forms of speech which lead readers not knowing how to connect. They couldn't understand it and explaining news entails that journalists account for it in four forms: Determining motives, elucidating causes, predicting consequences and estimating significance. With causes journalists are at the mercy of others and with motives they go with their own knowledge. Carey repeats the fact that why is often left unanswered and the American journalism always begins from the question "who." The primary subject of news is people and what they say and do. Why is answered by identifying the motives of these individuals. But often motive explanations are too easy and that it takes time, effort and substantial knowledge to find a cause. Motives can be misleading and simplifying. A journalist is a detective or investigator. When there is a move to non rational motives, we move into the domain of causes. If journalists cannot find a rational motive they bring out experts to provide the irrational motive. The article talks a little about precision journalism but that it is not really used anymore, and then a little about cause and consequence stories. They are embedded one in another and when moving towards consequence stories they tend to focus on the future rather than the past or present. Finally when he goes to sum it up it sort of comes together. For the most part this article seemed very all over the place that is why what I have been writing is also somewhat all over the place. I left out a lot of the examples he puts in as I believe they are just in there to illustrate the highlights. But Carey states that journalism is a curriculum and not merely a series of news flashes. Journalism is deeply embedded in American culture. He says that journalists mirror the scholar but because they rely on motives it weakens the power of their work. Carey says that if you look at the entire curriculum of journalism you will find reporting of enduring and persistent news despite the idea that American culture has no sense of time or longevity. Journalism became defined by breaking news at some unknown time in history and when that happened our understanding of journalism changed. Journalists became obsessed with being the first rather than the best; with uncovering the unknown rather than clarifying and interpreting the known. To restore the sense of time to journalism and scholarship is going to take a lot of work and luck. Carey ends his article with the advice that we need to start by reading more wisely.
"What Society Requires is Reputable Journalism"

This article is on the topic of newspapers being declared, "On the way out," according to Michael Kinsley. The argument is that newspapers deliver information in an unbeatable retrievable and storable form better than any other medium. "But internet users won't pay for news." Newspapers are reputable and have built a foundation for being reliable and accurate which they have to live up to everyday. Internet is not reputable, although it can be, there is no method to replicate the trust. New technology has yet to deliver a new model that would cause the newspaper to indeed be on the way out. It will take much longer for online commentary to achieve the state of trust that can compare to and replace respected newspapers, states Ford.

Mark Valeriano