Nick Davies: All the PR That's Fit to Print?

Last night in Cambridge someone asked Nick Davies what he would do if he was given 50 million pounds to fix journalism in the United Kingdom. Davies said he’d set up a "shadow newsroom" to sample all the output of the country's various newspapers to see what proportion of stories proved false or distorted. He’d make it a legal requirement that media products be labeled like food products, with stories rated as to the sources of information: how much original reporting had gone into them and which ones were just re-written press releases. “I think then consumers would start to abandon [the media] if they saw how bad their products were,” said Davies.

I don’t know if Nick Davies deserves 50 million pounds but certainly he deserves more than 6,000 pounds. That's what he said he netted after two years’ hard work on “Flat Earth News,” his delightfully detailed diatribe against journalism as it’s currently practiced. The book has struck a chord--nay, a very orchestra--in British media circles and there was a large crowd last night at the Wolfson College Press Fellowship event to hear him talk about it.

“New owners of the mass media have shifted their priority from propaganda to commerce,” Davies writes in "Flat Earth News." He argues that press barons no longer want to influence agendas but, instead, fatten their wallets. This obsession with the bottom line at a time of increased competition and falling profits has made owners ruthlessly cut costs. Reporters have to squeeze out more stories every day. Forced to increase their output they desperately turn to churnalism: recycling press releases. Writes Davies: “Almost all journalists work within a kind of professional cage which distorts their work and crushes their spirit.”

I was there to provide an American perspective though I don’t know how useful I was. I’ve only ever worked for The Washington Post and I’m unfamiliar with the assembly-line approach Davies described. We don’t have reporters writing nine stories a day, as Davies’s book claims is common in England. (Things may be different when I return to a post-buyout newsroom.) Nor does The Post resort to the dubious survey story, that is, a story based on "research" that's done by a business solely to get its name in the paper. Of course, the U.S. media makes its own mis-steps. For example, a medical show recently broadcast on NPR has been criticized for not informing listeners that the experts quoted all received money from drugmaker Eli Lilly.

Davies didn’t address some of the contradictions I found in his book. In one chapter he criticizes the lazy or overworked hacks who are content to do all their reporting (such as it is) via telephone and Google. But in another, he lambastes Fleet Street for employing private detectives to unearth private information—police records, phone records, health records—about story subjects. The latter activities imply a scoop-at-any-cost mindset lacking in the former. Davies returned to the economic rationale: Papers slashed their investigative staffs and now are forced to rely on crooked dicks going through trashcans and bribing police sources.

His attempts to wrap everything under the anti-commercial rubric weakens the book, I think. It would be just as strong as a catalogue of the media's shortcomings. His chapter on the failure of the press in the lead-up to the invasion of Iraq--the issue that got him started on the project in the first place--is sobering. And his opening chapter on coverage of the Millennium Bug (remember that?) should be read by every journalist ready to pile on a hot story.

Davies doesn't offer any solutions. I think some of Britain's problems are easily fixed. Ban cheesy survey stories for a start. Don't be so concerned with matching dubious non-news events, just because your competitors have them. (That this might prove difficult was underscored by a former Fleet Street editor who pointed out that people need those sorts of trivial stories so they won’t feel left out down at the pub.)

There was definitely a fatalism in the air. Newspapers stink. The publishing business stinks (small, worthy books have to pay for themselves these days, said Davies, rather than be subsidized by blockbusters). One woman in the audience said she sees the same decay in academia—at Cambridge, presumably. “Things are going right downhill," she said. "I don’t understand how I’ve allowed this to happen. How have intelligent people lost control of their institutions?”

I’m not sure we’ve lost control. I'm not sure we ever had control. Things change. Davies writes in his book that there never was a golden age of journalism, but he certainly implies there is an ideal we are failing to achieve. Is there an audience for that ideal? That's hard to say. Going downmarket--flat Earth news, in Davies's parlance--seems to sell. Still, I'm hopeful that the sort of journalism I like to read--and I like to do--will always have an audience. If it doesn't, I don't want to be cramming it down peoples' throats just because it's good for them.

That’s a market solution Davies the socialist wouldn’t like. But it’s all I’ve got.

Roger That: Observing Roger Alton

I think one of the reasons I like the British newspaper biz is because I'm not too close to it. The figures I read about--the venal owners, the embattled editors, the disgraced reporters--aren't like real people to me. They're like characters from a comic book: flawed superheroes whose exploits I can enjoy at a remove.

In contrast, I find it harder to enjoy what's happening to the news biz in the United States: the grim circulation and advertising statistics, the layoffs, the lashings of gallows humor (and, believe me, no one does gallows humor like a journalist). It's all very close. Today is being called "D-Day" at The Washington Post, the deadline by which eligible newsroom employees must decide whether to take the company's buyout offer. (Hey, let's not forget that on the real D-Day the allies started turning things around in Europe!)

With his imposing stature and large, bald cranium, Roger Alton resembles a comic book character: the braniac mastermind who remains in the futuristic HQ while his ragtag band of superheroes do battle with the forces of evil. And that, essentially, is what a newspaper editor is. Alton ran the Observer, the Guardian's Sunday sister, for nearly 10 years, before leaving at the end of 2007. He'll become editor of the Independent in July. He spoke yesterday to the Reuters Fellows, delivering a lecture entitled "Not Dead Yet."

The title echoed one given by the New York Times's Bill Keller last fall in London. An "homage," said Alton. Alton's remarks were, if anything, even more upbeat than Keller's. (My write-up for the Reuters Institute should be up on its web page soon. Click here to check. ) Yes, times are tough, said Alton, but plenty of people still buy papers and there are plenty of ways to make sure they keep buying them.

I noticed that while Alton spoke, and especially when he answered questions, he would sketch on the papers in front of him: boxes, flowcharts, sets of concentric circles. He didn't show these jottings, they were just the graphical manifestation of what was going on in his mind. Many of the best editors I've worked with have shared that illustrative trait.

But is a nimble, doodling mind and a surfeit of energy enough to turn around the anemic Independent--or any newspaper these days? Alton touched on the changes new media have wrought--bloggers! vodcasting! social networks!--but it didn't sound like his heart was in any of it. He said his changes at the Indy wouldn't be revolutionary. "I'm not cut out for that," he admitted. He said the paper too often looked like a second section and that the campaigning tone it takes on so many front-page stories can induce a sort of campaign fatigue.

Independent columnist and former Sunday Telegraph editor Dominic Lawson was the seminar's discussant (isn't that those little sachets of chemicals packed with electronics equipment?). Like Alton (and me, I suppose) he's a bit of a newsosaur. Both decried the way Fleet Street peddles its wares these days with things like free DVDs and Prince CDs. It makes news a commodity, said Lawson--which, of course, is what it's become for many people. That old holy grail--the scoop--isn't respected anymore. It can't exist in an Internet world and it never did sell papers anyway, said Lawson. (England winning at soccer is much more likely to shift copies, but those days are over, right?) The tabloids are a bit adrift since their stock and trade--puncturing taboos over sex and celebrating topless trollops--now spills for free from our PCs.

And yet, and yet.... Alton said he can't help but believe that if you went down to the corner shop in the morning and there were no newspapers, you'd want to invent something like them. What else can you crumple in anger than a newspaper, said Lawson. I could see the wheels turning in their heads, these two old Sunday editors. Running a paper is like getting the coolest toy in the world to play with, a board game that entertains with every roll of the dice. Bring down a world leader: Move ahead three spaces! Defend an expensive libel suit: Lose your turn!

Or maybe it's like chess. What I wonder is if it's now like three-dimensional chess, that game they played on "Star Trek." Can any one person keep it all in his head?

In the Time of Nick
Alton is a main character in "Flat Earth News," the Nick Davies screed about the sorry state of journalism. ("Roger Alton has never claimed to be a political animal. His style is too intense, bordering on manic, at best full of charm, at worse eye-wateringly clumsy.") Davies says that Alton and the Observer basically carried water for Tony Blair in the lead-up to the Iraq invasion, parroting the government's line and getting extra chummy with Blair and his PR Rasputin, Alastair Campbell.

Alton said he hasn't read the book but he bristled at one reference he had heard about, in which he allegedly returned from lunch with the Prime Minister "full of determined support for the campaign against Saddam." "It makes me sound like a fucking infant," said Alton, who said he never had lunch with Blair.

I think it's safe to say Alton and Davies won't be having lunch together anytime soon. Said Alton: "Journalists spend a lot of time shitbagging people so it's expected that they'll get shitbagged." At least, I think that's what he said. I hadn't heard the expression "shitbagging" before and perhaps I got it wrong.

Nick Davies will be talking about "Flat Earth News" at 8 p.m. on May 19 at Wolfson College in Cambridge. Click here for details.

'SuperMedia': Can Charlie Beckett Save Journalism?

I was at a gathering the other day where the host asked for a show of hands: "How many of you read blogs?" The audience numbered about 30, including many worthy journalists. Four hands, including mine, went up. Twenty-six people glared at us as if we'd just confessed to an unhealthy infatuation with donkeys. "Blogs," they were thinking. "Ugh. How can you read those sleazy digital compendia of slime and vitriol?"

It's the sort of attitude that drives me crazy and makes me want to storm the battlements of the mainstream media, pitchfork in one hand, flaming torch in the other. Then I remember that sitting at a desk on the other side of the battlements is, um, me. I like me enough that I don't want to set me on fire.

Eight months ago I came to Oxford to study citizen journalism and while I've learned a lot I'm not sure I've decided anything. I'm disgusted by the sclerotic worshippers of journalism's "Golden Age" who see nothing but rack and ruin in digital technology. But I'm equally disgusted by the techno-evangelists who keep promising a glorious future automagically assembled from the "wisdom of the crowds."

A new book by the LSE's Charlie Beckett falls into neither camp, though I'm not sure it's a total success, either. "SuperMedia: Saving Journalism So It Can Save the World" starts by sketching the tale of economic woe that faces the news media these days. Losing money (or not making as much as we once did), losing audience, losing respect--these are bad things. But they're counterbalanced by advances in technology that in some ways make journalists' jobs easier, make us able to reach more people. And these people--famously dubbed the "former audience" by proselytizer Dan Gillmor--want to get involved. Involving them is part of what Beckett calls "networked journalism." He writes:

Networked Journalism is a description and an aspiration. It reaffirms the value of the core functions of journalism. It celebrates the demand for journalism and its remarkable social utility. But it insists on a new process and fresh possibilities. It means a kind of journalism where the rigid distinctions of the past, between professional and amateur, producer and product, audience and participation, are deliberately broken down. It embraces permeability and multi-dimensionality. Networked Journalism is also a way of bridging the semantic divide between Old and New Media.

Beckett is vague on exactly how networked journalism can be applied. He admits he's more interested in "the dynamics than the details." Thus "SuperMedia" is more manifesto than instruction manual. Because of that, it's sometimes hard to assess the claims he makes for networked journalism. The phrase is invoked so often that it starts to sound like a miracle drug or an all-purpose stain remover. News media losing its way? Try networked journalism! Citizens don't care about politics? Try networked journalism!

I worry about some of the practical considerations of networked journalism: How, on deadline, can a reporter involve an audience? (Especially if, as Nick Davies claims in his new book, "Flat Earth News," that reporter is being pushed to produce ever more stories.) What's to stop elites from dominating the conversation once they're invited over the battlement's walls? Have we, as Adrian Monck might argue, mis-framed the problem entirely?

Still, Beckett has made a valuable contribution to the dialogue. The message I decided to take from "SuperMedia" was this one: Journalism has evolved over time. There is nothing wrong with it changing again. It's a message I wish those 26 people who didn't raise their hands would take to heart. (In the year 2008 it's journalistically irresponsible not to cast as wide a net as possible for information. And it's stupid not to spread your product as widely as you can, however you can.) As Beckett writes:

Networked Journalism is a return to some of the oldest virtues of journalism: connecting with the world beyond the newsroom; listening to people; giving people a voice in the media; responding to what the public tells you in a dialogue.

As for whether it will actually make a difference, that remains to be seen.

Media Monday: I Divorce Thee

Proof is what separates good journalism from crappy journalism and so let me retroactively apologize for my blog post of a few weeks ago where I criticized British newspapers for printing questionable stories based on self-serving research (last item). I didn't include any specific examples.

I knew, though, that one would come along eventually and sure enough a nice illustration appears in the Guardian today. The story, by legal editor Clare Dyer, is headlined "Mid-life crises pushing couples to divorce, survey of lawyers finds." The article begins: "Growing numbers of people are divorcing because of 'mid-life crisis,' a survey of 100 leading divorce lawyers in England and Wales reveals today."

The quote marks around "mid-life crisis" are just one clue to how wispy this story is. "Mid-life crisis"? That's not a scientific term, not even as precise as "adultery," which at least is a definable act. And in fact infidelity was the most common cause of marriage breakdown--"for the survey's fifth year running"--with "mid-life crisis" on the rise and coming in second. Family strains were third most common.

Funnily enough, there were no quote marks around "family strains." Would a mid-life crisis cause a family strain? Could a family strain lead to infidelity? The story is a mess all around, the data useless for anything more than a frosty, intraspousal breakfast table discussion. Extramarital affairs as a reason for divorce were listed in 29 percent of cases, down from 32 percent a year ago. Surely those three percentage points are within the margin of error. And is that 29 percent of all U.K. divorces or just 29 percent of those reported by "100 leading divorce lawyers in England and Wales"? Why even bother to release something so squishy?

The reason becomes apparent in the third paragraph: The "survey" comes from chartered accountants Grant Thornton and the first quote, in the fifth graph, is from the head of the firm's London matrimonial practice. To me the survey looks like an ad for Grant Thornton wrapped up in the guise of news. And the Guardian leapt on it like Michael Jackson on a Cub Scout.

They're not the only ones. I'm sure by day's end the story will be everywhere over here. That was the case with previous iterations. Last year's news was that private investigators were being hired more often in divorce cases. In 2005 the BBC headlined its story: "Affairs 'main reason for divorce.'" Browsing the coverage of this dubious survey from the last few years we can assemble an Infidelity Metric. Here are the percentages of marital breakdown caused by affairs:
2007: 29%
2006: 32%
2005: 29%
2004: 27%
2003: 29%

To me the headline isn't that there's been an increase in mid-life crises--whatever they are--but that, amazingly, every other year exactly 29 percent of divorces are due to affairs. According to 100 leading English and Welsh divorce lawyers, anyway.

I called Grant Thornton to ask if this annual survey wasn't just a big ad for its services. Of course not, said spokesperson Dee Crooks. "If we were a law firm, you could argue it was 'Come to me, come to me,'" she said. "But [clients] have got to go through a lawyer. We have relationships with lawyers, which is why we survey lawyers. We’re really down at the end of the line. We’re accountants. "

Okay, so a little story like this isn't the end of the world. God knows I've put lipstick on a pig before. But the practice is so common over here that you might think editors would simply bin these press releases when they come in, even those impressively marked "Embargoed until 00.01 hours, 25 February," as this one was. I think stories like this would fall under the "churnalism" heading Nick Davies is on about.

Why Newspapers Are Dying
British presswatcher Adrian Monck had an interesting post a few days ago about why newspapers are withering. It has nothing to do with journalism, he said: "The problems journalists are confronting are to do with the changing social habits of people who once purchased newspapers and were thus appealing to advertisers."

I can't tell whether he thinks the product needs changing--he sort of suggests it doesn't--but surely he doesn't believe we can change peoples' social habits instead?

Just Another Manic Media Monday

It's odd being in England when so much is going on back in America: the presidential primaries, the new Washington Nationals' ballpark, Britney Spears's meltdowns.... Of course, what really affects me are the changes at The Washington Post: a new publisher, consolidation of our printing plants and buyouts. I don't think I'll arrive back in the newsroom this summer to find the lock on my office changed, but one never knows.

Ten years ago I was away from The Post at a time when there was churn at the paper. A new managing editor had been named and I was off on a fellowship. I felt a bit out of the loop. What if I missed my chance to toady and brown-nose? Successful sucking up, like comedy, is all in the timing. I'm glad to say that despite my absence it all worked out just fine, even if that managing editor didn't stick around.

I think I'm probably too young to qualify for a buyout, though each round does seem to get lower and lower. The Post may soon start paying recent journalism school graduates not to even apply. The main thing is, I like my job. I like The Post. I don't plan on going anywhere. That sound you hear is my fingernails sinking into the wood on my desk.

This is not to say that all is well in Newspaperland. This New York Times story succinctly lays out all the challenges facing the industry. Many of the challenges are external, things newspapers have no control over: the rise of the Web, changes in readers' lifestyle and commuting habits. But some are self-imposed: We've lost some readers' trust, we haven't reacted well to changes in technology.... Over here, the latest book to pile on is "Flat Earth News" by Nick Davies. I haven't read the book yet, but Davies's main argument appears to be that time-pressed staffs are required to pump out more stories more quickly, resulting in a debilitating reliance on PR material.

It's an argument that U.K. journalism professor Adrian Monck carefully disassembles on his blog. Monck argues that, given the great advances in technology in the last 40 years, journalists should be able to work quicker and more efficiently. This review by Peter Preston in the Guardian makes the point that the Golden Age Davies harks back to was probably non-existent, or at least less shiny than he remembers it. Simon Jenkins made a similar point in a recent column.

I liked Peter Preston's closing comments: "One inescapable point about journalism is that, base or lofty, ruthless or idealistic, it is a mess, and always has been. That shouldn't stop us from trying to clean it up point by point, problem by problem. We can't afford not to be serious about our serious trade. But nor -- like rather too many tremulous tradesmen -- should we wallow in a froth of self-loathing that blots out the good and the necessary and the essential, too."

"A froth of self-loathing." Lovely. And worth keeping in mind. Of course, Peter Preston, I believe, is at the end of his career instead of in the middle of it, like I am. Journalists such as myself may need to steer clear of the froth of self-loathing but we need to plunge ourselves into the cold bath of self-criticism and self-improvement. The message of the economics seem unmistakable: Business as usual won't cut it anymore.