Media notes
This is a listing of media notes as compiled by Benjamin Israel.
News organizations missing out on statehouse coverage, longtime journalists say
The number of reporters covering statehouse news has decreased sharply while the complexity and volume of legislation continues to increase, and news organizations could be missing major stories because of this lower level of staffing. Those were the sentiments of Mike Lawrence and Terry Ganey during a session with journalism students at SIU Carbondale.
Mainstream media cut back on statehouse coverage as special interests launch
If Joseph Pulitzer could return to Missouri’s state capital, he’d probably recognize a recent development that was familiar during his time: politicians publishing newspapers. At the beginning of this legislative session, Rod Jetton, a former House speaker, launched a startup weekly, the Missouri Times. The newspaper and its website promotion promised “a different kind of media outlet” that would become “Missouri’s newspaper of politics and culture.” The journal’s arrival represented a new phase in the evolution of Missouri government coverage.
AEJMC releases resolution on 25th anniversary of Hazelwood decision
The board of directors of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (AEJMC), a nonprofit, educational association of journalism and mass communication educators, students and media professionals, recently passed a resolution regarding the 25th anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court significantly reducing the level of First Amendment protection afforded to students’ journalistic speech in the case of Hazelwood School District v. Kuhlmeier. In the ruling, the court’s 5-3 majority concluded that schools could lawfully censor student expressions in non-public forum media for any “legitimate pedagogical purpose,” and that among the recognized lawful purposes was the elimination of speech tending to “associate the school with any position other than neutrality on matters of political controversy.”
Where are news junkies getting their information now?
The reports from the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism remain relentlessly glum. There is no need to “do the numbers” one more depressing time. They’re still going down, with an increase in digital subscriptions for some newspapers the exceptional bright spot. The latest report, “The State of the News Media 2013,” lists the usual suspects for the continuing decline: fewer people enjoy following the news; half of all Americans get their news digitally; only 23 percent of Americans read a newspaper daily; only 34 percent of Americans under 30 watch TV news. Same old, same old. But there is one sentence in the report that ought to make practicing and prospective journalists sit up and pay attention: “Nearly a third of U.S. adults, 31 percent, have stopped turning to a news outlet because it no longer provided the news they were accustomed to getting.” Yow! The news junkies are abandoning the news. These are the people who are hoping for information and insight to help them understand local, national and international events. They’re telling us that they’re not getting that understanding any longer. So what’s going on here?