Finding the News

by Peter Copeland

  The Washington bureau put top priority on breaking investigative stories, and we led multimedia reporting teams with Scripps newspapers and television stations, covering everything from Sudden Infant Death Syndrome and unsolved homicides to cruelty at animal shelters. I was most proud to carry on the bureau’s tradition of training (paid) interns, and I helped raise hundreds of cubs of my own.

  Personally, my politics had moved to the boring middle, partly because I was older and partly because my views changed with experience. I sometimes wondered what might have happened if I had been a college radical in a country less tolerant than ours. In some of the places I covered, the wrong poster in a dorm room could have gotten me in trouble, or even killed. Many of the places I had worked, especially Mexico, the Middle East, and Africa, had grown far more dangerous for reporters.

  I long ago had lost my passion for strident activism or partisanship of any kind. I had political opinions, but they were not fervent, and it was important professionally to keep them to myself. My own mother complained she didn’t know who I voted for. My view of partisan politics was the same as that of good soldiers or judges or police officers: yes, politics was important, but I had a job to do no matter who was in power.

  The one belief I was passionate and vocal about was that with good information, people would make the right decisions. I was less interested in telling people what they should do than in telling them what they should know. Sometimes covering the news felt remote—that we were observing the world rather than changing it—but it always felt meaningful.

  Even when newspapers were closing or laying off reporters, I never stopped being grateful I found journalism. I felt satisfaction mastering a craft and purpose in the work. Looking back at the very first big fire I covered on that cold day in Chicago, it seems odd even to me that my response was not to help the injured but to take notes. At that moment, I felt I was doing what I was supposed to do: my job. My story is about finding the news, both as an occupation and as a calling. I always marveled that I got to explore the world and write about it. And they paid me.

  I was fortunate that older people had opened doors for me, the same way Maru was lucky to have been discovered as a dancer. We both stumbled into careers that allowed us to grow into ourselves and live happy, productive lives. We shared the same hope for our own kids, whatever jobs they chose.

  As the newspaper industry declined, however, my job was not as enjoyable, and by 2012 I had laid off more people than I ever had hired. Things were only going to get worse. Maybe now was the time to return to writing, which is what I had set out to do after college. It had been years since I had written anything except memos and corporate presentations. My boss snidely called me the “Minister of Propaganda” because of my adulatory reports about the Washington bureau to the corporate office, obviously intended to protect our jobs from budget cuts.

  Also, this life was not what Maru had signed on for. I had promised we would go to Washington for two years; now we had stayed almost twenty-five. Her dance group—expanded to three companies, with kids, teens, and adults—had become the premiere Latin dance organization in Washington, but the stress was exhausting, and we didn’t have time for each other. We always talked about doing more together, about traveling, or even teaming up on a business. Instead, I went to the bureau early and stayed late. When I got home at night, she turned over the kids and went to rehearsals or performances.

  Years before, I had promised her to retire when I reached fifty-five, which was the magic age when my pension and benefits would be secure and the kids would be grown. Back when I made the promise, my fifty-fifth birthday seemed far in the future, and I figured that by then I would be walking with a cane and happy to slow down. The day came too soon, and I wasn’t ready. I tried denial, negotiating, and rationalizing, but I had made a promise and I knew it was time. Reluctantly, I said good-bye to colleagues and the company that had given me so much.

  In 2013, I set off on a new adventure, once again, not sure exactly where I was headed.

  Forty years after I started as a cub reporter, the pace of change in the news media feels faster than ever. In my lifetime, the TV networks shocked everybody when they doubled the length of the nightly national news—from a mere fifteen minutes to thirty minutes. Few imagined TV news around the clock, or entire networks presenting current events, or that a “public service” like news would be so profitable. The tone of television news changed, too, from traditional broadcasters playing it straight to more “personality” and then outright opinion, partisanship, and shouting matches.

  The means to cover the news improved dramatically. Cell phones and portable, wireless gear meant correspondents didn’t need to carry dimes for pay phones or worry as much how to file text, photos, and video.

  The reporters covering the news changed, too. Enrollment at journalism schools flipped from mostly male students to mostly female. A few (but not enough) women, African Americans, Latinos, and Asian Americans became leaders in mostly white male newsrooms. The modest demographic changes were part of a healthy redefinition of which stories should be covered, how they could be told, and who should tell them.

  Newsroom culture evolved with the times. My grandparents, both newspaper reporters, remembered newsrooms filled with crude talk, cigarette smoke, and booze, but the stories in the newspapers themselves were puritanical and prudish. Later, because of real concern about sexual harassment in the workplace, reporters no longer were allowed to trade jokes in the newsroom about oral sex, but they could describe oral sex—and anything else—in the paper and on television.

  Then the internet blew up everything. The power of a few people (including me) to set the news agenda was shattered. The old editors no longer could decide who was a journalist, what was a story, or what was fair commentary. Politicians and businesses could speak directly to news consumers without going through journalists as gatekeepers. Citizens could talk back to the media and to each other. Enabled and emboldened by anonymity online, the tone of political discourse grew more vicious.

  The information network was always “on,” meaning there was no more news cycle with deadlines and built-in pauses, just round-the-clock, unfiltered information. The faster pace and increased competition reduced the time to check facts and frame stories, and the news agenda could be set by a random, ten-second video from somebody’s cell phone.

  More information did not always mean more wisdom. My generation was taught not to believe everything we read. My children had to be skeptical of unlimited sources of information. Even photos and videos—once the definition of unfiltered truth—could be misleading or lies. It was as if a tornado had hit the Library of Congress, knocking the covers off books and scattering the pages. There was more stuff but less sense.

  Some of this change was positive for readers: consumers had easier access to more news from more places than ever in history. The challenge was sorting through the propaganda, bias, and lies to find news that was accurate. When individual stories were freed from context and shared online, it was harder to judge the reliability of the original source.

  Even with this greater volume of stories, traditional news providers could not sustain the revenue that had allowed us to cover entire cities or even the world. It wasn’t that news companies failed to act; it was that we did not come up with strategies to make money when our products (news and advertising, especially classifieds) suddenly were free and ubiquitous. In the same way, the internet gave listeners more music in more places for less money, while the music providers—artists and record companies—struggled to survive.

  The “crisis” in media and the collapse of local newspapers is a business problem more than a journalism problem. We once had a lock on advertising and news delivery, and now we don’t. Investment has not kept up with new technologies, as evidenced by the amateurish and clunky digital operations at many local newspapers and TV stations. Newspaper revenue and employment are half what they were only a dozen years ago.
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  Underneath the job cuts and uncertainty, however, the journalism mission has not changed. The basic challenge still is to make sense of reality and to share that reality with others. Getting the facts right—asking for the middle initial like they taught at City News—and telling the stories quickly, accurately, and fairly, remain the goals. Journalism has never been complicated to do; it’s just difficult to do well.

  The highest form of journalism—investigative reporting—is more vigorous and less restrained than ever. Today, just as when I started, the most important work is not “covering” what everyone can see but exposing things that are hidden, either because of ignorance or because someone is trying to hide them.

  Reporters still need to develop sources by building trust and relationships. Then they must tap those sources to understand and explain what others cannot see. This means discovering and exposing hidden patterns, truths, and secrets. The talent and courage necessary to uncover investigative stories are not different because of the internet.

  Most importantly, journalists must strive to remember and protect our highest values. Technology is changing all professions, from medicine to law to education. Still, we expect our doctors, lawyers, and teachers to maintain rigorous standards of excellence and integrity. The same should be true for journalists.

  The disconnect between journalists and our audience is not new. We’ve long spent too much time covering things people don’t care about, and often from a point of view they don’t share. A simple example is how reporters talk about the government “losing” money from tax cuts, instead of how people will keep more of the money they earn. This is a form of bias, but it is so common that most people take it for granted.

  Good reporters pride themselves on keeping their personal views out of their coverage, but it takes effort. The night Bill Clinton was declared the victor in the 1996 presidential race, some people working in my newsroom clapped and cheered. I was appalled and spoke sharply to them. It didn’t matter whom they supported in the privacy of the voting booth—many of us wore “I Voted” stickers to work—but they knew better than to share their opinions in the newsroom. I was deeply embarrassed because interns working that night saw something so unprofessional.

  The complaints about bias are a product of declining trust. Reporters never have been especially popular, and even when I started, polls on trustworthiness ranked us below doctors and police officers. The distrust has grown, and today’s readers have more ways of being heard, which is why the complaints about coverage seem louder. While we consider ourselves part of the solution to the nation’s problems, many readers and viewers see us as part of the problem.

  President Donald Trump did not create the distrust of the media, but he figured out how to exploit it. He didn’t invent “fake news,” but he’s got a talent for labeling things he doesn’t like. And he’s right that some media people are on a seek-and-destroy mission against him personally as well as his policies. Only two of the nation’s top one hundred newspapers endorsed Trump in 2016. Just for the record, 93 percent of US newspapers endorsed Richard Nixon in 1972. Two years later Nixon resigned.

  Reporters should be less worried about President Trump than about the people who elected him in 2016. To many of the 63 million voters who wanted Trump to shake up the system, we in the media were part of that corrupt and unfair system. Add to that number the Hillary Clinton voters who thought reporters were unfair to her and gave Trump too much uncritical coverage. Then there are the millions who didn’t vote at all—a bigger number than those who voted for either Trump or Clinton—who are impervious to our calls to “civic duty.” How did so many citizens come to view us as the opposition, and how do we convince them we are on their side?

  To earn trust, our driving principles should be speed, accuracy, and fairness. Journalists must be fast because competition makes us better. Accuracy is the minimal requirement for real news. But even if we are fast and accurate, only fairness will earn the long-term confidence of the people who count on us.

  Are we meeting our own standards of speed, accuracy, or fairness?

  Technology allows reporters to be faster than ever, but most old-fashioned scoops don’t last because they are quickly matched by competitors, and most readers don’t know or care who broke what story. Reporters know, however, and scoops are a measure of skill, even if keeping track matters mostly to us. We should focus more on being first with truly original reporting, rather than being first to reveal what some politician is going to say in a speech that night.

  Good reporters want to be accurate, but there is a temptation to be first rather than right, especially when bad information can be “updated,” which also is a nice way of saying corrected. The pressure to update stories constantly on multiple platforms means less time to report and check facts. A positive development is that accuracy is easier to measure now because stories are instantly visible to all, and “fact checker” has become a growing job category in journalism.

  Fairness is the hardest goal to measure and achieve. If fairness is in the eyes of the beholder, we are failing miserably on both the right and left. Even by our own professional standards, we should be concerned by the vitriol of the coverage, the smirking and eye-rolling of TV reporters, and the angry frustrations that boil over into our reporting and social media. The current political climate is bringing out the best and the worst in journalism, which makes it harder for the many reporters trying to be fair.

  We can start by practicing what we preach to others about honesty and transparency. Honesty in our work is important to the people we cover and to our audience. We should talk publicly about how we get stories, the ground rules for interviews, the sources and documents that support our conclusions, and why we publish and broadcast what we do. We must try harder to get information on the record. When we have an opinion, it should be based on verified facts, well argued and free from outside influence. And can we please separate news and commentary?

  Journalists have to break their own stories, not follow the pack. They have to see things for themselves in the real world, because if you are reading something on a screen, you’ve already been beat. When you approach a story or a source, be insistent but courteous, skeptical but not cynical. The most important news-gathering tool is still the question. Ask questions from the point of view of the people watching your story, not the people you are covering. Then really listen to the answers. In the current polarized environment, we have to be extra vigilant against appearing partisan, even in our questions.

  Pause before you file, especially on deadline. Ask someone to look over your shoulder, even when you are “only” posting on social media and not doing a “real” story. People rightly judge us by the quality of our work, including on social media, which is why everybody needs an editor.

  I’m restating these basic rules because the only way to win trust is to earn it. Too many people think we are biased, and they are not all wrong. This problem goes far beyond the current occupant of the White House and affects media around the world, not just in the United States. We are married to our audience in the sense that we can’t survive without them. It’s time to listen to them and then restate our vows of accuracy and fairness.

  Real journalists do not create “fake news,” which is deliberately false reporting or carelessly false reporting that is not corrected. Fake news also occurs when ideological blinders and personal opinion distort reality, sometimes intentionally and sometimes unconsciously. Fake news is not simply making a mistake. Everybody makes mistakes, but real reporters correct them.

  There was no golden age of news in the past, however. In many ways, journalism is more professional than ever. When American newspapers were young, they were filled with lies, rumors, fake news, and political manipulation. It is true that when I started, reporters knew more than they put in the paper, and today people are quick to publish or share more than they really know. Again, this is about values—fairness and accuracy—and not about the interne
t or the nature of social media. Technology is not to blame when we cheat on our values, but it can be an enabler.

  The journalism business will figure out a way to prosper because quality news has enduring worth to individuals and society. Reliable coverage might even be more valuable now because false information circulates so easily and is manipulated by political operatives, scammers, and governments.

  Good journalists still make a product people want, but we have to figure out how to get paid during the difficult transition to a new business model. The news industry will not become nonprofit, because it won’t generate enough money for real scale. Nor will journalism be government-run, because of American history. That leaves a market-based, profit-oriented news media, or some combination of business models, which would be beneficial to all because of the variety and competition among news organizations.

  I spent my career trying to resist predicting the future, so I’m not going to predict the future of the news business, but every enterprise requires a growing stream of revenue. Advertising, the traditional funder of news, has declined for many news organizations, and readers and viewers are not paying enough as subscribers to cover the gap. Maybe there is a third way beyond advertising and subscriptions. I am positive that any winning business strategy will be built on the values of honesty and integrity.

  For young people attracted to a career in journalism, money always has been secondary to the calling, which was fine when we had a monopoly but a disaster when the business model collapsed. Young reporters—even those who can’t add and subtract very well—must learn the business of news as well as the craft of journalism. If you are starting a news career, you could end up working for a company that doesn’t even exist today. And you could be the one who creates that new company. I hope you do.