Medary.com

Terry Eastland, editor of the Weekly Standard, has written an article for the Wilson Quarterly titled The Collapse of Big Media: Starting Over.

A few excerpts (click "read more" below): Here it bears noting that though journalists aspired to the status of professionals, they never acquired the self-regulatory mechanisms found in law, medicine, or even business. The nation’s journalism schools, which taught—and still teach—a craft better learned on the job, never really filled the void.

I think he hits one core of journalism's problem here. They have aspired to be a "profession" but have failed to do those things which set the true professions apart from other avocations. One very important thing is that professional requirements (for physicians, lawyers, engineers, etc.) are to some extent enforced by law. Yet any kind of "professional" enforcement for journalism runs smack dab into the First Amendment.

(For your reference: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.")

Imagine that the Founding Fathers had written a Constitutional Amendment stating "Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of medicine, or of engineering, or of accounting."

To the traditional media, the new media have always looked awfully incomplete, as being more about politics and ideology than about news. Still, from their inception the new media have been landing blows on the old media precisely where it matters most. Remember that news is a thing made, a product, and that media with certain beliefs and values once made the news and then presented it in authoritative terms, as though beyond criticism.

Throughout most of American history, the press has been wildly, blatantly partisan. The rise of the "objective" reporter and the view of journalism as a "profession" have been side by side. But there are very real, legal requirements and responsibilities for an engineer who signs off on a design, or a physician who writes an order. This doesn't mean that bad engineering and bad medicine don't happen, but it does mean that there are controls in place to limit those occurances. There are no such controls in journalism.

Yet for the old media to become newly credible, to regain respect and audience, in a country more populous and less enamored of elites than it once was, and more red than blue, they’re going to have to dial down their imperial arrogance. They’re going to have to learn from the best of what the new media offer, and perhaps even recruit bloggers to help with news judgment and fact-checking. And they’re definitely going to have to look for news in places they formerly did not.

An excellent piece, well worth the time to read it.