About journalism

I have a heap of views about journalism. For example, I do think that journalism can be an important contributor to a healthy democracy. But it’s not clear to me that journalism always has been, or is currently. Maybe it is. But how would we know? If we are going to rely on more than cherry picking success stories (or failures) to assess the institutional impact of a given outlet, or the industry as a whole, we need research and a proven methodology.

Additionally, on my view, not everything that passes as journalism, succeeds at being journalism. On my view, actual journalism is a species of public relations. If a piece has the right qualities and features, then it succeeds at journalism. This is not the dominant view of journalism and public relations.¹

Posts on the topic of journalism