More journalists? Or fewer? Who will decide?

Who’s a journalist? Who will decide? Will bloggers rule the world? Will the First Amendment wither online? Do Big Govmint and Big Corpokleptocracy have motives for seeking to control the answers to these questions?

None of these questions can be considered in isolation. So let’s begin with a case little-noticed by the general public: “Three blogs which published sensitive information about upcoming Apple products could be made to disclose where the leaks came from. A California judge said in a preliminary ruling that bloggers should not have the same protection afforded to journalists under US law.” (Read the story.)

Argue pro or con if you wish. But consider: This ruling limits those who can call themselves journalists and, more important, who can seek protections under state shield laws allowing journalists to conceal their whistle-blowing sources.

Lost in the hue and cry over First Amendment rights to free speech and free press will be a very interesting numbers game.

(Read on at your peril.)

In 1980, America’s population stood at 220 million. The number of daily newspapers serving the public was 1,745 (See the NAA figures.) In those newsrooms worked 43,000 journalists – editors, photographers, copy editors and reporters. (See the ASNE figures.)

Now it’s 2005. The U.S. population stands at 295 million, a 31 percent increase from 1980. The number of dailies has fallen to about 1,450 (NAA’s most recent figure is for 2003 at 1,456), a decline of 20 percent. Newsroom employment has risen — it peaked at 56,400 in 2001 and has dropped 4 percent since. But here’s the breakdown for 2004: 13,000 supervisors, 10,000 copy and layout editors, 25,000 reporters, and nearly 6,000 photographers.

Anyone who has followed the newspaper industry over the past 40 years might be thinking this:

Gosh. Only 25,000 reporters among the 54,200 newsroom employees? There used to be more reporters. But as technology changed, production functions (design, layout) shifted to the newsroom. More copy editors were needed. As the number of reporters declined, less local news was reported and published. Wire copy filled in — meaning more copy editors. Color arrived, and more photographers were needed to provide the pictures that took advantage of color printing.

Bottom line: Today, only 25,000 reporters at about 1,450 newspapers look after the information needs of 295,000,000 people. That’s one reporter per 11,800 people. (By the way, the median circulation of daily newspapers is only about 12,000 paid subscribers.)

Industry mergers and acquisitions have seen the number of newspapers decline — and mergers mean loss of jobs, especially among reporters.

So what? you ask. Why all these numbers?

If you believe that Big Govmint and Big Corpokleptocracy are morally interested in having their operations closely monitored by journalists of any kind, then please give me some of what you’re smokin’.

Examine the actions of government and corporations in terms of whether they reduce or increase the number of journalists that can hold government and corporations accountable for their actions.

Can you see actions that enhance journalists’ ability to accomplish that? Hardly. Or increase the number of journalists? Nope.

A friend asked me to define “journalist.” That’s akin to saying beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Far greater minds than mine can hold forth on the meaning of professionalism versus craft, the importance of oversight and gatekeeping, and the punctuation in the First Amendment placing freedoms of speech and the press on equal grammatical footing.

But I believe that the Founders had in mind a citizenry that saw an obligation to question its government, to demand that its government be accountable.

That’s what journalists do. In same breath in which we speak of citizen legislators we should utter “citizen journalists.” A blogger or my mother writing a letter to her representative in Congress may have the same motive in mind — holding government, and because corporations can now be considered governments as well, them, too — accountable.

The last 40 years of governmental intransigence in providing information to the citizenry and the corporatization of the press have resulted in fewer journalists acting effectively to hold them accountable.

So that California judge ruling against three blogs can be viewed as evidence that government will ultimately seek to determine, through judicial ruling or legislative fiat, who is a journalist. If Big Govmint seeks to do that, the likelihood it will expand the number of journalists afforded shield law protections is zero. Nada. Not a chance.

That’s not a good sign, folks. More journalists, not fewer, are needed in any and every medium to hold accountable those who seek to control us.

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