No joy in Mudville: Is journalism striking out?

My newsroom days are 15 years distant, but I can see that there’s not as much joy these days in the newsrooms I visit. That’s a direct consequence of the change in motivation from the mission of journalism to the mission of creating shareholder value.

I teach journalism for a living to college students now. So I think a great deal about the newsrooms and the journalistic life my students will eventually enter. Should I teach them how disheartening it became for me at the end? Or should I teach them about, as a friend recently said, “the Great Mission and Moral Imperative” of the newspaper culture?

Back in the day, I started my career as a sportswriter. I loved being a sportswriter. It taught me how to be a journalist.

Advertisement