In my Scene piece this week on 20 years of Nashville politics, I touch on the changing role of the news media, characterizing it as a decline in "aggressive, competitive journalism." That may be an efficient summary, but there's more to say about the intersection of politics and the press in Nashville's last two decades.
In writing the piece I informally consulted a number of long-time observers of and participants in city government and politics, virtually all of whom had strong opinions about how the local media-politics nexus has changed for the worse. The press, especially The Tennessean, used to be both political watchdog and messenger, said one, but no more. Newspapers still wield influence in elections through endorsements, said another, but have little if any meaningful day-to-day role in public policy. A third observed that local press discourse these days "veers between the coarse and the ignorant."
As the untenable economics of dead trees give way to a utopian online future (except for that pesky little business-model problem), there's much chatter these days about a future without newspapers. But the real issue isn't whether we have a paper (lots of them, including The Tennessean, remain profitable); it's whether we have legitimate, meaningful journalism.
As I mention in the Scene piece, bloggers here have added value to the local landscape of news coverage and watchdoggery, but online independent media aren't well-developed compared to some other cities. Consider, for instance, the Beacon in St. Louis, or MinnPost up in Minnesota, or voiceofsandiego.org. These impressive if fledgling enterprises are non-profits for now, and long-term survival and prosperity will arguably require more than foundation support. In the current issue of American Journalism Review, former managing editor Rachel Smolkin makes the point that content trumps medium or format:
Newspapers are rightly trying to reinvent themselves in order to survive, experimenting with new business models, focusing on the journalistic and commercial possibilities of the Internet and working to meld print and online operations. For newspapers' survival to matter, though, the core of the new models must remain the same as the old: the dedication to illuminating stories and rich storytelling, the commitment to serving democracy.
Here in Nashville we still have papers and television newsrooms and reporters and editors, but how's that commitment-to-serving-democracy thing working out? The politicos I consulted for the article had a consensus response: Not nearly as well as it used to.
