Is Journalism Returning to its Roots?

In the article “Journalism Isn’t Dying, It’s Returning to Its Roots”, Antonio Martinez argues that today’s American journalism industry is experiencing a shift away from the professionalization and objective standpoint established in the 20th century. However, the industry is not shifting towards something new, rather it’s going back to the style of original journalism in the 18th century. Journalistic objectivity in the enlightenment era was not a thing at all. If you were to show a copy of the New York Times to the founding fathers, the non-partisanship of the paper would be a foreign concept to them. Journalism in the era of Ben Franklin was highly partisan and biased, largely because the paper’s themselves were funded by political parties. It was not until the 1900’s that newspapers became more “objective”. This happened because newspapers had a new source of funding, advertisement. Advertising money freed newspapers from writing highly politicized content, and allowed them to write for mass audiences from a somewhat objective standpoint. According to Martinez, this is all coming to an end. Martinez argues that we now live in a time where 12 different angles can be written about the same story. Twitter is something that the Founding Fathers would recognize as it is a highly emotional, highly partisan space for public discourse. Martinez concludes the article arguing that while writing styles have reverted back to the 19th century, journalism business models have not. National news organizations are constantly looking to increase profits by expanding their portfolios with acquisitions. 

In the article “The Media’s Post-Advertising Future Is Also Its Past”, Derek Thompson similarly argues that media is reverting back to a 19th century style as a result of the lack of advertising revenue left in the industry. Thompson says that there are four trends in media contributing to this reversal. The first is that there are too many players fighting for advertising revenue, and the winners are mostly big tech companies such as Facebook and Google. Media companies simply can’t compete with big tech’s wider audience. Second, there are not enough saviors to make news more profitable. No new technology will come in and change that. Third, there is no clear playbook for how media companies can generate new revenue. Many are currently experimenting by selling sponsored content/merchandise or focusing on increasing subscribers. However there is no guarantee that these methods will work. Finally, patrons coming to buy newspapers have varying levels of beneficence. A current trend is billionaires buying newspapers then selling them when they don’t make a profit. Thompson argues that in the 19th century, while newspapers were deeply biased, they were also highly engaging. Thompson suggests that as newspapers no longer have ad revenue to stay afloat, they will revert back to their highly biased yet engaging style in order to attract more subscribers. 

In my opinion, I do agree that journalism is reconnecting with its historical origins, however not at the same extreme. I do think that American newspapers are positioning themselves towards certain political views. The New York Times and The Washington Post’s main marketing strategy is essentially anti-Trump, stating that they find and report the truth while the Trump administration tells lies. However, newspapers still operate from an alleged view of objectivity, keeping more polarizing articles in the opinion section. The front page of the New York Time has yet to declare Trump as a fat orange idiot as a newspaper in the 19th century would. As with the argument that Twitter is a reflection of 19th century newspapers, while it is true that both are highly partisan and emotional, I think it is important to emphasize that Twitter is not necessarily a form of journalism. Twitter is simply one big public sphere for discourse. While its importance does grow everyday, it still does not hold the same level of status as newspapers do. Twitter is a place where opinions and news forms, and newspapers tend to pull from it and put a filter on it. I think that this shift in journalism is both positive and negative. I believe that it is positive because I personally don’t believe there is such a thing as “objective journalism”. Every journalist has some sort of bias that impacts what they write, so I think newspapers may as well acknowledge that. It is more transparent. However, I do see a negative side to this in that there is no possible way to get a somewhat neutral version of a story without a spin to make it appeal to a certain audience. It constantly throws into question what is real and what isn’t real, making it difficult to know what to trust. I think that the extreme partisanship of newspapers seperates people even more into their belief bubbles, preventing productive discourse and stunting out democracy as a result.