Catherine Rampell has done a good service by laying out for her colleagues what they need to do to fulfill their responsibilities in 2024. Here are the two I think are most important:
Spend less time reporting on who’s likely to win an election and more on what they’d do if elected.
The point of winning elections is, ostensibly, to govern. Yet a voter could spend hours watching or reading presidential election coverage and come away with only a vague understanding of what any of the contenders would do as president. Too often journalists ask candidates questions like “Why are you so far down in the polls in Iowa?” rather than “What would your position on [food stamps/tariffs/banking] mean for Iowans?”
Jay Rosen, a New York University journalism professor, has pithily boiled down our mission as “Not the odds, but the stakes.” These days, Rosen’s refrain is usually quoted in the context of the stakes for democracy (specifically, under another Trump administration), but it’s a good principle for any substantive matter that affects the lives of everyday Americans.
We must produce more coverage of what, say, the health-care system would look like under different candidates’ platforms. Also climate, working conditions, immigration, civil rights, taxes, nutritional programs and so on. This is harder to do than just covering the horse race, but it adds more value.
People need to understand the stakes.There’s so much cynicism and disinformation out there that a whole lot of people just buy into the fatuous notion that “there’s not a dime’s worth of difference between them.” And then there are the “lesser of two evils” and the “heighten the contradictions” excuses and this is what we end up with:
I can’t imagine how anyone can come to that absurd conclusion but it’s sadly not uncommon. Making the Democrats “learn their lesson” isn’t going to keep immigrants from being deported or Netanyahu and Putin from pursuing their violent goals.
Report the important positive news and not just the important bad news.
Journalists are often accused of having a “bad-news bias.” That’s partly because alarming or infuriating stories sell in a way that positive ones often don’t — particularly in an era in which the public seems addicted to outrage. This addiction manifests in many ways, including in how politicians talk, how regular people converse with one another, and what newspeople decide to report.
There’s also a cover-your-rear impulse that disproportionately discourages positive news coverage. If we write about a policy/company/person/study/whatever in a way that emphasizes the good things, and it turns out we missed some significant problem, we look like fools. If we write something broadly critical and miss something good, audiences rarely care.
But our job is to give the public a truthful portrait of the world around them. Positive developments are part of that too.
I don’t think I need to tell my readers how important I think this is. I feel as if you are well aware of all the bad news out there. We’re inundated with it. I try to highlight the more positive news that doesn’t get as much exposure. But it’s really important that the mainstream media shifts their attitude and starts reporting the facts without all the editorializing about how none of it matters.
She also has a resolution for us and it’s important:
But my key resolution for news consumers is this: Help news organizations stick to the pledges above. You can do this by actually consuming the nuanced, balanced, thoughtful news coverage you say you want.
One reason journalists disproportionately cover polls is that doing so is relatively easy; another is that audiences appear to prefer simple, digestible “who’s ahead?” summaries to nitty-gritty policy issues. They don’t seem to care much about local elections (as evidenced not just by audience ratings but by voter participation). And they love to rage-click. Those who hate on media claim to want more balanced, meaty coverage and fewer inflammatory headlines. But virtually any journalist can tell you that these stated preferences are not borne out by our traffic numbers.
And those numbers matter. They especially matter in an era of ultra thin budgets and media layoffs, in which complex investigative work that almost no one reads or watches becomes an unaffordable luxury.
So if substantive coverage matters to you, reward it with your attention. Vote with your eyeballs, your ears, your clicks, your shares, your paid subscriptions. That can mean here at The Post or at any other organization whose work you like, and, through your news-consumption habits, resolve to make better in 2024.
I resolve to try to circulate the good journalism that I come across all year long and help my readers find the good journalism that’s being done in the big media and also the blogs, substacks and other newsletters that deserve our attention. It’s never been more important to be informed.
