News-Record.com

I thought of that conversation with my friend as I read the second annual State of the News Media report, conducted by the Project for Excellence in Journalism, a respected Washington research group.

The conclusions in the 600-page report are bleak. Newspapers are positioning themselves as horse-drawn buggies, and editors are simply refining the whip.

Well, stop the presses! I'm not buying it. I don't see us in the newspaper business. We're in the business of connecting communities: people to information, people to other people, and buyers to sellers. We use newspapers and the Internet. We use the printed word, audio through podcasting, and visuals with photography and video.

It's all still journalism.

The report identified five major trends in journalism. One is about network news, which I have no dominion over so I'm not going to waste space on it here. Here are the other four:

* "There are now several models of journalism, and the trajectory increasingly is toward those that are faster, looser and cheaper. The traditional press model -- the journalism of verification -- is one in which journalists are concerned first with trying to substantiate facts. It has ceded ground for years on talk shows and cable to a new journalism of assertion, where information is offered with little time and little attempt to independently verify its veracity."

This is a worrisome trend, but one that is unstoppable. Our journalistic moorings are rooted deeply into the bedrock of verification and will not be loosened. I believe that citizens will continue to gravitate to news sources they trust. It's one reason we are working hard to strengthen our credibility, our accessibility and our transparency.

* "The rise of partisanship of news consumption and the notion that people have retreated to their ideological corners for news has been widely exaggerated."

This is good news for those who appreciate constructive discussion in the civic debate.

* "To adapt, journalism may have to move in the direction of making its work more transparent and more expert, and of widening the scope of its searchlight....In effect, the era of trust-me journalism has passed, and the era of show-me journalism has begun."

We're attempting to do that very thing, tearing down the walls that separate the News & Record from the community. I have a Web log in which readers can interact with me and with others about journalism issues. Other reporters also have blogs -- online news journals -- in which their coverage is expanded upon and, occasionally, explained.

* "Despite the new demands, there is more evidence than ever that the mainstream media are investing only cautiously in building new audiences."

We're building a new Web site that, frankly, we had hoped would be ready by now. We've gotten a great deal of national publicity for our efforts to move our online journalism deeper into the 21st century. We're experimenting with innovative ways to involve citizens in news coverage and interacting with us and others. Please sample the reader-submitted journalism and public forums.

The biggest challenge in the report is this:

"Journalism is a shrinking part of a growing world of media. And since journalists are trained to be skeptics and aspire at least, in the famous phrase, to speak truth to power, journalism is the one source those who want to manipulate the public are most prone to denounce....

"The challenge for traditional journalism is whether it can reassert its position as the provider of something distinctive and valuable -- both for citizens and advertisers....Somehow journalism needs to prove that it is acting on behalf of the public if it is to save itself."

We understand that. We understand the need for a trusted place to exchange ideas, the need to give voice to the voiceless and to speak truth to power. That's why we write about how tax money for low-income housing is being spent, how the criminal screening process for teachers is being conducted, how illegal immigrants are being employed to work on aircraft, and how children are getting sick from living in houses with lead paint.

Not everything is grim. Our circulation bucked national trends and grew each year from 2001 to 2003. In the wake of the federal do-not-call legislation limiting telemarketing, circulation growth sagged in 2004, but is on the rise again this year. Meanwhile, our online page views are soaring, recently exceeding 7 million a month.
But I don't want to sound as if I'm whistling pass the graveyard. We know we have significant challenges. And I'm too old to go into the legal field.

The news business is changing faster than ever. Your newspaper is changing with it, embracing the era of show-me journalism and building new audiences in new places.