Shannon McEnerney | April 13, 2010
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| Photo by Heather Brogden |
| Free Press co-founder Josh Silver outlined some suggestions for solving journalism’s current dilemma during a talk Monday night. Among the advice was more government funds for media. |
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But here’s the thing about this car: It’s broken down on the side of the road. Some people who see it don’t worry about it and think someone else will come along and help the car. But others come along and say no, they aren’t going to wait, they are going to fix the car and get it moving again.
This is the metaphor Josh Silver used Monday night to describe the state of the journalism industry. Silver, who is the executive director and co-founder of Free Press, a national organization working on media and technology policy, spoke to an audience in Ernie Pyle auditorium about journalism, media policy, the Internet and what needs to be done to make a change in media policy.
“It’s almost as if journalism is a car going up a big hill,” Silver said, whose own story about his interest in journalism struck a chord with students in the crowd. He recounted the first time he recognized the “journalism car” that is stuck.
A few years ago, Silver said he turned on the five o’clock news to discover the top story of the evening was on the rising price of lobster – not on wars, international events or local issues.
“So I said to myself, how do we improve the quality and tenacity of what is on TV?” Silver said.
In 2002, Silver co-founded Free Press. The organization works to educate and promote diversity in media ownership, as well as focuses on strong media and quality journalism and media reform policy.
“The media is not a natural system, it is inherently built on policy,” Silver said. “For too many years, media policy was made behind closed doors without any input and consent from the public.”
The important first step to create a better media system is to get the public involved in the debate, Silver said.
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| Photo by Heather Brogden |
| Silver talked about the Internet’s vast influence on how people access news, and how they get their own words out. "As the Internet speeds up, it’s delivering every media not printed," he said. |
“Until we cultivate a kind of journalism that does that,” Silver said about enhancing these issues, “then your issues are going to continue to fail.”
But there is another element affecting the media, its policy and the content: the Internet. With the growth of the Internet, Silver said it is important to see how the Internet infrastructure is influential and inevitability linked to content and journalism.
“As the Internet speeds up, it’s delivering every media not printed,” Silver said. “This is central to everything that you do.”
As broadband becomes more ubiquitous, newspapers are going the way of the dino, Silver said, predicting that eventually there will probably only be a few banner, major newspapers.
“Eventually the printed page will go away,” Silver said. “It’s not a matter of if, but a matter of when.”
He’s not concerned about saving newspapers, but Silver does want to save newsrooms and to save journalists’ jobs in order to have trained professionals in the wings as the business is reconstructed. Even with speed of the Internet and accessibility to media and news outlets, traditional journalists are still doing the vast bulk of the work.
“We’ve got to do something proactive,” Silver said. Government interaction, he said, could help media policy and what is communicated to the people.
“What happens with our airwaves? Who gets to use it, who doesn’t?” Silver said.
He described the universal service fund, which was created by the government to make sure telephone service could be deployed everywhere and that everyone gets it. Silver suggested the government subsidize broadband to expand accessibility and create competition, which is “absolutely critical in the Internet market.” But, the phone and cable companies represent the second largest lobby in Congress, Silver said.
“The daunting reality is that there is no longer enough private money to support the breadth and depth of local and international journalism,” Silver said.
But this is when the government can help.
“We have no choice but we have to have a more robust public media system,” Silver said. “With a lack of private funding, we need money from somewhere to pay for journalism.”
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| Photo by Heather Brogden |
| Silver’s Free Press works on policy issues for media and technology. While technology allows more people access to media, the public still needs to hear from professional journalists, he said. |
“When I say we need to bolster public media, let’s go from $1.35 to $10,” Silver said. “It would revolutionalize media content in the country.”
Media policy will determine what the media will look like a generation from now, he said. Will the poor have the same access as the wealthy? This is just one of the ways in which media policy has a profound effect on the future generations of people, one reason to keep moving the car up the hill.
“I cannot overstate how much the media impacts your view of the world,” Silver said.
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