Bill Kovach

Everybody complains about the quality of the media, but nobody does anything about it . . . in part because few of us know what to do about it. Happily, thanks to Bill Kovach, Tom Rosenstiel, and Blur, I now know a whole lot more about what to do about it than I did before. Blur is the textbook for the "Print Journalism" segment of the "Media Literacy 101" course that we all should have had in school but virtually none of us did. It explains what good journalism is, how to recognize it, and show more (just as important) where journalists can go wrong . . . and how to recognize that. The biggest problem with journalism today, Kovach and Rosenstiel argue, isn't political bias as such, but laziness. Reporters transcribe official statements without investigating them, interviewers fail to do the necessary background research, and publications that should no better fail to corroborate statements with two independent sources before publishing them. The result is a sea of information . . . some of it based on solid, careful research, but much of it misleading or completely erroneous.

Blur is, in the space of 200 pages, a (very) brief sketch of how we got here -- specifically of the ways in which information technology shapes the way we receive information -- a guide to how to deal with things as they are, a call for journalists to do better, and an examination of what the "next journalism," now emerging, might look like. Along the way it touches on subjects such as why (and how) people get news, and what good journalism looks like -- the latter illustrated with examples that are enough to make me want to change careers and become a reporter (not because they make it look easy -- far from it-- but because they make it look like an extraordinary challenge, in which the rewards come from making the world a better place. Blur is, in short, an extremely rich and wide-ranging book. That it's never confusing or dull (though it is serious) is a testament to how skillful the authors are at their trade.

The majority of readers will see the chapters on how to be an informed consumer of news as the heart of this book, and its most valuable feature. They'd be right, but the last 30 pages of the book -- two chapters on the "next journalism" -- also deserve notice. Its analysis of one potential road that the fusion of print journalism and the internet could take is lucid, innovative, and surprisingly compelling. There's a great deal of writing out there about the fact that jouralism is changing radically . . . not so much about where those changes might lead. Here's one very plausible-sounding possibility, embedded in one very thoughtful book. Highly recommended. show less

As a librarian, I find my profession facing many similar challenges to those faced by traditional journalists. People today are less inclined to get their information through trusted intermediaries that vet and edit content for their consumption. There are both positives and negatives to this but as former information middle-men, librarians and journalists are both in positions in which they have to both justify the value work they do and think about changes to that work to make it more show more relevant to consumers again.

Blur is a great little book that lays out these challenges by trying to help individual consumers to parse the news for themselves. By providing a sort of toolkit to digest the increasing amounts of information with which we are bombarded daily, the authors make a case for journalists more as teachers and assistants to an information-savvy public and less as the gatekeepers with total control over the framing of news stories.

This is a great little book that I'll be referring to often as I try to consider how my own profession must adapt to the same challenges. show less

A powerful indictment of the channels through which we now receive our information. The authors identify four models of content: journalism of verification (the traditional mode, in which journalists serve as thoughtful gatekeepers, and provide accuracy and context), a journalism of assertion that emerged with 24-hour cable access, offering a passive conduit for speakers with little challenge or editing, the journalism of affirmation that caters to like-minded consumers tending to show more cherry-pick information to confirm preexisting convictions; and interest-group journalism that includes targeted websites funded by special interest organizations. The existence of this growing variety, the authors argue, places greater responsibility on the consumer to be aware of the nature of the information being received and to find for themselves the now-scattered bits of information they need to make valid decisions. The majority of the book is designed to equip the reader to make these distinctions.

One can readily concede the characterization of the largely disintegrating (in both senses, as concerns quality and progression from a prior unity of professional objective) state of news media, while not accepting the authors' optimism about the ability of the population at large to be either motivated or equipped to take the necessary steps to obtain anything better. This is, after all, the same public that has fueled the growth of the journalism of affirmation embodied in Fox news and even, although less successfully, some few offerings on the opposite end of the political spectrum. The appetite and energy to individually acquire the skills upon which we used to expect from the traditional media seem in short supply. That should be of small surprise, given the critical comments about the negative impact of internet use and a general lack of intellectual depth that becomes more common (e.g., Maggie Jackson's Distracted, and Nicholas Carr's The Shallows).

If it is true that a thriving democracy depends upon an educated and informed citizenry, and if it is also true that the plethora of information has decreased the amount of actual knowledge, and further that the burden of bridging the gap falls on each person where before we could rely on a skilled profession to do most of the heavy lifting, then perhaps we are in for a bleak future. Although the authors no doubt intend this solid work to offer encouraging instruction to the reader, the outcome is as likely to be a sobering pessimism arising from consumers' lack of critical curiosity. show less

The most common criticism of late-20th and early 21st century journalism seems to be that it's not "real journalism" anymore. Kovach and Rosenstiel offer a model which considers that the thing we call "journalism" might not be a monolith. They find historical precedents for 4 different models - a "journalism of verification" which matches that "real journalism" category, a "journalism of assertion" which values immediacy over analysis, a "journalism of affirmation" which presents news in a show more way most likely to reinforce the beliefs of its audience, and an "interest-group journalism" in which special interests create content which looks like news to an uninformed viewer. They also recognize a "journalism of aggregation", in which organizations and individuals curate the "news feed" that is interesting to them.

While the bulk of the book talks about the first 3 models, and how to recognize and analyze them, the real theme of the book might be the last category. Individuals have increasingly accepted more of the responsibility for collecting their own varied sources of news, and the broad journalism industry has responded in logical ways to stay in business. If we are all becoming "aggregators" in one sense or another, we need to understand the different kinds of journalism, and know how to evaluate them (as what they are, not what we wish they were).

I didn't find the last section, on the future of news, as satisfying as the rest of the book. As good journalists, Kovach and Rosenstiel are measured in their language and conservative in their predictions. Unfortunately, that style which works so well for the rest of the book doesn't match the job of forecasting. (This is also the section where I felt too many sentences began or ended with "as we discuss in our other book...")

This book should be taught in high school, as part of preparation for informed citizenship. (Sadly, it probably will mostly be taught in college journalism classes.) show less