Welcome to November’s Need to Know series on aligning local journalism to serve democracy by making it more sustainable and indispensable for today’s audiences, with concepts from Tom Rosenstiel’s book The Next Journalism: How the Press Must Change to Serve Democracy.
It’s been 25 years since The Elements of Journalism was published, and while many of the news media principles outlined in that foundational book remain relevant today, the political and economic environment has shifted in such a way that they no longer offer a roadmap to sustainability.
To meet the moment — to serve democracy — journalism must be sustainable, and to do that, it must be measured by the value it provides to the public, not the attention it generates, Tom Rosenstiel writes in his new book, The Next Journalism. He outlines 10 shifts news organizations must make to create enough value and utility for their communities that people will recognize journalism’s value and pay for it.
The changes require making the public the focus of the journalism, not a bystander to it, and expanding journalists’ sense of purpose beyond the watchdog to helping people improve their communities and thrive.
This approach was reflected in a recent University of Maryland Merrill College of Journalism study that surveyed Marylanders about what “jobs” they need journalism to do. Researchers distilled responses into six core needs:
- Give me agency: Tell me how policies will affect me and what I can do about it.
- Give me the long view: Outline the history and context of what’s happening around me today.
- Help me see the invisible systems shaping our lives: Explain the deeper patterns that affect the changes I see around me, like higher prices or worse traffic.
- Give me the street-level view: Let me plug in to what’s going on in my neighborhood.
- Help me navigate right now: Keep me updated on real-time news.
- Help me engage with what’s great here: Highlight what is working in my community, platform local heroes and give me reasons to celebrate my community.
This list of needs can serve as a starting point for newsrooms to assess what roles their journalism is playing, and aligns with the themes — both tangible and intangible — Rosenstiel says he believes will make journalism more sustainable
“One of the things I find interesting about this research is that it shows quite a range of different kinds of needs,” Rosenstiel, who helped lead the study, told API. “That suggests people have a fairly rich sense of how they interact with journalism. They want to know what’s going on on their street but also the invisible systems around them.”
How to use this series: These themes and other ideas in this series will be familiar to many local news leaders. Rosenstiel says as much in his book — in fact, many of the concepts he writes about are inspired by local newsrooms that have found tangible success through these approaches. This month, we’ll share practical exercises inspired by The Next Journalism to help news leaders further level up their journalism and give their communities the information they need to thrive.
Gratitude goes to Tom Rosenstiel for contributing to this series. Rosenstiel is the former executive director of the American Press Institute and currently serves as Professor of the Practice at the University of Maryland’s Philip Merrill College of Journalism. He is the author of several books, including The Next Journalism: How the Press Must Change to Serve Democracy. Rosenstiel has no current affiliation with API.
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