Commentary: Learning to drive in the digital age

By Will Shoemaker

Times Editor
 

The Year that Changed Journalism.

Columbia Journalism Review describes 2017 in no uncertain terms in its fall edition devoted entirely to media in the age of Trump. Editor Kyle Pope in the opening pages recalls beginning to plan the issue months ago and thinking CJR might be accused of hyperbole when, if anything, it’s understatement that has him worried as of late.

The fall edition hit my desk last week in timely fashion, the morning after the Times and Colorado Press Association (CPA) teamed up for a “Brews with the News” event at a local watering hole — to mingle with community members and rally support behind an industry that has taken a few hits below the belt in recent months. (I assure you, we are not the “Enemy of the American People.”)

It was there that CPA Membership and Special Projects Specialist Russ Bassett posed a question over a beer that I’ve been contemplating ever since: “What’s your biggest challenge?”

After thinking for a minute, the answer seemed easy: Finding the time to devote to video, web and social media and train staff on those platforms while still producing a quality newspaper.  

But the more I thought about it afterward, the deeper the challenge seemed — and not just about carving out time to do more with basically the same resources.

An answer began to come into focus when the I opened the Trump edition of CJR to read The Guardian’s Janine Gibson writing about how live blogs, Twitter and SEO obsession has brought out the worst in media as we fail to tell the full story and contradict one another just to be the “first to inform.” How confirmation-bias journalism, accessible at the click of a button, has created echo chambers that divide the public, and media outlets align themselves with political parties.

That’s when it occurred to me. My biggest challenge is the same for all journalists — and can even be extended to the whole of democratic society: The digital age.

We’re still in an adolescent stage of understanding this new, exciting phenomenon. Like a 16-year-old kid with the keys to dad’s Ferrari, we’re as reckless as we are eager to go zero to 60 in five seconds flat.

We should embrace that ability for lightning-fast access to information, but come to understand the dangers of going too fast — that News Now No Matter What and News But Only If It Fits My Views are good for neither journalism nor society. And mass proliferation and misuse of the term “fake news” — which has come mean even truths a person finds uncomfortable — is equally as damaging.

In my college years, the buzzword was “new media,” suggesting a shift that was underway. But today, the questions and challenges facing news organizations are not simply related to format — web or print, video or text, breaking news or in-depth reporting. The digital turn that appeared as if it would strengthen the quality of journalism 10 years ago, after all, has landed us squarely in The Year that Changed Journalism.

The world we now know — half-truths and untruths being paraded as fact, the ire directed our way — none of it would be if not for digital media.

Yet, there’s hope. As CJR’s Pope notes, “The attacks have emboldened newsrooms and the people in them, reminding journalists why they got into this business in the first place.”

We’re lucky at the Times. The general distrust of media so pervasive today hasn’t trickled down to the local level — at least here. We’ve seen it among our peers, including Grand Junction Daily Sentinel Publisher Jay Seaton standing up, rightly, to a lawmaker’s “fake news” allegation when there was only real and honest information.

We wouldn’t be wringing our hands over how best to provide news in the digital age if we didn’t care deeply about the underlying mission. The leader of the free world may not accept the central role of a free press in a democratic society, but we know that the majority of Americans — and, without a doubt, our readers — do.

These times, I suspect, are but a speed bump. The era of digital-fueled post-truth will be followed by an enlightened embrace of the Fourth Estate.

We’ll all learn to drive a little less recklessly.  

(Will Shoemaker can be contacted at 970.641.1414 or editor@gunnisontimes.com.)

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