Swimming Against the Tide

What have journalists learned except that reporting — in brief and inflammatory manner — gets on the page or on the air? Certainly, there is no evidence that young people are coming into the work of reporting without ideals or dedication, but the money crunch has affected their potential. As number crunching increased in importance at area newsrooms, motivation grew to eliminate the bodies that cost the most. As a result, experienced, knowledgeable, expensive reporters who often served as informal mentors and teachers, like Bob Simmons, an award-winning journalist at KING-TV, were among the first to be "encouraged to leave." Speaking about today's young reporters, Simmons noted,

"I would say that... 70% to 80% [of young reporters] are better motivated... and want to do good journalism. When they get to the paper or to the broadcast station, they find that they are not allowed to write anything that means a damn thing! They're assigned to do meaningless stuff day after day. They get cynical and frustrated and either get out of the craft or they accommodate themselves to a future of doing that."

One Seattle news director, speaking to Simmons about two years ago, seemed to agree when he acknowledged that, under a previous ownership,

"If I had to do a local government story of the type you used to do, I would have to send my executive producer because he's the only guy in the newsroom who knows how to do a complicated story. The people here won't let me pay enough to hire people who know how to do complicated stories."

In Good News/Good Deeds' attempt to confirm the quotation today, the same news director demurred. He said rather,

"As a general rule the complicated stories are more and more difficult to do on television because the time restraints are greater and the people who work in television have gotten out of the habit of doing it. To accomplish the types of stories that were done 15 years ago on television, those sometimes require looking to people who've been around a long time to do them."

Those "habits" of doing complicated stories were not easily broken, but broken they were. As a result, citizens are missing the benefit of experienced reporters in general. More importantly, the community experience acquired by long-time, local reporters is largely unavailable in the average newsroom's pool of intelligence. Absent there, it is also lost to the community at large.