By Jaclyn Azia
A decrease in mainstream news coverage of the White House and federal agencies, as well as an increase in the presence of foreign correspondents in Washington, D.C., have significant implications for investigative reporting in the nation’s capital, a panel of industry leaders said Tuesday.
During an American Forum entitled “Washington Watchdogs: An Endangered Species?” reporters and editors from both print and broadcast said Washington journalism is facing more challenges than ever and the future of how American democracy functions could be at stake.
“There’s no question that mainstream media is under increasing financial pressure,” said Mark Whitaker. With less money, organizations are looking for ways to cut back, he said.
Another concern voiced by Mark Whitaker, Senior Vice President of NBC News, concerns information that reporters get from confidential sources. The danger, he said, lies in what you loose “when you have fewer veteran reporters who know how to get that kind of confidential information and have news organizations behind them that are willing to go to bat to protect them.”
As reporters begin working in greater numbers for niche media outlets, a main concern is how well citizens will be informed and what they will read and have access to, according to panelist Tyler Marshall, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist.
Moderated by Professor Wendell Cochran, the Forum addressed issues concerning Internet media, financial pressures, and the importance of eyewitness journalism.
Suzanne Struglinski, senior editor of Provider magazine and a former regional reporter for the Deseret News, said individual cities and towns are losing their Washington presence when bureaus populated by reporters with regional ties are closed.
“They’re not going to get the details and information on their delegations specifically that a bigger news organization [would get],” said Struglinski. “They’re not going to pay attention to it in a way that a local newspaper will.” This is because reporters won’t have that institutional knowledge or a relationship with the members of Congress that local reporters have.
Melinda Wittstock, CEO of Capitol News Connection, stressed the need for reporters to be in Washington to cover stories – what she called eyewitness journalism.
“If you’re not there, you can’t see the context,” she said.
Since there has been a decrease in eyewitness journalism, citizens who are voting their congressmen into office are not getting all of the information they should.
Marshall agreed with Wittstock, saying, “They [citizens] are not getting objective, unfiltered feedback on how their representatives are acting.” He said this is due, in part, to the fact that the press releases being issued by the representatives’ staff are not always objective.
One student posed a question about how the Internet affects the jobs of Washington watchdogs. On the one hand, the alternatives offered by the Web have had devastating effects on the business model. Whitaker says that although subscribers are paying, there is “tremendous pressure to put it out there for free.”
On the other hand, though, the Web has allowed for job opportunities and industry expansion. Marshall said that the internet is actually adding jobs, at least in the short term. Additionally, most newspapers in the U.S. are growing specifically in the area of web-related work.
“In this town, blogs are a growth industry,” said Marshall, and he called some of the content “darn good.”
The panelists agreed that blogs are here to stay. Struglinski said blogs are a great news-gathering device and a good way to write shorter stories.
However, Whitaker stressed that reporters must be cautious in their use of blogs and social networking sites like Twitter.
“As much as we want to embrace the new forms of media, we have to be extremely disciplined,” he said, to make sure reporters are not sacrificing the time it takes to gather necessary information.
Struglinski agreed, saying, “What’s better, fast or correct?” She said the answer is always going to be ‘correct.’
Panelists were optimistic in response to questions about the future for journalism students.
Whitaker said, “there’s more room for entrepreneurship that there’s ever been.”
“Being a journalist is the best thing you could do,” said Struglinski. “It’s a front seat to history.”
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