Scott Dickensheets: Tough to compete with comfort news

By Scott Dickensheets

Friday, Sept. 24, 2010 | 2 a.m.

I’m going to feel itchy about journalism for the next few minutes, and because you’re reading this news product, I’ll presume you’re interested, at least a little.

(First, some proper disclosure: This is based on a panel discussion at UNLV moderated by my boss, Brian Greenspun, who did a terrific job, didn’t ask a single awkward question and looked dashing the whole time.)

That there’s plenty to be itchy about was clear from the title of Wednesday’s talk: “The Death of Old News.” Just as obvious was the dearth of new news. For all the brain sweat we journalists devote to the problem of what to do next, no one yet has any sure fixes, including panelists Jim Lehrer, host of PBS’ “The NewsHour,” and Alex Jones, author of the book “Losing the News.”

During the event, sponsored by the Black Mountain Institute, they spoke broadly of the need to make people value (that is, pay for) serious, hard-news journalism. They agreed an informed populace requires unspun info from credible sources. They insisted that we have to capture the attention of the kids on their mobile devices and their Face-tweets. They used words like “rethink” and “reframe.” They name-checked Jon Stewart approvingly.

However urgent, those aren’t fresh observations in an industry fractured by layoffs, contraction, lost revenue and epidemic trust-depletion.

Naturally, all that turmoil looms huge on this side of the byline. It probably occupies somewhat less of your head space; consuming this stuff is just a small part of your life. And yet, in a very real way, this is about you — you the news consumer, you the citizen.

What is it you want, anyway?

Until you clear up the specifics for us, Lehrer and Jones share a fundamental (if, on this night, largely unexamined) belief that serious news will survive simply because it has to — democracy would suck without it.

“I think people will understand how important the institution (of journalism) is to their community,” Jones said.

“I’m not one of those who says the death of news is here,” Lehrer said. “I don’t believe it!”

By journalism, they don’t mean breaking news about Paris Hilton’s bloodstream, or the partisan exhalations of Rush Limbaugh or Keith Olbermann. They mean straight, hard news about the workings of government, business and other civic institutions. Jones calls this “the iron core.”

They both ardently believe it will survive the seismic shifts in business models and delivery methods.

That puts the ball — a very heavy ball in the shape of democracy — in the consumers’ court. So it was even more telling when Greenspun looked out over the crowd — maybe a couple of hundred people in a problem-riddled valley of 2 million — and said that the people he was concerned about were the ones not present. Assuming he didn’t mean people deterred by the prospect of parking at UNLV, he neatly encapsulated the problem.

“What we do is important,” Jones said, “whether they want it or not.” Lehrer declared, “I’m not in the entertainment business!” (It was an ironic counterpoint to their praise of Stewart’s “The Daily Show.”)

Those were full-stop moments for me. Our challenge is to make you want it; if we can’t and you don’t, then its importance remains mostly abstract and therefore inert.

Indeed, I know registered voters who get through their days reading nothing more informative than a menu because the news doesn’t interest them.

It’s not easy being you, news consumer. Every day you’re subjected to an unprecedented info-dump — some of it actual news, some of it disguised as news, some of it analysis, much of it pure, congealed spin. No wonder many people shrink from the difficult responsibilities of the “iron core” and burrow into unchallenging comfort news.

The shrewdest thing I heard that night was Jones’ observation that the vast amount of data out there has herded us into ever-narrower channels of intellectual life.

If there’s a way to lead you out of that, I didn’t hear it the other night, although I did hear three men convinced it can and will happen.