Q&A: ‘If Journalism Becomes Further Marginalised, Look Out, World…’
Interview with Chuck Lewis, Fund for Independence in Journalism
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Chuck Lewis |
ROME, Oct 29 (IPS) – Shrinking newsrooms, declining sales and audiences, vanishing foreign correspondents, concentration of ownership, shrivelling papers…is journalism imploding? Can independent journalism survive?
“Yes,” says Chuck Lewis, founder of the Centre for Public Integrity, and one of the most respected voices in journalism today. And the answer is non-profit journalism.
Lewis is a former producer of the CBS show 60 Minutes, and a journalist-in-residence at American University in Washington. He has written for The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, Christian Science Monitor, Columbia Journalism Review, The Nation, and many other publications. A pioneer of the non-profit model, Lewis speaks with Miren Gutierrez, IPS Editor-in-Chief about the future of journalism.
IPS: So, the news is that in-depth, independent journalism may endure…But investigative reporting is expensive, it could be risky too. Who will pay for it?
Chuck Lewis: Civic-minded, wealthy individuals who believe in the concept of an “informed citizenry” and public service journalism — local, regional, national, international…Great work itself will begin to attract “buzz” online, and other revenue sources could open up, from advertising, to subscribers/members, to paid partnerships with existing hollowed out media corporations desperately seeking content, etc. In some parts of the world, such as Europe, government funding or direct public subsidies (as with the BBC) are possible too, with its related issues…
IPS: In your recent article ‘The Non-profit Road: It’s paved not with gold, but with good journalism’, you say that while increasingly newspapers will develop into “print-digital hybrids” (an expression coined by Robert Kuttner, co-founder and editor of the liberal U.S. magazine The American Prospect), advertising revenue is still to come up to editorial payroll levels. So what happens in the meantime?
CL: In the meantime, downsizing will continue, bureaus will close, investigations will not be undertaken or funded…Some media organisations will cease to exist or become unrecognisable vis-à-vis news as we have known it…Celebrity-headline-entertainment-sport-weather pap instead, masquerading as “news”.
