Do we need a digital “New Journalism”—a revolution in how reporters tell stories, an infusion of “voice” and “personality” a la Tom Wolfe, Truman Capote, and Hunter S. Thompson?
Frédéric Filloux and Monday Note think so. Filloux suggests that a revival of “New Journalism” could save journalism from extinction. In an epic sermon to the chorus, Filloux enumerates why newspapers need to evolve: readers are saturated with content, traditional editorial models and bylines are unnecessary to credential a reporter’s work, journalists are more committed to blogging than writing for print, and magazines have shaped reader preferences. From these premises—validity questionable—Filloux concludes that “digital media needs to invent its own journalistic genres.”
Whether or not you believe that print magazines have influenced browsing behavior, a migration of content from print to digital media demands the development of new genres. After all, different genres of journalism emerged in response to the material constraints and possibilities of print contexts. A digital context thus necessitates a new set of genres.
Why then does Filloux argue, perhaps out of pure nostalgia, for a retro recycle of “New Journalism?”
Although Filloux is right that “news reporting is aging badly,” the solution is not a return to the ‘70s. “New Journalism” had its cultural moment. The movement was an expression of dissatisfaction with the norms of news reportage and the “straight” social institutions supporting those norms. Contrary to received wisdom, “New Journalism” was not especially concerned with the material dissolution of journalism. In fact, writers like Wolfe, Capote, and Thompson were enabled by a boom of affordable glossies, tabloids, and dailies. If anything, “New Journalism” is antithetical to our contemporary technological and cultural moment, entirely unsuited to current market pressures and consumer expectations.
“New Journalism” passed out of this world, or at the very least became passé, because it failed to fulfill the basic charge of the newspaper: to report facts. And factuality has not decreased in importance as criterion since the demise of “New Journalism.” Jonah Lehrer, A Million Little Pieces, the Stephen Glass scandal, to name a few examples, point to a persistent suspicion of the pseudo-, semi-, and quasi-factual. Champions of digital journalism have not focused on its creative potential, that is, the ability of journalists to invent or distort stories. Rather, the pro-digital camp has cheered for crowdsourced journalism, social media fact checking, and the advent of technologies that regulate freedom of invention, if not freedom of expression.
Digital journalism has revealed the complex relationship between “journalism as product” and “journalism as public good.” Is the news a commodity that should respond to, or alternatively, create markets? Should consumer demand for a particular type of journalism, or even journalism that says certain things about the facts, constrain what type of journalism is produced? Or is the news a public good? Is it the right of a democratic citizen to access information about his or her political, economic, and social world? The transition from print to digital journalism has emphasized this paradox, the contradiction built into post-“New Journalism.” After we have admitted that journalist need not be constrained by facts, or that facticity is not a useful metric for measuring the value of reporting, the news can pretend to be both product and public good. As our demand for stylized but eminently factual “news” intensifies, how long can the conceit of “journalism” keep up the charade?
It seems inevitable that a total divide in the journalism industry will splinter digital media: a great schism between “news” outlets that purport to deliver facts and “entertainment” portals that sell witty, clever, and pleasurable “stories.” But how will news companies convince consumers to purchase a product that ought to be free? Perhaps the real scam is that citizens must still pay to make informed decisions. Information should be free; entertainment should come at a price, if need be, a sacrifice. We can only hope that news will become a right, not a privilege of the wealthy. Until then, the “liberal media” is a myth, but not of the kind you might expect. The problem is not that some media companies hide a liberal agenda or bias, or that conservative-slanted companies attack a liberal agenda piled up from straw. Instead, we should ask, how could any media company pretend at liberalism while denying entry to all citizens?