It’s sad to witness the demise of yet another independent publisher of newspapers. In its heyday, Knight Ridder was a proud organization that brought credit to journalism.
With size and success, some of the K-R newspapers fell victim to elitism, industry groupthink, and snobbery --- all of which the marketplace might eventually have corrected. But the fatal mistake was to go public with Knight Ridder’s ownership. Once Wall Street and the money managers got in the door, profit margins were destined to become the driving force instead of courageous journalism.
Knight Ridder’s demise is simply the latest in what appears to be an irreversible trend for newspaper publishing. When Wall Street gets involved, money trumps everything.
INI is one small exception, due to our unique ownership structure. We’re owned by a non-profit journalistic trust that is pledged to perpetuate our independence and allow us to continue to pursue journalism as a public trust.
We have no ambition to operate on a grand scale, partly because doing so might risk our own independence. But we have something to contribute as a modest laboratory for journalistic service at the grassroots level.
Years ago, when the elite journalists started working their editorial agendas into their coverage, INI took a contrarian approach -- banning editorials and recommitting ourselves to purposeful neutrality in our coverage, free of any self-serving political motives. We felt it was essential that citizens make their own decisions and feared the consequences if people abdicated to would-be “professional” opinion shapers.
When the elite journalists started imposing “political correctness” on what citizens could say in print, we went the other direction by inviting the anonymous expression of opinions via our Speak Out and Sound Off telephone lines. Many in the industry looked down their noses at us, but the back-and-forth exchanges stimulated, provoked and informed --- and got regular citizens involved in developing their own opinions about the topics of the day.
Of course, some members of the local "power structure" didn’t like our Speak Out/Sound Off columns. Because the country has fallen so far away from its rich heritage of anonymous free speech, many community leaders simply weren't accustomed to any public criticism. (Many smaller communities, especially, can become closed societies where voices of dissent simply aren't tolerated.)
Then along came the Internet. Not surprisingly, the mindsets of the big-time newspapers publishers haven’t changed -- they aren’t allowing free speech on their websites, either. Once again, INI has taken the contrarian approach by creating Public Issues Forums at newszap.com for nearly 100 communities --- bringing the Speak Out/Sound Off freedom of speech concept to a new platform.
Like the newspaper column, the online public issues forums give citizens a voice in their community, and a place where their opinions can stand or fall on their merits. The forums tend to be “self-policing”: when somebody says something illogical or outrageous, other posters are quick to point it out. Once again, we are providing dynamic forums that are involving more people and broadening the range of ideas for community discussion.
A bit of historic perspective might be useful here. The American Revolution might never have occurred or succeeded without the publication of anonymous opinion. (King George didn’t like it any better than today’s critics.) The most famous political discussions in this country's history, the Federalist Papers, were first published under a pseudonym.
During the Revolution, Thomas Paine warned: “If the freedom of the press is to be determined by the judgment of the printer of a newspaper in preference to that of the people, who when they read will judge for themselves, then freedom is on a very sandy foundation."
Most of today’s publishers don’t trust the people to “judge for themselves.” Paine would probably flip in his grave to see how today’s media has limited and sanitized the general public’s expressions of opinion.
As media critic Jon Katz has written, “Journalism's exclusion of outside voices and fear of publishing any but moderate opinions has made it difficult for the country to come to grips with some of its most sensitive issues -- race, gender, and violence. Media overwhelmed and monopolized by large corporations, inaccessible to individual people and motivated primarily by profit, is the antithesis of Paine's life, his work, and his vision for the press.”
Critics of anonymous expressions of opinion often invoke another traditional American value: the right to face your accuser. But that principle -- quite properly -- applies to the courts. It was never intended to limit free speech.
In fact, the U.S. Supreme Court has noted a "profound national commitment to the principle that debate on public issues should be uninhibited, robust, and wide-open" and ruled that "an author's decision to remain anonymous, like other decisions concerning omissions or additions to the content of a publication, is an aspect of the freedom of speech protected by the First Amendment" and "the anonymity of an author is not ordinarily a sufficient reason to exclude her work product from the protections of the First Amendment."
Paine would love what’s happening on the Internet today --- and especially the public issues forums as newszap.com.
No longer does freedom of the press belong only to the big Wall Street-controlled media. With the Internet, every community can have what INI has brought to a few communities with our Speak Out/Sound Off columns and the public issues forums at newszap.com.
The Internet is bringing freedom of the press back to the people --- where it belongs.
I'd love to hear from you at JoeSmyth@newszap.com. Do you agree or disagree with the thinking outlined above? Do you have other ideas you think we should consider?
