Where Have All the Journalists Gone?
Independence Day Parade, Red Lodge, Montana. Kenneth Jarecke/Contact Press Images
By Kenneth Jarecke, Editor in Chief
Journalists, your job is to make the powerful folks uncomfortable, not to aid and comfort them.
I follow a certain college football program. I've been doing this my entire life. There's never been a time when I wasn't a fan of the program. This team is not only the only show in town, but they're the only show in the entire state. There's no other Division 1 college programs, nor any professional programs (in any sport) to compete with them.
Their stadium becomes the third largest city in the state on game day. Heck, they've been selling every seat in the place since before I was born. You can imagine how closely tied the local economy is to their success (this goes for the media business as well). People lose their businesses when the team is losing, and they've been doing so for, I don't know, a decade or so now.
They fired their head coach two weeks ago. They could have waited three weeks and cut his buyout in half, but they needed to get rid of him in a hurry. That's how bad things had gotten. To be clear, nobody really cares about the extra $7.5 million he got, they're just glad to be done with his losing ways.
That said, the dismissal of the coach did come as a bit of a surprise. Normally, coaches are fired at the end of a season and the guy, being a native son, still enjoyed the support of a good many fans. They wanted him to succeed. They supported him. They are great fans who showed a good deal of patience with the whole situation.
The fans only see this team in person a few times a year, when they play. They see them in the Spring Game as well, which is a glorified practice that usually draws upwards of 60,000 people. The fans don't sit in on practices, except for this one. They don't get to ask the coaches any questions. The only information they really get is from the (fairly large) news media that is dedicated to reporting on the team.
The fans, the people who've been buying every seat in that stadium for sixty years, had high hopes going into the season. The dedicated media had been generous when it came to pouring out the pre-season Kool-Aid. The fans had no idea of what was really happening behind the scenes. They were led to believe that this high paid group of state employees (the highest paid group) was diligently working on their behalf.
To be far, the media doesn't see too much of the practices either. They're kept on a fairly tight leash. Still, they knew enough to start dishing out the dirty laundry about five minutes after the guy was fired. Evidently, this coach has several serious issues that were fairly well known and nobody had bothered to reporte on them until he was gone.
In addition to the moral issues, it seems the football team had not been practicing basic football skills either, like blocking and tackling.
So you had character issues as well as poor coaching and nobody said anything.
The journalists failed their readers. They also failed to fulfill their role as watchdogs over a tax funded, state-owned operation.
I'm not sure who's more guilty of dropping the ball here... the coaches, the media or the poorly coached young men who were tasked with carrying it.
That's shameful behavior really. Parents are entrusting the well-being and education of their children to these people. As a parent, that's deeply disturbing. As a reader it's disturbing as well. To some degree, journalists knew what was happening, and yet, they sat on it.
Full disclosure, I've covered this team on and off from the very start of my career. At the beginning, I was still a student at the university. When I needed a picture of a certain player or position group for a story, I wouldn't go through the Sports Information office. I'd just show up at practice, grab whoever I needed when they had a free moment, make my picture and be done. In doing so, I'd also watch as much of the practice as I liked, and I'd like to think if the coaches weren't teaching players how to properly play the game, I would have noticed.
Nowadays, practices are closed. There's no oversight from outside eyes. Eyes that could have called attention to the ongoing shenanigans.
Today, it seems that the credentialed journalist class will be the last ones to provide that oversight. The privileged access they enjoy, as limited as it is, is tenuous at best. They could lose that credential for asking the wrong question, let alone negatively reporting on the team. Honestly, they could also lose their readers as well.
This has always been a thing when it comes to sports journalism. Given the chance, Howard Cosell would tell you that today. He was no fan of what counted as sports journalism fifty years ago, let alone of what's happening now. If he were still alive, he'd probably be out of work.
Which is only one reason why we don't have any would-be Cosells today. The other reason is it's all about the TV entertainment dollar. This is big money and the people who report on it, at least those with the biggest platforms, work for the same corporations that are paying for the broadcasting rights.
Which doesn't give much comfort to the good people of Nebraska who deserve better from their university. It doesn't help the business owners. It doesn't serve the fans. It doesn't sever the players. What it does to youngsters growing up in Nebraska, who out of frustration or bad parenting, start rooting for the Iowa Hawkeyes (heaven help us), I shudder to think.
Journalism failed us, but this is just football. The program is paying for itself ten times over and every other sport on campus. It's not like the taxpayers are going to be writing a check for this failed product. My concern is with how journalism is failing all of us on a much bigger level.
Everything that has been happening with sports journalism is now happening on the news side of things.
Journalists depend on access, that's how they justify (for example) a White House Corespondent's salary. You don't get your thirty seconds on camera in the daily briefing and your boss will find someone who will get that face-time. You won't lose your credential, as the White House isn't in charge of passing those out, but to disrupt the daily narrative puts one at risk of being ignored. And just like with sports journalism, one could not only lose, but anger their readers.
None of this is such a new thing, and poor journalism is practiced at every level, but maybe it's just becoming a little more obvious. Maybe the Kabuki theater masquerading as journalism inside the Beltway is starting to wear a bit thin. One can only hope.
Before she released her latest book, did anyone know that Nina Totenberg, National Public Radio's pride and joy, was buddies with Ruth Bader Ginsburg? Now, I'm a huge fan of Nina, but I would have liked to know about her weekend shopping outings with RBG when she was reporting on the Supreme Court. Don't get me wrong, I'm not asking for a full Pretty Woman montage here, but maybe just give us a subtle hint now and then... like showing up at the Kennedy Center with matching handbags. That would have been both fun and classy!
I don't know. I just get the feeling that journalism is becoming less professional or something. I guess that happens with any profession when you stop properly paying people for doing it... except when it comes to coaching football of course.
We're not just sitting and our hands and throwing stones. We're working to do journalism right at The Curious Society.
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