The current crisis for journalists is not exceptional.
That was the opening –- and calming –- shot in Columbia University journalism and sociology professor
Todd Gitlin's remarks closing The Poynter Institute's first seminar on "New Habits of News Consumers."
"It took a long time to get where we are," said Gitlin, the author of "Media Unlimited" and nearly a dozen other books about media and politics, including the forthcoming "Liberal Resurrection." "News is an offshoot of an older industry -– the attention-getting industry. It is an accompaniment to modern life."
The technologies of news and entertainment didn't just drop from the sky. "They were craved before they developed," according to Gitlin. "Modernity –- it means coming unhinged from the attachments people previously took for granted."
Gitlin said that for thousands of years in human history, the only people most men and women encountered on a daily basis were those they already knew. Most people they met were not new to them. Strangers coming through a town or village were remarkable because they were rare. Traveling priests, troubadours, poets and bards brought news of things that weren't evident from daily face-to-face contact with the same old gang.
"Only in the last twinkling of an eye, the last three or four centuries, have people gathered the means to know the images and sounds of people they had not personally beheld," he said.
To put that in some context, Gitlin said that in the 17th century, the most successful individuals only encountered a handful of great works of art. But in one day, the average 21st century netizen sees more treasures than his 17th century counterpart beheld in a lifetime.
"It is the desire to have a certain kind of experience, combined with the means to have that experience," he said.
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Anne Van Wagener/Poynter
Columbia University journalism and sociology professor Todd Gitlin offered closing remarks to The Poynter Institute's first seminar on "New Habits of News Consumers." |
So, that makes this the "Information Society," right?
"That flatters us too much. It has become a cliché," Gitlin said. "Information is not why people turn to media. They turn to it for a certain kind of experience, one fundamentally of emotion and sensation. Information is not the end; information is the means -- a means toward a certain kind of experience, the 'a-ha!' experience. It's what Ben Bradlee said someone should have on beholding the front page of
The Washington Post: 'Holy shit, I didn't know that!' "
Modern life is that domain in which people crave emotional reward and sensation from a series of encounters with faces and other elements not known to them, he said.
It's all about entertainment one way or another, according to Gitlin, who detailed how the cost of entertainment has come down over the centuries.
"In the colonial period, the most common entertainment was theater," he said. "In the 18th century, it cost nearly your entire wage to go to the theater. Today, entertainment is virtual costless. That marks the difference between their age and ours. But the dynamic is the same: it delivers us from the everyday."
Another key point for journalists to consider: the attention-getting industry has been built on the transitory experience. In other words, the kind of emotion and sensation that pop culture was designed to deliver was transitory. Remember your mission, he said.
"You're in the news business and you're in the business of arresting the attention of people and prying them away from what they take for granted. They must read the next day's paper and so on," Gitlin said. "While the desire to gain attention is a dynamic in journalism, it's not the only one. The predominant dynamic since journalism's inception has been the desire to capture the attention of people. Another dynamic is the extension of democratic enlightenment."
Gitlin cited covereage of Civil Rights, Vietnam and Watergate as examples of journailsm's role in a democratic society.
As to the future, Gitlin is reservedly optimistic.
"I wish I could say I have a business plan I can offer you," he said. "I don't think the sky is falling next week. But the challenge to your everyday routines is immense. If there is human ingenuity that brought us to this pass, it must be possible for human ingenuity to recover the part of journalism that sets it apart from the rest of industry."
"We have not begun to think about how to deploy our attention-getting resources, to telling the big story, connecting the big dots," Gitlin added. "But I know one thing for sure: if journalists don't do it,
the rest of our lives will be nothing more than a trance."
