LITTLE ROCK — The health of American democracy depends on newspapers finding a business model capable of sustaining robust news-gathering operations, the man who once ran the Philadelphia Inquirer and Arkansas Democrat newsrooms said Friday.
Penn State University visiting professor Gene Foreman said at the University of Arkansas Clinton School of Public Service and during an interview earlier in the week that newspapers remain in “crisis” as the Internet has driven down printcirculation, slashed advertising revenue and caused job cuts across the industry.
The radical changes in the industry have led to a shrinkage in both quantity and quality of newspaper journalism, Foreman said.
If an effective business model isn’t found to support newspapers, democracy will ultimately suffer, Foreman said.
“The public really does need news,” Foreman said. “Somehow this has to be resolved. Unfortunately, I don’t know what the answer is.”
Foreman was in Little Rock to talk about his textbook, The Ethical Journalist: Making Responsible Decisions in the Pursuit of News.
The text, the product of interviews with at least 100 journalists, lays out clear guidelines for the modernday reporter.
More than ever before, Foreman said, journalists need a firm grounding in ethics as blogs have blurred the line between fact and opinion and the Internet has forced quicker online publishing with less fact-checking.
“We learn from our successes and also from our failures,” Foreman said. “WhatI’m hoping to do with this book is help [aspiring journalists] skip some of those tough struggles of trial and error by absorbing the lessons that my generation of journalists have learned through experience.”
Foreman graduated from Elaine High School in 1952 and Arkansas State University at Jonesboro in 1956.
He worked for the Arkansas Gazette, The New York Times and the Pine Bluff Commercial before moving to the Arkansas Democrat as news editor in 1968.
In 1969, he became the Democrat’s managing editor.
Foreman left the Democrat in 1971 to become the executive news editor of Newsday.
In 1973, he joined the Inquirer, where he helped manage newsroom operations for more than 25 years. He held several positions at the newspaper, including managing editor, executive editor and deputy editor, until his retirement in 1998.
He is now a visiting professor at Penn State University and directs the Foster Conference of Distinguished Writers in which journalists discuss their experiences and techniques.
Arkansas Democrat-Gazette Publisher Walter E. Hussman Jr. made a savvy business decision by charging readers for online news, Foreman said.
But nationally there’s resistance from readers to paying for online news, he said, and competitive pressures are keeping more newspapers from creating pay walls.
Still, Foreman said, he thinks the future business model for newspapers must involve readers paying for more online news - at least to some extent.
“This hasn’t jelled yet. We haven’t gotten the entrepreneur who has been able to put this all together,” he said.
“So we’re in a transition period here now. A template for the future of journalism may be being established right now. And we ought to get it right.”
Arkansas, Pages 11 on 04/17/2010