In 1922, a piece titled ‘The Newspaper of Tomorrow’ appeared in Radio News. It began by imagining a future where a passenger on a transcontinental plane journey receives news over a rubber disk placed over his ear.
The writer then foretold: “The broadcasting of news by radiophone had long displaced the daily newspaper…” and added, “Don’t scoff! The day may be nearer than you suspect.” A hundred years later the 10th anniversary issue of this newspaper’s Kerala edition is in your hands.
Yet there is a palpable fear about the future. How to compete as print journalists with a 24-hour news cycle marked by instantly breaking news often put out in 140 characters. Do I need a smarter headline?
What more to add that television has not already reported? Aren’t readers following the social media feeds of newsmakers who want to bypass the media? Isn’t it better to put the story out rather than wait and be beaten by rivals? Adding to these anxieties is the fact that the most voracious consumers of news media are journalists, and in that game of who broke the story, what is the latest, how are they spinning this story, the print journalist feels that all that is left are the crumbs of a story that need to be rustled into something palatable next day. Stale news is an oxymoron, the big editor tells the newsroom. Yet another day of anxiety awaits the print journalist.
It is to the reader that we must turn to address these concerns. It has been well-documented since media research looked at journalistic routines and behaviour that journalists tend to write for other journalists and seek their approbation rather than that of the readers.
It is by understanding the readers of print journalism, appreciating the reasons why they read the newspaper, and how they are different from other consumers of news that the newsroom can begin getting rid of its anxiety. The reader may watch television, go to news websites and use news apps, but she comes to print journalism for a deliberative experience. The basic information may be had from other sources, but the reader seeks more. More context, more nuance, and more credible information.
Before we elaborate on these, let us understand the newspaper reader a little better because conflating her with the television viewer or the website-app scroller is a category mistake. The corollary is underestimating her interest and intelligence. The verdict is delivered in a case, and it is transmitted quickly by other media. Reactions are also available. The print reader is looking for more because she is a deliberative and, therefore, a discriminating consumer. A closer perusal of the judgment, point of law and fact, an obiter that tells more, a dissenting view perhaps, the presumptions of evidence – there is always a lot more to know and tell.
If only, we don’t conflate different consumers of news. An analogy may help. There is a lot that separates a beer drinker from one who prefers vodka or single-malt. All contain alcohol. At different times the same person may have all these. Yet there is a typological difference between the three.
This may sound obvious. Yet newsroom after newsroom think they need to adjudicate their content on what is trending and what the analytics reveal. Having seen a screen with web analytics lord over a print newsroom with subs looking up to it for clues, one has wondered at the fate of news judgment as a contest between what the reader wants and what she needs. Don’t think news is consumed the same way by all. It never was, and never will be. What Bacon said of books is equally true of news.
Some news are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some to be chewed and digested; that is, some news are to be read only in parts; others to be read, but not curiously; and some few are to be read wholly, and with diligence and attention.
The print reader, not always but compared to other consumers of news, is diligent and attentive. That is where context comes in. Context is often confused with background as in a chain of events that has led to the event being reported. But context is weaving or joining together all those elements proximate and distant that lead to a story. An accident can lead you to road conditions, budgets, safety regulations, vehicle fitness rules and licensing processes. Good journalism is an archeological task. Not all forays will be or can be done in a day.
But all put together provide context. It should not be construed narrowly as something that needs to be there in one copy. It is more like a web of information within which a particular story starts making sense. Consider a story of sexual violence. Reporting the incident is obvious. But these only make sense when the newspaper has also spent time covering patriarchy, laws, social change, education and even deviant behaviour.
The mere enumeration of the kind of angles, as we say in the newsroom, tells us that no event can be desaturated. You cannot merge the colours into white and render the event as black and white. Nuance thought in chromatic terms is the ability to see the colours that are present, and since the faculty is to see, it requires removing our colour filters so that the colours in the story become visible. This ability to see nuance or to see colours in a story is no easy task. The natural inclination is to follow one’s notions instead of seeing the nuances.
It is only when we see nuance and report them that we are able to build credibility. Or else we become agitprop artists beating the drum of the cause we hold dear. While that may get us the applause of intellectual fellow travellers, it does not engender trust and credibility.
In journalism, truth is not to be considered a given. It is discovered during the process of news gathering, newswriting and news editing, which is then again repeated. The material is being constantly worked upon to arrive at a tentative truth that can pass the litmus test of accuracy and fairness on that day. In conveying this process, owning up to errors without harbouring the illusion that only we have the key to truth, we can build trust in our readers. For the readers are not us and their diversity demands that we not cease from exploring the story via different alleyways.
The diversity in the readership is yet another fact that we often forget. The readers are not imitations of what we may want them to be. They are not members of a choir to whom the preaching may sound dulcet. They are a motley to be engaged in conversation. More than other media outlets, a newspaper to ensure its health will have to ensure conversation within the community that it serves. This sense of rootedness is crucial because newspapers serve that need, and while we may have differential claims to being global, we uniformly live in the here.
Therefore, it is when we address communities and become, to use the primary and etymologically closer meaning of the word, a communal product, engaging citizens in conversation by providing content that is contextual and credible, we do what print journalism has done with mutual profit for the readers qua citizens, news organizations qua businesses, and journalists as catalysts of conversation.
Piece can be read here
