Panelists discuss the state of local media in the Inland Northwest

Spokane does not have a healthy media ecosystem but neither does anywhere else in the United States right now, local media officials said at a panel Saturday on The Changing Media Landscape in the Inland Empire.

The panel, part of the Get Lit! program, featured Luke Baumgarten of the Inlander, James McPherson of the communications department at Whitworth University, Cheryl-Anne Millsap of Spokane Metro, and John Orr of KYRS. Ryan Pitts, assistant managing editor for digital media at the Spokesman-Review, moderated. About 45 people attended the event in Auntie’s Bookstore in Spokane.

Spokane’s media ecosystem

Newspapers are dying everywhere and that means democracy suffers, McPherson said. Spokane used to be a two newspaper town.

But, as Baumgarten suggested, this is a better than ever time for grassroots community journalism to exist. The problem is figuring out how to make money and fund it in a way that sustains people financially and spiritually, he said. The Spokesman has a better opportunity to do this because it is locally not corporately owned.

Baumgarten said partnerships may be viable options for media today, referring to a recent NPR story on newspapers in Dallas and Fort Worth working together on sports coverage. It is not feasible to crush the competition any more, he said.

An audience member asked how much profit media really need and why newspapers are not non-profit.

McPherson said when took a group of students on a Jan Term class to New York and Washington, D.C., media officials said they would not be in the position they were if they had figured out the right business model (I was on that trip. Check out my related blog posts.)

“People are more interested in news than they’ve ever been before,” McPherson said. “They are less interested in paying for it.”

A few audience members expressed concerns about the loss of local content in newspapers and on TV news. One audience member suggested that if media will fulfill their local mission to find local stories, people will invest in them.

Pitts asked the audience what they wanted from their local news and how media can earn their trust. Audience members wanted truth, local news, investigative work, depth and media to not cover what others can do better. Some expressed a desire for stories they did not know were going on and for more idealists in the industry wanting to take on the world.

Defining journalism

The panelists started the forum by defining journalism and spoke of their own experiences of getting into journalism, most by accident.

“I consider it to be gathering, organizing and distributing information a local community needs to make decisions and understand what it needs to live in this community,” Pitts said.

Orr emphasized the importance of critical journalism to the survival of the American democracy, suggesting that rich corporate media devalue this tradition.

Baumgarten said journalism is a career that works well for apprenticeships and learning as you go.

“The news cycle is such that we spend a lot of time doing the job and not a lot thinking why we do the job,” Baumgarten said.

Baumgarten said he wants to get people to engage in their world through journalism.

Millsap said she was the first “unofficial backpack journalist” for the Spokesman-Review when she first came on board with the newspaper as a features writer, carrying around a scanner and audio devices in her backpack to interviews.

“Everyone has a story and I like to tell that story,” Millsap said.

McPherson defined journalism as gathering and providing information to help people better their lives. He said he went into journalism because he wanted to change the world.

True journalism and journalists

An audience member posed the question of what is true journalism and what makes some a true journalist.

Millsap said when the Spokesman-Review first offered her a job, she turned it down thinking she was unqualified. Journalists have a certain sense of set-apartness that they need to lose, she said.

“The tools to make good journalists are inherent,” Millsap said.

McPherson said having a professional or trained journalist is valuable – having someone who knows who to talk to in City Hall and knows what records to dig through.

“Most of us don’t know how or don’t have the time or motivation,” McPherson said.

McPherson said most bloggers are not journalists, though some are. McPherson keeps his own personal blog on media and politics but says that does not make him a journalist even though he once was one.

An audience member said she appreciated the ethics training professional journalists have as well as the training to back up their claims.

Millsap said journalist need to be careful that punditry does not replace journalism. A growing number of people can not distinguish between what is opinion based and what is not, she said.

Baumgarten said newspapers are not objective though they claim to be and an inherent bias exists.

Alternatives

While audience members and the panelists spoke a lot about the state of traditional newspapers, Baumgarten and Millsap said their alternative publications are actually growing.

Baumgarten said the Inlander has always employed a more Web-like business model as a free paper without subscriptions and reliant on ad revenue not classifieds. Advertising sales are still strong, he said.

Millsap said Spokane Metro is still young, only in its ninth issue, but seeks a different approach, aiming to be interesting rather than investigative. She said it has been successful and growing thus far.

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