Face It, You Just Don’t Care About the News Anymore
So what does that mean for democracy?
Late one evening in March, I was sat in the JFK Forum at Harvard’s Kennedy School, surrounded by dozens of journalists and academics. We were watching Nina Martin and Renee Montagne, from NPR and ProPublica, collect their Goldsmith investigative reporting award for “Lost Mothers,” a harrowing and important piece of work exploring the shocking number of American women who die in childbirth every year.
As they were being given a standing ovation, I finally formulated the question I’ve been struggling with lately: With this kind of brilliant and high-quality journalism being pursued around the world every day, why is it that the news industry is steadily shrinking?
I’m a research fellow exploring alternative futures of journalism in the age of social media at Harvard’s Shorenstein Center for Media, Politics, and Public Policy. Inspired by the work of the late media scholar James W. Carey — who looked at the media within the dynamics of culture, rather than the mechanics of economy or politics — I want to understand what is happening to journalism underneath all the noise and preoccupation with Donald Trump, his election, and his day-to-day dramas.
