INTRODUCTION
Students in Professor Raymond McCaffrey’s Spring 2020 Ethics in Journalism class at the University of Arkansas met for the last time together in Kimpel Hall on March 12. As they followed instructions about plans to cease face-to-face meetings and go to online instruction, the students received an email from university officials officially announcing the move to remote learning.
In the weeks since then, the more than 30 students have spread out from one coast of the country to the other, from Maryland to California, some of them staying around Fayetteville while others have moved to be with friends, family and loved ones throughout Arkansas and in places such as Memphis, Dallas, Kansas City, and Norman. As they have felt the course of their lives change – one student has already had a parent laid off from work – they have managed to continue to study journalism ethics and its importance in a democratic society at a time of crisis.
Virtual Lecture from Professor McCaffrey: April 2, 2020
One of our lessons this semester was titled: “The Business of Journalism.” It would seem that this might be the last subject we would need to talk about now as journalists are covering a global pandemic. But the economic fallout caused by the coronavirus has been devastating to the news industry at a time when journalists are trying to fulfill their ethical obligation to “Seek Truth and Report It.”
This downturn has been felt strongly by a segment of the industry that many feel is crucial to the democracy: local news. This category includes newspapers that mostly focus on their local communities. Though these outlets have digital news sites, they are still dependent on revenue from print-edition advertising, which has suddenly begun to evaporate. This has resulted in the layoffs of journalists who were working to provide important news to the public about the pandemic.
I have provided links to a number of recent stories that provide some background about this business development:
Tampa Bay Times will cut five days of print starting next week as ad revenues plummet, by Poynter Staff
Gannett, responding to the coronavirus-related downturn, announces a series of cut, by Rick Edmonds
The Tow Center COVID-19 Newsletter, by George Civeris, Emily Bell, Nushin Rashidian, and Sam Thielman
The coronavirus is a media extinction event, by Craig Silverman
Despite this disturbing trend, local journalists continue to do what they do better than anybody else: report about what’s going on in their own communities. The value of this type of journalism can be seen by the fact that a Pulitzer Prize is awarded each year for local reporting.
If you look at the list of past winners, you will see the name of Raquel Rutledge, a Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reporter who won for what the Pulitzer site described as “penetrating reports on the fraud and abuse in a child-care program for low-wage working parents that fleeced taxpayers and imperiled children, resulting in a state and federal crackdown on providers.” (I worked with Raquel at another local newspaper, the Colorado Springs Gazette.) Local journalists understand how things operate in their communities, so it should be no surprise that they knew exactly where to look for important stories as the virus spread. Here is a link to stories Raquel has been producing as of late.
We have heard about brave retired doctors and nurses volunteering to help with the care of patients incapacitated by the virus. Here is a story about a retired journalist stepping forward to help his old newspaper.
Local journalists also tell the story about how members of the local community are pitching in – including (and perhaps especially) pets.
Boston is a big city and one doesn’t usually think of its flagship newspaper, the Boston Globe, as a local news outlet. But though the Globe is known for its national and international reporting, it remains strongly connected to the extended Boston community. The Globe famously won a Pulitzer for its investigation into child abuse by the Roman Catholic clergy in Boston, and a movie about that work, “Spotlight,” won an Academy Award for Best Picture. Here’s a link to a story about the Globe and its pandemic coverage.
Finally, here’s a link to a story about a reporter for the Austin American-Statesman in Texas, after she was diagnosed with the coronavirus.