Causes to Celebrate: Columbia Journalism Review (CJR)

So if I had to name one place that helps me keep track of news media in all its many forms, I would have to point to the Columbia Journalism Review.  CJR was essential during the past election as it helped to bring to light stories from all parts of the country--not just those that reflected my own views.  It was just as important to me to understand news journalism from a local standpoint as it was to understand it from national and international perspectives, and CJR really helped with that.  In essence, they are a news site about news sites--talking about local trends in journalism, noting where local journalism is dying, and where new opportunities are being found.  They highlight some common threads in journalistic writing, and point to where they've been more, or less, helpful to the overall conversations taking place around just about any issue you can think of.  And I believe that it is just as important to understand the forces and voices that bring us the news as it is to get that news.

Being informed about these trends, and hearing from those critiquing their own fellow journalists is something I really find to be helpful.  It lets me know where conversations have come from and where they were started, and whether or not those conversations are actually useful to have and then also helpful to the overall discussion.  CJR informs me about what good questions are and where local and national news teams are failing to ask them; they also highlight journalism sources that are looking to deepen our conversations and create more thoughtful and insightful reporting instead of just looking for clicks or the latest hype.

Their reporting during the election centered on small towns in America and the issues that were on the minds of various swathes of people--from the east coast to the west.  It was invigorating to see what the concerns of other communities were--to understand their points of view and to consider them when making my own decisions.  And when the pandemic began to really hurt the media industry as a whole, it was good to see those trends--to know that a lot of local journalism was being replaced by big money investment companies that might be more interested in shilling propaganda rather than unvarnished accounts of events.

Now, to be clear, most news organizations have a bias and an agenda, and while some of them are more open about it than others, it's important to understand those biases so that you can decide if the news is actually important or just someone's own calculated views to slant the stories in a way that will get the responses they want.  And yes; that does actually, and unfortunately, happen.

Case in point, when the news about George Floyd started showing up, and as local protest movements were going on, many newspapers stopped people of color from covering those stories out of fears of bias or ...something.  But who better to cover those stories?  Why not allow it?  Many journalists of color were disheartened and disappointed that, while there was a national movement to reconcile our biases and bring more diverse views to bear, local and national news organizations were often more intent on stymying those impulses.  Learning about that through CJR colored (hah) my own perceptions of the news and the way its reported to us and informed me about a lot of work-place biases that have become ingrained in our national institutions--including the media.  And that was really important to know and to understand, because if you're not getting a local or a community-based story, then is the news really a good representation of what's going on?  Can we actually have a conversation if our sources don't actually understand the politics and local sentiment where the stories are coming from?  My sincere belief on this is that, no; we cannot.

So this is why CJR is so important; it talks about these issues and strives to ensure that our news industry is actually trying to do good work for the people (and pointing out when it doesn't.)  And that is why I think it is both so vital for all of us and also a cause worth celebrating.