How to reconnect media with their audience? A few takeaways from my students.
Like in 2016, American Media failed to properly “read” the country as if no lessons had been learned from the previous elections. I asked my Journalism students from Sciences-Po School in Paris how to reconnect media to their audience.
American media predicted a blue wave with the same blind faith with which they saw Hillary as a certain winner in 2016. They leaned blindly on the polls they commissioned, yielding to an unabated optimism. They thought that women, Black, and Hispanic voters were going to overwhelmingly reject Donald Trump, which they didn’t. The New York Times endorsed Amy Klobuchar and Elizabeth Warren who didn’t even go through the nomination, which tells us more about NYT than it does about America.
What is wrong with the American mainstream media? Why are they so consistently unable to understand large parts of the country?
Last week, we devoted a session at Sciences Po Journalism School to discussing this with my students, including some Americans. They came up with some thoughtful contributions.
Here is an abstract (posted with permission) of their thoughts.
1. Increase the diversity in the newsroom
The monolithic newsroom structure is seen as the main factor that explains the split with the audiences. Among the remedies outlined by the students:
• Reducing the tuition in US institutions that teach journalism to align them with the market conditions. As mentioned in a previous Monday Note, the average tuition for a J-school in the United States is $54,000 a year for an entry salary of around $45,000 a year. (At the other end of the higher education spectrum, a student who graduates from a top business school has to pay $100,000 in tuition and other costs per year but the investment will be quickly offset thanks to an entry salary of $216,000).
• Ending the usual unpaid internship system could help to widen access to the profession.
• Increasing the number of scholarships and fellowships. The media industry should increase its financial support to aspiring journalists, especially in areas left deserted by the news media.
• Reinforcing the coverage of non-mainstream political movements, instead of flying blind when it comes to far-right populism.
(Excerpts have been slightly edited for the sake of brevity and clarity).
Genevieve Mansfield (Maryland, USA) :
“Newsrooms need to become more genuinely representative of the American people, especially with regard to socio-economic background. (…) In addition to barriers based on identity, the professionalization of journalism placed barriers on classes as well, particularly due to the fact that: 1) American universities are expensive and 2) unpaid internships are the norm. Thus, the gatekeepers of “objectivity” became overwhelmingly white, male, and upper class. These trends have improved in recent years, but they have not changed greatly. Elitism within journalism is alive and well, as evidenced by the chart below demonstrating where 2018 summer interns studied. Mainstream media have always been out of touch with the material realities of working people in the United States because they do not represent them.
Mainstream media have failed to grasp this because they solely represent the interests of elites. Real solutions might be to open internships and hiring to non-college-educated applicants, to set quotas for interns coming from state or community colleges, to provide paid internships, and to increase remote work opportunities for applicants living in rural or non-urban environments.”
Lucy Martirosyan (Boston, MA, USA):
“Newsroom employees are less diverse than US workers, overall. More than 77% are non-Hispanic whites, according to a report by the Pew Research Center in 2018. In a 2019 survey conducted by the American Society of News Editors (ASNE), 22% staffers of color make up legacy print newsrooms, while 19% hold leadership positions. The survey only received a 23% response rate nation-wide because people complained that it was too “time-consuming.” The 40-year-old diversity survey is currently on pause, undergoing revision.
Suggested solutions:
- Hire journalists to analyze far-right media in the US. Far-right populism is alive and well in the States, and ignoring it isn’t going to make it go away. We’re seeing people who feel isolated by mainstream media seeking out alternative, far-right media that reflects their views on topics such as religion, anti-abortion, individualism, and so forth.
- Newsrooms need to be reporting their own diverse make-ups and hiring more reporters of color, accordingly. If journalists don’t represent their audience, there are going to be gaps in reporting — as we have seen for the past four years on Latino voters. ”
Students note, though, that American media are not the only ones to suffer from a disconnect with their audience.
Léontine Gallois (France):
“We can clearly spot a microcosm of white, wealthy, educated, lefty, Parisian journalists working in French MSM. At Libération [a notorious left-wing outlet], 73% of journalists have a parent from the upper class.”
She refers to a story published by Libération about the structure of its own newsroom. Interestingly enough, the piece came after two other articles (here and here) on the coverage of the Yellow Vest movement, which was also a major miss by the entire French media.
Greta Baxter, (Armenian, Russian, American):
[She takes the example of MSNBC]: “While MSNBC has some of the most female news anchors as well as anchors of color, it is crucial to recognize that this itself is not the end-all — this is the trap of identity politics, which assumes that a diverse staff is automatically conducive for diverse perspectives. In reality, we must consider the diversity of race, class, political affiliation, and even geography in politics. Are interviews predominantly with politicians and ‘grasstops’ organizers, or are we speaking to grassroots organizers or the average person?
The MSM has received a lot of criticism over the past four years for over-reporting on Trump. (…) How will this speak to the average American? It is easy for the media or political elite to argue the importance behind every Trump tweet they air and analyze — but rather than prove that importance, perhaps it is more impactful to view the media not as an outlet which decides what issues are important to focus on, but instead as an outlet which listens to the people and reports on what they already are thinking of.”
2. Teaming up with local outlets and local reporting
Genevieve Mansfield highlights that:
“Though MSM has a history of elitism in its hiring practices, local news outlets used to offer readers a more representative alternative. The Brookings Institution’s study “Local Journalism in Crisis” attributes part of Donald Trump’s 2016 win to the loss of local newspaper:
‘Unlike social media and partisan national publications, local outlets play an important gatekeeping function in national elections, vetting the rhetoric and platforms of candidates for national office for the local communities they serve. This may help explain why Donald Trump performed so well in communities with few print and digital newspaper subscribers.’
The study goes on to show that these rural and non-urban communities that voted heavily for Trump in both elections have been hardest hit by the loss of local news: “Sixty-eight percent of the counties without any daily or weekly newspaper are found in counties outside metro areas.” Having lost the benefit of more representative local news, these communities are now increasingly serviced by large media conglomerates whose reporters mostly live in large metro areas, like New York City (2nd highest cost of living in the USA).”
Johan Ness Gerhardsen, (Stavanger, Norway):
“Decentralize production offices to strengthen local news. Most MSM-offices are situated in big cities in many countries. (…) This has negative effects on the legitimacy of journalism. In Norway, people coming from more rural areas, especially in the north, see national news as the product of ‘’city-people’’ and often irrelevant to their own lives. Aftenposten for example enjoys primarily an Oslo-based audience and has received criticism for an ‘’Oslo-bias’’ that does not represent the conditions of the rest of the country.
Maithreyi Kamalanathan (Chennai, India):
India also doesn’t escape the problem of a disconnect between its mainstream media and a large segment of the population. But there are excuses for a 1.2 billion-people country speaking 22 different languages split between different castes and social distinctions, with 36 different states and union territories. The specifics of India make even coverage a daunting task, as Indian MSM are practically unable to provide enough field reports to properly inform their readers about what is happening outside of the large metropolitan areas. Here is Maithreyi Kamalanathan’s comment:
“Bridging the gaps between Indian liberal MSM organizations and the masses requires constant coverage of stories of the rural and urban poor at all times. Not just when an issue goes viral. If it is financially not plausible to deploy editorial resources permanently in remote corners of the country, they should collaborate with local vernacular publications and alternate media organizations that do cover these stories on a permanent basis. The collaboration could also work as a two-way street with academic research published in mainstream media finding its way in hyper-local channels whose audience is less exposed to such stories.”
3. Media should lean more on their own research
Renée Bertini (Florence, Italy) suggests that mainstream media should improve their ability to conduct qualitative research:
“Journalists should focus more on talking to a smaller but socially, economically, and politically diverse sample of voters to achieve a deeper understanding of their motives. (…) MSM should also use all tools available and produce parallel, independent research. Aside from polls, there are so many digital means to obtain quantitative data about how people feel about politics and representatives. For example sentiment analysis on social media, or on forums (Reddit, 4chan,…). While certainly imperfect, sentiment analysis may bring forth some very different perspectives which cannot be shown through polls.”
— frederic.filloux@mondaynote.com
