The National Press Club

NPC Centennial Forum Sponsor

The First Amendment, Freedom of the Press & the Future of Journalism

Monday, December 8, 2008
Sugden Theater, 701 5th Avenue South, Naples, FL

Panelists:

• Darryl Adams, News Director, Waterman Broadcasting News
• Matt Bernaldo, Managing Editor for Online News, Waterman Broadcasting
• Roy Peter Clark, Poynter Institute Vice President & Senior Scholar
• Chris Doyle, Publisher, Naples Daily News
• Phil Jones, Former CBS News Correspondent

Moderator: Tammy Lytle, NPC Past President

Links

Naples Daily News - Phil Lewis: More rough times seen for papers

Press Release

POSSIBILITY OF CITIES WITHOUT NEWSPAPERS RAISES QUESTIONS OF WHERE PEOPLE WILL GET NEWS AND WHAT THEY WILL PAY FOR

NAPLES, FLA. – With the backdrop of the Tribune Co. filing for bankruptcy protection, panelists at the National Press Club's forum on the future of journalism Monday said some communities should get ready for having no daily newspapers.

"I think we are going to see some significant communities without daily newspapers in the not too distant future," said Roy Peter Clark, vice president and senior scholar at the Poynter Institute, a journalism think tank.

"What would you be willing do to as citizens in order to get information with ink?" he asked the audience of more than 300 people who gathered at a National Press Club Centennial Forum co-sponsored by the Naples Press Club.

"Would you be able to think of news gathering not as some highly profitable venture, but as a public utility?" Clark asked. "I think that more and more power will go unchecked in communities when the watchdog is euthanized."

He said anyone who proclaims to have solution to this problem is not telling the truth.

Finding that solution, Clark said, will take "a lot of trial and error. No magic bullet. But various remedies that will challenge all of us in terms of our standards, in terms of our ethics and in terms of what our role is in a democratic society. It will be a very difficult, challenging and interesting time."

News organizations will have to work together, Clark said, breaking the barriers erected by what have been highly competitive companies.

"All of these traditional boundaries are under pressure, and many of them have been erased, including the ones that say I am not going to link to your site because you are a competitor," Clark, said. "That's old school."

Clark was speaking at the final National Press Club forums on "The First Amendment, Freedom of the Press and the Future of Journalism" that the Club conducted throughout the country to mark its 100th anniversary. At each forum, the Club gathered a panel of leading local journalists to talk about where the news business is going and how to protect its core values.

This forum was moderated by Tammy Lytle, a former Orlando Sentinel Washington correspondent and Club president, who noted a recent Editor and Publisher Magazine report that predicted "several cities" could be left without newspapers as companies default on their debt and go out of business next year.

Chris Doyle, publisher of the Naples Daily News, said his paper was one of the most profitable of the Scripps-Howard chain, but it is not immune to the cutbacks that are plaguing all news organizations. He said he thinks he has cut as much of the editorial staff as is possible and still put out a good newspaper.

The future, he said, "involves citizen journalists, it involves bloggers. It involves … people formerly known as the audience helping us do the reporting."

But in the free market of news, Doyle said, consumers are going to decide what they get and what they are going to pay for it.

"We have to think that multimedia includes newspapers," he said. "There are still a lot of people who decide, 'Boy I like this thing that arrives at my home.'"

Darrell Adams, news editor for Waterman Broadcasting, defended the fact that his company provides news for two local television stations, NBC-2 and ABC-7, from the same newsroom. Critics in the audience said that undermined competition for news.

"If we are doing our job and being true journalists, covering the stories that we are supposed to cover, does it really matter if we are all working for the same organization or not?" Adams asked.

Feeling much of the same economic pressure as newspapers with declining viewers and dropping advertising, Adams said, television stations must have a conversation with their audiences about what they are willing to pay for news. Now, over-the-air TV stations and their Internet sites are supported entirely by advertising, and viewers get all of the content for free.

"If you want to continue looking at what we deliver, you are going to have to start to ask yourselves, are you willing to start paying for it?" Adams said. "We need to be able to pay the staff to go out to report. Investigative reporters, producers, people we expect to go out there and get the facts and get them right -- we have to find ways to pay for it.

"If I charge you a subscription fee, would you come to my Internet site?" Adams asked. "Or would you trust a non-professional journalist blogger? If we told you you can watch NBC-2 commercial free, but you are going to have to pay a subscription, would you be willing to pay for that subscription? That's the conversation we are going to have to start having."

Phil Jones, a former CBS News correspondent, said people are turning away from television news because it has lost its punch. In the past, he said, people felt they had to sit down and watch Walter Cronkite on CBS or Huntley-Brinkley on NBC.

"The reason there is no longer an appointment with nightly television news, the reason people are not sitting down or hanging around for the morning show, is they feel they have been stung," Jones said. "They have seen the news shows go soft after the first story. They are looking at themselves and saying, I don't need to know that."

But Matt Bernaldo, managing editor for Waterman Broadcasting's online service, said the change in viewing habits has more to do with changes in lifestyle and changes in technology.

"You can get news 20 different places," he said. "I am 38 years old. I have three kids under 5 years old. I don't have time for all these things. I can't remember when I watched a broadcast live, even a football game."

People don't come to watch a TV newscast, he said, because they can get news elsewhere, even on cell phones.

"We want to be platform agnostic," Bernaldo said. "I want my story to be out there. We want to be everywhere. We don't want to be shut out from what's out there."

And no technology is immune from disappearing, he said. "What's big today will not be big tomorrow."

Details and highlights of these forums can be found at the National Press Club's Web site.

The NPC Centennial Forums program is sponsored by Aviva USA, one of the nation's fastest-growing life insurers. In addition, the company is funding the production and distribution of 12,000 DVD copies of the Club's centennial documentary, "The National Press Club: A Century of Headlines" and supplemental education materials.

Tom Godlasky, chief executive officer – Aviva North America, said, "Our partnership with the National Press Club is based on shared values and a belief that the First Amendment, freedom of speech and professional journalism are fundamental to democracy, personal freedom and free enterprise."

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION:
Gil Klein – National Press Club Centennial Project director, 703-338-2721. E-mail gklein@press.org.

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