Every couple of years, I team up with the Dean of the Journalism school at IUPUI to teach a course in Mass Media and Public Affairs. To suggest that it is challenging to describe the relationship between sound information and public policy would be a definite understatement! It was challenging even before newspapers began failing, and right now, it is anyone’s guess what the media landscape will look like ten years hence.
A recent article in the Atlantic addresses journalism’s profound transition from newspapers and broadcast evening news to…what, exactly? We can’t yet know, but Mark Bowden, the author, describes today’s landscape pretty accurately:
With journalists being laid off in droves, ideologues have stepped forward to provide the “reporting” that feeds the 24-hour news cycle. The collapse of journalism means that the quest for information has been superseded by the quest for ammunition . . .