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Michael Ray Smith, Ph.D., Professor
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A quip from Michael Ray Smith, Ph.D.
Professor, Palm Beach Atlantic University
Professor, Palm Beach Atlantic University
Florida
Today is National News Engagement Day, a good time to
think about the journalism of hope and ways to engage readers and viewers.
That term isn’t original with me. It came from Al
Neuharth, founder of USA Today and author of “Confessions of an S.O.B.” The
journalism of hope is old-school journalism that says as a vigorous free press
increases, accountability and reform increase.
That’s the spirit behind National News Engagement Day, a
month before Election Day, Nov. 7. Sponsored by Association for Education in
Journalism and Mass Communication, the day is receiving attention from
journalism educators and media organizations across the nation. Two critical
issues are at stake.
Issue 1: Awareness includes discerning between the
questionable role of public relations as a part of the news model in some
editorial operations.
Pew Research recently reported, “One of the greatest
areas of revenue experimentation now involves website content that is paid for
by commercial advertisers–but often written by journalists on staff–and placed
on a news publishers’ page in a way that sometimes makes it indistinguishable
from a news story.”
Known as native advertising, the trend is catching in
legacy media with eMarketer predicting that native ads spending will reach
$2.85 billion by the end of 2014.
Issue 2: The journalism of hope includes the idea of
teleos, what the ancients said is the goal of this life, which is to seek the
good.
A group of us in AEJMC have joined the idea of seeking
the Good with sympathetic objectivity, an idea that former Christianity Today
senior editor Carnes pioneered. As journalism educators, we talk about the need
to get it right and the number one duty of a journalist: Accuracy. We teach
students the ethic of consulting themselves first before weighing into an
article. Prayerful preparation can make all the difference.
We teach them to train their news antenna to wiggle over
news that may be missed by others such as the beach-side baptism of nearly 100
people in September by a downtown West Palm Beach Church. We applaud the work
of the mainstream when it covers religion on page one as the Sept. 30 Wall
Street Journal did with its Tamara Audi piece, “Tough Choice for Iraq’s
Christians: Fight or Flight.”
The ultimate goal is to report information for the good
of the community to help the community flourish.
The twin concerns of the encroachment of public relations
into the news content and the wariness of coverage of faith in the marketplace
are two areas where we can improve in journalism. We can seek the Good as part
of the free flow of information for a healthy democracy. It doesn’t have to be
bad news for the sake of bad news; it can be gritty reports of power abuses
that will lead to reform.
The journalism of hope boldly speaks to power to do the
high calling of the teleos of fourth estate: To make the powerful accountable
and reform more likely.
Engage the news today and participate in the extraordinary
power of the free press to make a difference for the good of the order.
More about Michael Ray Smith:
A professor at Palm Beach Atlantic University, Michael
Ray Smith worked as a journalist for a number of newspapers including the
Atlantic Journal-Constitution and author of the 2014 book, “The ABC List of
Feature Ideas". Visit his site at
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