Brown: Journalism should find more showmanship

It may sound a little absurd coming from a guy who has written for this newspaper for the better… It may sound a little absurd coming from a guy who has written for this newspaper for the better part of his college career, but it’s time to face the truth: Journalism as we know it should die.

Hoping to gain strength by gaining size, newspapers are folding up, consolidating and being bought out by larger corporations. Even the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette just laid off 30 employees after revenues slumped. Following the pattern, Pitt has wound down its journalism track over the past two years.

I feel such job loss in skilled professions is atrocious — yet I have no remorse for the Post-Gazette or any other paper that has cut its staff. Why? Because newspapers are stuck in a “Saw”-like spiked helmet.

Rather than try to find a key to unlock it, though, they’re sitting around hoping that when that timer goes off, the newspaper industry won’t find a spike lodged in its brain.

But it’s going to happen. That is, unless they make a few changes.

Traditional journalism has relied on the same stagnant set of ethics to uphold reporting standards since right after the Spanish-American War. Before the war, however, publishers William Randolph Hearst of The New York Journal and Joseph Pulitzer of the New York World amped up sensationalism in their city’s news at the turn of the 20th century to drive circulation at their competing newspapers.

Their “yellow journalism” struck up a frenzy  with alarming headlines and misleading half-truths. The tactics and strategies Hearst and Pulitzer employed make today’s network news stations look unbiased and straightforward.

The antics reached a head in 1898 when the USS Maine burst into flames in the Havana harbor after being commissioned to protect the Cubans from the Spanish. It has never been proven whether or not the Spanish blew up the ship, but the publishers didn’t care.

In the following days, The Journal posted a $50,000 reward for whomever captured the “enemy” responsible. The World displayed pictures of a fiery boat being blown apart on the front page.

Together, the two tycoons helped instigate a war. And ironically, both now have awards for outstanding journalism named after them..

So what does that have to do with today’s journalism? The truth is writing today has gone soft. The flare of actively seeking readership as a business has faded. And that’s why this art I love so much is dying.

In no way do I believe we should use sensationalism to create artificial wars — we’ve done a bit too much of that lately as it is. But I do believe that journalism needs a bit more showmanship to it.

One policy especially lacking in showmanship instructs  journalists to always identify themselves when they’re out to get a story. It’s a noble policy, but it just can’t compete anymore.

With eyewitness accounts, blogging and live feeds from anywhere in the world, you can find out instantly anything you want to. Buying print publications has largely become an exercise in furnishing packing products when you’re too cheap to buy bubble wrap.

What people want from periodicals — and what newspapers need to make money — is a certain amount of sensationalism. That’s why Americans still watch soap operas and pro wrestling: We crave the ridiculous.

Take the article ESPN.com pulled on LeBron James’ Las Vegas vacation in July. Editor-In-Chief Rob King said he quashed it because he “found that [writer Arash Markazi] did not properly identify himself as a reporter or clearly state his intentions to write a story.”

I read the story after someone had saved it on Deadspin.com, and I didn’t think it presented James any differently than I already imagined him —  as a 25-year-old kid. It really wasn’t that salacious.

Yet ESPN missed another Roethlisberger-sized story because of a relatively minor misstep, and Deadspin probably took in a few thousand new hits. It further solidified how antiquated journalism has become.

Reporting has become increasingly an art in avoiding confrontation and pandering to the whims of the powerful. When Mayor Luke Ravenstahl filed for divorce from his wife, Erin, rumors circulated that he had an extramarital affair, according to the Tribune-Review.

But we’ll never know. Ravenstahl hired a hot-shot lawyer from Philly for the sole purpose of making sure his privacy was respected. Translation: His lawyer was more than equipped to bankrupt any struggling newspaper that dare dive into his personal life, with or without reason.

So the boy mayor once again crushed controversy, providing little in the way of new material for any of us to give two licks about. And perhaps with the revenue the newspapers didn’t generate, they weren’t able to hire the next Hunter S. Thompson or David Foster Wallace.

Newspapers need not do a capital restructuring to survive in the 21st century. Money comes when you give people something they want to buy.

What newspapers need instead is much cheaper and more effective: a philosophical restructuring.

Email Jacob at jebrown13@yahoo.com.