Journalism... seriously?

May I draw your attention to an Online Opinion article written by Eric Beecher: Dumbing Down the Media. It was emailed to me today. Eric talks about the decline in journalistic quality and the factors to its demise.

While I agree with most of the article, I don't share his view that the media has 'dumbed down' its audience to the extent that quality media 'cannot attract a broad constituency without large dollops of celebrity gossip and soft lifestyle coverage'. I think this a general statement, and is probably indiciative of the majority of Australians, but I don't think that this is 'driving away the micro audience that craves quality journalism'. Rather, this 'micro-audience' is driving integral papers like The Australian. I imagine the demographic consists of uni students, corporate executives and journalists, who are savvy with the media and have the ability to see through and sift through soft, tabloid headlines and news stories. These are the people who crave facts, not fluff. That audience will never diminish.

As for the other arguments in the article, I largely agree. And I maintain the ideas expressed by Julianne Schultz that for the shortcomings of the Australian news-media industry to be resolved, the catalyst will be journalists. It won't come from the editors, executives, producers, or people in the higher eschelons, not from the media owners--as closely concentrated and incest as they may be--but from the people who write the bloody stuff. Write what they're teaching us to write at uni, investigate articles and if you report one fact, report all facts. Let the suck-up journalists write heavily agendered articles in order to please the editors and publishers--they'll run out of steem and soon fade away.

I understand this is a highly idealised notion, but I believe that all great actions must start with an idea (as a very perceptive Frenchman once said to me), and this is an idea that, if crystalised, will revolutionise news media and save the grace and honesty of journalism.