I’m at Stanford University for a workshop, sponsored by an organization called New Directions for News and entitled “Enduring Values? Examining Journalism’s Foundation, Checking for Erosion.”
There seems to be general agreement that any discussion of journalism values seems inevitably to bleed into marketing values — and that we need to keep them separate. But there are even bigger questions on the agenda.
Here’s one. Are the users of news going to be the creators, at least in part? I’m convinced they are. I’m also convinced that this fact is changing the nature of what we do.
A panelist just asked a question that may also be crucial: Should media companies be public? That is, should they be in a position where they answer to the whim of Wall Street analysts? The newspaper business is arguing about this internally these days. I suspect that only some public newspaper companies wish they could go private. They’re the ones that care about journalism. They seem, increasingly, to be in a minority.