CHILL

If mere numbers of journalists are considered an indicator of quality,
the growth of journalist employment from 1970s to 2000 should have made
journalism extraordinary in the 1980s and 1990s. No one should have
been surprised by the savings and loan debacle, the Soviet Bloc
collapsing, the international debt crisis in developing nations , U.S.
aid to governments in central America and the Iran-contra affair, child
labor in the developing world, the explosive growth of Chinese economy,
or rising domestic and international terrorism. But we were surprised
and journalists didn’t forewarn us. Obviously, the attention of the
rising number of journalists was turned elsewhere.

If you look
at newsrooms you can see the problem. Most journalists in newspapers do
everything BUT covering significant news. They spend their time doing
celebrity, food, automobile, and entertainment stories. Look around any
newsroom, or just the lists of assignments or beats, and you soon come
to realize that 20 percent or fewer of the journalists in newsrooms
actually produce the kind of news that most people are concerned about
losing.

It is not the mere number of journalists that matters;
it’s the choices that editors and publishers make about how to use the
journalists available to them. Journalists are a crucial resource and
how they are utilized has a significant influence on quality. Few
newspapers have cut sections or types of coverage, choosing instead to
cut throughout the newsroom and not to reassign journalists to the
kinds of journalism that matters most to society.