Panel discussion: The audience cares

A panel discussion Saturday taught me a few things about the Spokane media audience. Those who attended are concerned and a little frustrated with the major players, intrigued by the journalism experiments cropping up and healthily skeptical of the information they consume.

The event was at Auntie’s Bookstore as part of the Get Lit! festival. Here’s a link to the official description. (Full disclosure: The panel was moderated by Ryan Pitts, my supervisor at The Spokesman-Review.)

I listened but didn’t speak, and I was rapt for the entire 90 minutes, not all of them comfortably. Almost nobody seemed to think the region’s media ecosystem was healthy, but panelists and audience members took pains to point out what is succeeding. The Spokesman-Review wasn’t mentioned often in this portion.

Here’s what was: Spokane Metro magazine is in its infancy but expanding. The more-established Inlander, a weekly paper, also is expanding its reach. The Fig Tree Monthly, which covers the Spokane religious community, has published for 25 years and is hiring. We’ve got a budding crop of bloggers and online publications such as SPOKE(a)N(e) magazine.

All good things. I’ve always held that more media voices can only improve democracy in a community. And people in the room felt guarded optimism for the future because of these multiplying voices, including from citizen journalists.

To that point, one panelist responded with a useful distinction. Answering a question about what constitutes a “true journalist,” Whitworth University professor James McPherson said that this is the type who knows who to talk to, where to go in City Hall and what records to search for. This journalist knows 500 times more than what’s published. Many bloggers and citizen journalists, he said, know half as much as what’s published (i.e. they make things up).

I can’t imagine all citizen journalists fabricate intentionally. I’m sure some do, but more would make strides in accuracy with help from a trained editor. Help they’re not likely to get, and there’s where McPherson’s description of the skills of the professionals and fears for the future rang true to my ears.

Many in the room thought that the region’s democracy was suffering despite the efforts of these pros. Perhaps even because of them. Specifically, these critics cited cutbacks at The Spokesman-Review and a prevalence of stories about fires, death and pop culture from the television news reports.

The S-R cutbacks have been painful, and I recognize that the effects have been visible. But I still believe we produce good reporting on important stories (e.g. Thomas Clouse’s recent bird-dogging of former sheriff’s Sgt. Pete Bunch).

The newspaper took other licks. Panelist John Orr, a board member at nonprofit KYRS, talked about the negative effects of media conglomeration on democracy. Although he didn’t mention The Spokesman-Review, he certainly didn’t exclude it. (For the record, The Spokesman-Review is a family-owned newspaper.) McPherson said the newspaper’s quality has been declining for 10 years, and after the event mentioned on his blog Pitts’ handling of “the insults–some deserved, some not–aimed at his employer.”

But the Spokesman had its supporters, too. The final comment came from a woman who questioned some attendees’ apparent belief that it was the newspaper’s role to be subjective and fix community problems. Then she responded to one man’s rant about what he felt was insufficient coverage of the shooting of Shonto Pete by a cop and the death of Otto Zehm after a confrontation with police. She suggested that if it hadn’t been for the newspaper, the Police Department’s versions of events would have been largely unquestioned.

In all, this was an instructive afternoon. I was heartened to see people turning out. That’s the takeaway for me: a knowledge that people care about the journalism I help support but also hold strong opinions. The stage is set for more conversation about what’s next for the region’s media, but I’ll leave that for another time.

I know I’m overlooking some good tidbits from the discussion. If you attended, share what I’ve missed by commenting below.

Update (April 13): First, be sure to check the comments for James McPherson’s clarification on what he meant when he said that bloggers often publish more than they know. He goes into more detail on his blog. Second, I discovered in that post that one of McPherson’s students has done an excellent job of reporting Saturday’s discussion, so I want to tip my hat to Jasmine Linabary’s blog, where you can find fuller quotes and more details.