DATE: Monday, September 8, 1997             TAG: 9709070031

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B13  EDITION: FINAL 

TYPE: OPINION 

SOURCE: ANN SJOERDSMA

                                            LENGTH:   82 lines

JOURNALISM PANDERING TO THE PUBLIC HAS BECOME AN EPIDEMIC

Journalists are at war. We're fighting for the soul of journalism, and we have been ever since USA Today, with its mindless ``factoids'' and bite-sized servings of ``news,'' became the industry standard. Ever since the guiding principle to a newspaper's content became the amount of time that ``the average reader'' can spend on it.

What year was it, I wonder, that imagination and curiosity died? Sometime in the self-indulgent '80s.

In the week since Princess Diana's fatal crash, the press - especially the sleazy tabloids that hire the paparazzi - has been subject to public indictment.

But as harsh as the public may be, it will never be as critical as those of us within the press who mourn the loss of the daily newspaper driven first by news, not by entertainment.

We're a big group and we like to argue a lot.

The new post-USA Today journalism has been aptly called ``Holiday Inn journalism,'' for its compressed blandness and sameness - one paper looks and reads like any other - and ``Mickey Mouse journalism,'' for its oversimplification and superficiality. Good reporters - and there are many - resist both trends, but they're allegedly up against market forces. Number crunching. What sells. Or so the business types who make content decisions on a non-news basis tell us.

So, like the all-encompassing popular culture, broadcast in continuous instant images on TV that require no active human response, the news has been homogenized.

The conventional wisdom within the press - or perhaps, more accurately, within media company management - is: People don't read anymore; have shorter attention spans than they used to; get most of their ``news'' (so to speak) from TV anyway, and seek to be amused, not informed. So, don't overtax or scare them away with depth and detail - unless the detail has to do with crime or celebrity.

On those subjects, there's no such thing as overkill. Or a rush to judgment.

Though holdouts remain, most newspapers have incorporated some of this ``wisdom'' into their news decisionmaking. And yet, fewer Americans subscribe to a daily newspaper today than in 1965, when the population was considerably smaller. So, it's not working.

It's hard to believe now, but news in print used to be commanding on its own, without glitzy photo spreads, graphics and oversized headlines. It used to be enough that news - defined by conflict, novelty, prominence, proximity, impact and recency, not just by popular interest - was important and enlightening; it didn't have to be fun, or attractive, too.

Which is not to say that sensationalism didn't sell newspapers. The yellow journalists proved that it did. And journalism has never been a genteel profession. But at least there was more agreement on what news is. And there was more of it in the paper.

News wasn't nonsense like public-opinion-poll results, statistically insignificant medical studies, celebrity comings and goings, observations of pop-culture trends, community conversations or reports of conferences staged by PR people.

I've never much cared for the coventional wisdom. I'd sooner overestimate people, and then be disappointed.

How long does it take to read a newspaper anyway? The length of one episode of ``Friends'' or ``ER''?

I choose instead to believe that if we journalists ``(re)build it, they will come.'' But what should journalism be today?

Some thought ``public'' or ``civic'' journalism,'' with its town-hall-style meetings, represented the future. Reporters would help people enhance their lives - and make newspapers more relevant to them - by asking them to define the ``news'' of their community.

Exceedingly controversial, public journalism is still in vogue in some circles. But it always seemed to me an admission of failure. The good reporter knows the community's concerns and can present them in a far less self-serving and more informed manner than those personally affected.

I believe the answer lies in the limitless power of the printed word to challenge people. In the critical thinking skills that we worry our children are not learning in school. We journalists need to find new angles, ask fresh questions and spit in the wind more.

But we also need readers who will give us more than a USA-Today minute.

MEMO: Ann G. Sjoerdsma, an attorney, is an editorial columnist and book

editor for The Virginian-Pilot.

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