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Losing the News: The Future of the News That Feeds Democracy

Alex S. Jones

3.65 · Rating details · 113 ratings · 23 reviews

In Losing the News, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Alex S. Jones offers a probing look at the epochal changes sweeping the media, changes which are eroding the core news that has been the essential food supply of our democracy.
At a time of dazzling technological innovation, Jones says that what stands to be lost is the fact-based reporting that serves as a watchdog ...more

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Hardcover, 234 pages

Published August 1st 2009 by Oxford University Press, USA (first published 2009)

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Oct 03, 2009 Kathleen (itpdx) rated it really liked it

Shelves: non-fiction, lwv-book-group

This book is Alex Jones' perceptions of the current state of journalism in the US. His background and main focus is newspapers.

He puts news reporting in four categories:
1) bearing witness
2) follow up
3) explanatory
4) investigative

Each one, progressively, takes more time and is therefore more expensive. He explains the history of newspapers in the US--that up until about 100 years ago they were about advocacy rather than balance. Newspaper publishers saw that if they were neutral and inexpensive ...more

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Sep 07, 2009 Jack rated it it was amazing

An amazing and insightful examination of the state of contemporary news, most notably the print edition of big-city papers. Alex Jones, a friend and distinguished journalist, heads the Shorenstein Center at Harvard. His latest book should be required reading for anyone who cares about the state of modern reporting.

His analysis begins with a detailed study of the importance not simply of daily print journalism, but most especially long-term investigative reporting, a field which has suffered ...more

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Oct 12, 2009 Barb rated it liked it

Shelves: read-in-2009, non-fiction, vine

This is not what I expected it to be. I thought Jones would be talking about the news and who controls what the average American sees and hears as news. But what Jones focuses on specifically is what he refers to as the 'iron core' of news, journalism itself and the fate of newspapers.

He's obviously very well informed and has many interesting anecdotal stories and insights having grown up in a newspaper owning family. He traces the impact of technology as well as the economy on news and ...more

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Jul 26, 2018 April Helms rated it really liked it

Shelves: journalism, nonfiction

For those interested in journalism, and particularly newspapers, I recommend The Death and Life of American Journalism… and this book. Combined, these two books excellently sum up the history of newspapers as well as the current dilemmas in the profession. While the book is mostly about newspapers, it delves a bit in other media formats as well. Well worth the read.

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Aug 18, 2018 Jennifer Rauch rated it liked it

This 2009 book didn't tell me anything about the state of the news that I didn't already know.

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Nov 28, 2019 Robert Geoghegan rated it liked it

An exciting insight into journalism and the fears of what would happen to newspapers.

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Jul 07, 2019 Keith Blackman added it

Well-balanced critique of what's happening to the traditional media, and why it's bad

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May 18, 2012 Bart Breen rated it really liked it

The Good Old Days with a Strong Look to the Future

Take a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist who is third generation in a newspaper-owning family and throw in journalism generally in a state of complete upheaval and you have a recipe for either a strong book with a lot of insights or a lot of nostalgic hand-wringing. In this case, though you get a pretty strong balance of both.
In what is overall a strongly reasoned and well thought through presentation, Jones touches on many themes and issues. The Good Old Days with a Strong Look to the Future

Take a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist who is third generation in a newspaper-owning family and throw in journalism generally in a state of complete upheaval and you have a recipe for either a strong book with a lot of insights or a lot of nostalgic hand-wringing. In this case, though you get a pretty strong balance of both.
In what is overall a strongly reasoned and well thought through presentation, Jones touches on many themes and issues. Prevalent throughout however, is also a steady diet of self-admitted denial that Newspaper journalism as it has been in exercised in the past is over and the future at this time is uncertain.

Jones weaves a consistent metaphor from the very beginning embedding the book upon the concept that there is within all journalistic output, an iron core of factual news which informs the populace and is the bedrock of democracy. Jones sees this as the "iron core". Not surprisingly, as he analyzes the source of this "iron core" he equates it more with newspaper journalism that from any other source, and it is the rapid diminishing of newspaper journalism that has him most alarmed about where the news will come in the future that provides democracy with the fundamental knowledge to maintain an informed electorate.

Upon this platform, Jones precedes to explain how he understands the first amendment to have functioned in the past and currently. There is a good deal of insight here that injects a fair measure of realism and avoids a simple statement of faith based upon an overdeveloped sense of nostalgia. Jones is realistic and points out the progression of the concept to where it rests today.

Further, Jones is realistic about the state of journalism today. In addition to the core of objective news, he recognizes that there are other elements of news which wrap around the core if you will. In particular there is advocacy news in which predetermined positions are advances based upon the editorial decisions to filter the news to fit the desired position. This is often in the form of editorial comment within a newspaper and in televised news . Entertainment exists within this context as well. Again the major premise of the book sees the growth of these elements as revenue producing enticements that are maintaining while serious news is neglected because the basic economic model that supports it has shifted significantly. He laments the diminishing of real, hard core news which was supported in the past through a model of advertising support. With the advent of the internet and newspaper advertising and circulation diminishing, and especially exacerbated by the recent downturn in the economy is leading to the consolidation of outright closing of newspapers. Where, Jones laments, will the iron core of news come from? Further, generational changes are coming and this newer generation is not wired to receive and examine news in the same way. Real substance; real digging, seems destined to become a rare commodity which may stay in the domain of those educated and rich enough to realize its value and pay for it, while the general populace lags behind and democracy suffers.

After a meandering course through these issues, and Jones memories he provides his insights as to how things may play out and that things, while serious and unknown at this time as to how they will finally resolve, are not so very different than pivotal changes in the past. The model may change, but the news must continue to play its pivotal role in democracy itself.

While the resolution is not in itself so satisfactory and despite Jones' disclaimers that he's not simply indulging in remorse over the "good old days" the value in this book is not so much in the destination as in the journey. The book is a good primer for those interested in the journalism industry and where it's been.

I enjoyed it and can recommend it.

4 stars.

Bart Breen ...more

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Apr 17, 2011 Bill Sleeman rated it did not like it · review of another edition

In a Simpsons’ episode from 2001 Grandpa Simpson meets a newspaper columnist and exclaims “You're in the newspaper business? Something that's going to die before I do.”

Unlike Grandpa Simpson author Alex Jones in “Losing the News: The Future of the News that Feeds Democracy“ (2010) doesn’t seem to be sure if he is worried about the death of newspapers,the death of objective reporting or the perfidious influence (my words) of the Internet or perhaps all three? This lack of clarity is unfortunate In a Simpsons’ episode from 2001 Grandpa Simpson meets a newspaper columnist and exclaims “You're in the newspaper business? Something that's going to die before I do.”

Unlike Grandpa Simpson author Alex Jones in “Losing the News: The Future of the News that Feeds Democracy“ (2010) doesn’t seem to be sure if he is worried about the death of newspapers,the death of objective reporting or the perfidious influence (my words) of the Internet or perhaps all three? This lack of clarity is unfortunate as I think the author has the kernel of a good idea with what he calls in chapter 1 the Iron Core of news – that there is a need and a demand if we are to be informed citizens for objective hard news reported in a balanced manner - but then he loses this good idea and his focus on why this core is so necessary by launching into what can best be described as an extended lament on the dangers of the Internet. He goes on to couple this with numerous complaints about the dangers of too few people willing to report news events objectively and the influence (primarily negative) of the ‘citizen journalist.’ As the author is Director of Harvard University’s Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy, one might expect, at least I did, a more balanced analysis of the future of news and the role of the Internet. Instead readers are subjected, not once but repeatedly to stories of how wonderful life was in the old newspaper age, with a particularly tiresome focus on the newspaper that the author’s family ran which it seems was located just one city over from “Mayberry” but was equally bucolic and plucky.

Jones does make an effort, following his own advice, to try and be fair-minded when he reviews the work of journalists and journalism students who, in his estimation, successfully employ the Internet to communicate news. But his examples are hardly enthusiastic and read more like someone trying to disguise their own dislike: “I’m not opposed to the Internet, why some of my very own friends use it…” he seems to be saying. In fact, Jones’ animus towards the role of the Internet in providing news is only thinly disguised throughout the work and in places – as on page 205 – he drops this disguise altogether:

“A newspaper should be distinctive in its sense of place and character, reflecting its town and region and tailoring itself its readers without pandering. And if those readers want to read the newspaper’s articles online, they can. But the job of reporters will be to report and write, not to try to also be a Web jockey. If there needs to be a cell-phone sized version, let a specialist in cell phone-sized news write it, not a newspaper reporter.”

Are we to assume as Jones apparently does that a professional newspaper reporter should not write for the very small screen or does he think that anyone who does write for a mobile web platform isn’t a journalist?

Jones has a lot to say about the importance of objective news reporting and the role of newspapers – when he writes about the dangers of newspapers cutting professional staff to meet the financial bottom line he writes from experience and is right on the mark - but overall the author is only mildly successful at communicating his ideas. His repeated use of the same few examples – how many times do we need to be told that President Roosevelt’s Fireside Chats represented a change in news distribution and reception – suggests a lack of attention to supporting details and instead a desire, in my opinion, simply to go on about the Internet and those misguided folks who instead of using good old-fashioned newspapers use the Internet as their source news.

A more concise analysis of this same issue can be found in an April 2011 article on the Washington Post website by Tom Rosenstiel - "Five myths about the future of journalism."
...more

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Mar 19, 2010 Michael rated it really liked it

Jones, a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist, takes us on a journey through the trials and tribulations faced by top shelf journalism in the face of the increasingly dwindled profits of today’s newspapers (apparently anything south of TWENTY percent is just not enough for those NYSEers who now control many of the papers). Of course the internet, with all it’s splendid content, is the latest threat to “real” news – defined roughly as objective-as-possible, bias and agenda free reporting. Jones Jones, a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist, takes us on a journey through the trials and tribulations faced by top shelf journalism in the face of the increasingly dwindled profits of today’s newspapers (apparently anything south of TWENTY percent is just not enough for those NYSEers who now control many of the papers). Of course the internet, with all it’s splendid content, is the latest threat to “real” news – defined roughly as objective-as-possible, bias and agenda free reporting. Jones briefly charts the course of journalism through US History to show how it has evolved from the days of amateur political libel to more responsible, balanced reporting that, in his mind, shores up the democratic principals on which this nation was founded by promoting transparency in governance, big business practice, and other areas of frequent abuse. Important for any prognostication about what the future holds for such journalism in the face of non-pedigreed web rants and our latest economic meltdown, he deals with the impact of other threats to newsprint in the past –First Amendment rulings, radio, television, and CNN – to promote the idea that newspapers are likely to remain. The question is what form they will eventually assume in order to compete and remain solvent. Will serious, balanced reporting ultimately swim with the fishes?

I apparently represent one target audience for this book. My ever-expanding skepticism has led me to believe that much of what passes for news is doctored up supplementary advertisements for things, politicians, untested medical statements, or propitiation of the latest, statistically dubious hysteria. Admittedly, much of this perception is the result of frequent, unwanted exposure to local TV news affiliates and the Today Show. The author is obviously on the same page as he dismisses these programs as televised tabloids and one of his main points is that similar crap, as well as basic sports coverage, society and local interest stuff, crossword puzzles, and the like are what keeps newspapers financially afloat. This is the dilemma that continually nudges (or rocket launches) the best journalists, foreign affairs reporting, and serious investigative units out the door. I did find it a bit interesting that he only culled up about a half-dozen examples of exemplary newspaper coverage – heavily leaning on Watergate and the Pentagon Papers – and probably twice that in reference to dismal journalistic failures such as the Jason Blair debacle. And who can’t think of dozens more examples of glaring incompetence off the top of their head?

All in all, however, I’m drawn to the author’s understated, reasoned approach to this. Absent are bombastic proclamations about what the future holds or unbridled diatribes about how the philistines of Wall Street and Blogville have destroyed the legacy of the “iron core” news that promotes the public weal. This stuff is the basis of the book of course, but thankfully Jones approach is more analytical, rather than pontificatory (is that a real word? I’ll scan the NYT).
...more

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Jan 05, 2013 Josh McConnell rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: journalism, thinking-cap, other-nonfiction

Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Alex S. Jones has a vested interest in the future of journalism and the news. For multiple generations (at least three or four), his family has worked for and/or owned print journalism organizations -- specifically, newspapers. Jones has also worked for the NYTimes, hosted PBS' Media Matters and teaches journalism on a university level, among other titles.

So before we continue... No, he isn't the controversial American radio host of the same name.

All of this ...more

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Jan 19, 2014 Dale rated it really liked it

"the nation's traditional news organizations are being transformed into tabloid news organizations..." (p. 51)

Alex S. Jones is a journalist who has just about seen it all: he has owned and managed a paper, he has written features, he won a Pulitzer Prize, he has taught journalism, he has done radio journalism and he has written several books. He knows of what he writes.

Jones is concerned about the evolution of news gathering services (TV, radio, newspapers, magazines) from expensive ...more

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Oct 12, 2011 Shannon rated it really liked it

Jones brought up some very good points. At first I thought this book would be similar to the Kovach/Rosenstiel book on Principals of Journalism, but it was not. Jones, unlike Kovach/Rosenstiel, offered more examples of specific newspapers that were in financial trouble, as well as news organizations that addressed solutions to the problems failing papers faced. I also enjoyed how the book was interwoven with Jones's personal narrative of his family's experiences with the Greenesville Sun, making ...more

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Mar 26, 2012 Kevin Cecil marked it as to-read

Some of my friends run a great blog called "read this not that" (http://rtnt.tumblr.com/). I was reading their mission statement and freaked when it included a quote from Alex Jones. I only knew of Alex Jones, the conspiracy nut job, and immediately questioned why a site for advancing in depth journalism would quote someone more delusional than Glenn Beck. The editor quickly replied and educated me on the non-crank Alex Jones. The one who wrote this book, which I totally would have avoided due ...more

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Oct 17, 2012 DT rated it really liked it

I really enjoyed this book. It's very short (~150 pages). Its thesis is about how important it is to have 'core news' (which is not entertainment news, or health news), but on investigative and eyewitness journalism that tries to report the facts accurately. The author argues that journalists should not just report "So and so said X, So and so said Y", but to should also indicate who is actually telling the truth.

Mixed in with the analysis is a short history of the newspaper industry and the ...more

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Jul 31, 2012 Jason rated it it was amazing

Alex S. Jones draws to light what many of us already know... good reading thus far... Jones is objective as a mediator of the truth and candidly relates small-town newspaper takeovers as well as the larger circulators. He knows the history and shares it well. Hopefully more people take notice. Accountability news is beyond necessary in a democracy. Without it, we lose many of our freedoms and get robbed by those in public service and corporations. This is a must read book.

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Apr 16, 2010 Lynn rated it really liked it

Interesting discussion of the newspaper and its history. Very good and very accurate. So far there is no replacement. News from TV and the web generally originates with newspapers and newspaper journalists. In depth news almost exclusively comes from newspapers.

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Feb 18, 2016 Sharon Beers rated it it was amazing

A good look at the consequences of the demise of print journalism.

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Nov 30, 2009 Michael rated it liked it

Fascinating, but most likely because I'm interested in the topic so much. I learned so much from this.

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Nov 11, 2009 Jean rated it really liked it

4.5

Interesting and thought provoking....

Similar ideas to the future of libraries..... lots of information, but what is valid? How does all this affect democracy?

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Feb 06, 2010 Adam rated it it was ok

Shelves: non-fiction, media

Intelligent analysis of news business, but too much skewed for my taste through a prism of despair about the future of journalism.

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Jul 05, 2010 Michele rated it it was amazing

Very thoughtful.

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About Alex S. Jones

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Alex S. Jones is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who has been director of the Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government since July 1, 2000. Jones is also a lecturer at the school, occupying the Laurence M. Lombard Chair in the Press and Public Policy.