FIXING JOURNALISM -- A look inside might help

While walking my dog yesterday, the landscape on a clear Northern California late spring afternoon got me to thinking about the whole enterprise of reinventing journalism to make it more relevant to current times and technologies.

It's not just a matter of externalities.

I think American journalists have long taken an 'us vs. them' attitude toward the outside world -- meaning those outside the charmed circle of writers, editors and others who know or are exploring the true picture. Maybe us vs them is too strong, but certainly us and them -- us on the outside looking in, them as the other, the ones we interview, write about, dissect.

Some of that is necessary, of course. A certain degree of skeptical distance is needed to do journalism. Otherwise, it rapidly descends in marketing pure and simple, aka pr.

Nothing wrong with pr or marketing. But if journalism is just a confused branch of marketing, it ain't much, and certainly not what it strives to be. At best, it's a good, sometimes great, way of helping to explain our world and our lives to ourselves. What's really happening, not what we wish, hope or believe is happening, in politics, business, the arts, our community, etc.

The point, looking forward, is learning to use what others are trying to tell us journalists -- that we've been too insular, too sure of ourselves, too distant from the concerns, beliefs and needs of many of those in our audiences. I'm not talking about pandering, or watering down, or doing market research, before writing or publishing stories. But more communications -- real, thoughtful, honest, open communications -- between journalists and the people and institutions they cover would help immeasurably, I think.

Another move forward for writers and reporters, and others in the broad journalism biz, would be to recognize that wisdom isn't our special purview. Neither is the ability to write and express interesting thoughts in interesting and relevant ways. That probably sounds kind of silly, but I think many journalists and professional writers of many stripes have felt that they had the magic gift of researching and writing, and others just didn't.

The funny thing is that now that the world's mad about emails, blogs and Tweets, all the world's a writing lab, and all (or so it sometimes seems) its inhabitants experimenters in a vast psych experiment.

Lots of crap gets written, of course (I'm hoping not on Flocks), lots of self-serving fluff, plenty of inane observations, etc. etc. But lots of rough poetry, many interesting insights, personal observations, jokes and ideas -- a lot to learn from. It turns out that the gift of gab isn't just doled out to the Irish (I'm part Irish, and many other parts tossed in as well) or a special tribe of folks known as journalists.

There's wisdom in watching the wisdom of crowds as it begins to build and blossom, and learning from some of the best of what it has to teach. I hope journalism catches some of that magic, and wisdom, and doesn't just blindly assume that if it's not part of 'us' it doesn't count.

Because that route, I think, will lead to irrelevance. And death, because nothing is more useless than irrelevant journalism.