Donald W. Reynolds Journalism Institute

Hurley 08 Symposium

On April 4, 2008, the Missouri School of Journalism and the National Press Club celebrated their joint centennial years by inviting panelists from Ghana, Britain, Canada and Sweden to talk about some of the innovations that offer promise for the next 100 years.

“Concerns about the future of the press are not just American; they’re global,” according to Geneva Overholser, the Curtis B. Hurley Chair in Public Affairs Reporting at the Missouri School of Journalism, and program moderator.  “Some of the solutions emerging in other countries see little or no discussion here.”
Highlights of the conference:

Liss Jeffrey: “Media literacy is a cornerstone for effective citizenship in the 21st century.”

According to Jeffrey, media literacy classes are mandatory in Canada:  “In Canada you don’t make the assumption that you do or CAN control the media environment. Why? Because we not only have Canadian channels but we have all the U.S. channels …. It’s just not a possibility. You don’t go to the FCC and say, ‘BAN those wardrobe malfunctions’…. That’s just not the way it works. … So the idea was: What we need to do is  …train those students who are citizens-to-be in how to think critically about any environment that they may run across.”

Karl Erik Gustafsson on state subsidies for media: “I’m going to talk about the forbidden fruit for you. The forbidden fruit from Sweden....”

Gustafsson outlined a “system of selective subsides given by the state to newspapers in weak market positions.”
“I can tell you [Sweden] is a wonderful place to work. And I feel entirely optimistic about the future of journalism and I know that not many people are. So there may be something …that we’re doing right.

“Due to the subsidies, the newspaper industry has become more healthy than before – more competition, more new initiatives coming on….The government can’t complain, even if you criticize them on the front page every day. It’s only market position [that determines the subsidy.]”

Certainly Professor Gustafsson’s subject is anathema to many Americans, and he understand it to be so: “Sweden is a very small country 9 million people, but it’s a great newspaper nation. Eighty percent of all people men and women alike read a newspaper every day.” Sweden had a strong and early freedom-of-the-press law, said Gustafsson, but was persuaded to adopt the system after advertising revenues decline and newspapers began to falter. The plan prohibits state interference, he said, and has lasted for 30 years, “So we are not expelled from paradise for tasting the fruit.” Three categories of media receive subsidies, with number two newspapers in metropolitan markets getting about $10 million a years, provincial number-two newspapers about $2.5 million each and smaller weeklies –  such as a Spanish-language newspaper for Latin American immigrants in Sweden -- getting about half a million. Comparing the size of the program to an expenditure with which Americans are more familiar, he said:  “If you take a look at the system – the total budget of the two democratic presidential candidates for president and the [annual] Swedish subsidy for the press is about equal size.”

Alan Rusbridger on ownership that places profit-making below other values: “My feeling at the moment is that the world is a very interesting place and is highly connected with our lives, and that the readers understand this...”

“...And that at a time when most American papers are withdrawing from the world and closing down foreign bureaus, the Guardian ought to be swimming against the tide and opening up foreign bureaus….That’s the kind of conversation I can have with the Scott Trust. I don’t have to go and argue about the money…or try to make a financial case for it.”

Alan Rusbridger on the Guardian’s commitment to transparency: “I think if you don’t have a proprietor, you can be much more open about what you do, and I think in the world in which we exist toady  that is right and it’s also unavoidable.  I think the Internet exists as a giant goldfish bowl which will scrutinize everything we do.  So I think you have a choice of either doing this to yourself and allowing that conversation in or just sitting there and waiting for it to be done to you.

For Oppong-Nkrumah, government support for media is precisely what his colleagues had to struggle mightily to overcome.

Until 16 years ago, he said, Ghana’s only radio was state-sponsored, When Joy FM started, in 1995, its chief executive was arrested and locked up. But now his station is part of a thriving media landscape. “In many of our programs we take a critical position on establishment policies, with the hope of causing leadership to better the status quo,” he said.

“Our programs …encourage direct interaction between people and government, and careful analysis of issues…so that the ordinary Ghanaian can begin to factor into the public discourse.” Through Joy FM, “ the thoughts of the ordinary Ghanaians, in their homes and in their cars and in their offices -- go directly to affect government policy “ through phone calls, text messages, radio and online.  His listeners, he said, tend to be the “working middle class, the kind of people who are working, listening…have weight and authority to speak on the issues – not someone who wants to be cynical about something” or make a joke.