Across America, newspapers that have defined their cities for over a century are rapidly failing, their circulations plummeting even as opinion-soaked Web outlets like the Huffington Post thrive. Meanwhile, nightly news programs shock viewers with stories of horrific crime and celebrity scandal, while the smug sarcasm and shouting of pundits like Glenn Beck and Keith Olbermann dominate cable television. Is it any wonder that young people are turning away from the news entirely, trusting comedians like Jon Stewart as their primary source of information on current events?In the face of all the problems plaguing serious news, What Is Happening to News explores the crucial question of how journalism lost its way—and who is responsible for the ragged retreat from its great traditions.
"Jack Fuller is in many ways the renaissance man of modern American publishing. He’s been a law school graduate, a Supreme Court clerk, he’s an accomplished novelist, an expert on jazz. In the newspaper business he has been, at various points, the editorial page editor, the editor and ultimately the publisher of The Chicago Tribune . He’s a remarkable figure, and this is his second book in the last 10 years or so on journalism. The first one was called News Values and was a very sensible approach to questions like “what is news about?” and “how do we make the choices we need to make ethically?” It was a handbook for the way news used to be practised. This book – the title of which, What is Happening to News , I confess I don’t love – is about emerging research in neuroscience about how people consume news, how they react to news and how that is changing. It directly confronts issues such as shortened attention spans, heightened emotional stimuli and bombardment by multiple media. The book talks very intelligently, and quite creatively, about how news is going to need to be significantly re-conceived if it is to continue to get through to people and break through all of the stimuli that surround people in the modern information world. The book is frankly stronger on description than it is on prescription, and I don’t think anybody has definitive answers on this yet. But Fuller is right to point people to this research and to suggest that a new grammar of news is almost certainly emerging and is going to need to emerge. That’s not really his point. His point is more how do you deal with the fact that video is such an emotionally more powerful medium? How do you convey subtlety in a world dominated by people who are shouting at each other, and who are incredibly easily distracted? He also points out that telling stories by talking about human beings, for instance, as opposed to abstract policies, is not cheap but may be essential."
