I think it would be very hard to have a functioning democratic state without journalism of some kind. I may be overstating my industry’s importance, but if you don’t know what the government is doing, or how the machinery of the state is operating, or what the lives of the citizens are like, then how can you participate in your democracy? And you can’t rely on the government to tell you. So even though most journalism is not vital to democracy, if there was no journalism, there would be very little to stop the government from behaving how it liked.
I also think that in my field of journalism, science writing, there’s a lot of value in translating abstruse-but-important research and thinking into readable or even enjoyable material for laypeople. Also, you can convince people of things that are true, and help people make good decisions (I hope).
Plus, things like criticism are helpful for readers in allowing them to find the books/films/theatre they might enjoy (and I think they have a value even given the existence of crowdsourced review sites like Rotten Tomatoes). And, of course, people enjoy reading/watching, and that is a good in itself.
For someone like me who has no other skills than interviewing clever people and writing down what they say, I suspect that journalism is one of the places I could do the most good, because I can do it well. Of course, all the good outcomes I just mentioned are reliant on the journalist in question being good at their job, but that’s probably true of all careers, isn’t it?
On measuring it: re democracy at least, I guess you could try to do some sort of study looking at countries with strong independent journalism vs those without, but they would be so horribly confounded I doubt you could get good numbers on it.
I think it would be very hard to have a functioning democratic state without journalism of some kind. I may be overstating my industry’s importance, but if you don’t know what the government is doing, or how the machinery of the state is operating, or what the lives of the citizens are like, then how can you participate in your democracy? And you can’t rely on the government to tell you. So even though most journalism is not vital to democracy, if there was no journalism, there would be very little to stop the government from behaving how it liked.
I also think that in my field of journalism, science writing, there’s a lot of value in translating abstruse-but-important research and thinking into readable or even enjoyable material for laypeople. Also, you can convince people of things that are true, and help people make good decisions (I hope).
Plus, things like criticism are helpful for readers in allowing them to find the books/films/theatre they might enjoy (and I think they have a value even given the existence of crowdsourced review sites like Rotten Tomatoes). And, of course, people enjoy reading/watching, and that is a good in itself.
For someone like me who has no other skills than interviewing clever people and writing down what they say, I suspect that journalism is one of the places I could do the most good, because I can do it well. Of course, all the good outcomes I just mentioned are reliant on the journalist in question being good at their job, but that’s probably true of all careers, isn’t it?
On measuring it: re democracy at least, I guess you could try to do some sort of study looking at countries with strong independent journalism vs those without, but they would be so horribly confounded I doubt you could get good numbers on it.