I hadn’t really planned on a career in journalism. Years ago, a college friend suggested I might like to work on the student newspaper, so I joined the paper’s staff and later became the editor. I was an English major with few practical ideas on what I might do after graduation, so journalism seemed like my best bet. After college, I did some freelancing and edited a tiny newspaper in Milwaukee, then volunteered at a community radio station and along the way got a master’s degree in journalism. This led to my first full-time job as a reporter at Wisconsin Public Radio.
For journalists of my generation, this was a fairly typical way to break into the profession: start small, get some clips, and do whatever you can to get your foot in the door. The cities where I lived still had morning and afternoon newspapers, and journalism was a thriving industry. And now? Newspapers are in free fall, radio audiences are declining, and the internet has dramatically reconfigured what it means to be a “journalist.”
On this week’s show, “In Journalism We Trust,” we talk to some people who are rethinking journalism in this rapidly changing media landscape. New York Times podcaster Ezra Klein explains why he values transparency more than objectivity as his guiding principle. Deborah Blum, who runs MIT’s Knight Science Journalism Program, defends the tradition of fierce, independent reporting. And Rob Gurwitt describes how he turned an email newsletter for a few friends into one of the primary news sources for his New England community. They don’t agree on everything, but I found each of their stories incredibly inspiring.
—Steve