Journalism: If I Die Before I Wake

I wrote in this column several months ago that Hollywood is trying to save newspaper journalism... or newspapers are paying Hollywood to save themselves.

After finishing All the President's Men, which tells the true story of how Washington Post reporters Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward teamed to unravel the Watergate scandal under President Nixon, it is ever apparent the importance of journalism.

Where are the unnamed sources going to go if newspapers die? Are we going to get a mass of silhouetted figures with audio-adjusted voices? No, and here's why.

Journalists – nay, newspaper journalists – develop a personal relationship with their sources. It's somewhere between acquaintance and friend. Through these long-lasting relationships, journalists get inside information in exchange for maybe some positive press now and again. Or maybe that inside source has the same sense of morality and desire to expose injustice that propels all of us into the field.

Added to the personal touch is the anonymity provided only through newspaper reporting. While we all try to avoid unnamed sources, they are sometimes required. That, or in the case of Woodward and Bernstein, a confidential source approaches one under the agreement of lifetime anonymity.

Those conversations always happen between two people. There is a trust, a bond.

Television requires a field producer, a reporter and a cameraman at the very least. Do you think an anonymous source is going to come forward to all of that? I don't, which is why you never read or hear about a TV reporter going to jail for refusing to name a source.

We still have that in newspapers. It will never happen in television, and I wonder what we, the public, will miss if newspapers go the way of the dinosaurs.

Newspapers were created to provide a check on government to avoid corruption. To ensure that, in the constitution, journalists are protected against revealing confidential sources. Without the anonymous sources, government corruption is much more likely.

Television never breaks a story because they don't get those confidential sources. The public doesn't understand that.

When you watch the local news tonight, know that what you see was probably first reported here at the Times. If it's national, some newspaper broke it, the wire picked it up, TV saw it, and landed the “exclusive” interview, which really means the first television interview. The story, though, was revealed in the good-old black-and-white. Television has been enjoying this luxury for quite some time.

Because of that, it also doesn't have the staffing required to establish the necessary relationships with sources. There are no beats at a TV station. You aren't going to find the Fort Drum reporter or the political reporter on your local news. You aren't going to get insider information, and sources certainly aren't calling the TV station first. They're calling their favorite reporter, and that person works for a newspaper.

They're calling that more-than-an-acquaintance, less-than-a-friend person. They're calling maybe the only person who gave them ink when they first ran for public office. They're giving the one person who shook their hand at a presser when no one knew their name a chance to break a big story simply because newspaper journalists are on the job, at the functions every day. The one or two field reporters on TV can't make those connections. They're concerned with two things: a sound bite and getting something on-air quickly. They rush on the scene, hit quickly and rarely anything more.

Television, I argue, relies – yes, relies – on newspapers to develop the story, and then they stick whomever on camera for that sound bite. Why do you think newspapers always get the full story?

It's because we know the sources and they know us. They trust us. They don't trust the camera and the reporter who only comes around when something big and bad happens. They like the reporter who calls the office everyday, knows how the family is and probably even wishes a happy birthday.

We are careful and deliberate, and we develop a special rapport with sources that cannot be matched by sticking a camera in someone's face hours after the morning papers broke the story.

I just hope you all recognize this before it's too late. Our clock is rapidly approaching midnight.