Journalism's In-House Critics

Like many another established institution, the U.S. press tends to suffer criticism badly--even when it comes from within. Editors do often read with respect the magisterial preachments of the Columbia Journalism Review, which for ten years has ranged with cool competence over the triumphs and trials of American journalism. But the C.J.R., published bimonthly by Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism, has neither the staff nor the space for consistent critiques of how the press performs at the local level.

In the past three years, a new kind of journalism review has sprung up in nearly a dozen U.S. cities. Unlike the well-documented, professorial C.J.R., the newcomers are blunt, angry and gossipy in their exposure of faults, real or imagined. Most are financially fragile, physically unprepossessing and dependent on volunteered talent. Execution has been uneven, but editors are beginning to wince as they read.

Raising Doubts. The first, and probably still the best, of the new in-house critics is the Chicago Journalism Review, a TIME-sized monthly launched after the stormy Democratic Convention in 1968 to fight "news management, news manipulation and assaults on the integrity of the working press." Its favorite subject is the generally uncritical attitude of Chicago's papers toward the political machine of Mayor Richard Daley. When Black Panthers Fred Hampton and Mark Clark were killed in a Chicago shootout two years ago, the dailies at first did not question the official version: that the Panthers fired first and brought the fatal fusillade on themselves. But the Review devoted a spe- cial 16-page issue to the incident and raised many doubts, which now seem amply justified; last summer a grand jury indicted city officials for obstructing justice in covering up what it decided was an unprovoked case of police overkill. The November issue of the Review included a report on the cozy, profitable relationship between several local sport reporters and Marje Everett, former principal owner of Arlington Park and Washington Park race tracks.

Chicago's Review has spawned a host of imitators, including the Philadelphia Journalism Review, St. Louis Journalism Review, Review of Southern California Journalism (Long Beach), Hawaii Journalism Review, Rhode Island's Journalists Newsletter, Thorn ("A Connecticut Valley Media Review") and The Unsatisfied Man (Denver). None so far has had the impact of Chicago's Review.

Contributors are mostly junior staffers from local papers: criticism has often been narrow and carping, more concerned with working conditions than the papers' performance; advocacy sometimes is so one-sided as to seem irresponsible. But some valid questions have been raised. The Long Beach Review attacked local papers for rejecting an article on the use of dumdum bullets by the city's police. The Philadelphia Journalism Review took the monthly magazine Philadelphia to task for refusing to run an unflattering pre-election investigative report that it had assigned on Frank Rizzo, the city's tough police commissioner who is now mayor-elect.

The most ambitious of the new reviews is New York City's [MORE],*a tabloid monthly that made its debut last June. Editor Richard Pollak, a former press writer for Newsweek, wrote in the first issue that [MORE] would cover the New York press "with the kind of tough-mindedness we think the press should, but seldom does, apply to its coverage of the world." Unlike the other reviews. [MORE] has tried to stake out a national constituency, since New York is the publishing center for the magazine industry.

Among its best efforts to date was a piece by Charlotte Curtis of the New York Times on the resignation of former Harper's editor Willie Morris last spring. She argued that the real reason Morris had to quit was his erratic stewardship of the magazine, and not the financial interference he cited in his resignation statement. Though [MORE] sometimes misses the mark, its current issue contains a well-researched if slightly overstated article by the Institutional Investor's Chris Welles, condemning the New York Times for putting out "a business and financial section of astonishing mediocrity," which is dominated by "press releases, unembellished spot news and public relations trivia." Another article criticized the New York Daily News for altering Associated Press copy to delete negative testimony in FCC hearings on whether the paper should be allowed to keep the license for its New York television channel.

Kiss-and-Tell. As a rule, [MORE] does not allow a contributor to write about his own publication, in effect preventing both partisan gripes and possible reprisal. Newspaper chiefs complain with some justification that many of the new journalism reviews are primarily kiss-and-tell operations in which staffers write about personal grudges.

Most editors insist that they approve of the concept of journalism reviews. Although Denver Post Managing Editor John Rogers feels that The Unsatisfied Man contains "too much invective," he adds that "if we in journalism can't take criticism, we might as well close shop." Assistant Managing Editor Ben Bagdikian of the Washington Post, whose critique of the paper in the Columbia Journalism Review eventually led the Post to hire him, feels the review concept has "made it possible for professionals to talk about the press in a critical way without pussyfooting. These reviews have taken a look at sacred cows--sacred cows were all over the newsroom leaving what cows usually do--and have challenged the conventional wisdom of news selection." As the new reviews gain in stature and maturity, Bagdikian feels, they may be able to "strengthen those voices in the wilderness who really care about the profession."

*Named for the traditional newsman's slug at the bottom of each page of copy to indicate more is to come.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.