It is first essential that we look at enterprise Journalism. There are certain innate realities faced by enterprise Journalism simply because of its nature, very little or nothing can be done about these realities. Enterprise Journalism is usually done on grass root levels and therefore may not merit enough interest from the masses. Shoemaker and Reese (1996, p. 270) concluded that the larger the area covered by a medium more its contents would be required to be standardized. Given the varying interests and tastes of the people messages must also be broadened along with geographic area, and therefore the content is unlikely to take chances and make innovations. Shoemaker and Reese (1996) also describes in detail the deep impact the ideology of the ruling elite in the influence of media content in chapter 9 ‘The influence of ideology‘, this will be discussed a little later but it is also further summarized and theorized in chapter 11, where Shoemaker and Reese (1996, p. 270) ascertain that factors like cultural significance, a better political system and a higher economy causes one country to appear more in the less privileged countries’ mass media. Therefore a significant factor for establishing the criteria for newsworthiness is economic political and cultural significance. This comes in the way of enterprise Journalism as grass root news sources and other unconventional news sources may be overlooked in the effort to cover more significant countries. Enterprise Journalism therefore is something that is posed by a lot of challenges inherent to its nature, but to add to this it faces many more overwhelming external challenges that have systematically established themselves in stages and spheres in the media to create an hostile environment and system. Therefore we need to look at some of these seemingly overwhelming challenges and more importantly who it is that is most responsible for this dire situation.
To understand these factors and the functional way in which it manifests itself, let us begin with the more apparent factors that keep Journalists from pursuing sources they would want and rather make due with what is more readily available. Today there seems to be a change in the ethics in Journalism with editors wanting to give the people what they want rather than what they need to be aware off. Hallin (1996, p.254) in his chapter ‘Commercialism and professionalism in the American news media’ discusses whether this kind of attitude could lead to a decline of public life or an age of multiple voices and more democracy. Hallin (1996, p.247) reviews the recent changes and explains them through two schools of thought, the readership theory and the stockholder theory. The readership theory claims that as a response to the decline in newspaper readership the Journalists must give the ‘customers’ what they want. The stockholder theory indicates that since the trend of ‘public’ ownership has become the norm with the selling of stocks, the media can be treated as any business for the sole purpose of profit. Another factor that restricts enterprise Journalism is the fact that they are not given the opportunity to go to places where they would be able to find unconventional sources as Davies (2008, p.56) explains that in present times it is common that budding Journalists after a Journalism degree are filled with hopes and enthusiasm of how they are going to impact society and use their unique creativity to make the masses aware, only to end up in a production line in a news factory chained to a keyboard working out trivia and clichés to fill the newspaper. Shoemaker and Reese (1996, p.161) suggests that the present trends question the top-down organization structure as it is extremely restricting Journalists and the traditional freedom they have had and needed for Journalism. Shoemaker and Reese (1996, p.145) resound the fact that the economic objectives of the company are intensified by the stockholder form of ownership, and that the resulting larger firms tend to take fewer risks than the smaller ones. This is a negative thing for enterprise Journalism, which by nature needs to invest in creative ideas of Journalists. Shoemaker and Reese (1996, p.267) also ascertained that according to the present model, middle level media personnel like editors pay more attention to the organization’s goals and thereby necessarily the business side of the organization, than reporters who care more for their sources thereby bringing about constant conflict between editors and reporters. Therefore when there is a conflict between an organization’s need to make profits and its editorial routine an editor who controls both may make the argument to side with the business side of the organization claiming it is more immediate. Given that economic factors take precedence over ethical factors it becomes largely about satisfying consumer needs. This results in a pattern as Shoemaker and Reese (1996, p.269) conclude that with a media organization striving to promote itself within a target audience, the more they become tuned and prominently reflect content that are of interest to that particular target audience. This further develops into a pattern wherein programming that attracts the right audience for the advertisers are produced and preferred and programming that does not attract the right audience may be abandoned.
The justifications for the manifestations of these patterns are not solely economic but the time factor is also as significant. A major reason that enterprise Journalism is fast diminishing is simply because there is no time for it in today’s production process of news. There are so many readily available sources and coupled with the fact that Journalists are not given enough time to practically do any investigating or checking even on how much of the information handed to them is true. As Shoemaker and Reese (1996, p.262) points out that readily available sources like corporations may result in Journalists favoring them as sources as Journalists are racing against time. This will result in favoring certain types of sources over a period of time. Davies (2008, p.69) illuminates the danger of this situation explaining that for all Journalists these days the sole imperative is not getting an accurate insight into a given story but rather the only concern they can possibly be worried about is to file their stories as immediately as possible, as the present situation demands so. Therefore they spend very less time with their work and much less time if any at all on checking out the accuracy of the information or the legitimacy of the source, this is exactly the kind of environment where rapid repackaging takes place. Davies (2008, p.64) also illustrates that ascertaining truth is one of the primary functions of Journalism, arguing that the object of Journalism itself is truth and central to this objective is the function of checking thereby by taking time away we are taking truth away as well. Shoemaker and Reese (1996, pp.268-269) reflect that sources with economic and political power have the potential to influence the news in a system where Journalists bank on readily available sources, these sources generally hire regular staff exclusively to get information to the media quickly. The media is thus dominated by “official” sources, that influence and involve themselves in issues rather than events. Journalists are also expected to provide the same amount of news on a slow news day and because of an increasing dependence on public relations practitioners may revert to accepting their news rather than come up with enterprising stories. A shocking piece of research by Davies (2008, pp.52-53) gives us an insight into the level at which these readily available sources influence news content and the amount of it that makes the news. What Davies did was commission specialist researchers from the department of Journalism at Cardiff University to take four prestigious newspapers and sample the stories that made it as news. The researchers found that 60% of the stories that made the news was completely or to a large degree out of wire copy and PR material, while 20% of clearly showed elements of wire copy where material had been added, they were unable to ascertain the source of about 8% of the material leaving only 12% of the news, that was actually produced by the reporters. Another elusive reason that enterprise Journalism is diminishing is because Journalists cover events more than they do issues, as this more easily justified given the nature of issues and events, furthermore cover events has in itself been made a routine (Shoemaker and Reese 1996, p.266).
The extent to which enterprise Journalism is being diminished makes it apparent that there are more forces at play than mere economical factors and time constraints. There are other less noticeable yet more prominent factors that challenge enterprise Journalism. The environment that Journalists have to work with discourage enterprise Journalism. Ownership is quite an influential factor in the creation of this environment whether it is negative or positive towards enterprise Journalism. Shoemaker and Reese (1996, p.166) observed that media scholars had paid close attention to many companies being owned by one person or one entity and concluded that absentee owners tend not to take an aggressive news approach or a strict editorial policy, which resulted in the community interests taking a back seat to corporate and economic factors. McNair (1998, p.24) lists three ways in which ownership dominance influences the working of the media. He notes that the first category is done through economic measures in quite a direct way by disregarding unwanted or inconvenient stories. The second category is done through political means, pointing out that even the governments of the most liberal countries impose laws and censoring measures on the media in a bid to regulate the media and sometimes even intimidate them. The third category that is used as a means to dominate the media is cultural where the Journalists recruited or promoted to influential positions are from a minority and privileged sector of society and have come to form value systems that in line with the ideologies of the dominant groups of society namely the economic, political and cultural elites. This is the kind of environment where enterprise Journalism goes from being hard to nearly impossible. Shoemaker and Reese (1996, p.169) says that for an organization to establish and maintain control it is essential for the organization to socialize its workers to the routines and in cases of handling situations that have not yet been manipulated into a convenient set of routines then the organization enforces the reporter to act and maybe even think in a certain way. This is done through reinforcement and a reward system while there may even be cases where those that do not comply are either demoted or fired. Given that the control is established through reinforcement both positive and negative, it influences a reporter at a very deep level and he may also feel like changing his ideology because he honestly feels that’s the ‘truth’. Shoemaker and Reese (1996, p.265) arrives at a number of conclusions that link reporters from the routines, which are significant to enterprise Journalism. They point out that the longer an individual works for an organization that much more socialized is the individual to the policies of that organization. They also point out that the more a reporter adapt to the routines of the organization the more their work is likely to be used which actually changes what Journalism is and what its function is. They also came up with the hypothesis that the more a reporter incorporates the routines of the organization and as part of his work the more professional he is thought of by his co-workers. Venturing a little bit deeper, leads us into another set of factors that form a bridge between all these factors and the final set. It is the organization that hires a Journalist, what is the basis of this selection process Shoemaker and Reese (1996, p.264) found that some employers preferred those with majors in Journalism, while other employers wanted those with majors in liberal arts, more specifically American studies. They also ascertained those who had different “communication” college degrees produced different content than those who had other majors. Another important attribute that in the present system they highlighted is that the role Journalists see themselves in largely impacts the content they produce. Therefore whether they see themselves as disseminating information or interpreting to the masses what others do, or as adversaries to the powerful, it will express itself in their content, thus if these roles are defined to them by the owners and the organization, it is that entity that has a large influence on the content. The most serious danger right now to enterprise Journalism is from what Shoemaker and Reese (1996, p.266) call “pack Journalism”, which is the causes different Journalists to share their ideas looking mainly for each other’s confirmation about news judgments and to observe each other, this is mainly due to editors that question the coverage of a story that is different from another news organizations coverage of that story. Therefore the more Journalists read each others story and depend on their counterparts for confirmation, the harder it is going to be for a Journalist to take up a story that would be enterprising.
Finally the last set of factors that it leads up to deals with how this situation came about, in spite of the fact that Journalism in theory was meant to combat these exact patterns in society. One could say it is lack of vigilance and that may have played a role in some part, but it takes a lot to put the way such a prominent field as Journalism functions in exactly the opposite direction it set out. Shoemaker and Reese (1996) establish the most influential factor is the economic and political elite that subtly brought about a system that insulates them and ensures that things stay they way they are. This coupled with the quickly changing kind of ownership of media organizations create a strong shell that forms a concrete basis so that spheres in the between not only stay the same but also continue to move in the direction it is currently moving. Shoemaker and Reese (1996) illuminates the fact that ultimately it is the owner that has the power in a media organization even though it flows down in parts to those below him. They also shed light on the fact that a large percentage of news comes from governmental and business sources, or what is termed as “official” channels. Individual sources, which are essential for enterprise Journalism have little access or knowledge of dealing with the media. They also examine how minorities are underrepresented, and conclude that the more a minority has acculturated to the majority the better his/her prospects and socio-economic level is. They mention that there are more people with high status than low status jobs in television characters. They note that in an elite medium there are less or no workers similar to its general population. They point out that the more a country’s government faces criticism from the media the more the media is tried to be controlled by the government.
Therefore enterprise Journalism is fast moving towards extinction and the challenges it faces are huge and at a deep level, to survive it would have to face the richest and the most powerful, not to mention them that make the laws. It is very likely that if it does not survive then there will have to be a new definition of democracy that the then media can be a fourth estate too, I do not see the media being a fourth estate to what we now define as democracy, if enterprise Journalism is lost forever.
Reference list
Curran, J & Gurevitch, M (1996), Mass Media and Society, Arnold, London.
Davies, N (2008), Flat Earth News: An Award-winning Reporter Exposes Falsehood, Distortion and Propaganda, Chatto & Windus, London.
McNair, B (1998), The sociology of Journalism, Arnold, London.
Schlesinger, P (1978), Putting ‘reality’ together BBC News, Constable, London.
Shoemaker, P & Reese, S (1996), Mediating the Message: Theories of Influence on
Mass Media Content, Longman, New York.
Sunstein, C (2001), ‘Exposure To Other View Points is Vital to Democracy’, The Chronicle of Higher Education, Viewed 27 October 2008,
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