HARRIS PROPOSES REVIEW OF PROFITS vs. JOURNALISM

By: Bill Kirtz Hutchens Commission Would Be Model


CAMBRIDGE, MA. -- Jay Harris, who resigned as San Jose Mercury
News publisher to protest editorial cutbacks during difficult
economic times, proposes a blue ribbon panel to examine what he
sees as the battle between newspaper profits and editorial
quality.

He told a Harvard Faculty Club dinner of journalists and
academics Wednesday that a group similar to the 1947 Hutchens
Commission on Freedom of the Press could focus national attention
on what he calls the problem of "unfettered market forces." The
16-year Knight Ridder executive resigned in February, charging
the company with a bottom line focus that undercuts journalistic
performance.

"We should never accept the notion that unfettered market forces
will produce the best results," Harris said, comparing a paper's
commitment to editorial quality to a company's research and
development budget. "In journalism, the heart of the enterprise
is human capital -- primarily journalists," he said.

The Hutchens Commission's call for a more active and responsible
press spawned the social responsibility theory of the press. Many
of its recommendations have been become parts of journalism
ethics codes.

Harris said such a similar commission could move the profits-
quality debate outside the journalistic arena. He hopes that such
a group would come up with a standard of reference that the
public could use to see if they are well served by their
newspapers. Harris said this panel -- made up of former
politicians, university presidents, and journalism executives --
could propose voluntary steps for the media to take to better
serve the public.

"Newspaper companies can't produce an increasing level of profits
without cutting more and more out of the organization," he said
during a question-and-answer session. "They need to be re-
positioned in the public marketplace."

Noting Knight Ridder's recent claim that top-tier financial
performance is not incompatible with top-tier journalism, Harris
said that if profits come not from growth but by cutting "the
means that produce first-rate journalism, they are incompatible.
Newspapers are a trust, not just a business," he said. "News and
readers' interests do not contract with declining advertising.
Nor does our responsibility to the public get smaller as revenue
declines or newsprint becomes more expensive."



Bill Kirtz (kirtzcb@hotmail.com) teaches journalism at Northeastern University in Boston.



Copyright 2001, Editor & Publisher.