SPJ Austin Jobs Board

The SPJ newsletter talked about a new campaign, Report it now.. If you click Tell your local media to Report it Now! it automatically pulls up all the local news organizations in your area. You can email a form letter, edit the form, or paste your own message. I agree with the form-letter message:

Restore the public trust in your news coverage

I am deeply concerned with the current state of the news media and with the quality of your news coverage. Information is the lifeblood of democracy. We depend on our media to provide us with what we need to know, so that we can make informed decisions about the things that affect our lives.

Over the past several years, I’ve seen you devote plenty of time to whatever is the latest celebrity scandal or sensationalized missing persons case. Coverage of these stories may be good for ratings or advertising dollars, but they have absolutely no impact on our lives, and they obscure the real issues that are crucial to our families and our communities.

The press should use its power to uncover things that are important and new and that change community thinking. You should not squander this constitutional freedom on pseudo scandals that research shows may build an audience or on one-sided reporting.

Instead, the stories you report should answer our needs as citizens, not just the interests of insiders, or the political or economic system. Your news coverage should monitor all the key centers of power in the community – including but not limited to government – and ask the questions that are key to uncovering the truth.

It’s time to restore the public trust in your news coverage through accurate and impartial reporting.