Margaret Sullivan: ‘There is a moral component to a life in journalism’

When Margaret Sullivan began her storied career in journalism in the late 1970s, 7 in 10 Americans said they trusted the news, she reports. Coming of age just after the era of Watergate, she describes how exciting it was to work in a newsroom, a job that was not only enjoyable but also a vital part of civic life, especially on a local level. Local newspapers were financially successful then, and journalism offered a viable career path. “As a bonus, it struck me as exceedingly cool,” she says.

In her new memoir, “Newsroom Confidential: Lessons (and Worries) from an Ink-Stained Life,” Ms. Sullivan tells a very personal story about watching as her profession lost the public’s trust – today only 1 in 3 Americans say they trust the news. She draws on her experiences to trace some of the missteps that newspapers made as the digital age unfolded, disrupting both its business models and the flow of information. 

Covering the nitty-gritty of local civic life for over three decades at The Buffalo News, she became one of the first women to lead a major regional newspaper. As the public editor at The New York Times, she was tasked to investigate and critique the organization’s reporting from the inside. And more recently, Ms. Sullivan was the media columnist for The Washington Post, where she continued to think and write about the broader issues confronting journalism.

“Much as I love and value my craft, I’m worried,” she writes at the outset. “I am sickened at the damage done by hyperpartisan media and distressed about the failures of the reality-based press. We’re in deep trouble. How did we Americans become trapped in this thicket of lies, mistrust, and division? Can we slash our way out?”

A manifesto as much as a memoir, Ms. Sullivan’s book has some suggestions. A major theme is her call to press forward with a renewed focus on journalism’s role in a free society. “The reality-based press has to reorient itself, framing its core purpose as serving democracy,” she writes.

She spoke recently with the Monitor; the conversation has been lightly edited and condensed.

What have been some of the major challenges confronting journalism over the course of your career? 

I would say there are a couple different things. In the digital age – and certainly before that, although in a different way – we’ve become very oriented toward what gets the most traffic, what gets the most engagement, what gets the most clicks. A lot of it is driven by the profit motive, since most news organizations are owned by corporations, and they are profit-making entities, and so they do have to think about that stuff.

But that should not be the first thing we think about. The first thing we think about should be: “How do we serve the public?” and “How do we best play our constitutionally protected role in society?” I have seen my role in recent years as trying to call journalists to their higher purposes. We’re not here to generate clicks. We’re here to serve the public, and we’re here to play an important role in the workings of democracy. 

But one of the distressing parts is the fact that it’s harder to do this. Local newspapers, which had been the engine of local news in most regions, have taken a huge hit as their business models, based on print advertising, completely disintegrated. Newsrooms have shrunk so shockingly in size. At one time, a typical regional newspaper may have had 200 or 300 people in the newsroom. And now the much more typical number is 50, 60 people. And then maybe there was a second newspaper in town, ... but it’s gone now. So you just can’t do the same job covering all the important things that are happening.

You also explore one of the traditional values of journalism, objectivity. Do you think the idea of objectivity has distorted the way many news organizations cover the news? 

I would say that there’s also a couple of different ways to think about objectivity. One is that all it means is approaching a story with impartiality and with an open mind. And who can argue with that? I think that’s exactly what we should be doing.

But there’s a kind of performative “both-sides-ing” of political content, which is always really disappointing to see. So I think where objectivity gets more problematic is the way it has come to be understood by some journalists, where it often means to just report everything down the middle, and to be sort of neutral – not just impartial, but actually neutral, no matter what the subject matter is. 

I don’t think that actually works well at a time when democracy itself is threatened. You can’t really cover people who oppose democratic norms and people who support democratic norms and then treat them equally. I mean, we’re just not doing our jobs if we do that.

One of the things I’ve started doing is not using the word objectivity so much, but rather trying to use words that are less argument-inducing, such as impartiality, fairness, accuracy, public spiritedness. Objectivity for a number of people, and I think particularly younger journalists, journalists of color, anybody who might find the old idea of objectivity as “the view from nowhere” – they find that very problematic because they think that we should actually stand for something.

I’ve come around to thinking that we should actually stand for something, too. And among the things we should stand for are equality under the law, press rights, decency, democratic norms. I think it’s actually remiss if we don’t stand for and stand up for these things. 

You quoted the Nobel Peace Prize recipient Maria Ressa, the Filipina journalist, who said, “In the battle for facts, in a battle for truth, journalism is activism.” Do you see reporting the news as a form of activism?

When I quote her in the book, I don’t think she means, and I certainly don’t mean, carrying a picket sign or going to bat for a candidate. I don’t believe in that. But at a time when the very purpose of journalism is on the line, and when journalists are threatened and they’re disparaged and all of that, I think it makes quite a bit of sense to stand up for our craft and not be afraid to do that. So it’s not traditional activism as I see it. It’s just an awareness that we can’t be passive, and that we need to have some ideals and live by them.

What has encouraged you about the future of journalism? 

If you define local news very broadly, there are some good things happening. There’s the rise of relatively new nonprofit newsrooms that are digital only. There’s growing philanthropic support for local journalism. I also think there’s more awareness now on the part of government officials, and even on part of the public, that local news, and news in general, need public support. All of these things are good and relatively new. 

The workforce has also become much more diverse. You see so many talented young people of diverse backgrounds who are entering the field and bringing their own skills and knowledge and experiences to what they’re doing. I’m always very heartened by spending time with young journalists.

There is a moral component to a life in journalism, and we can embrace that. I encourage people to go into journalism. I still think it’s a great way to spend your life. And, you know, it really is a life commitment in so many ways. It’s not just a job. It’s a calling, and it’s imperfect, and we’ve screwed it up a lot. But I still think that it’s an absolute necessity that journalists be at their best.