The Crisis in American Journalism and the Conservative Response

Mary Grabar and Tina Trent examine the promise and perils for conservative journalists of the current historical moment.This three-part report begins with observations by Alexis de Tocqueville about the virtues of America's free press in the 1830's and ends with an examination of the vigorous conservative citizen journalist movement inspired by the Internet. Over the course of the twentieth century, however, the media establishment increasingly tied its fortunes to academia....
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Mary Grabar and Tina Trent examine the promise and perils for conservative journalists of the current historical moment.This three-part report begins with observations by Alexis de Tocqueville about the virtues of America's free press in the 1830's and ends with an examination of the vigorous conservative citizen journalist movement inspired by the Internet. Over the course of the twentieth century, however, the media establishment increasingly tied its fortunes to academia. Credentialing elite journalists became the purview of left-wing educators as journalism education itself became a social justice and progressive reform activity. This is the state of journalism education today at elite schools, such as Columbia. But the news about academia and journalism is not all bad. Many educators continue teaching the non-ideological craft of reporting news. A thriving culture of traditional journalism training exists at conservative and Christian schools. And conservative journalists were among the first to grasp the potential of the Internet and establish new online publications that are now reaching vast audiences.