Confession: I was ready to not like the new report from Free Press on “Saving the News: Toward a National Journalism Strategy.” Yeesh: a national journalism strategy, when we can barely figure out how to use Twitter? Seemed a bit presumptuous.
The first sentence of the report didn’t help, either:”Journalism is a public good.” Really? Britney? Octomom? Glenn Beck? Public goods? Double yeesh.
Sure enough after that boldly wrong-headed statement, the Free Press guys = Victor Pickard, Josh Stearns, and Craig Aaron – pulled back, and hard. After that, they made it quite clear they were talking about something a wee bit more specific, aka “quality journalism” – you know, stuff with facts and thinking.