A Conversation with Geneva Overholser

Director, University of Southern California Annenberg School for Communication & Journalism
February 2011

The Carnegie-Knight Initiative is helping to transform journalism education as the news business undergoes radical change. Geneva Overholser, director of the Journalism School at USC Annenberg, is one of a dozen deans or directors tasked with ensuring that students learn the skills they need not just to adapt and survive, but to help create journalism’s future.

Prior to her post at USC Annenberg, Overholser held the Curtis B. Hurley Chair in Public Affairs Reporting for the Missouri School of Journalism.  She was editor of The Des Moines Register from 1988 to 1995, where she led the paper to a Pulitzer Prize for Public Service and has been ombudsman of The Washington Post, a member of the editorial board of The New York Times, a syndicated columnist for The Washington Post Writers Group, and a reporter for the Colorado Springs Sun.

How is the role played by journalism education institutions changing in the face of a rapid weakening of legacy media?
There is so much change going on that nobody knows for certain what the future is going to look like. Journalism schools must conduct the type of research that will help practicing journalists not just figure out the future, but play an active role in shaping it.

What are the most promising new economic models?
Traditional legacy media have been weakened, but I would not want to overstate their fate. They’re still here and must now pay attention to how they’ll sustain themselves in what will be an increasingly collaborative media ecology. In this new ecology you’ll have traditional providers of news, doing what they do best like investigative reporting that it’s hard for a local website to do. We’ll also see more new entrants like aggregators and a variety of players who will manipulate increasingly accessible data of all types in ways that were never before possible. Together the players in this ecology will meet individuals’ information needs.

Tell me about the importance of news literacy in this new ecology.
How an individual chooses to inform him or herself is more important than ever. We now need to be more careful about the consumption of news. In the old days, you might not agree with everything in the daily paper but fundamentally you could get a pretty well rounded accounting of the day’s events. Now people get their information from a variety of sources, and it’s incumbent upon them to understand what makes for a credible source – like who funds it and its political intentions.

Given the journalism schools’ expanded role as news providers is there a danger that universities could squelch controversial reporting?
We do need to be mindful that there are special pressures on those pursuing truthful and unfettered journalism within universities. All of us who work in journalism have to worry about whether advertisers are going to exert power on the editorial process or whether publishers’ friends will be treated differently. But universities have additional concerns about donors, community relations and students’ privacy. As more and more journalism is done by universities, we need to be mindful of these pressures and continue reporting without fear or favor.

Is the public interest still being served in the new news ecology?
The big actors like the New York Times or NPR are still serving the public interest. There’s been an enormous economic collapse of the underpinnings of traditional media, but they’re far from dead. The entry of more media creators is a great and a very democratizing phenomenon. But we do need to worry about new players’ accuracy. This extends to legacy media as well—NPR, CNN and others tweeted that Congresswoman Giffords had died immediately after the Tucson shootings. This doesn’t mean they misbehaved. Instead, it’s an indication that news moves so much faster and that as consumers, we have to be a bit more skeptical.

Do you think there’s a risk of losing some of journalism’s more traditional values as we all move toward an increasingly distributed, more digital world?
We’ve got to emphasize our commitments to the public interest, to being proportional, to verifying and attributing. Perhaps of greatest importance now is journalism’s commitment to transparency. We must show consumers how we reported so that they can better judge our work. We need to look at how we can constantly improve instead of lamenting that it’s not what it used to be.

As more news organizations receive support from nonprofits, how, how does this change the notion of transparency?
News organizations must be very careful to make note of all funders of any of their work. Though many foundations, particularly smaller ones and individual philanthropists, are reluctant to be cited. This is an area of concern and we have to be sure that the public knows who is funding what. Foundations like Carnegie Corporation are enabling innovation where it is desperately needed. With Carnegie Corporation funding, USC has launched a remarkable master of arts in journalism program. Like other Carnegie Corporation- supported projects, it has brought journalism schools into a richer relationship with other parts of the university.

Draw me a composite sketch of the ideal 21st century journalism student?
This person can tell stories across platforms--video, audio and text journalism. They’ll emphasize the public interest and will be far less top down. These journalists will not assume they alone know what readers “need to know.” They will have much richer connections with the people formerly known as the audience. They will be comfortable with technology, and constantly alert to new ways of reaching people. And, they’ll have no choice but to be concerned with how journalism will be sustained, unlike the old days when journalists would throw their copy over the wall and let some other guy worry about how to connect to an audience.