It was a lot like other experiences I’ve had at conventions over the past couple of years. In March, as I gathered my backpack to head out of the room where I’d just spoken in Madison, Wisconsin, a man approached and said, “I really appreciated what you had to say. May I ask a question?”
I was in no rush. Immediately ahead was a five-hour drive to Des Moines, where I was speaking to a newspaper conference the next day. “Sure,” I answered. “Of course. How can I help?”
His question was straightforward and deliberate. “What’s really going on at newspapers across the country?”
I knew it wouldn’t be a quick answer. I had been standing for two hours and there were a couple of chairs in the corner of the room, near the door. I suggested this was a conversation that required sitting.
As I began to answer his question, the area began to fill. Soon, there were a dozen or more publishers, editors and others standing in a semicircle, intently listening in on the conversation. I appreciated their interest. It’s a bit humbling to know people sincerely care what I think about anything.
I shared my thoughts with the group. Heads nodded as I mentioned most locally-owned papers seemed to be doing fine. Big metros, not so much.
Someone spoke up, “My paper is part of a small local group. That’s how it is with us.”
I went into more detail about the state of newspapers of various sizes and types, then explained that I should get on my way to Des Moines. As I began to walk toward the hallway, I heard a familiar refrain, “Thank you for what you do for all of us.”
You know, I hear that at every newspaper and convention I visit. I appreciate that people think that way. But the truth is I’m not really sure what I do. I study. I do research. I visit papers. I asked what’s going on. Then I share the information. It seems a lot like what journalists at newspapers do every day.
As I was leaving the Concourse Hotel in Madison – one of the nicest I’ve stayed at, by the way – I glanced at my email and text messages. There was an email from a magazine reporter in New York, asking if I had five minutes to talk.
I recognized the name. He had interviewed me a week or two earlier for a story he was writing about the state of newspapers. During the interview, when he shared who he had spoken with while doing his research, he mention Iris Chyi, University of Texas, and other names that could fill a “Who’s Who” list of researchers in the area of newspaper health.
In his brief email, he mentioned his editors were skeptical concerning the content of his story.
Apparently the people he was interviewing were consistent in their findings. Most locally-owned newspapers are doing well. The same is not always true of other newspapers. The further the newspaper from the owner or ownership group, the more likely the paper isn’t doing well. That has been a consistent finding of my research for the past few years.
A few days later, the reporter and I talked on the phone and he asked if I could point him to some data that he could show to his editors. I did, reluctantly. I was reluctant because I’m starting to feel outnumbered. There seems to be stories on social media and in national publications almost daily about how one large newspaper group after another is falling apart. As I reminded this reporter, most newspapers aren’t part of large national groups. Most newspapers are still locally owned.
I didn’t even mention the publishers who I’ve run into over the past few weeks who are starting or have just started new papers. Frankly, I really didn’t care what the magazine ran, if anything.
Relaxing in the lobby of the hotel in Des Moines the next day, a publisher approached and I invited him to visit. He told me his newspaper is enjoying significant growth. It has been growing, he told me, several years in a row. The past year has been the best yet. Then – you guessed it – he said, “Thank you so much for what you do for our industry.”
I wanted to thank him. It’s folks like him – like the publishers, editors and journalists I met in Wisconsin and Iowa over the weekend – who give me the energy to keep up the fight. They remind me of others I’ve met recently in Wyoming, Texas, Kentucky, Tennessee, Vermont, Kansas and places I’ve momentarily forgotten.
One publisher in Iowa came up to the podium to tell me something. “Remember ten years ago when the university dean told you he didn’t think there would be a single newspaper left in America in ten years?”
“Yes,” I answered, “I remember.”
“You should mention that in every column you write. It’s been over ten years and we’re still here, and we’re not going anywhere,” he told me.
Consider yourself told.
On Campus Speech: Thanks, Mr. President — But No Thanks
Gene Policinski is president and chief operating officer of the Freedom Forum Institute. He can be reached at gpolicinski@freedomforum.org, or follow him on Twitter at @genefac.
However, regrettably, they should not. Keep reading, please.
Taking a shortcut through the First Amendment in the name of free speech is not a good idea — and that’s what Trump’s approach will be, no matter how admirable the stated goal of encouraging and protecting the rights of all in university communities to speak freely.
At first hearing, President Trump’s recent announcement of a planned presidential order to mandate free speech on college campuses might seem to be just what free expression advocates would support.
Trump’s approach is to tie freedom of speech to federal funding for universities: “If they want our dollars, and we give it to them by the billions…Free speech. If they don’t, it will be costly. That will be signed soon,” he told the Conservative Political Action Conference annual convention.
Conservatives have long complained — in my view, with justification at some higher-ed institutions — that liberal academics have created an atmosphere where views of faculty or outside speakers from “the right” are unwelcome. In recent years, a number of high-profile, controversial speakers claiming conservative credentials have been heckled, harassed or prevented from speaking.
In 2017, conservative author Ann Coulter canceled a speech at the University of California, Berkeley, amid fears of violent student protest. At Texas Southern University, Houston, a speech by Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, was cancelled because of student opposition.
In announcing his initiative last weekend, Trump cited a Feb. 19 incident in which a man recruiting for a conservative group was punched by one of two men who confronted him at UC Berkeley. But even that example raises questions about how Trump’s proposed “carrot and stick” approach would work and whether it is appropriate there or elsewhere.
Neither the recruiter nor his assailant was reported to be connected to the university. The attacker was arrested, as existing law provides, regardless of where the punch was thrown. Presumably, local justice will run its course without need of a federal, campus-focused “back-up.”
How would — and should — a university be held accountable for the actions of non-university persons? How many incidents, and what kinds of incidents, must occur to rise to the level of a “free speech penalty” that will punish a campus community of thousands or tens of thousands of students? One, two, 10? Who decides and by what measure? Does a punch count 10 times more on the “penalty tally” than a shouted insult?
And what if the punch takes place on a private university campus? Do we want government bureaucrats imposing “free speech” rules on those institutions now constitutionally outside the government’s purview?
Conservatives and liberals alike would historically seem to stand together in opposing government intervention or control over such private enterprises. We ought not hysterically surrender such rights without considering what might be the next “justified” need to trample the independence of non-public colleges and universities.
Another, larger question: Just how widespread is the conflict over conservative speakers, or the entire issue of liberal versus conservative campus speech conflicts? In recent years, as the Freedom Forum Institute has gathered information, made campus visits and convened discussions nationwide, a few observations have emerged: At the vast majority of colleges and universities, speakers of all stripes come and go without objection — the larger battle is not student protest, but student distraction and disinterest regardless of subject matter.
Perhaps 50 campuses out of 4,000-plus higher-education institutions have been embroiled in controversies that directly engage free speech. Granted, in that small group, a number are high-profile or highly-respected institutions. Worrisome, but not worthy of a blanket government surveillance and review system that would be required to fairly impose such draconian penalties on entire campuses for what are likely the actions of a few.
Rather, let us say openly and clearly that colleges should be held by all of us to the high standard of being marketplaces of ideas. Make that criterion one when considering what college to attend or where to make an alumni donation.
Some would say academic freedom means the right to evaluate and exclude some ideas — to focus on the proven and accepted. However, that can quickly morph into intellectual ossification — the collegiate equivalent of what the French scholar Alexis de Tocqueville warned in the 1830s would be the greatest danger to the United States’ new and innovative commitment to free expression and democracy: The “tyranny of the majority,” in which alternative views would cease to be heard.
Let us follow principles already set out by some leaders in the academic world that decry overt or hidden censorship and disavow the false gods of safety, security and “ideas just too dangerous to be heard.”
As to the latter, yes, there are indeed dangerous ideas and inflammatory speakers with no goal other than self-promotion. But it is a futile and dangerous tactic to attempt to suppress a bad idea or arbitrarily extinguish a flame-throwing speaker — particularly in the Internet Age.
Better to propose a new idea and listen to anyone with ideas worth considering — on or off campus.