Welcome to Portland News Review

Welcome to Portland News Review.

This project was inspired by a number of things that I've witnessed over the past eight years or so. Each is alarming on its own, but together they paint a picture that is bleak and frightening in its implications for the future of journalism in the United States and beyond.

These trends include:

• The pernicious belief that pursuing and reporting news should be a profitable endeavor
• Stemming from the above (as most of the ills plaguing journalism do), the placing of news in the same arena as popular entertainment and forcing it to compete as such
• The misguided notion that journalists should give the public what they want rather than fulfilling their duty to research and report what the public needs to know
• The new obsession among formerly conscientious and competent news outlets that speed trumps everything, as manifested in the ever increasing number of news organization blogs and headlines touting breaking news, instant news, around the clock news and so forth.
• The seeming lack of journalistic integrity among many in the online news business—no doubt stemming in part from their misconception that the news is business
• The almost hysterical cries, from within the industry and without, that newspapers are dinosaurs doomed to extinction (these cries often coming loudest from the very bloggers and online properties who rely on newspaper reporters for their material)
• The relentless dumbing down of the news to the point that The Daily Show has been voted the number one news program on television
• The successful propagation of the myth, by right-wing politicians and their hangers on, that the media has a liberal bias
• The increasing percentage of unaltered press releases, including audio and video, that are being aired as news with no acknowledgment or clarification that they are, in fact, nothing but paid advertisements

Portland News Review is also inspired by Columbia Journalism Review, American Journalism Review, The Poynter Institute and the rest of the media watchdogs and friends of the press that comprise this group. These organizations not only hold the news media to account for their errors and shortcomings, but give accolades where due and stand by their side in the defense of journalism against the relentless attacks, both subtle and overt, of those who seek to stifle rigorous journalism and a free press.

This group includes self-serving business owners and shareholders who are blind to the vital role and higher calling of journalism in a liberal democracy. It includes cowardly politicians who seek to muzzle journalists and scale back freedom of the press because they know their actions and politics cannot survive the blinding light of truth and public scrutiny. It includes many in the burgeoning world of online news distribution who profit directly from access to the quality, in depth reporting being done almost exclusively by the old school print newspapers and public radio and television outlets—all the while hailing their impending demise; a despicable case of biting the hand that feeds.

So why add Portland News Review to a field that already contains so many excellent organizations? I want to focus almost exclusively on Oregon and the Pacific Northwest in doing what Columbia Journalism Review does so well on a national scale.

Columbia Journalism Review’s mission is to encourage and stimulate excellence in journalism in the service of a free society. It is both a watchdog and a friend of the press in all its forms, from newspapers to magazines to radio, television, and the Web.... CJR examines day-to-day press performance as well as the forces that affect that performance. The magazine... offers a deliberative mix of reporting, analysis, criticism, and commentary. CJR.org, our Web site, delivers real-time criticism and reporting, giving CJR a vital presence in the ongoing conversation about the media. Both online and in print, Columbia Journalism Review is in conversation with a community of people who share a commitment to high journalistic standards in the U.S. and the world.

I highly recommend a subscription to both Columbia Journalism Review and American Journalism Review.

I hope you'll join me on the journey and participate in the discussion frequently!