Stephen Bates contributes to the conversation about how to secure the future of the newspaper by arguing that the press should declare itself a religion:
Besides keeping its reporters out of jail, a church paper needn’t rely on massive infusions of foundation money. It could instruct readers to tithe. As congregants, it would be their sacred duty.
More broadly, as New York University’s Jay Rosen points out (and noted earlier), American journalism itself constitutes a sort of religion, “a belief system and meaning-making kit that is shared across editorial cultures in mainstream newsrooms.” What qualifies as news reflects an idealized notion of democracy. Public corruption brings forth righteous wrath from the press’s pulpit. Reporters strive to “evoke indignation at the violation of social values,” media scholars James S. Ettema and Theodore L. Glasser observe in their book “Custodians of Conscience“—as, they add, the prophet Jeremiah did.
Just as the Puritans vowed to purify the Church of England, journalists seek to purify the country’s institutions of self-government. “Democracy,” Philadelphia Evening Bulletin editor Fred Fuller Shedd declared in 1931, “functions largely through the efficient service of the newspaper”—no great leap from “No one comes to the Father except through me.” The Scripps Newspapers’ motto admonishes, “Give Light and the People Will Find Their Own Way.” See also John 8:12: “I am the light of the world.”
It shouldn’t be that hard to reposition the press as a church. It’s already halfway there.
Read the entire post at Slate.