Oregon daily emerald., February 13, 1984, Page 7, Image 7

'New journalism of hope'
USA Today chief
challenges media
By Michele Matassa
Of the Emerald
To keep pace with America's news audience,
the nation's media leaders must drop their tradi
tional journalism of despair and focus on jour
nalism of hope, says Al Neuharth, pioneer of the
17-month-old newspaper USA Today.
Speaking Friday at the University’s 63rd
Oregon Press Conference, Neuharth said
America's readers are challenging the industry to
justify its Constitutional freedom and to re
examine its ' whole tone and attitude.”
Despite the challenge, many journalists still
practice journalism of despair, the method big
city media use to focus attention on themselves
by walking all over their readers, he said.
"The old journalism of despair is a technique
that leaves the readers or viewers or listeners
discouraged or mad or indignant. The new jour
nalism of hope is a technique that combines the
good and the bad, the glad and the sad and leaves
readers fully informed," Neuharth said.
President and chair of the Gannett Co., which
owns 85 of the nation's daily newspapers with a
total circulation of more than four million,
Neuharth delivered the annual Eric W. Allen
Memorial Lecture as part of the statewide biennial
conference.
Groups like UNESCO, which supports licens
ing reporters and wants absolute censorship, are
threatening the journalistic freedoms given the in
dustry by free-press champions like Thomas Jef
ferson, Neuharth said.
"We must keep pace with our readers as well
as with our satellites. We must devote time and
energy to our philosophies as well as to our pro
duct. In short, I think we need to work a bit
harder to understand our freedoms, so that we
not only preserve them, but we also deserve
them," Neuharth said.
The information era doesn't lie off in the
future but confronts us today, Neuharth said.
"The future is not in the 1990s. The future is
right now and the public in this country will not
wait until the 1990s for the newpaper industry or
any other area of communications to unders
tand. . .that we are indeed living now in an infor
mation society," he said.
Neuharth told Oregon's journalists to not be
Al Nueharlh
afraid of this revolution but to move with it by
noticing that readers will not tolerate being held
captive by manipulative media leaders.
"The sooner we realize that, the sooner skep
tics will stop asking whether newpapers have a
future and they will start talking about what that
future is," Neuharth said.
Now one of the most imitated publications in
the country, USA Today grew to a circulation of
1.3 million in 16 months, making it the third
largest daily behind the Wall Street lournal and
the New York Daily News, he said.
Critics denounce USA Today's format, but
readers embrace it and that's what counts,
Nueharth said.
"The important question all of us in the
newspaper business and in this profession should
ask ourselves is whether as editors and publishers
or reporters we plan to edit our newspapers for a
few professional critics, for ourselves or for the
readers."
'Japanese Phenomenon' continues
A panel discussion on
“Japanese High-Tech and Har
monious Labor” will follow two
films on the subject tonight at
6:45 p.m. at the Eugene Public
Library.
More than 100 people from
the University and Eugene com
munities attended the last event
in the series entitled "Japanese
Phenomenon,” says Alan Wolfe,
professor in the east Asian
language department is spon
Key duplication
Make a spare.
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Bookstore
Oregon Daiiv Emerald
soring the series.
Tonight's panel will include
Melissa Barker, sociology,
Gerald Friar, international
studies, Ken Ramsing, manage
ment and Kurt Willcox, Oregon
Public Employees Union, who
will present an American labor
point of view, Wolfe says.
Two half-hour films,
“Technology and Tradition,"
and "Beyond Confrontation,"
will be shown before the
discussion.
The Japanese Phenomenon
series is a study of Japan's image
as a business superpower and
American reaction to that im
age, Wolfe says.
The last event in the series will
be a discussion on "Partners or
Victims? — Women of the Japan
Phenomenon" on Feb. 20. Films
will include "The Elusive
Geisha" and "Farm Song."
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