JournalismJobs.com: Interview with Peter Johnson, columnist, USA TODAY -- Dec. 2005

| Home | Interview with Peter Johnson, columnist, USA TODAY -- Dec. 2005

November 20, 2009

Peter Johnson, 51, writes the "Media Mix" column for USA TODAY and has covered media issues for the past 16 years. He joined USA TODAY in 1983 as a national general assignment reporter. He got his start with Gannett's Westchester newspapers in New York, covering local government and the police beat. Johnson graduated from Syracuse University in 1976 with a B.A. in English and Journalism. He was an editor for his school paper 'The Daily Orange.' He spoke with JournalismJobs.com about the fate of newspapers and the recent rise in journalistic scandals.

JournalismJobs.com: Are journalists making more of the death of the newspaper industry than is really deserved, given that profit margins at some major chains are higher than many companies in the Fortune 500?

Peter Johnson: No, they’re not making too much of it. I’m worried about my own future as are a lot of people. The profit margins are high, but you haven’t heard any of these companies say, in light of the changing environment of newspapers, vis a vis the Internet, cable television, etc., we’re going to accept a 10 percent margin or an eight percent profit margin. Nor would their shareholders particularly want to do that. So when you have new technology threatening an industry that requires profit margins of 20 percent and above, something’s got to give. And that something is ultimately going to be man and woman power.

So, yeah, I’m very worried about it. Everybody should be worried. Just on a personal basis, my son is a junior in college and I've seen him pick up a newspaper maybe three times in his entire life. He gets everything from the Internet. He hasn’t adopted the habit of reading newspapers. I know that young people historically – at least modern historically – may not pick up newspapers a lot, but they used to at least get the habit. I don’t see younger people getting in the habit of reading a newspaper. But I do see them getting in the habit of getting news from the Internet. We have to figure out how to move from print to the Internet and I don’t think newspaper companies are doing such a great job of doing that.

JournalismJobs.com: It seems a new scandal is popping up every other week in journalism. Is the industry slipping more into a crisis we can't recover from?

Peter Johnson: No, what’s going on is that there’s a lot of due diligence and more attention is being paid to scandals than before. The stars are aligned in a sort of order right now and this too shall pass. There’s definitely a lot going on and there’s definitely been some eruptions. I can’t say that there’s any rhyme or reason to them. I don’t think reporters are getting any sloppier than they ever were or any worse.

JournalismJobs.com: Are journalists making the scandals worse by all the coverage? How can the industry battle against that?

Peter Johnson: I think the more the better. We definitely have to analyze these things and shed as much light on them as possible. I don’t think we’re making it worse. Some of the coverage, just by the sheer volume, gives the impression that the situation is out of control, but that hasn’t been the case.

JournalismJobs.com: How do you see the Valerie Plame scandal ending?

Peter Johnson: I suppose there’s going to be some big face-off between the reporters and Scooter Libby. Maybe Tim Russert squaring off with him. He was pretty involved in that. It may come down to their word against his. That’s my gut. And I think the media will win on this one.

JournalismJobs.com: Were you shocked Bob Woodward didn't reveal his source sooner in the Plame case?

Peter Johnson: I was surprised by one thing only: He had not told his editor but at the same time he was going on TV and talking about how this was much ado about nothing and that this was going to be a tempest in a teapot and that whoever had done the leaking had done so innocently. He definitely gave the impression, on TV at least, that he was an outside observer and it turned out he was anything but. I don’t think he had any responsibility at all to the public to write an article about it or to come clean with us. But he should have with his editor. That said, he’s got a very long history of good, straight reporting and I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt.

JournalismJobs.com: What's your view on anonymous sourcing -- it is a necessary evil or just plain evil?

Peter Johnson: I think in some circumstances it’s absolutely necessary. You have to have it. But it has been overused tremendously and has been a crutch. I prefer to always get people on the record as much as humanly possible. But there are certain times where, for a variety of reasons and everyone knows what they are, a person has to cloak his identity and I think that if you have a decent rapport with your editors and everybody talks about it and is open about it, there should be no problem with anonymous sourcing -- as along as everyone’s on board and everybody can be trusted and you’re open with readers about why you’re doing it. For all those reasons, there’s definitely a need for it and I would hate to see it completely go away. Once do you that, a lot of sensitive information does not get reported.

JournalismJobs.com: Journalists were criticized for not taking a deeper look during the run-up to the war in Iraq. Do you agree with that criticism?

Peter Johnson: Absolutely. I think there was a collective reticence about taking on the Bush administration during that time because it involved 9/11 and that a lot of editors and reporters felt that it was somehow unpatriotic to question the government at a time of global terror and global war. So it was sort of an odd confluences of events in which we trusted our government and gave our government the benefit of the doubt when actually what we should have been doing is questioning our government officials as much as we always do and taking the heat for it.. But I think you get into an area where corporate interests enter into the equation and a lot of media corporations were very gun-shy about getting tagged and labeled as possibly being unpatriotic and unsympathetic to the administration’s and/or the president’s war on terrorism. And it became very murky and muddy. It’s an extremely unfortunate thing that happened and I think we’re all living to regret not questioning the government more intensely about the ramp up to war.

JournalismJobs.com: Is there a period in history in which you saw something similar happen?

Peter Johnson: The same thing happened in Vietnam. Only with Vietnam, Richard Nixon was telling us through his mouthpiece Spiro Agnew that the media was elitist and fanning the flames against our being in Vietnam. And he was right. I think a lot of people in the media felt that after Vietnam the media would never let an administration get away with going to war without explaining all the whys to the American public. And yet I think history will show that that's exactly what happened in Iraq and that, during the sensitive post 9/11 period, Americans put blind faith in their government's reasons for going to war and lived to regret it. We've already learned that many of those reasons were bogus and I predict more revelations are to come..Generally speaking, I don't think the national media deserve any substantial kudos for their pre-war scrutiny.

JournalismJobs.com: With all these scandals, it feels like journalists have slipped below the status of used car sales people. Do you have any regrets about being a journalist?

Peter Johnson: No, I’ve never ever worried about that. First of all, there’s always a double-edged sword to the business. Some people have always had an antipathy to reporters and the media in general, which you learn the second you get into this business is that some people will always blame the media. I've been dealing with that for 30 years. In terms of the public opinion polls, a lot of it lately stems from the Bush administration and Hollywood using the media as a whipping boy. If in doubt: blame the media. But media are becoming more transparent and that's good. Bloggers and other people who write about us are now giving people a better understanding of how we operate and all that's good., too.