RIP American Model of the Press? It appears that online financial realities killed it ...

From Day 1 here at GetReligion, just over 19 years ago, our primary goal has been to defend religion-beat reporting rooted in what has long been called the American Model of the Press.

You know, that’s the old-liberalism brand of journalism built on accuracy, fairness, balance and respect for the views of citizens involved in debates about issues in culture, morality, religion and even politics.

Some people include the word “objectivity” in creeds about this kind of journalism, which tends to fuel philosophical discussions about whether it’s possible for the minds of journalists to remain “blank slates,” or words to that effect. In my teaching days, I attempted to define objectivity in terms of fair-minded professional standards for newsroom work.

This brings me to an essay that I recently wrote for the Religion & Liberty journal published by the Acton Institute. The headline: “The Evolving Religion of Journalism.” I don’t want to cue waves of weeping violins, but writing this piece was painful and involved about a month of involuntary 3 a.m. brainstorms.

The bottom line: I didn’t want to write another essay about media-bias issues, because discussing “bias” implies the existence of shared, common professional standards for journalists. My goal was to describe the emerging digital-marketplace reality — news that preaches to niche choirs makes money. It produces faithful, paying subscribers, which is what matters now that news organizations cannot depend on mass-market advertising.

Are you reading the stunning four-part Columbia Journalism Review series by Jeff Gerth about elite newsrooms and Donald Trump? It’s crucial that “The press versus the president” was published by a journal at the heart of the old-liberal journalism establishment. Here is a crucial passage, right after Trump commits to his “fake news” approach to press relations:

In the days after Trump’s declaration, the Times surveyed its new digital subscribers, millions of whom flocked to the paper during his presidency, to better understand their motivations: the administration’s “vilification of the press,” one subscriber replied, in a typical response, according to “New Digital Subscribers Survey” data provided to me by a Times staffer.
Trump would often call the Times “failing,” including the day after the controversial story about Russia-Trump ties, but in fact the soaring digital-subscriber base throughout his presidency offset the steady fall in revenue from print subscribers and advertising.

What does this have to do with my Acton essay, which focuses on a timeline of events that begins long, long before Orange Man Bad?

Here we go again: Hollywood doesn't 'get' America, so maybe religion is part of that?

Every decade or so, power players in Hollywood discover that there are millions of Americans who do not mind buying tickets to see movies that contain overtly religious symbols, themes and even characters.

I’ve been covering this story since the 1980s. It’s fascinating how new generations of reporters manage to work up a sense of culture shock about this.

For example, consider that much-discussed Atlantic feature back in 2005 that ran with this headline: “Can Jesus Save Hollywood?”

Another five or six years later, the discussion of niche-Christian entertainment was still creating buzz. The conservative interfaith journal First Things ran a provocative piece with this headline: “Is ‘Christian’ the new ‘Gay’?” Sociologist D. Michael Lindsay, at that time the president of Gordon College, responded to a question about that equation:

This comes from a quote that one woman who I interviewed in Hollywood recounted to me a story that she had where the conversation basically was a Hollywood producer telling her that it had become new and interesting for committed Christians to “come out” in Hollywood. And they actually used that language of “coming out” where one publicly identifies in this way. I think what it really reflects is although historically Christianity has been a very powerful force in this country, within the pockets of elite cultural life — in Hollywood, at universities like Harvard and Yale and the rarefied heights of arts and entertainment — being a deeply committed person of faith, whatever that faith tradition may be, is seen as unusual or odd. There’s pressure when you’re in those high positions not to be too public about your faith and certainly not a faith that is evangelistic in approach because that’s seen as overbearing or narrow-minded.

Like I said, this is “old” news. This trend will go on and on — because America is basically a red v. blue puzzle these days and it’s hard to ignore the evidence that “pew gap” statistics play some role in that.

That David French guy — much hated by Trumpian conservatives and lots of illiberal progressives — had a provocative summary of the situation in his must-read book “Divided We Fall: America's Secession Threat and How to Restore Our Nation.” Here is a summary of that French thesis from a new essay I wrote for the journal Religion & Liberty about the death of the old-school American Model of the Press:

The bottom line: Americans are divided by their choices in news and popular culture, choosing to live in protective silos of digital content. America remains the developing world’s most religious nation, yet its secularized elites occupy one set of zip codes, while most religious believers live in another. These armies share no common standards about "facts," "accuracy" or "fairness."
“It's time for Americans to wake up to a fundamental reality: the continued unity of the United States cannot be guaranteed,” wrote French. At this moment, “there is not a single important cultural, religious, political, or social force that is pulling Americans together more than it is pulling us apart.”

This brings me to a new City Journal piece with this headline: “Can Capitalism Save Hollywood? The gulf between elites and audiences is eroding profits throughout entertainment and news media — but signs of correction are emerging.”