Saving Journalism

The Rise, Demise and Survival of the News

by DR JENNY TAYLOR

Could the flourishing history of journalism provide clues for enabling it to flourish in future?  Could the flourishing history of journalism provide clues for enabling it to flourish in future? Why is society’s watchdog, the press, with its long and often honourable pedigree, going feral? Failing to bark at misrepresentation and fraud, while snarling at truth?

Why does journalism have the privileged position it does? As commercialization collides with the greatest communication revolution since Gutenberg, why are both revenues and media ethics in meltdown?

If digital and now AI-produced media have “the most prodigious capability for spreading lies the world has ever seen” (Alan Rusbridger, Editor, The Guardian, U.K.), is it coincidence that readers turning away in the millions, globally?

Yes, news mongering there has always been! But responsible journalism has foundations that have been sadly neglected.

Why did journalism – the Fourth Estate epitomized by Edmund Burke – emerge first in Europe, even though China had printing nearly a thousand years earlier? That epic tale is not known to many people today, not even most journalists.

How far back do the origins of public discourse go? What was it about moral fervour, all the way back to the Hebrew people, that revolutionized not only Greek and Roman classical narrative, but also the understanding of values, character, personality, and indeed language itself? Should it surprise us that America’s first newspaper editor was a Christian preacher? What was the connection between Bible translation and public discourse, of which responsible journalism was the most brilliant – and indispensable – adjunct?

For some, a surprising tale, for others even an unpalatable one: Saving Journalism recounts it’s often heroic past – and, just possibly, may equip and inspire you to help win back its future.

JENNY TAYLOR began her career in 1974 as Arts Editor of Palatinate, Durham University’s student newspaper. She then became an indentured reporter
with a weekly in the Yorkshire Post Group – the award winning Goole Times. Two years later, she moved to The Evening Advertiser in Swindon as a Senior Reporter and Arts Editor.

Over the years, she has contributed to The Guardian, The Times and, in translation, to the European press. Following her Ph.D. at the School of Oriental and
African Studies, University of London, she has published in academic journals as well as in the mainstream and online media.

Now widely recognised as a cultural analyst and journalist, she was the founder of the charity, Lapido Media, described by historian Tom Holland as
‘groundbreaking’; because it helped to bring the national media up to date with changes in the demography and cultural climate of the UK. She is Research Fellow in Communication, Media and Journalism at the Kirby Laing Centre for Public Theology in Cambridge.

Her earlier books are A Wild Constraint (Continuum 2008), an extended essay on contemporary sexuality; and Faith and Power: Christianity and Islam in
‘Secular’ Britain with Lesslie Newbigin and Lamin Sanneh (SPCK 1998, and Wipf & Stock 2005).