Of Michael Schudson's seven books, four have been on the news business. He has won a MacArthur "genius" grant and a Guggenheim fellowship for his sociological research. But not even his decades of experience writing about news, politics and popular culture prepared him for the glare of media attention trained on the report he co-authored with former Washington Post executive editor Leonard Downie titled The Reconstruction of American Journalism.

"This is my 15 minutes of fame," joked Schudson, a newly tenured professor at Columbia's Graduate School of Journalism. "I never had done anything that got such a response." Indeed, he's the first to point out that with newspapers folding, reporters and editors being laid off by the scores and media economic woes, "this is in some quarters a very hot topic."

Professor Michael Schudson Image credit: Jen Sloan

While stories about the changes in journalism have been legion, few have taken the comprehensive look that this report has, and none has had such reverberations throughout the media business. Since the report was released Oct. 20, Schudson and Downie have been on something of a press junket, speaking to dozens of reporters and columnists. Their take on the problem, and their proposed solutions, have been both praised and pilloried.

For his part, Schudson says he discovered a lot more about journalism in writing the report, for which he credits his co-author and partner in the endeavor, Downie. When they exchanged drafts, for instance, he got back one section covered with editing marks, including a journalism abbreviation with which he was unfamiliar—the initials "CBK" written down most of one page. What did that mean, he asked Downie. "Could be killed," came the reply—newspaper-speak for deleted. Said Schudson, "I'm still learning!"

Q. Journalism has seen big changes before, but is there a historical precedent for the shifts we're seeing now?

Nothing like this. We had newspapers for about a century before we had reporters, for instance. Reporting developed slowly, and the kind of serious accountability journalism—being a watchdog on journalism, being a watchdog on government, finding a way to keep powerful institutions accountable to the public—really developed quite late in the day and didn't fully flower until the 1960s. So there have been changes in the past, very significant ones, but this one is absolutely remarkable. I mean, it changes the experience for the journalist. It changes the experience for the consumer, who has access to news on a daily basis from around the world—at their home, on their computer. The crisis is caused because it changes the economic game for the metropolitan newspapers that have been the real engine of accountability reporting for a long time now.

Q. What is different this time?

It's only in the 20th century that you begin to get what we would think of as editors and writers as professionals, who have an ethic, a pride, an integrity about keeping their own views out of their reporting. That was a fundamental change. And it didn't ultimately mature until the 1960s. And then we've had several decades of, I think, a journalism to be very proud of. The Internet—not by itself, but it's the primary factor—has reduced the economic basis of the newspaper, which had been advertising. It was a kind of lucky accident that we could, as a society, turn over to commercial enterprises the responsibility of providing us the information we need to make a democracy work. Now that lucky accident seems to be ending. Newspapers may survive, but they are going to have to survive in a much more constrained way. Their budgets will be smaller, the reporting staffs will be smaller, and we're seeing new online organizations without the delivery trucks to pay for, without the print to pay for and without the presses to pay for. They are going to be able to provide first-rate journalism at a much lower cost.

Q. The report calls for changes to the tax code, that would allow independent news organizations to receive tax-deductible donations, and for a national fund that uses receipts from the Federal Communications Commission to finance local news reporting. Is it possible to have taxpayer dollars paying for this kind of accountability journalism, yet still guarantee its independence?

Well, in a way, there is no such thing as independent journalism. Somebody has to pay the bills. So either that money comes from advertising, to whom one might be beholden; or from philanthropists, to whom one might be beholden; or government, to whom one might be beholden. So the trick—whatever the funding model—is to build walls of separation. And you can do that. Did it always work in commercial newspapers? Of course not. Did it often work? Yes. And can you organize things like that with philanthropic support? We think so. Can you do it with government support, where we're always the most suspicious? I think the answer there is yes, too. There are all kinds of instances, including PBS and NPR, where, yes, there have been occasional problems, but, on the whole, it's worked for over 40 years. The National Science Foundation and National Institutes for Health hand out billions of dollars to scientists and social scientists. This is not uncontroversial. Does it work? Yes, it works. The historian in me wants also to note that the government has been supporting the news media since 1792, with the Postal Act, which gave newspapers a discounted postal rate that really was crucial to the establishment and flourishing of commercial newspapers for this country from the very beginning. So I think we have a tradition of public responsibility for the circulation of publicly relevant information. What we're asking at this point, when there's such a crisis, is that we pursue that further.

Q. The report identifies communities around the country where local journalism is threatened or disappearing. How can that challenge be addressed?

There are start-up news organizations in different parts of the country, usually started by former journalists. Their readership is low, but growing. These are still fragile organizations. They're small. They're dependent, usually, on a single philanthropist or a community foundation. But they're in a position where they know that their leadership is small. That's why they're making these kinds of partnerships with local television and local radio. These journalists are becoming recognized in their communities as serious people to take account and to be aware of. And their voices are becoming part of the civic dialogue, often with others in journalism.

Q. Enough with the bad news. Are there reasons to be optimistic?

We were aware, but nonetheless surprised, about the numbers and quality of online start-up news organizations run by professional journalists, sometimes involving citizens with lay backgrounds as well. These are real news organizations, contributing not only on their own websites but also cooperating and providing some of their own news reporting to mainstream, traditional news organizations. In the midst of the economic chaos that we're seeing, as newspapers of substance and long history cut their newsrooms by 50 percent, we're seeing quite remarkable new developments. We think we're at the beginning of what we call a reconstruction of what we know of as American journalism. It was interesting to me, and I think to Len as well, to visit some of these start-ups to be instructed by 28-year-olds and some 50-year-olds who, for one reason or another, no longer have jobs in newspapers, who are having the time of their lives, who are totally imbued with the best values of accountability journalism. That was just remarkable and heartening to see, and the note of optimism in the report didn't just spring from our preconceptions, but from the reporting we did from the people we met.

Q. How do you hope this report will be used now and in the future?

I hope that it becomes a topic of discussion in various quarters. We hope that foundations will take a look at it. We hope that universities and journalism school deans will take a look at it. We would hope very much that Congress and the FCC will take a look at it. We don't have all the answers by any means, but I think we've surveyed a lot of the territory, and it's time for this society as a whole to recognize and accept responsibility for what we're losing here, or what we're potentially losing, in local news coverage in particular. That's what I'd like to see.