I want to talk about "news" today how it's changing, how media is changing and the business of news.

First, a status report.

What we've seen happening with journalism and with news can be seriously depressing – particularly if you are part of the group of 1,000 employees recently laid off by Gannet or the 70,000 newspaper employees who have lost their jobs in the last few years. Newspapers across the country have gone out of business, others will soon go out of business and many others, though still alive, have been decimated. The San Francisco Chronicle -- that city's only remaining, local, daily newspaper– is reported to be losing $60 plus million a year. Last week, the Sacramento Bee – the flagship of the McClatchy chain – announced that it is offering buyouts to fully 55 percent of its full-time employees. The New York Times announced another "restructuring" of its newspaper on Friday. I'm sure each of you has a similar story.

Broadcast media, both radio and television, are also facing dramatic change.

That's not to suggest that there is no longer an interest in news. People are seeking news and information – but by alternative means and from alternative sources that often operate with alternate definitions of news.

A year ago, The Comedy Channel's Jon Stewart tied with news anchors Tom Brokaw, Brian Williams and Anderson Cooper as being among the most admired journalists. Clearly, "news" is been re-defined by its audience. But, while new ways of sourcing and presenting content are engaging younger audiences – new definitions of news can often be problematic.

In addition to what is news, the definition of a "Journalist" is becoming equally blurred. Our company is in St Paul where the recent Republican National Convention was held. Even our own journalists questioned the credentials of many people who claimed rights as "journalists." Writing in one of our blogs, our reporter noted: I did see some people with credentials issued by the Republican National Convention among the handcuffed detainees. But I also saw people with handmade "media" insignia; Kinko manufactured press badges and several students claiming to be with a college paper in Iowa."

In the final outcome, I think the concept of a "journalist" lost considerable credibility.

I run a media company that engages in professional news gathering and news production. Let me tell you about our own evolution – or maybe "revolution."

We began as a regional radio company. Now, American Public Media is the second largest national producer of public radio programming after NPR, with a weekly audience of 15.7 million people and another 1.5 million unique Web users. It's international via the Web. We do audio, video, text, smart video games, snapshot pictures, retrievable audio and more. During the RNC, I met a former Knight Ridder photo journalist who was working for us and who laughed at the circumstance that he was a photographer for a "radio" company. Obviously the definition of what we do has changed significantly.

The news business will survive. There are lots of solutions to the current revenue and audience crisis that besets traditional media. In some cases, it simply means taking a lower profit margin. In some other cases, it means reducing expense. The Miami Herald, the Sun-Sentinel and The Palm Beach Post announced content sharing plans Friday – a business model that would have been unheard of two years ago. In other situations the solutions are more complex. My fear is that we are lacking the leadership to design and implement the best of these complex solutions. That is a very real threat.

So what's causing the changes?

First of all, as anyone with access to wired and wireless media knows, we have an abundance of information and ways to get that information rapidly.

News delivery has never been faster. Newspapers gave up "speed" to radio in the 1940s. Broadcasting has now given it up to the Web and to PDAs and cell phones, through texting, twittering, and snapshots. Our company could not have gotten a report on the air four seconds after the quake. Newspapers couldn't have done it in paper form in four hours. Yet, newspapers continue to play an important role by providing perspective, depth, analysis and discovery as they have for more than sixty years after first losing their competitive "breaking news" advantage to radio. They've changed from the "extra, extra, read all about it" role to providing an important – even critical – role of "context," depth and breadth. We need them.

The issue of story selection is changing at an equally fast pace. We are inundated with information and pictures and sounds. We are bombarded with messages at every turn. Communication venues grow at a furious rate: We have Facebook, MySpace and Linked In. We have Twitter and Flickr and Plaxo and UTube. We have CNN, Fox, Salon, Yahoo news, Second Life, Gather.com, The New York Times.com, blogs, Politico, Drudge, Huffington, EveryBlock's neighborhood posts and more and more.

Tools and devices are equally plentiful and ubiquitous – laptops, iPhones, Blackberries, cell phones. Wi-fi and Wi-max, television, radio, satellite broadcasting, cable.

So why isn't that a good thing?

Ironically, I think this increased choice is actually narrowing our societal perspective rather than broadening us and our knowledge base. Knowing which sources to trust and which factoids are really facts worth repeating is increasingly a challenge. Knowing what came from a professional journalist or an edited site or a trusted brand and what came from a "citizen" journalist with Kinko credentials or an independent blogger like the Daily Kos – is important to understand, but rarely focused on. Even when the source and brand are clear, there seems to be an erosion of standards even at the best of them. Monday The New York Times, arguably one of the best brands in news, printed a story on Sarah Palin referring to her not disclosing her pregnancy, saying: quote "I didn't want Alaskans to fear I would not be able to fulfill my duties," (and here's the interesting part) "Ms. Palin told People magazine last week." When's the last time The Times quoted People in a major news story rather than doing its own sourcing?

That's not the case with engagement – there are signs of greater engagement in young people and in senior citizens. But again, not necessarily informed engagement. Ultimately the weaker the best of our strong news brands get, the less likely we are to have a new generation demanding quality – because they will have no prior experience with quality news.

So why is this happening?

This technology-enabled shift, and the increasing division between a well- informed citizenry and those who are randomly forwarding unvetted emails about Sarah Palin or Barack Obama, is threatening our credibility, our industry and, ultimately, our democracy.

Madeleine Albright recently noted that global Democracy is threatened or lost in one of two ways:

It's the later where our society is threatened.

But you know all that. You're the choir.

What's the solution?

Embrace technology. Exert leadership.

In my industry of public media, the picture is a little more positive. Public Media can and should be a leader in raising the bar for news content and journalism – but it will take stronger leadership, increased funding and an engaged audience for us to reach our potential. Continue to page 2 ...