A wonderful, sobering, speech by Tom Stites on the state of the media for democracy. In an age where Rosen talks about ‘the people formerly known as audience’, meaning that more and more people create rather than just consume news; think blogs, think citizen journalism – Tom Stites reminds us that before we start to get excited about that, we first have some heavy duty fixing to do when it comes to people as simple readers of news.

The media’s performance is democracy’s critical issue – if we want to govern ourselves, we need the best information we can get in order to make an informed decision.  This decision making process, Stites argues, is severely hindered by excluding a large part of the citizenry: in particular those less-affluent, or simply, the poor. In an eye-opening exercise of taking the perspective of the other, he asks us to imagine being a single mother with three daughters, without health care – and then read the newspaper through her eyes. There is very little reason for her to read the newspaper, because those who write the news are all affluent, well-off and part of the elite – and who cannot imagine that their audience is not like them. The poor not reading the news is not because they do not like to read – Tom Stites stresses – (think sales of mass market paperbacks in Walmart) – it is just that the news is not relevant for them.  We need to start making news relevant for all citizens again.