Editor’s note: John Geddes, managing editor of the New York Times, was the scheduled keynote speaker Saturday night at the 100th anniversary celebration of the founding of the UW-Madison School of Journalism of Mass Communication. Here are excerpts from his prepared remarks.
The mood of the moment seems to be that the world of journalism is deteriorating before our eyes.
Two weeks ago media magnate Rupert Murdoch told the American Society of Newspaper Editors that the end of newspapers as we know them is nigh. My colleague Nick Kristof soon opined that the climate of press freedom is more ominous in the United States than at any time in the past century. Six weeks ago Jeffrey Rosen of New York University somewhat jocularly called for the commissioning of a new book titled “Laying the Newspaper Gently Down to Die.” And everywhere online, there’s some correspondent taking a whack at MSMs, the acronym of the day for most of us in the mainstream media.