We went to journalism school together (in different graduating classes), worked on the SDSU Collegian together and covered the state Capitol together (for competing wire services). We go back to the days when you wrote news stories on typewriters and there were teletypes pounding away in the news or press room. Regardless of whether we were cooperating or competing, Tena always was (and still is) the epitome of class and professionalism. Her intelligence, commitment and experience gave readers greater insight into the issues she covered and undoubtedly helped train dozens of younger reporters.

Tena treats everyone with respect while still striving for the goal of good journalists — to inform and educate the public in a fair and objective way about events that affect our lives. It’s a trait that’s disappearing in our 24/7 digital news world. Sadly, she’s not the only good reporter I know who’s encountered the impact digital and social media have had on traditional media organizations and the ensuing “restructuring.” Moreover, each one who comes to mind is one I held in high regard.

How much do I admire and respect Tena and her talents? Even though it’s probably been a couple years since we’ve talked to or seen each other, upon reading she was leaving I immediately called her to express my surprise and regret. It’s not hyperbole when I say Tena is one of the best newswomen journalists I’ve had the pleasure to know. It was not only a pleasure to work with her, I have no doubt she made those of us who had that chance better reporters and better people. Hopefully, whatever comes next for her will still bring her abilities to bear for the public.

Walter Isaacson, Bill Moyers Reports, April 25, 2007

Grossman holds a place in Russian journalism and literature unlike that of any American writer. Despite the fact it was seized by the KGB and suppressed in the Soviet Union until after his death, the Ukrainian native’s epic World War II novel, Life and Fate led to comparisons to Leo Tolstoy and War and Peace. Grossman’s status as a reporter during World War II might arguably be compared to that of Ernie Pyle in the United States. And the short stories in The Road plainly have echoes of Anton Chekhov and Grossman’s contemporary, Isaak Babel. In trying to capture Grossman with his shorter works, Robert Chandler, who edited the collection and translated the material with his wife and Olga Mukovnikova, breaks them down to writings from before, during and after World War II.

The book opens with “In the Town of Berdichev,” a short story based in the town in which he was born. Written in 1934, the story of a female commissar during the 1919-1921 Polish-Soviet war who is billeted with a local family to give birth is indicative of Grossman’s style and approach. The focus is on people and place while recognizing that neither has real context absent the recent and current events that have impacted both them and their society. One of Grossman’s most popular stories, it also served as the basis for Commissar, a film made in the Soviet Union in 1967 but suppressed until 1988 and the era of perestroika.

As with all Soviet citizens, Grossman’s life and career path were interrupted by World War II. He became a reporter for the army newspaper Red Star and ended up covering many of the most significant moments of the war. Grossman was in Stalingrad. He was one of the first reporters to enter the Treblinka death camp. He covered the fall of Berlin. Those experiences work their way into his short stories and essays. Coming in the midst of the war, the 1942 short story “The Old Man” has a propagandistic bent in looking at the life of villagers during the German invasion of Russia. “The Old Teacher,” meanwhile, not only does the same but is a story that directly takes on the massacre of Jews during the war.

Yet the true impact of the war is seen in the two non-fiction pieces in this section. “The Hell of Treblinka,” published in late 1944, was one of the first articles written in any language about the Nazi death camps. It was, in fact, translated and used in the Nuremberg trials after the war. Although later investigation and research would show that some of Grossman wrote was erroneous, it remains a compelling account of coming face to face with virtually unimaginable horror. In detailing the “conveyor-belt” approach toward the processing and murder of thousands, Grossman writes:

Astonishingly, the brute beasts were able to make use of everything. Leather, paper, cloth — everything of use to man was of use to these beasts. It was only the most precious valuable in the world — human life — that they trampled beneath their boots.

More than a decade later, the mental images remained. In 1955, Grossman wrote “The Sistine Madonna,” an essay based on a Madonna by Raphael he saw while on display in Moscow. To him, the Madonna becomes not only a mother and child at the Treblinka gas chambers, she is present for the Ukrainian famines brought about by the Soviet farm collectivization and Stalin’s Great Purges of the late 1930, a mother who must live and raise a child in “a time when people led wolfish lives and wolves lived like people.” Coming in the mid-1950s, that essay also hints at Grossman’s change in status. As a reporter, he was a leading beacon for the Soviet state. But Grossman becomes disenchanted with the Soviet cause, something his writing begins to reflect. He begins to slide into disfavor and, ultimately, his novels face not only resistance but outright suppression.

Still, Grossman continued to write about and view life through the prism of recent history. For example, “Mama” is based on the true story of a girl adopted from an orphanage by a leading figure of Stalin’s security police who ends up back in the orphanage when her parents are swept up in one of Stalin’s purges. Likewise, while “Living Space” is but two and a half pages, it tells the status of those released from Stalin’s gulag after his death in a way perhaps nothing else can.

There’s also a somewhat different Grossman in these later stories. The title story looks at the struggle, pain and suffering of war through the eyes and philosophical musings of mule pulling a munitions cart. “The Dog” is about the relationship between a mutt called Pestrushka, the first living creature to be launched into space and return, and the Soviet scientist in charge of the mission. Although markedly different from Grossman’s early work, they still explore the human condition in the context of events that seem beyond our control.

The New York Review Books Classics and Chandler have done a wonderful job of bringing Life and Fate and Grossman’s last novel, Everything Flows, to American readers over the last four years. The Road is a more than worthy addition to that effort.

“The Hell of Treblinka,” Vasily Grossman, The Road

The FTC points out that the report, titled “Potential Policy Recommendations to Support the Reinvention of Journalism in the Internet Age,” is not made up of its proposals but, rather, is a collection of suggestions from a series of workshops it hosted and from reports and articles about the future of journalism. There are some interesting concepts. Here’s a few:

• Limiting the “fair use” doctrine to address issues posed by news aggregators and search engines.
• Amending the Copyright Act to create “hot news” protection. While you can’t copyright facts, this doctrine recognizes some quasi-property interest in the value of having the news first, before there is widespread public dissemination.
• Establish a “journalism” division of AmeriCorps to help “ensure that young people who love journalism will stay in the field.”
• Collecting fees from telecom users, broadcast licensees or ISPs to create a national fund for local news.
• Creating “citizenship news vouchers, which would allow taxpayers to allocate some amount of government funds to the non-profit media organization of their choice.
• In conjunction with the latter, using a non-profit model for new organizations or explore other types of business structures. (A bill that would allow newspapers to qualify as nonprofit entities was introduced in the U.S. Senate in March 2009 and still sits in committee.)

These are just a few of the ideas discussed to one degree or another in the report. As a former newspaper reporter and a readere, I want newspapers and print magazines to survive. At the same time, I am more than a bit leery of government being involved with the funding or structure of news organizations. Just like with churches, I think we are all better served by separation of state and news media.

Still, the only way for newspapers to survive is to explore, discuss and debate a wide range of ideas. Or perhaps I’m just a Luddite unwilling to recognize that the dead tree-based form of journalism will inevitably disappear. If that’s the case, it looks like the FTC is in the same boat.

Potential Policy Recommendations to Support
the Reinvention of Journalism in the Internet Age

The local daily certainly bears that out. A significant problem, of course, is revenues, an area in which newspapers are not the only ones suffering. The study indicates that newspaper ad revenue fell 26% during 2009, bringing the total loss over the last three years to 43%. Both radio and local television ad revenue fell 22% last year, magazine ad revenue dropped 17% and network TV 8% (and news alone probably more). But the real kicker for newspapers is that the study estimates the industry has lost $1.6 billion in annual reporting and editing capacity since 2000, or roughly 30%.

In 2009 alone, an estimated 5,900 full-time newspaper jobs were shed, numbers similar to 2008. hat means roughly one-third of newsroom jobs in American newspapers that existed in 2001 are gone, with the cuts coming in significant part from specialty beats like science, the arts, suburban government and statehouse coverage. These figures threaten an outcome that may make throw-weight concerns irrelevant: newspapers “are flirting with a tipping point where the cutbacks are so great that even loyal audiences give up.”

Across the media board, some of the damage may well be self-inflicted. Attributable in part to cable television and radio, the executive summary observes that 71% of Americans believe most news sources are biased and 70% feel overwhelmed rather than informed by the amount of news and information they see. “Quantitatively,” the study notes, “argument rather than expanding information is the growing share of media people are exposed to today.”

To me, that is more disconcerting than throw-weight: fewer outlets elevating argument over information and objectivity. Combine it all and it’s not a good formula for a marketplace of ideas.

Press release for State of the News Media 2010