We Are Pragmatic
Let us pause, during the
New York Times' year-long celebration of its 100-year march to
journalistic dominance, to glance at the newspaper that may dominate the next
century of print journalism (if there is one): USA Today , a newspaper
that scarcely needs a Web site (though, of course, it has one), because its
front is a home page in print.
For all
its obvious yearning for marketability and user-friendliness, USA Today
built its circulation without resorting to tabloid sensationalism. From the law
courts to the tennis courts, it covers the news straightforwardly. But what
does McPaper stand for? What is the philosophy of USA Today ?
Large-circulation American newspapers, to be sure, don't
market philosophy, except sideways. A major newspaper is supposed to be a team
effort, a nonideological pursuit of the objective truth. Asking for its
official philosophy is like demanding the creed of the Chicago Bulls. The
likeliest payoff is a slogan on the order of "Get it Over." With a newspaper,
"Get it Out" is about the best you can hope for. But USA Today is the
lengthened byline of one man, former Gannett CEO Al Neuharth--and the
flamboyant South Dakotan spent years preaching the philosophy of his paper,
both before and after its September 1982 launch.
Neuharth, it turns out, is a more important 20th-century philosopher than
anyone expected. ("We Find Al Philosophical," the in-house headline might
read.) His struggle through the start-up and red ink of USA Today
succeeded in bending daily journalism to the principles of classical American
pragmatism.
For years, media critics pounded USA Today : An
"explosion in a paint factory," the "flashdance of editing," the "junk food of
journalism." Asked early on if USA Today could qualify as a top
newspaper, the Washington Post 's Ben Bradlee replied, "If it can, then
I'm in the wrong business." Post literary critic Jonathan Yardley
condemned USA Today for giving its readers "only what they want. No
spinach, no bran, no liver." Critics cast Neuharth as the disreputable heir of
William Randolph Hearst. But try a different succession: William James; John
Dewey; Al Neuharth.
No,
William James didn't take off on "Buscapades." And John Dewey didn't festoon
the Columbia philosophy department with the white onyx and black marble of
USA Today 's Rosslyn, Va., headquarters. But what, after all, were the
beliefs of the "pragmatists," those American heroes whose comeback in the
intellectual world (through present-day scions like Richard Rorty and Donald
Davidson) now makes them founts of wisdom to philosophers around the world?
James urged us to think of true beliefs as those that point to successful
actions, most of which result (in the sense of pragmatism's coiner, Charles
Sander Peirce) from a convergence of belief among our "community of inquirers."
James didn't mind if our beliefs occasionally took us a bit ahead of the
evidence (see his "Will to Believe"), particularly if that passionate,
optimistic confidence stirred us to make the world better than it is.
Such sentiments are practically the anthem of USA
Today , which brings together the USA's "community of inquirers" faster than
Jerry Springer unites addled families. Some may see a latent liberalism (in
today's sense) in USA Today 's editorial line: its espousal of gun
control or publicly financed elections (to name to editorial positions taken by
the paper in recent weeks). But the argument on these topics is no less
practical in tone and substance than its more "conservative" recent stands in
favor of public shaming as judicial punishment or its endorsement of hunting.
Policies are to be preferred if, in proven practice, they save lives--or
dollars. On the contentious issue of gerrymandering, racial or otherwise: The
practice is to be deplored not on grounds of high principle, but because, by
creating safe seats for one or another party or interest group, it makes
"elections meaningless." Moreover, in pursuing racial fairness, there are
better alternatives available.
James declared: "There can
be no difference anywhere that doesn't make a difference
elsewhere." What paper better embodies that belief than USA Today , which
recently ran a graph on "Rain and Drizzle: The Difference"? ("The difference is
the size of the drops, with drizzle drops less than 0.02 inches in diameter,
falling close together, and rains drops larger than 0.02 inches in diameter,
widely separated.")
As for Dewey, he threw out
the false distinction between theoretical inquiry and practical
decision-making, proclaiming that all thinking amounts to problem-solving. For
the author of Experience and Nature and A Common Faith, the
smartest way to educate people was to give them the information and skills
necessary to solve their problems--not to point them to an authority who'd tell
them what to think or solve their problems for them. Which would be the paper
of choice for a man with such a mind-set: the New York Times or USA
Today ?
Dewey
himself liked Peirce's definition of truth as the "opinion" on which all
investigators are "fated to be agreed." More than most papers, USA Today
steps aside and delivers the experience that Dewey considered necessary to that
convergence on solutions: statistics, direct lengthy quotations, complete box
scores. Why, it even runs pages entitled "Solutions." ("Trucks: What Needs to
Be Done."). Mindful of the fragility of "truth," and trustful of how a better
"truth" might emerge from experimentation and debate, Dewey thought we might
well drop the whole concept of "truth" and speak more usefully of "warranted
assertibility." Does any editorial page so clearly reflect that belief as
USA Today 's, with its regular "Opposing Opinion" and cross section of
positions?
One of Neuharth's first articulations of his metaphysics
came in October 1983, in a speech to the Overseas Press Club in New York. As
recalled by Peter Prichard in his book, The Making of McPaper , Neuharth
condemned the "old journalism of despair," a "derisive technique of leaving
readers discouraged, or mad, or indignant." In its place, Neuharth declared,
USA Today delivered a "journalism of hope"--an enterprise one can
imagine James franchising under his "Will to Believe." It offered reportage
that "chronicles the good, the bad, and the otherwise, and leaves readers fully
informed and equipped to judge what deserves their attention and support."
Neuharth imposed his philosophy on the newsroom. Stories deliver facts and
information with minimal interference from reporters eager to be literary. As a
result, sentences are short and clear, often brilliantly compressed. "USA
Snapshots" and other regular graphs abound. Lengthy quotations from transcribed
interviews let readers hear newsmakers directly. USA Today 's modular
layout and bold type anticipated the typical multidimensional Web page, almost
inviting the finger to point and click, to follow Christine Royal through the
process of her cosmetic surgery, to jump to the daily profiles of Olympic
athletes, to explore the depths of the Bosnia power struggle. [See displayed
picture of July 1,1996, front page.] Headlines are supposed to emphasize the
positive. About the crash of a charter plane in Malaga, Spain: "Miracle: 327
survive, 55 die." Neuharth criticized a headline about a health study that
read, "Death Rate Drops," saying it should have read, "We're Living
Longer."
Other devices ensure that USA Today 's
editors keep the focus on the exact community the paper covered: the USA To
Neuharth, that meant the USA, not "America." In a 1985 memo, Neuharth
threatened to transfer out of the country any editors who sloppily allowed
"America" or "Americans" into the paper when they meant citizens and residents
of the United States. Personal pronouns anchor the headlines as they drive home
an idea James and Dewey would have welcomed--the USA as one big
first-person-plural community. Classics included "We Move Less Often" and
"We're in the Mood to Buy." If the New York Post 's candidate for
immortality was "Headless Body in Topless Bar," USA Today `s might have
been "USA is Eating its Vegetables."
Yet, even in USA Today 's recent in-the-black years,
the paper has been a magnet for negative media-critic boilerplate. In Read
All About It! (1995), an attack on newfangled newspapering by ousted
Chicago Tribune editor James Squires, the poppin' mad former honcho
railed that USA Today "adopted an editorial philosophy designed to avoid
all controversy." In Who Stole the News (1995), veteran AP correspondent
Mort Rosenblum recycled the standard yuck that USA Today "is for people
who find television too difficult."
"Balderdash!" a
turn-of-the century Deweyean might have replied. Is USA Today
uncontroversial because it opens up its agora, presuming truth will rise from a
clash of diverse debaters from all regions and classes of the national polis?
Can it be more simplistic than television when its front page alone regularly
presents or capsulizes more than 30 different news matters--far more than
you'll hear about on one edition of World News Tonight ?
USA
Today 's journalism fulfills the political philosophy of the Framers,
themselves heavily influenced by the ancient rhetoricians (see Carl J.
Richard's The Founders and the Classics ). Both groups favored the
Isocratic notion of a truth emerging from ongoing debate over the
Socratic notion of The Truth emerging from an old kibitzer's endless
dialectical probing. USA Today weds that impulse to the pragmatist
program: If you give the people facts, if they identify an authentic
problematic situation in their environment, if you permit them to hear multiple
views, they'll converge on a truth that works.
And so it happens every day in USA Today , as much as
it can in a paint-factory explosion. Big and small explanatory facts (how
airport security works, the percentage of people who screen each phone call,
why women reject technology jobs), and problematic issues (animal rights,
standards for criminal punishment) come together in a virtual Journal of
Pragmatism. You say the New York Times is a century old, and we
ought to join its celebration? Nah--too Cartesian.
Back in his early Chicago
days, John Dewey tried to start a newspaper. He failed. Al Neuharth hasn't. He,
like James, knows the meaning of cash value. If James and Dewey lived today,
they'd be reading "Snapshots," absorbing the blooming, buzzing confusion of
"Across the USA," and probably arranging for Al Neuharth to give a few lectures
at Columbia and Harvard.
