Reflecting on Service Journalism
The focus of our course reading assignments for week four of my media & entrepreneurship class is the importance of service journalism. While at first glance I expected this to signify a shift in gears for our class, I am realizing after digesting these different articles that our previous discussions on SubStack, follower engagement, ideas and originality are all intertwined in some way with the concept of service journalism.
The biggest takeaway from the three assigned articles is that service journalism is tailored to the readers more than the subject of what you are covering. In the Missouri School of Journalism article, editor-in-chief of The Wirecutter, Ben Frumin, said that, “It is stunning to me what a deep and powerful relationship you can develop with readers. They will be your biggest advocates, they will be your biggest marketers, and they will be your biggest evangelists, when you provide a service to them that is so valuable and so deeply thoughtful and personal.”
I found this quote of particular interest after having listened to the personal experiences of guest lecturer Paul Szoldra, founder and creator of “We are the Mighty,” a satirical publication on the military, that originated as a website and developed into a successful SubStack newsletter. I found that the message conveyed in Frumin’s quote directly aligns with the stories Szoldra told as he explained to the class how he developed a fairly large following over time. This is what first led me to believe that service journalism is certainly connected to the different ideas we have discussed in this class.
I also found Megan Griffith-Greene’s story on the evolution of the service desk at the Philadelphia Inquirer intriguing given the timeliness of the article. This article proved to me how service journalism is very much still on the rise, as she attributes a large part of the desk’s success to the few who stepped up during the start of the pandemic, when readers desperately needed direction. I liked how she described the process of different ideas snowballing themselves into pitches and reaching the service desk, while also explaining that in other cases, stories can be “stolen” from other teams within the Inquirer and spun into more “reader-friendly” pieces that fit the bill of service journalism.
One thing Griffith-Greene touched on that I would like to know more about (since she said don’t get me started) are her qualms with service journalism in the context of sexism. I’m not quite sure what she meant when she referred to the “incredible sexism that underlies this association,” since service journalism stretches far beyond the bounds of women’s magazines. I understand that this issue fell under the “misconceptions about service journalism” header, but I’d simply like to hear more about this issue and read about some real-life examples. Furthermore, brining me to the final article, Griffith-Greene need not look any further than The Charlotte Agenda, which was founded and created by Ted Williams, a male.
I found this piece by far the most intriguing of the three assigned articles for this week because I love a great success story. What I particularly appreciated was how Williams was able to recognize the changes taking place around him within the journalism industry and adapt by creating his own newsletter. Similar to stories we have heard in class of well-respected writers leaving their reputable employers to freelance on SubStack, Williams was able to seek out top-of-the-line journalists from The Charlotte Observer and recruit them to facilitate his launch of The Charlotte Agenda. Axios set Williams up for life by acquiring his business, and his profits have grown since.
I think the quote that I reflected on more than anything came straight from Williams, when he said, “I think media is a very simple business that people tend to overcomplicate.”
