By Tom Robotham

Recently, a former colleague sent me a link to an interview with Harry Shearer (The Simpsons, Spinal Tap) in Richmond Magazine. “I thought of you and Port Folio Weekly when I read this,” she said.

She was referring, in particular, to the interviewer’s first question: “As a satirist, you've been known to throw a little pepper at the mainstream media. What can I do to stay off your hit list?”

“Your job,” Shearer responded. “Cover the news. Don't take surveys to find out what readers want. If they knew what they wanted, they wouldn't need a newspaper. It's not elitist to say that — it's true. The news is what we don't yet know, so how can we know what we don't yet know? Frankly, being a New Orleans Hornets fan, if the local newspaper surveyed me, I'd say I'd want the sports section to report that the team won every night.”

Over the years I’ve expressed the same sentiment. When I worked for Port Folio I argued strenuously against the idea of developing editorial policies in response to market research. I stand by this belief. Editors and writers are professional observers and cultural critics. As such, they have a responsibility to cover what they think is important—not what readers say they want.

Alas, this viewpoint cuts directly against the grain of the policy of most mainstream media organizations. The editors of The Virginian-Pilot, for example, should devote as much space to the arts as they do to sports, if not more so. But they don’t. Their reasoning? They see a robust sports section as a given but see arts advocates as a “special interest group.” (That’s a direct quote from an interview I once conducted with the editor.) Based on market research, moreover, they’ve concluded that not enough people care about the arts to justify a daily section.

They’re by no means alone in their willingness to “give readers what they want.” When I was a reporter at The Staten Island Advance back in the early 1980s, the editor established a column called, “It’s Good News!” His motivation?Readers often complained that the paper contained too many “negative stories.” They wanted something to brighten their day. The result was a hokey column filled with stories about people who had found and returned lost wallets, or folks who stopped to help a stranger with a flat tire.

This isn’t news. It’s opium. Unlike Shearer’s fantasy of reading news of Hornets victories every night, the “Good News” stories were true. But they were similar in essence. The intention behind both is to make readers feel good, not to confront them with important truths.

People may not be clamoring to read about all the bad news in the world—atrocities in Sudan, for example—but newspapers have a responsibility to report these stories anyway.

But I’m not holding my breath waiting for a radical change in policy. The boards of newspapers have handed control of these essential institutions over to businessman with MBAs—people who were taught that every important decision should be based on market research.

Reflecting on this problem, I often wonder whether capitalism is fundamentally at odds with democracy and culture. But on balance, I don’t believe that it is.

The problem with the mainstream media today is two-fold.

First, it’s a matter of greed. The people who run our daily newspapers, not to mention our television networks, radio stations and too many of our magazines, see modest profits as inadequate. They want more, more, more—and they want it quickly.

Second, it’s a matter of shortsightedness. In spite of their pathetic efforts to pander to readers’ interests, newspapers are failing. The Pilot Media Companies, for example, just decided to shut down another of its publications, Skirt. (Incidentally, I don’t mourn the loss of this publication. The name and premise struck me as an insidious reinforcement of gender stereotyping. Indeed, I’d often thought that it would’ve been fun to produce a male equivalent as a spoof called Suit: A Magazine for Soulless Corporate Executives. Neither do I mourn the loss of the Pilot Media Companies’ publication Mix, a magazine for “people of color,” which seemed to suggest that the company’s other publications were for white people, and the executives had decided to throw a bone to everyone else. As if African-Americans, Asians and Hispanics have some fundamental bond by virtue of the fact that they are minorities. But I digress.) The point is, these efforts at pandering to the market have not worked. (The fact that the executives who have overseen these debacles still have their jobs after laying off countless hard-working journalists is a real head-scratcher. But again, I digress.)

So what is the answer? How can media companies make a decent profit and serve the interests of democracy and culture?

I firmly believe that excellence leads to profitability in the long run. And that should be the only operating principle: the pursuit of excellence—in other words, the pursuit of truth, beauty and goodness.

There are no guarantees, certainly, that this operating principle will lead to commercial success. But if you survey the history of American culture you’ll find ample evidence that it can work. Think of All in the Family, for example. When Norman Lear produced the program, he was motivated by a desire to produce smart, social commentary in a comedic setting. Initially, the program was a commercial failure. But the network stuck with it. And in time, it became one of the most successful shows in television history.

As we look to the future, there’s reason for hope. Giants of the publishing industry like The New York Times and The New Yorker are still surviving, if not thriving, by standing by their principles. So are smaller publications like Portland’s Willamette Week, the nation’s best alternative weekly.

Nevertheless, communities across the country are suffering. Their newspapers continue to shrink, and devote an increasing amount of what little space is left to fluff—to that verbal equivalent of opium. Moreover, radio networks like Sinclair Media continue to fill the airwaves with toxic right-wing rhetoric because they don’t believe that “that’s what the people want.” Alternative viewpoints simply won’t drive ratings. The same can be said of commercial music stations, which neglect artistic excellence in favor of the aural equivalent of cotton candy.

It’s not overly sensational to suggest that our culture and democracy hang in the balance. Our media, after all, play a powerful role in shaping the ways in which we think about ourselves and the priorities we establish. If they pursue Jeffersonian ideals of truth and beauty, we will become more enlightened and will hold our leaders to a higher standard. If they feed us opium, we will grow numb and number.