Mainstream journalism may have to turn increasingly towards reporter-certification in an effort to compete with emerging new media and combat shrinking audiences and declining advertising revenues.

That was a key message delivered to scientists and journalists participating in the fourth of six science and mass communications workshops. The speaker was Philip Meyer, a highly respected journalism professor at University of North Carolina Chapel Hill and the author of Precision Journalism, The Vanishing Newspaper, and other seminal books on journalism.

Meyer emphasized that in calling for journalism to better police itself and implement reporter credentialing measures, he was clearly addressing certification, not licensing, of reporters to demonstrate their acumen in covering particularly complex issues. Pointing to a wrath of troubling trends involving news media readership, viewership, and finances, Meyer said that in the face of strong pressures from competitors, one common response is to improve product quality.

Media owners are not taking that approach and instead continue to invest more in dissemination of news content than in news gathering (read reporting and editing), Meyer said, in part because the competition is coming from emerging information technologies. Many media owners are responding by trying to make their traditional news media outlets cheaper rather than better, he said, which includes cuts in newsroom staffs, in quality editing, and in enterprise reporting.

Meyer's remarks came as part of a two-day scientists and journalists workshop held at Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory in early June. The workshop is supported by funds from the National Science Foundation's Division of Atmospheric Sciences, Paleoclimate Program and is managed by the Metcalf Institute for Marine and Environmental Reporting, publisher of this newsletter.

Meyer told the roughly two dozen participating reporters and scientists that he has found science writers to be more adept than many other journalists at critical thinking. But he said his decades-long push to have journalism take something of a scientific-method approach to news gathering and verification has yet to be widely adopted.

If reporters would more often apply the scientific method to their investigations, he said, they would "discover that the real objectivity is in the process, using methods that can be replicated."

Meyer pointed out that daily newspaper readership penetration of American households peaked in the 1920s and that it has been declining ever since. At the current straight-line rate, he quipped, the last daily newspaper reader will die in the 2040s. To combat the declining state of journalism, Meyer encouraged journalists to practice "professional solidarity," recognizing the "good guys," and "going after" -- by name -- those who pass themselves off as responsible journalists. Writing and rewriting codes of ethics is simply not sufficient, Meyer said, urging journalists to embrace professional standards and conduct.

He said he reconciles his concerns over teaching young journalism students current directions in the press by reminding today's youth that they have the opportunity to fix the media left them by today's generation.

"Don't mess it up!" he implores them.

Nicholas Lemann, dean of Columbia's Graduate School of Journalism, told the meeting that his program's objective is to "turn out value-added journalists as opposed to commodity journalists," training them not just for their first journalism job but for a long career in journalism. He outlined Columbia's new effort with four other highly regarded journalism schools to instill more specific training -- including science training -- in graduate journalism education.

Lemann was especially critical of "miracle cure" health reporting, when the news media hype a certain issue in the name of health coverage.

Former NBC News President and ABC News Senior Vice President Richard C. Wald, also pointing to problems and challenges besetting mainstream media, said he finds hope in the internet and in cable television. He said their differing pricing mechanisms can allow them to provide greater context and depth and not face new expenses with each additional new audience member. He said this economic situation allows new media to provide more in-depth coverage, albeit for a targeted and smaller audience.

Pointing to the analogy of musical chairs, Wald said there "never has been a time when so much is in disarray and up for grabs" in the communications field. He said environmentalism is "a dormant issue right now, lacking the political leadership it once had," and he said coverage of environment "is not front and center in American news dialogue."

Wald acknowledged that prime-time TV "news magazines" like ABC's "20/20" are more interested in "sensation rather than statesmanship," which, he said, is the nature of broadcasting in the highly competitive prime-time hours. He said he anticipates that over time, CBS's "60 Minutes" will look more and more like "20/20" and less and less like the serious news model it long represented.

Wald agreed to speak to the workshop after Washington Post Executive Editor Len Downie, Jr. was unable to attend at the last moment because the Watergate "Deep Throat" news source come forward.

Additional reports on this workshop will be published in upcoming issues of Environment Writer in coming months. The next workshop in the series is expected to take place this fall at the University of California, Berkeley.