NPR's On the Media

Commentary

Broadcast: January 1, 2000

Mitchell Stephens

Hopes for a new century.

The case can be made that the media, in general, became the most powerful institution of the past century�and that journalism, in particular, established itself as the form of communication best able to capture the struggles of that century.

Here are twelve, rather different hopes for media and journalism in the new century:

• First, that technology will not make communicating seem so easy that we are unprepared for the inevitable and repeated realization that really communicating is hard.
• Second, that media and journalism won�t continue to grow so large, so powerful and so pervasive that we continue to lose our abilities to entertain and inform ourselves.
• Third hope for the new century, that if newspapers do finally succumb to the competition with newer technologies, whatever replaces them will be damn good. And that whatever may replace newspapers will be portable enough to peruse with breakfast, in bed�wherever.
• Fourth, that we and our children and grandchildren will have the luxury of living in less and less newsworthy times. That, in other words, journalism may not be the form that best captures the twenty-first century.
• Fifth, that, even should we be so fortunate, humankind will retain sufficient interest in civic affairs to prevent news from being totally overwhelmed by entertainment.
• But, sixth, that the exploration of kinds of news that go beyond civic affairs will continue to broaden and deepen.
• And, seventh, that, even if times are good for many, journalists will not lose the critical spirit that might help make them better for more.
• Eighth hope for the new century, that digital and video communication will begin to achieve the revolutions not only in art but in thought that writing and printing -- after similarly inauspicious starts -- achieved.
• Ninth, that humankind will discover � in art, in thought � new methods of mixing its mushrooming doubt with invigorating, if circumscribed, conviction.
• Tenth, that knowledge will not only be distributed but organized and accessed with such efficiency that humankind�s attachment to myths and superstitions will further weaken.
• But, eleventh, that the flood of facts won�t wash away the seeds of ideas.
• And, twelfth, that no amount of information will lessen our awe and astonishment at the wonder of our existence.

Happy new century!