Former business journalist and current University of Maryland professor Rob Wells writes in The Washington Post about what today’s journalism world could learn from Kip Kiplinger, the founder of Kiplinger’s Personal finance.
Wells writes, “Journalism faces major challenges in 2022 because the digital revolution upended the traditional advertising and mass circulation business model and diminished the news media’s gatekeeper role on information. This has created economic problems even at the most successful publications. Simultaneously, journalists confront an increasingly fractured society where the two sides don’t even agree on a common set of facts, and independent journalism faces attacks from ideologues. Journalists also battle against dwindling attention spans from Americans with access to an endless array of content.
“Such problems call for bold solutions, and a look at legendary business journalist Willard ‘Kip’ Kiplinger’s legacy may provide them. In the 1920s, Kiplinger set out to fix some serious problems with the credibility and context of journalism — many similar to the troubles confronting the media in 2022. He hit on solutions that resemble many modern media innovations, such as shorter-form writing and a focus on analysis instead of straight reporting. The changes Kiplinger began making in the 1920s served him well in the 1930s, when he had to mediate between the conservative world of business and a political world dominated by the liberal New Dealers surrounding Franklin D. Roosevelt.”
Read more here.
