Where Have All The Journalists Gone?

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Richard Helppie

Hello, welcome to The Common Bridge, I'm your host Rich Helppie, where we will be discussing issues of the day, opportunities of the moment, in a fiercely nonpartisan policy oriented way. Today, we're going to be back on journalism and the state of journalism today with a renowned writer. We welcome to The Common Bridge today, Mr. Kevin Allen. Kevin, it's good to see you. (Kevin Allen: My pleasure.) Kevin is a renowned sports journalist who has been inducted into the National Hockey League Hall of Fame because for almost 50 years, he's covered the National Hockey League, including 30 years as the USA Today's hockey writer. He's authored more than 20 books, covered over 600 games - including 25 Stanley Cup finals and seven Olympics - as well as the NCAA final for the World Series, the Super Bowl, the NBA finals. Beyond sports, he's interviewed Jimmy Carter, Al Gore, Michael J. Fox, Jon Hamm, Tim Robbins, and a host of other luminaries of our time. While sports reporting has been Mr. Allen's forte, and a great way to earn a living, he's first and foremost a journalist and an author. It's been my pleasure to call him a friend for many years. He has a view on contemporary America and our reporting industry. So again, we welcome to The Common Bridge, my friend and accomplished writer, Mr. Kevin Allen. So Kevin, our audience likes to know a little bit about the background of the people that are on the show. I could probably tell a few things, because we've known each other for so long; played on some of the same ball fields as kids. I witnessed some of our expertise, and some of our not so good days, throwing baseballs around and such. Thanks to social media and mutual friends, we were able to connect after years of raising our families and chasing careers. Tell the audience of The Common Bridge a little bit about some of your early days, maybe a little bit about your academic preparation and a little arc - maybe a minute or so - on what you've done in the professional world.

Kevin Allen

Well, Richard, I think I was one of the few people that had the advantage of knowing what I wanted to do quite early in my life. I decided when I couldn't hit the curveball in little league that if I wanted to have a career that was involved in sports, that I better figure out a different way to do it. I liked writing and I thought maybe...I would spend all my time reading newspapers; I delivered newspapers and before I went out on my route, I would pull out and read the sports section. Then I thought, this looks like a great way to make a living. So because of that I could focus on that pretty early. And even in high school, I went to Wayne Memorial High School, the teachers there - and Darrell Emerson was my teacher, he figured out that I really was sincere and dedicated and he kind of crafted a program to help me get on my way. I was able to come out of high school and actually go to work for the Ypsilanti Press, which was a daily. I was 17 years old when I started to get paid; I covered high school sports and of course, I was able to go to college at Eastern Michigan University and there I got on the college paper. I always say that my days on the college paper probably prepared me more than any other college classes that I had because it was hands on experience. We covered the city, we covered politics, we covered everything. From there I had an internship at a weekly chain in Michigan, I went out to Arizona and worked for a daily out there, and then came back and ended up at the Port Huron Times Herald, which turned out to be my big break because in 1984, the Tigers got off to a great start at 35 and five, and I was of course situated in Port Huron, which is an hour plus to Detroit. They needed someone to cover those hot Tigers. I was elected and I covered probably 40 games that year. I went to spring training the next year and the next thing I knew I was at USA Today.

Richard Helppie

Was one of the challenges keeping the smile off your face when they said, Allen, get down to the corner of Michigan and Trumbull and we're going to pay you to go there.

Kevin Allen

Absolutely. I grew up in Wayne, Michigan, and I would get on the bus for 35 cents one way to go to the Tiger game. So I grew up loving the sport of baseball and when I went to USA Today I thought I would continue in that regard. When I got there, there was a lot of baseball writers and there was a gentleman who had left hockey to go to baseball. They were going to conduct a national search for a hockey writer and the guy - the late Rod Beaton - and said to the sports editor, Kevin's from Michigan, he probably speaks hockey fluently. Well, I had actually covered the Redwings training camps - Steve Yzerman's first training camp - so I did have some hockey experience. When a sports editor said, could you do this for us while we do the search? I said, yeah, absolutely, I can do that. And they gave it to me on a temporary basis and as you mentioned, more than 30 years later, I was still doing the job on a temporary basis.

Richard Helppie

You're highly respected and you've earned your stripes. Well, today, you're writing for a new publication?

Kevin Allen

Yeah, I am. You know, classic story in America, there was a merger and I had been there a long time, therefore I was at the top of the salary structure. So those are the people that usually get moved out. I anticipated that was going to happen; it did. I looked at possibly retiring and I decided I wasn't really ready so I ended up taking a job with Detroit Hockey Now, which is a new website. I'm officially the editor in chief of it, although, basically, I'm sort of a beat writer for the Red Wings. Then I also maintain ties with the Hockey Buzz website, which still gives me my national platform. I do national columns for that website as well and then I freelance and do things, I've just finished a book with Detroit Tigers great Willie Horton. I did another one with Bernie Nicholls, the former All Star NHL player as well. So I've kept pretty busy.

Richard Helppie

You have and your productivity is amazing. Kevin, you know enough about what I've been up to over the last many decades and you know that The Common Bridge was started based on a frustration with an unresponsive and highly polarized government. We have elected people competing against each other and not addressing issues. And all of this, in my humble opinion, is possible because that treasured fourth estate has abandoned its crucial role of holding those elected accountable. Instead, they're joining the fray of partisanship. I'm an eternal optimist, I see the integrity of those battling back. There are a lot more people that are fiercely nonpartisan that are joining us on The Common Bridge and most of them are just afraid to speak up. But I also see some brave souls calling out the formerly noble reporting industry for abdicating their position of trust. On the show, we've had Joe Ferullo, Mort Crim, Thomas Frank, Matt Taibbi, Stuart Taylor, and others, and they've all called out the same issue. One of the parallels they draw is that political reporting, and general reporting, has become more like sports reporting and so today, that's what I was hoping we could get; a learned view from a person like yourself who's traveled around the world, you've witnessed some very powerful people in their unguarded moments. You can bring those insights about where the heck are we with journalism and reporting. And so, as always, I'm anticipating some education and maybe we'll get to some policy ideas as well. But let me start by asking this, Kevin, when you're writing about sports, are you writing to inform and entertain the fans? And when you began your career, was that also what you were supposed to be doing - inform and entertain? If I'm correct about that, is that the norm for general reporting, especially political reporting, or is it something else? Are they are they different or should they be different?

Kevin Allen

Well, you've already, in your opening question, gotten your arms around the whole situation in journalism. And that is the mission has changed dramatically from the time I started to where we are today. When I started in the 1970s, and again, that was the Watergate era; it was probably the golden age of journalism. We had...the watchdog effect of journalism was probably never greater than it was at that point; they basically toppled a president who needed to be toppled at that time. At that point, there was a lot of discussion within the industry of where do we go from here. That led to - even in the sports world - when I came out of college, several prominent sports departments around the country were already hiring investigative reporters. We were going to join the political world, as well, and doing very similar things if we were going to hold sports teams accountable. We were going to get into areas that we never got into before. And I think we did do that for a while. But what happened is, in the early days, even in the 70s, we were still informing; that we're in an information business. People didn't know a lot about sports figures; this is before social media, this is before the internet. So you were still just giving readers basic information and interpreting what was happening with teams, and they were happy to get that information. But as time has marched on, and we've had the involvement of the internet - particularly social media - that mission changed because readers had all that information; they know a lot about celebrities, they know a lot about political figures, they know a lot about sports figures. So no longer were we providing basic information; they could get that, they could get it in a timely fashion in real time. So we really had to reinvent ourselves. And what has happened - and I think this is true in the sports world, it's true in the political world - is advocacy journalism became part of it. What we discovered - and especially through social media - is that there was a group of people, a large group of people, that prefer to get their news coverage from their perspective, from their advocacy. If you were an Oakland Raiders fan, you wanted to read about the Oakland Raiders from people who were, almost, fans of the team. We still now hear today from readers who will comment under our stories - if we write a negative story about a team - what are you doing, you should support the team. That never would have happened in the 1970s. And I think that's sort of forced journalism to make a decision. It also came at a time when the economics of journalism was changing; it became more difficult to make money. There was survival mode. I remember being at USA Today where there was a lot of discussion because the newspaper was becoming obsolete. People weren't getting their news from a newspaper, they were getting it on the web, and we had to figure out a way to survive to make money. I think that forced a relaxation of the rules. I think everybody pushed the envelope. I think we were looking more for sensational stories instead of good, solid dependable reporting. That put all journalists in an uncomfortable position of trying to figure out how to stay relevant and still embrace their ethics that they've had for a very long time.