If you’re lucky enough to catch it, there are distinct moments in your life when you just know what’s bound to happen next. As a child sitting in a small windowless room with his cousins, bracing for an incoming tornado, Dr. Anthony Moretti, the chair of the Communication and Organizational Leadership department at Robert Morris University, knew that he wanted to be the one knowing what was going on, to be a journalist chasing the story. While he didn’t go on to be a storm chaser, Dr. Moretti pursued the study of communication, received a Ph.D. in Mass Communication from Ohio University, and spent many years in production. For those who want to enter the field, from someone who has spent a lifetime in it, we consider what the future of journalism holds.

Over the course of almost 50 years, the way in which we receive news and the technologies that bring us information have gone through radical changes. Stretching back to the 1980s, radio was cutting tapes with razor blades, television production turned to digital tapes in the mid 80s, and now the ability to capture stories anywhere, anytime, is possible with the world in our hands—cellphones. “Being able to be anywhere and put together a story is fascinating. But I think that speed, that expectation for speed, at times leads to inadvertent mistakes—mistakes nonetheless—and so that worries me a little bit,” said Moretti. “There’s something to be said about simply concentrating on the questions you’re asking, listening to what the person is saying, and not worrying about whether or not you move a little bit, do I have to move this way to keep the shot framed up, you know, and all that kind of thing? I think something’s lost because you’re distracted” adding, “newspaper journalism is really—and has always been—the lifeblood of the journalism world because of the depth that they can get into in a story.”

American journalism is as old as our nation itself, and as the world has embraced new technologies and trends, so has the art of storytelling. One thing that remains, is when we hear the name “Marshall McLuhan,” we know, “the medium is the message.” But in the digital age of journalism, has the medium become more important than the message?

Widening our shot and seeing journalism from a global perspective, we have to wonder: is American news culture different from how the rest of the world tells stories? Dr. Moretti is a special commentator for the China Global Television Network and shared his perspective on the tendencies of U.S. media. “One of the criticisms that I have of U.S. media is I think they’re too quick to jump on what I call the narrative,” said Moretti. “Whatever the narrative is, I don’t care what it is: the New England Patriots cheated, China is bad, Russia wants to nuke somebody. Whatever the narrative is, I don’t care if it’s sports or real life, the narrative sort of kicks in and, as the echo chamber of Washington starts to repeat it, and repeat it, and repeat it, and repeat it, it basically becomes almost like gospel and nobody dares to question it.” Reflecting on what has caused this change in journalism over the years, Dr. Moretti argues that it has roots in what is now referred to as legacy media. “A lot of people view them [legacy media] as: I want to watch ‘fill in the blank name’ on Fox, or on MSNBC, or I want to go to Democracy Now, or I want to go wherever I want to go. I only want to hear what I want to hear. I only want information that agrees with my viewpoint. I’m right, and I know I’m right, and I want to be validated and proven right,” he said. “We’ve created so much celebrity and so much ‘this newscast is hosted by me.’ Instead of, ‘This is the news,’ and it’s a really big difference.”

If you’re going into journalism for the fame of your name at the bottom of a page, you’re destined to fail. And similarly, American journalism—and the content that consumers want to watch—follows in similar fashion. Dr. Moretti remembers a professor in college telling one of his peers, “‘If you’re more important than the story, we have a problem.’ We now have a problem because what Sean Hannity says is more important than what actually happened. What Rachel Maddow says is more important than what actually happened. Not in everybody’s minds, but in enough viewers’ minds that, as long as Sean Hannity says something that I agree with, everything’s great, or if it’s Rachel Maddow, or whomever it is that I turn to on a regular basis. I’m not sure I’m comfortable with celebrities—and they really become celebrities in my mind—being news professionals or pretending to be news professionals.”

The medium has become more important than the message not only in television news, but even in print journalism. From a monetary standpoint companies know what headlines sell, or get clicks, that aren’t written about what, but rather who. “I think it was the LA Times who hired a Taylor Swift reporter last year,” said Moretti. “And it was like, what the heck are you doing? But then I thought about it: she is probably the most recognized, talked-about entertainment brand in this country right now. And as much as it pains me to say it, if three or four reports a week on Taylor Swift are going to draw more eyeballs to the newspaper’s website, that’s kind of the world we’re in right now. We have to adapt, I get that. We have to adapt, but I just don’t want this—I just don’t want the pillars, the real standards, to go away. That’s what I worry about. How much can you cut into them until they’re really not what they were?”

While there is a constant need to adapt to our ever-changing world, can the journalistic system return to telling stories without neglecting the truth in place of what sells? Dr. Moretti believes that “if you’re a journalist who really, really cares about the industry, you do that every day. The story matters, the truth matters, accuracy matters. Telling the best possible story I can tell today matters. If you’re a loudmouth, then all you’re looking for is how I can twist something to generate a headline,” and it starts with dropping the name of a celebritized figure, and the rest writes itself. 

In the digital age of journalism, the medium has become more important than the message, but the story of journalistic reform and the next shift in the way we tell stories technologically, from whom, and for whom has yet to be written.