The well-being of journalism in America is at stake, and members of the media must take steps to protect its integrity, said Geneva Overholser, the 24th Ralph McGill lecturer.

“Journalism in America is dangerously threatened, and a decline in America’s journalistic health leads directly to a decline in America’s civic health,” she said in her speech Wednesday.

Overholser is the Hurley Chair of Public Affairs Reporting at the University of Missouri and former ombudsman for The Washington Post and editor of The Des Moines Register.

“The roll call of media problems is long,” she said. “There is a tendency to rush herd-like toward one story, which drowns out all others.”

And newspapers are risk-averse, she said.

“We are slow to make changes even when solid evidence indicates the need to do so,” Overholser said.

Also, editors of newspapers are moving more frequently from one community to another, much like reporters, which leads to less connection with the community, she said.

“There has been a different tenor since 9/11,” Overholser said. “It had a profound impact on journalism.”

Though there were many examples of fine journalism after Sept. 11, 2001, “it wasn’t journalism that challenged the prominent thinking,” she said.

“Skepticism is patriotism. But we in journalism have grown far more worried about being disliked than we used to be. Now … we must fear being labeled unpatriotic. Too few of us (journalists) have stood up well under these challenges,” Overholser said.

The move of newspapers from private ownership to publicly traded companies greatly has changed the nature of journalism, she said.

“Making money for their corporations now has a greater hold on journalists than making a difference in their communities,” Overholser said. “News has become secondary to markets and revenues.”

Despite all the downfalls that journalism faces, it is still a necessity, she said, and people are seeking solutions, and several major gatherings of newspeople are held each year, where problems in journalism are discussed.

The best way to solve the problems, though, is to inform the public, she said.

“I believe that only through acquainting the public with the issues at hand — and with the extent of the challenge — can we hope to attain any real solution,” Overholser said.

“It is only when the public demand for good journalism is heard as loudly as Wall Street’s demand for shareholder satisfaction that corporate journalism will give its civic duty anything like parity with its commercial duty,” she said.