TPM is, in fact, journalismâŚwhich should tell people how important journalism is.
Yesterday I posted my thoughts on the challenges of the Fourth Estate. At this time, the Fourth Estate is still strong, albeit the problems discussed in this article.
But it is weaker every minute that reprobate is in the Oval Office.
As an Iowan who lives in a small town, I have seen this slow death over the last few years. Itâs heartbreaking to watch.
Not to worry, small town journalism is being replaced by Fox News, and Sinclair television stations.
What could possibly go wrong?
It is market forces. My local city Paper (Orlando Sentinel) has a pdf version that I subscribe to and read every day. I gave up on the print edition as I was always up every day earlier than the carrier . My last print holdout is the Sunday NYT. Print is dying a slow and painful death. . witness the movie The Post that had to look for an old time printing press that was still functioning for their shots. They adapt or die
The journalism with the broadest reach has basically been bought, and now represents corporate interests over public service. (Fox news is an extreme example, but even the New York Times and ABC News answer first to the share holders. MSNBC, with the exception of Morning Joe, has managed to find a more liberal base, but donât think for a minute that they wouldnât change if there was more money to be found elsewhere.) Public service has never been profitable, and cannot compete with big moneyed interests. TPM can work for a narrow, targeted market in part because it has a national focus, and a base that is spread across the country. It would hard to do TPM for local news, and probably impossible for a small town. For local journalism to survive, we have to find a way to balance the bigger idea of service with the financial reality that journalism costs money. (The problem is greatly exacerbated by the death of small, locally based businesses.) I have no idea how we accomplish that balance, and I suspect that we wonât.
I spent the first phase of my career in newspapers and magazines. It was the happiest time of my life. But I saw this coming and stood out from under the crash. There have been attempts to recreate local journalism on the web with poorly-paid volunteers. That didnât work out. What could ever take its place I canât say. Itâs a damn shame. Itâs not really the fault of the papers or the people. Blame greedy conglomerates, if you want to blame someone. That, and the flight of ad dollars to free web classifieds.
I think an example of the blandly conventional face of mainstream journalism was on display this morning on the Sunday talk shows. Every one simply accepted at face value the idea that Ilhan Omarâs comments were âblatantly Anti-Semitic.â Not one host or panelist dared to raise the question as to whether or not lobbying for Israel is even possibly too heavy-handed, or that perhaps not everything that Israel does is above criticism. Not one.
There is an excellent podcast called On the Media that has looked at many aspects of this phenomenon over the last decade (and many other stories around media) that I highly recommend - I listen every week.
I am somewhat lucky enough to live in an urban area where the paper has survived to some extent - even though it leans Republican and is a shadow of its former self, I subscribe just to try to keep it alive. My love of written news and good reporting was awakened when I was very young ( I remember being captivated by the stories of James Meredith going to the University of Mississippi amidst crowds of angry white people in the 5th grade) and it has never abated. Although I never worked in the industry, many of my heroes were always investigative journalists both local and national.
The fact is the world changed substantially and irrevocably when the internet arrived, and we are the primary subjects of the biggest experiment of the last century. So far we have earned maybe a C- in what we have done with it. The fact that anti-science, conspiracy theories and anti-human politics continue to thrive and seem to be growing are proof that having all of the knowledge of the world at your fingertips is not the transformative thing we thought it would be.
My town used to have 2 daily print papers (morning and afternoon), and 1 weekly African American newspaper. The afternoon paper was bought by the morning back when i was a kid. The AA gig moved to a much larger town east of me. Weâre now down to just one, plus the minuscule paper strictly for government legal ads. The daily has been shedding itâs reporters and employees for years. It moved its print operations out of town, and just recently moved out of its building into a much smaller office space with no street presence at all.
Saying all of this, though, iâve never subscribed. Itâs historically been owned by RWNJs, and was even partly owned by our former Governor who is one of the biggest RWNJs in this country. I never subscribed, even to their online edition, because i refused to support their brand of yellow journalism. I highly suspect that i am not alone in my choices, either. We all prefer one local TV station over another. We all recognize the political bias inherent in national news organizations. We choose to support those outlets whose ideologies most closely line up with out own. I did not support our local paper because it was too ideologically conservative. Now, itâs on life support. Even if/when it dies, i wonât shed any tears.
Now, again, having said all of that, i do acknowledge the need and value of local news organizations. For the time being, thatâs satisfied by TV, but even that media is hardly the same as print. If there was a local paper, even if it was electronic, that was capable of reporting local news in the manner that i apprecaiate, i would support that outlet. I will not, however, support any online or print versions of Fox or Sinclair.
I was a reporter for a small-town 5-day-a-week paper in my early 20s. My mother was a reporter for the same paper for 20 years.
An award-winning editor, a great publisher whose family owned the paper, and a literate and well-educated community made the job a joy and one of the greatest learning experiences of my life.
Sadly, that paper is now nothing but fish-wrap, and itâs not very good at that.
Is there a specific answer for what happened to that paper? Did the family sell out? Did it just lose the financial support of local business as they vanished?
We have a hyperlocal all volunteer non-profit online newspaper here in South Central NH. Been in existence since 2005. Run by a mostly aged and crazy board/staff/reporters/editors. https://forumhome.org. We live on fundraising and donations and a tiny bit of advertising. Big part of our mission is to get local election info that no longer is covered by the city press, which is dying, to our residents. Also covering as we can local boards. 4 towns, around 4-5000 residents each.
Whenever there is a concentration, it presents opportunities, first in niches that are left open then, when those are taken advantage of, in larger enterprises. We are just seeing the first stirrings of this in journalism.
Not mentioned in this story is broadcast journalism. There has been regrettable concentration there, but there are local stations. I live in a major metropolitan area, but there are stations that play to fragments of the metropolis. In my town, the local paper has got less and less good, but there is an Internet competitorânot very good, but itâs there.
Part of the problem is convincing people to care about what goes on in the local community. I never voted in town elections (they are in May, separate from state and local elections. I never cared about local politicsâmy town was well governed so what was there to worry about? Then a state rep sat down next to me when I was having dinner at a local bar and suggested I run for town meeting (we have elected town meeting, because if we had an open one weâd have to rent an arena). Since then Iâve been heavily involved, and I care about what happens in local government. I canât say that I support local media heavily, but at least I present an audience to advertise and report to.
It got sold as the family members who founded it and ran it began to die of old age.
The new owners are interested only in cutting costs.
Two words: Media Consolidation.
It crushes competition large and small. The advertising is sucked up by the giants and whatever aggregators of the news are still out there under new management. AP may even someday be a thing of the past. Oh, the horror thatâll bring. Its like the AP just woke up to this phenomenon or something.
Similar situation here for the Courier Journal. Family owned for decades, Pulitzer Award winning. Family aged outâŚsquabbles between siblings (women should be home knitting not on the board of directors!) âŚsold it to Gannet. Down hill fast.
Tragic.
Same with the Knoxville News-Sentinel.
Used to be Scripps-Howard, then downhill with Gannett, and now off a cliff as USA Today lite.
Itâs unreadable.
You know what is taking its place right now I think? The Nextdoor App on Facebook.
Our local paper has been bought out by a chain that owns 3 other dailies off I5 in WA. They are all printed in Tacoma and most of our content is Tacoma-specific. They still have one or two staffers in our town. Things like a major local business burning down yesterday didnât make todayâs paper.
Seattle had 2 dailies when we moved there 25 yrs ago. Now theyâre down to one. We subscribe but they havenât delivered it for 2+ weeks now. Every day I log on to report a missing paper but they flag it âan issue is known and your paper will arrive in 2 hoursâ so it wonât let me report. After noon that flag is gone and it lets me report the missing paper. They claim to credit the next bill (they make us pay ahead now). If I cancel today Iâd need to pry out the balance of what I have paid them and the credit they owe me from the next bill.
Occasionally I email them and they tell me I have online access but my kids want to read the cartoons while they eat breakfast.
They used to commit to 7am delivery so one could read the am paper before heading to work. Now they basically offer nothing.