Originally published at: The Future of Local News Is Making People Pay For It - TPM – Talking Points Memo
You can leave journalism altogether or you can take the longest way around the barn possible to try and keep doing it (and maybe, in the process, save local journalism). That was the choice that I and four other journalists were facing in fall 2021, after witnessing countless talented colleagues get fired, pushed out, or…
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If Scientology can be tax-exempt, so can local newspapers. That would likely help more stay in business.
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As both a virtual OG reader of TPM and a subscriber to Hellgate I’ve come to very much value learning and knowing the voices of the reporters. It helps make them feel like trusted sources, but sources with overt biases which we as readers are free to filter as well as to engage with. I gave up reading the NYT oped page years ago because it felt like the combination of self-satisfied elitist bubble in concert with largely boomer conventional wisdom was as predictable as the tide but without the ability to course correct required of a navigator. With so little public engagement, these writer’s thin skins were on public display while their frequently inaccurate takes are both embarrassing and unnecessary. Sites like TPM and Hellgate build reader trust through actual reader engagement, which is certainly a function of their relative small sizes but hopefully the success of both publications manages to maintain that connection -the essential source of this reader’s confidence.