Many years after the fact, a friend who was the top editor at a large metro newspaper reminded me that back in the 1990s I had warned him that various websites, including Craigslist, were going to ruin his company’s business model.
“You were right,” he told me. “We should have listened to you.”
I had been right, but since there was no pleasure in being so about the disaster that had by then befallen the field I love — journalism — we hoisted a mournful drink instead. We were meeting in the aftermath of yet another round of layoffs, or “buyouts” as they were charitably called, in the newspaper industry.
Thus ended many a journalist’s career, as a combination of factors including free web-based content, demographic changes, the lack of community roots, and avaricious owners led to the widespread collapse of the print news industry over the past quarter century.
I later chronicled some of the decline in my years as a blogger/media critic for Bnet and 7x7.
But the decline of a robust press in the big cities was partially offset by the emergence of exciting new web-based publications that attracted large audiences. Meanwhile, it was in the small towns and rural areas that the real damage to a robust local press occurred.
As a result, many communities have been left as virtual “news deserts” with no real coverage at all. Here and there, a few efforts have emerged to counter this disturbing trend. One of those efforts, the Local News Network, is headquartered in Durango, Colorado. I serve on its advisory board.
The Courier Newsroom is another, also located in at least eight states, including Michigan, Florida, and Arizona. And the family-owned Storm Lake Times in Iowa is yet another.
Some days, such innovative businesses give me hope that a new age of local journalism may be dawning in the heartland to quench the thirst for reliable information in the news deserts that are also home to many of the conspiracy theories and disinformation campaigns that are dividing the country politically and threatening our democracy.
Some believe that paywalls are the answer for these new local news companies; I’m not so sure. People are able and willing to pay for only so many information sources, which is one of the reasons so many of our colleagues lost their jobs once the Internet came along.
We may need a new national initiative whereby some sort of an annual content “pass” is available for purchase, sort of like the one you get to visit our national parks. This may seem like a crazy idea, and it probably is, but it might just work if enough powerful forces got behind it.
There are a lot of details that would have to be worked out. How can we possibly determine what is a legitimate press outlet or independent journalist in a world filled with bloggers good and bad, publications real or fake, stories fact-checked and un-fact-checked?
Who gets to decide all this stuff?
Which code of conduct do journalists need to adhere to?
What about censorship, government or private sector? What about Section 230?
There are too many questions to go into in a daily essay but perhaps if my blood pressure recedes enough in the coming months I will flesh out this crackpot idea. Somebody has to start addressing the crisis in journalism.
Anyway, if anyone has a better idea, I’m all ears, as they say.
Thanks to David Bank (re:Courier) and Steve Rhodes (re:Storm Lake) and the folks at LNN for help on this piece. Thanks to Jackie Ross for some of the Afghanistan headlines below.
***
Tim Redmond, one of the talented local journalists still able to operate independently in San Francisco, has published a blistering look at a vicious pro-recall ad in the right-wing-funded battle to unseat progressive DA Chesa Boudin. I’ve linked to the article below.
MONDAY HEADLINES
* Is Delta the last Covid ‘super variant’? (Guardian)
* With poor nations only 5 percent vaccinated, wealthy nations need to look in the mirror (Edit Bd/WP)
* Covid: Huge protests across Europe over new restrictions (BBC)
* European protests against Covid-19 curbs spread to Brussels (Financial Times)
* Riots broke out in cities across the Netherlands, the third night in a row that police clashed with mobs of angry youths who set fires and threw rocks to protest COVID-19 restrictions. There were also clashes in Brussels with police firing water cannon and tear gas at demonstrators throwing rocks and smoke bombs. (Reuters)
* How will the Covid Pills Change the Pandemic? (New Yorker)
* Americans should get boosters ahead of possibly ‘dangerous’ winter spike, Fauci says (WP)
* How COVID shots for kids help prevent dangerous new variants (AP)
* How the U.S. Lost Ground to China in the Contest for Clean Energy (NYT)
* Republicans have fundraising edge in battle for control of US Congress (Financial Times)
* The Dangerous Experiment on Teen Girls — The preponderance of the evidence suggests that social media is causing real damage to adolescents. (Atlantic)
* Vancouver Is Marooned by Flooding and Besieged Again by Climate Change (NYT)
* Colombia is pitting two vulnerable groups against each other. At stake is the Amazon. (WP)
* Eight years old and sold for marriage: Desperate Afghan families sell their daughters for cash (MSN)
* Jobs lost, middle class Afghans slide into poverty, hunger (AP)
* On Helmand’s bleak wards, dying children pay the price as western aid to Afghanistan is switched off (Guardian)
* The United Nations pushed for urgent action to prop up Afghanistan's banks, warning that a spike in people unable to repay loans, lower deposits and a cash liquidity crunch could cause the financial system to collapse within months. (Reuters)
* Hidden books, secret meetings, precious hope: In Afghanistan, girls risk it all for an education (USA Today)
* In Hard Times, Afghan Farmers Are Turning to Opium for Security (NYT)
* The Guardian view on Afghanistan: a fast-developing disaster (Guardian)
* More Americans say they’re not planning to have a child, new poll says, as U.S. birthrate declines (WP)
* Peng Shuai: Chinese tennis star tells Olympic officials she is safe (BBC)
* Can big tech ever be reined in? (Guardian)
* How Tax Credits, Subsidies Have Aided Electric-Vehicle Market (WSJ)
* Why is everyone quitting, and how do I know whether it’s time to leave my job? (WP)
* El Salvador Bitcoin city planned at base of Conchagua volcano (BBC)
* Two Fox News commentators resign over Tucker Carlson's series on the Jan. 6 siege (NPR)
* NASA Prepares to Launch Asteroid Defense Test Mission (VOA)
* Five people were killed and more than 40 injured after an SUV sped through a Christmas parade in Waukesha, Wisconsin, knocking down dozens of people including youngsters waving pompoms and a group of 'Dancing Grannies'. (Reuters)
* Police in California are seeking about 80 suspects who they said swarmed into a Bay Area Nordstrom department store in a coordinated robbery, ransacking as much as they could carry and fleeing in cars they had parked outside. (Reuters)
*Boudin recall ad features paid staffers and a scandal-plagued former DA — Why don't the local media, so happy to attack the DA, fact-check an ad that is blatantly false and kind of ridiculous? (48 Hills)
* Australian small publishers will get a leg up in their fight to secure licensing deals with Google and Facebook after the country's richest person said his philanthropic organization would seek a collective bargaining arrangement for them. (Reuters)
* Biologists Recommend Trees Put Aside A Little Phosphorus For Unexpected Emergencies (The Onion)
***
“Read All About It, Part III”
Song by Emeli Sandé
Songwriters: Adele Emily Sande / Benjamin Alexander Kohn / Peter Kelleher / Iain James / Thomas Andrew Searle Barnes / Stephen Manderson
You've got the words to change a nation
But you're biting your tongue
You've spent a life time stuck in silence
Afraid you'll say something wrong
If no one ever hears it how we gonna learn your song?
So come on, come on
Come on, come on
You've got a heart as loud as lions
So why let your voice be tamed?
Maybe we're a little different
There's no need to be ashamed
You've got the light to fight the shadows
So stop hiding it away
Come on, come on
I wanna sing, I wanna shout
I wanna scream 'til the words dry out
So put it in all of the papers
I'm not afraid
They can read all about it
Read all about it, no oh
Oh oh oh
Oh oh oh
Oh oh oh
Oh oh oh
Oh oh oh
Oh oh oh
At night we're waking up the neighbors
While we sing away the blues
Making sure that we're remembered, yeah
'Cause we all matter too
If the truth has been forbidden
Then we're breaking all the rules
So come on, come on
Come on, come on
Let's get the TV and the radio
To play our tune again
It's 'bout time we got some airplay of our version of events
There's no need to be afraid
I will sing with you my friend
Come on, come on
I wanna sing, I wanna shout
I wanna scream 'til the words dry out
So put it in all of the papers
I'm not afraid
They can read all about it
Read all about it, oh
Oh oh oh
Oh oh oh
Oh oh oh
Oh oh oh
Oh oh oh
Oh oh oh
Yeah, we're all wonderful, wonderful people
So when did we all get so fearful?
Now we're finally finding our voices
So take a chance, come help me sing this
Yeah, we're all wonderful, wonderful people
So when did we all get so fearful?
And now we're finally finding our voices
Just take a chance, come help me sing this
I wanna sing, I wanna shout
I wanna scream 'til the words dry out
So put it in all of the papers
I'm not afraid
They can read all about it
Read all about it, oh
Oh oh oh
Oh oh oh
Oh oh oh
Oh oh oh
Oh oh oh
Oh oh oh
I wanna sing, I wanna shout
I wanna scream 'til the words dry out
So put it in all of the papers
I'm not afraid
They can read all about it
Read all about it, oh
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