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In the U.S., the gutting of newsrooms has largely already happened, with disastrous consequences for democracy. There is simply too little actual investigative

In the U.S., the gutting of newsrooms has largely already happened, with disastrous consequences for democracy. There is simply too little actual investigative journalism, particularly at the local level, being done today. There are too few independent newsrooms. Consider that this was already a plotline in the early 2000s TV show "The Wire", written by former Baltimore-Sun reporter (and NewsGuild member) David Simon. The papers being organized are those that found a business model that works to a degree. The fight now is largely about whether their owners will continue to operate real newsrooms, which requires employing journalists at a living wage and having a fairly long time horizon for investment, or whether they will become essentially hollow brands with little original content. But to your point: yes, the broader political question of how the fourth estate is funded in the U.S. remains unresolved for now.

tharne 5y ago
I think a big part of the problem with funding the news is the way papers handle online payments. I would happily pay a dollar or two to have online access to the NY Times, WSJ, or even my local town paper for a day. What I absolutely do not want to do is spend $500+ on 3 or more subscriptions that I will not read, or not read much of, on most days. For papers that still have a print edition, you can buy the day's paper. I don't know why you can't do the same thing online.
- tsunamifury 5y ago
  You misunderstand. The subscriptions are not the key to revenue. The dollar even per article would be even less so. They are qualifiers for the ad demographic.
  - wbsss4412 5y ago
    The NYTimes seems to be doing quite well on subscription revenue.
    - Master_Odin 5y ago
      The NYT has subscribers across the country (and beyond) as it covers broad US and world events. I doubt a local paper that principally covers local/state news will have that same reach.
      - ghaff 5y ago
        The NYT, WSJ, FT, The Economist, and maybe a few others have a national and international (to greater or lesser degrees) audience who are willing to pay $100/year or so for a subscription. That's a much tougher sale when your audience is almost entirely just, say, Philadelphia.
      - wbsss4412 5y ago
        And for the same reason, local papers are going to have paltry ad sales. At the end of the day, none of this looks good for local news, but that doesn’t been that subscription sales aren’t a viable business model to some degree.
    - PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
      Not sure why people are downvoting you. Here are some numbers from Feb 2021: > Total subscription revenue in 2020 was up 10 percent, to $1.195 billion. > Total ad revenue at The Times fell 26 percent in 2020, to $392.4 million. > Adjusted operating profit rose 1.4 percent from the fourth quarter of 2019, to $97.7 million, and 0.9 percent over the year, to $250.6 million. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/04/business/media/new-york-times-earnings.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/04/business/media/new-york-t...
      - llbeansandrice 5y ago
        Just because the NYT was successful doesn't mean that model translates at all to local independent newsrooms. It doesn't even necessarily translate to other large national news papers. The resulting problem is exactly why people complain about too many streaming services. You could easily have to juggle national, state, and various local-level subscriptions. Maybe multiples at every level. Plus any other publications specific to other hobbies or interests you might have. Just because it works once, doesn't mean it will work for everyone.
  - chaostheory 5y ago
    The “qualifiers” are way too high for anyone who isn’t from the boomer generation. I can afford it, but I cannot justify it.
- ekanes 5y ago
  Agreed, micropayments would be clutch here.
scarface74 5y ago
“Journalism” has never been good when it comes to covering anything that didn’t effect the White middle class. Journalist reflexively took the word of the police department and prosecutors and didn’t believe minorities when they complained about police misconduct. It was only when everyone could film the police that it became apparent. On the other side, the rise of Trumpian populism came about because everyone ignored rural White America including journalist.
- bnralt 5y ago
  I think Walter Lippmann covered this pretty well 100 years ago in his book Public Opinion (an excellent book by the way, I highly recommend it). Newspapers get money from the public through a hidden commodity tax by way of advertisements. In order to get this to work, they need to sell their circulation, and the value of the circulation depends on the buying power of those in it. As such, the goal of a newspaper has to be to keep it's target audience happy by giving them what they want: > Circulation is, therefore, the means to an end. It becomes an asset only when it can be sold to the advertiser, who buys it with revenues secured through indirect taxation of the reader. The kind of circulation which the advertiser will buy depends on what he has to sell. It may be "quality" or "mass." On the whole there is no sharp dividing line, for in respect to most commodities sold by advertising, the customers are neither the small class of the very rich nor the very poor. They are the people with enough surplus over bare necessities to exercise discretion in their buying. The paper, therefore, which goes into the homes of the fairly prosperous is by and large the one which offers most to the advertiser. It may also go into the homes of the poor, but except for certain lines of goods, an analytical advertising agent does not rate that circulation as a great asset, unless, as seems to be the case with certain of Mr. Hearst's properties, the circulation is enormous. > A newspaper which angers those whom it pays best to reach through advertisements is a bad medium for an advertiser. And since no one ever claimed that advertising was philanthropy, advertisers buy space in those publications which are fairly certain to reach their future customers. One need not spend much time worrying about the unreported scandals of the dry-goods merchants. They represent nothing really significant, and incidents of this sort are less common than many critics of the press suppose. The real problem is that the readers of a newspaper, unaccustomed to paying the cost of newsgathering, can be capitalized only by turning them into circulation that can be sold to manufacturers and merchants. And those whom it is most important to capitalize are those who have the most money to spend. Such a press is bound to respect the point of view of the buying public. It is for this buying public that newspapers are edited and published, for without that support the newspaper cannot live. A newspaper can flout an advertiser, it can attack a powerful banking or traction interest, but if it alienates the buying public, it loses the one indispensable asset of its existence. Especially relevant today, with the number of advertisement driven companies. Also from the book, how newspapers will often let erroneous stories die rather than correcting them and angering passionate readers: > The more passionately involved he becomes, the more he will tend to resent not only a different view, but a disturbing bit of news. That is why many a newspaper finds that, having honestly evoked the partisanship of its readers, it can not easily, supposing the editor believes the facts warrant it, change position. If a change is necessary, the transition has to be managed with the utmost skill and delicacy. Usually a newspaper will not attempt so hazardous a performance. It is easier and safer to have the news of that subject taper off and disappear, thus putting out the fire by starving it.
philwelch 5y ago
The heyday of the newspaper also had disastrous consequences for democracy, such as the Spanish-American War.
- seanicus 5y ago
  Lest we forget NYT being used as a mouthpiece for Dick Cheney and forming the foundation of the invasion of Iraq. I'll stump for the importance of journalism at any level (esp. the local level) but the willingness of major outlets to accept and regurgitate anything from cops/3-letter orgs is absolutely confounding.
  - modo_mario 5y ago
    Reminds me of when every US newspaper basically plainly copied what the gov said about the strikes against Kata'ib Hezbollah being in response to a hit and run toyota-rocket attack of theirs on a US base. Not a soul that took note of the fact that Kata'ib had denied any involvement or that this happened very far away from where they held power and deep in territory with an enemy local group that had instantly claimed the attack.
throwaway2037 5y ago
Thank you to post about this important issue. The demise of diversity in news sources is that local politics will lose its Fourth Estate (media) that acts as a check-and-balance. National politics will continue to be closely monitored by national papers. To all readers of any nationality: This issue will affect any democracy that sees a sharp decline in local news sources.
webdoodle 5y ago
> But to your point: yes, the broader political question of how the fourth estate is funded in the U.S. remains unresolved for now. It's been funded by for profit organizations, that have a vested interest in controlling what is newsworthy and what is ignored, and who gets discredited and maligned. Unbiased news died with Operation Mockingbird in the 60's and it's corpse has been dancing along like Weekend at Bernie's.
brimble 5y ago
I don't think folks appreciate just how tetering-on-the-edge local corruption already was before local newspapers started to die. Expect to see a lot more crazy stories coming out when small towns and small cities go so far into private-fiefdom territory that someone outside notices. The only remaining significant bulwark to ruining-the-country levels of corruption is state auditors—and that's if they're not corrupt themselves. Larger cities may be OK a little while longer since they usually still have some local investigative reporting. It's one of several reasons I'm no longer sure the Web is compatible with healthy democracy.
- WesternWind 5y ago
  One thing I have read about though, is that, since unlike radio or tv stations there is no real regulator of who owns how many websites, conservative media networks are creating news sites for towns using a local contractor for local stories, and then having national or international stories be presented with a conservative slant. https://www.niemanlab.org/2020/07/hundreds-of-hyperpartisan-sites-are-masquerading-as-local-news-this-map-shows-if-theres-one-near-you/ https://www.niemanlab.org/2020/07/hundreds-of-hyperpartisan-...
- iratewizard 5y ago
  There is more than one solution to the problem. As the problem gets worse, the need for a new solution will overcome the friction that was preventing that solution from taking place. Upper government ought to be proactive about helping those solutions along, so fixing the problem doesn't involve killings.
mcculley 5y ago
I would love to buy a subscription to a newspaper. As far as I can tell, nobody wants to sell me one without ads and trackers. It does not appear there is a big enough market for a publication that serves the interests of subscribers. I canceled all of my subscriptions after asking politely that they do something about the third party tracking.
WesternWind 5y ago
There's also been a huge rise of non profit journalism.

tharne 5y ago

I think a big part of the problem with funding the news is the way papers handle online payments. I would happily pay a dollar or two to have online access to the NY Times, WSJ, or even my local town paper for a day. What I absolutely do not want to do is spend $500+ on 3 or more subscriptions that I will not read, or not read much of, on most days. For papers that still have a print edition, you can buy the day's paper. I don't know why you can't do the same thing online.

tsunamifury 5y ago
You misunderstand. The subscriptions are not the key to revenue. The dollar even per article would be even less so. They are qualifiers for the ad demographic.
- wbsss4412 5y ago
  The NYTimes seems to be doing quite well on subscription revenue.
  - Master_Odin 5y ago
    The NYT has subscribers across the country (and beyond) as it covers broad US and world events. I doubt a local paper that principally covers local/state news will have that same reach.
    - ghaff 5y ago
      The NYT, WSJ, FT, The Economist, and maybe a few others have a national and international (to greater or lesser degrees) audience who are willing to pay $100/year or so for a subscription. That's a much tougher sale when your audience is almost entirely just, say, Philadelphia.
    - wbsss4412 5y ago
      And for the same reason, local papers are going to have paltry ad sales. At the end of the day, none of this looks good for local news, but that doesn’t been that subscription sales aren’t a viable business model to some degree.
  - PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
    Not sure why people are downvoting you. Here are some numbers from Feb 2021: > Total subscription revenue in 2020 was up 10 percent, to $1.195 billion. > Total ad revenue at The Times fell 26 percent in 2020, to $392.4 million. > Adjusted operating profit rose 1.4 percent from the fourth quarter of 2019, to $97.7 million, and 0.9 percent over the year, to $250.6 million. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/04/business/media/new-york-times-earnings.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/04/business/media/new-york-t...
    - llbeansandrice 5y ago
      Just because the NYT was successful doesn't mean that model translates at all to local independent newsrooms. It doesn't even necessarily translate to other large national news papers. The resulting problem is exactly why people complain about too many streaming services. You could easily have to juggle national, state, and various local-level subscriptions. Maybe multiples at every level. Plus any other publications specific to other hobbies or interests you might have. Just because it works once, doesn't mean it will work for everyone.
- chaostheory 5y ago
  The “qualifiers” are way too high for anyone who isn’t from the boomer generation. I can afford it, but I cannot justify it.
ekanes 5y ago
Agreed, micropayments would be clutch here.

scarface74 5y ago

“Journalism” has never been good when it comes to covering anything that didn’t effect the White middle class. Journalist reflexively took the word of the police department and prosecutors and didn’t believe minorities when they complained about police misconduct. It was only when everyone could film the police that it became apparent. On the other side, the rise of Trumpian populism came about because everyone ignored rural White America including journalist.

bnralt 5y ago
I think Walter Lippmann covered this pretty well 100 years ago in his book Public Opinion (an excellent book by the way, I highly recommend it). Newspapers get money from the public through a hidden commodity tax by way of advertisements. In order to get this to work, they need to sell their circulation, and the value of the circulation depends on the buying power of those in it. As such, the goal of a newspaper has to be to keep it's target audience happy by giving them what they want: > Circulation is, therefore, the means to an end. It becomes an asset only when it can be sold to the advertiser, who buys it with revenues secured through indirect taxation of the reader. The kind of circulation which the advertiser will buy depends on what he has to sell. It may be "quality" or "mass." On the whole there is no sharp dividing line, for in respect to most commodities sold by advertising, the customers are neither the small class of the very rich nor the very poor. They are the people with enough surplus over bare necessities to exercise discretion in their buying. The paper, therefore, which goes into the homes of the fairly prosperous is by and large the one which offers most to the advertiser. It may also go into the homes of the poor, but except for certain lines of goods, an analytical advertising agent does not rate that circulation as a great asset, unless, as seems to be the case with certain of Mr. Hearst's properties, the circulation is enormous. > A newspaper which angers those whom it pays best to reach through advertisements is a bad medium for an advertiser. And since no one ever claimed that advertising was philanthropy, advertisers buy space in those publications which are fairly certain to reach their future customers. One need not spend much time worrying about the unreported scandals of the dry-goods merchants. They represent nothing really significant, and incidents of this sort are less common than many critics of the press suppose. The real problem is that the readers of a newspaper, unaccustomed to paying the cost of newsgathering, can be capitalized only by turning them into circulation that can be sold to manufacturers and merchants. And those whom it is most important to capitalize are those who have the most money to spend. Such a press is bound to respect the point of view of the buying public. It is for this buying public that newspapers are edited and published, for without that support the newspaper cannot live. A newspaper can flout an advertiser, it can attack a powerful banking or traction interest, but if it alienates the buying public, it loses the one indispensable asset of its existence. Especially relevant today, with the number of advertisement driven companies. Also from the book, how newspapers will often let erroneous stories die rather than correcting them and angering passionate readers: > The more passionately involved he becomes, the more he will tend to resent not only a different view, but a disturbing bit of news. That is why many a newspaper finds that, having honestly evoked the partisanship of its readers, it can not easily, supposing the editor believes the facts warrant it, change position. If a change is necessary, the transition has to be managed with the utmost skill and delicacy. Usually a newspaper will not attempt so hazardous a performance. It is easier and safer to have the news of that subject taper off and disappear, thus putting out the fire by starving it.

philwelch 5y ago

The heyday of the newspaper also had disastrous consequences for democracy, such as the Spanish-American War.

seanicus 5y ago
Lest we forget NYT being used as a mouthpiece for Dick Cheney and forming the foundation of the invasion of Iraq. I'll stump for the importance of journalism at any level (esp. the local level) but the willingness of major outlets to accept and regurgitate anything from cops/3-letter orgs is absolutely confounding.
- modo_mario 5y ago
  Reminds me of when every US newspaper basically plainly copied what the gov said about the strikes against Kata'ib Hezbollah being in response to a hit and run toyota-rocket attack of theirs on a US base. Not a soul that took note of the fact that Kata'ib had denied any involvement or that this happened very far away from where they held power and deep in territory with an enemy local group that had instantly claimed the attack.

throwaway2037 5y ago

Thank you to post about this important issue. The demise of diversity in news sources is that local politics will lose its Fourth Estate (media) that acts as a check-and-balance. National politics will continue to be closely monitored by national papers. To all readers of any nationality: This issue will affect any democracy that sees a sharp decline in local news sources.

webdoodle 5y ago

> But to your point: yes, the broader political question of how the fourth estate is funded in the U.S. remains unresolved for now. It's been funded by for profit organizations, that have a vested interest in controlling what is newsworthy and what is ignored, and who gets discredited and maligned. Unbiased news died with Operation Mockingbird in the 60's and it's corpse has been dancing along like Weekend at Bernie's.

brimble 5y ago

I don't think folks appreciate just how tetering-on-the-edge local corruption already was before local newspapers started to die. Expect to see a lot more crazy stories coming out when small towns and small cities go so far into private-fiefdom territory that someone outside notices. The only remaining significant bulwark to ruining-the-country levels of corruption is state auditors—and that's if they're not corrupt themselves. Larger cities may be OK a little while longer since they usually still have some local investigative reporting. It's one of several reasons I'm no longer sure the Web is compatible with healthy democracy.

WesternWind 5y ago
One thing I have read about though, is that, since unlike radio or tv stations there is no real regulator of who owns how many websites, conservative media networks are creating news sites for towns using a local contractor for local stories, and then having national or international stories be presented with a conservative slant. https://www.niemanlab.org/2020/07/hundreds-of-hyperpartisan-sites-are-masquerading-as-local-news-this-map-shows-if-theres-one-near-you/ https://www.niemanlab.org/2020/07/hundreds-of-hyperpartisan-...
iratewizard 5y ago
There is more than one solution to the problem. As the problem gets worse, the need for a new solution will overcome the friction that was preventing that solution from taking place. Upper government ought to be proactive about helping those solutions along, so fixing the problem doesn't involve killings.

mcculley 5y ago

I would love to buy a subscription to a newspaper. As far as I can tell, nobody wants to sell me one without ads and trackers. It does not appear there is a big enough market for a publication that serves the interests of subscribers. I canceled all of my subscriptions after asking politely that they do something about the third party tracking.

WesternWind 5y ago

There's also been a huge rise of non profit journalism.