6 ms·

The Local-News Crisis Is Weirdly Easy to Solve

18 points by MattGaiser 3y ago

PaulHoule 3y ago
Ideally, investment in local news would come from the federal government, which has more freedom to think long-term than cash-strapped states and municipalities do. The problem I see there is "cash-strapped states and municipalities" which leads to a dependence on the federal government that is often unhealthy: for instance when a bridge washed out in my town they had to wait years to get a grant to fix it. Similarly the bus company has had a large number of buses fail inspection and, being cash-strapped, isn't going to be able to fix them until it gets help from outside. If we had some model where states and municipalities weren't cash-strapped I think they'd end up saving money in the long term. ---- As for the media I was just looking at the 2009 book The Curse of the Mogul https://www.amazon.com/Curse-Mogul-Worlds-Leading-Companies/dp/1591843901 https://www.amazon.com/Curse-Mogul-Worlds-Leading-Companies/... which makes the case that media conglomerates had a history of structurally underperforming compared to smaller media companies. Around that time that book came out, Warren Buffet invested heavily in small newspapers but he took a huge loss on them in the end https://newrepublic.com/article/156399/warren-buffett-terrible-newspaper-owner https://newrepublic.com/article/156399/warren-buffett-terrib... part of that story is the disappearance of classified ads and Google and Facebook becoming the new ad monopoly and choking off their revenue. Around Ithaca our daily newspaper (owned by Gannett) has turned into garbage whereas we have three free weekly papers, two of which have paper editions and a third of which is online only. It strikes me as deeply unfair that the daily is still getting the "paper of record" legal notice business when it is not doing the work to cover local issues the way the other papers are. Part of it is that the weekly really has a better model, most towns don't have enough going on to really fill up a daily and it is easier for advertisers to support a weekly since they get the same value in the end.
- everybodyknows 3y ago
  > dependence on the federal government that is often unhealthy My town of ~16000 residents flew a delegation across the country a few years ago for the sole purpose of lobbying for a project grant from Washington. This was reported in the local paper in tones suggesting some sort of success had been achieved.
- deprecative 3y ago
  Antitrust law against media companies and we shut off the tap to red states. I solved it.
- fieldcny 3y ago
  That mechanism exists, it’s known as “taxes”
HumblyTossed 3y ago
Hmmm... maybe the government shouldn't have let conglomerates buy up everything.
- orangepurple 3y ago
  He has a point. 40% of household media is produced by the Sinclair group. It's just an oligarchy. You can't really stop it.
constantcrying 3y ago
The author argues that local news papers should be externally funded (government, NGOs) to keep them in existence. One main argument brought forth is that newspaper uncover scandals, which is for the public good and ultimately saves money by preventing and couteracting corruption. This seems completly insane. The reason local newspapers are failing is because nobody reads them. People obviously do not care what is written in them to an extent that would keep the paper alive. Funding them will not make people read them. The idea that state funded journalists should be recruited to uncover corruption and then report about it is unbelievable. The one reason journalists can uncover what the government can not is because they are independent of the goverment. If you want to fight corruption you don't need journalists in between.
- soared 3y ago
  I agree that government funding doesn’t make sense, but newspaper were dying because nobody read them. Many pivoted and are profitable but are now being killed by companies like Alden Capital. Denver Post has large readership and has been profitable for a long time, but it was gutted by private equity and forcibly, slowly, killed.
  - araes 3y ago
    To add, there's also quite a bit of what recently has been described as "enshitification." The news source starts out ok, somebody makes a metric [1] to describe "ok," sources start chasing metric, stories all start sounding like they're written by an algorithm, soon you wonder if they all got replaced by generative AI a while ago, and nobody noticed (kinda like radio DJs). Reuters exemplifies this. I used to read Reuters. Now I barely skim. "ChatGPT, write me a generic story about a missile strike." "ChatGPT, write me a generic story about the Ukraine War, with absolutely no context, onsite reporters, or investigation." "20,000 artillery rounds per day?" Seriously? Every 4 seconds? Does anybody on the news even look at how big a hole a 155mm artillery shell leaves? No. Just the same video reel of patriotic photos and then Zelensky photo shoots. I saw one video the other day of a bomb squad trying to disarm a shell from WWII. Even with shielding, it still shook buildings for 100's of yards in every direction. 20,000 of those. Per day. Its like the only thing news sources can report on is stories with keyword "missile" because those used to get clicks. The algo says write this. [1] Ex: viewers, view time, page views, ads, social reposts, qtr. profits, clicks, engagement length, ect...
orangepurple 3y ago
I stopped consuming news when I realized NOTHING from the media has an impact on my life. Anything important always travels by word of mouth.
- stonogo 3y ago
  All you have done is outsource deciding what is important.
  - orangepurple 3y ago
    I still hear about what happened and I do not outsource the analysis of the situation.
orangepurple 3y ago
This is why you should just turn off the TV and never watch the news: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZggCipbiHwE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZggCipbiHwE
kbelder 3y ago
Just have the Federal government pay for it? That's not an easy solution, that's a simplistic solution.

18 points by MattGaiser 3y ago

Ideally, investment in local news would come from the federal government, which has more freedom to think long-term than cash-strapped states and municipalities do. The problem I see there is "cash-strapped states and municipalities" which leads to a dependence on the federal government that is often unhealthy: for instance when a bridge washed out in my town they had to wait years to get a grant to fix it. Similarly the bus company has had a large number of buses fail inspection and, being cash-strapped, isn't going to be able to fix them until it gets help from outside. If we had some model where states and municipalities weren't cash-strapped I think they'd end up saving money in the long term. ---- As for the media I was just looking at the 2009 book The Curse of the Mogul https://www.amazon.com/Curse-Mogul-Worlds-Leading-Companies/dp/1591843901 https://www.amazon.com/Curse-Mogul-Worlds-Leading-Companies/... which makes the case that media conglomerates had a history of structurally underperforming compared to smaller media companies. Around that time that book came out, Warren Buffet invested heavily in small newspapers but he took a huge loss on them in the end https://newrepublic.com/article/156399/warren-buffett-terrible-newspaper-owner https://newrepublic.com/article/156399/warren-buffett-terrib... part of that story is the disappearance of classified ads and Google and Facebook becoming the new ad monopoly and choking off their revenue. Around Ithaca our daily newspaper (owned by Gannett) has turned into garbage whereas we have three free weekly papers, two of which have paper editions and a third of which is online only. It strikes me as deeply unfair that the daily is still getting the "paper of record" legal notice business when it is not doing the work to cover local issues the way the other papers are. Part of it is that the weekly really has a better model, most towns don't have enough going on to really fill up a daily and it is easier for advertisers to support a weekly since they get the same value in the end.

everybodyknows 3y ago
> dependence on the federal government that is often unhealthy My town of ~16000 residents flew a delegation across the country a few years ago for the sole purpose of lobbying for a project grant from Washington. This was reported in the local paper in tones suggesting some sort of success had been achieved.
deprecative 3y ago
Antitrust law against media companies and we shut off the tap to red states. I solved it.
fieldcny 3y ago
That mechanism exists, it’s known as “taxes”

HumblyTossed 3y ago

Hmmm... maybe the government shouldn't have let conglomerates buy up everything.

orangepurple 3y ago
He has a point. 40% of household media is produced by the Sinclair group. It's just an oligarchy. You can't really stop it.

constantcrying 3y ago

The author argues that local news papers should be externally funded (government, NGOs) to keep them in existence. One main argument brought forth is that newspaper uncover scandals, which is for the public good and ultimately saves money by preventing and couteracting corruption. This seems completly insane. The reason local newspapers are failing is because nobody reads them. People obviously do not care what is written in them to an extent that would keep the paper alive. Funding them will not make people read them. The idea that state funded journalists should be recruited to uncover corruption and then report about it is unbelievable. The one reason journalists can uncover what the government can not is because they are independent of the goverment. If you want to fight corruption you don't need journalists in between.

soared 3y ago
I agree that government funding doesn’t make sense, but newspaper were dying because nobody read them. Many pivoted and are profitable but are now being killed by companies like Alden Capital. Denver Post has large readership and has been profitable for a long time, but it was gutted by private equity and forcibly, slowly, killed.
- araes 3y ago
  To add, there's also quite a bit of what recently has been described as "enshitification." The news source starts out ok, somebody makes a metric [1] to describe "ok," sources start chasing metric, stories all start sounding like they're written by an algorithm, soon you wonder if they all got replaced by generative AI a while ago, and nobody noticed (kinda like radio DJs). Reuters exemplifies this. I used to read Reuters. Now I barely skim. "ChatGPT, write me a generic story about a missile strike." "ChatGPT, write me a generic story about the Ukraine War, with absolutely no context, onsite reporters, or investigation." "20,000 artillery rounds per day?" Seriously? Every 4 seconds? Does anybody on the news even look at how big a hole a 155mm artillery shell leaves? No. Just the same video reel of patriotic photos and then Zelensky photo shoots. I saw one video the other day of a bomb squad trying to disarm a shell from WWII. Even with shielding, it still shook buildings for 100's of yards in every direction. 20,000 of those. Per day. Its like the only thing news sources can report on is stories with keyword "missile" because those used to get clicks. The algo says write this. [1] Ex: viewers, view time, page views, ads, social reposts, qtr. profits, clicks, engagement length, ect...

orangepurple 3y ago

I stopped consuming news when I realized NOTHING from the media has an impact on my life. Anything important always travels by word of mouth.

stonogo 3y ago
All you have done is outsource deciding what is important.
- orangepurple 3y ago
  I still hear about what happened and I do not outsource the analysis of the situation.

orangepurple 3y ago

This is why you should just turn off the TV and never watch the news: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZggCipbiHwE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZggCipbiHwE

kbelder 3y ago

Just have the Federal government pay for it? That's not an easy solution, that's a simplistic solution.