When Local Newspapers Close, We Lose What Matters: Journalism

Self-serving special interests are delighted to fill the void when local journalism disappears.

The vast majority of social media is opinion, spin or all about me. Whatever passes for analysis is often cherry-picked data packaged to support the spin.

There are a number of dynamics driving this post-truth competition for attention and engagement, but they boil down to money and selfhood in the online era.

Money is an obvious dynamic: the tech monopolies in search and social media and the media conglomerates all reap billions of dollars in revenues from users’ attention and engagement, as the data collected from users is sold at a premium. The more time users spend online, the greater the revenues and profits.

Why do people spend such large chunks of their lives posting “free” content on platforms? Many, including myself, of course, are hoping to make money by attracting subscribers, viewers, sponsors, advertisers, etc. to their feed / site, while others seek to establish a selfhood online that is larger and more fulfilling than the one they have in the real world.

Changing our selfhood in the real world is difficult; it’s much easier to curate a carefully edited mise en scene version of ourselves and our life online.

What’s been lost in this frenzied competition for eyeballs and “likes” is the distinction between opinion and journalism. The post-truth cliche is that there is no distinction, that everything is mere opinion and spin, but this is not true: journalism is different from opinion and spin.

In the post-truth competition for attention and engagement, the more sensational the content, the better. In contrast, much of journalism is DBI: dull but important. It’s never going to attract the same attention as sensationalist extremes, and few are willing to pay for it.

The core claim of the post-truth era is that there are no facts, there are only ambiguities and interpretations that can be spun 360 degrees at will. Actually, there are facts, for example, the city council voted 5 to 2 to approve the transit station project, and the county received funding for the rehab of the bridge.

From 1988 to 2005, I was a free-lance journalist for metropolitan newspapers, paid to cover housing and urban design issues as well as other topics. Under the guidance of editors, I learned what I call the journalistic style of research, interviews, fact-checking and composition.

The basic idea is to interview subjects who are involved in the issue or knowledgeable observers, gather facts (who, what, when, where, budget, policies, master plans, etc.), confirm the quotes from the sources and if there was a controversial decision looming, make sure the competing views were represented, while making clear who had a financial stake in the issue.

I’ve endeavored to maintain the core tenets of the journalistic style in my posts from 2005 to the present.

Though few seem to notice, old-school journalism is still being done the hard way, and no, it’s not all opinion and spin. Yes, a point of view can be established–for example, the muckraking investigative journalist makes it clear that The Little Guys are uncovering the dirt the Big Guys have been successfully hiding from the public–but this is different from opinion and spin. It’s in plain sight, and part of the story being presented.

Yes, bias can slip in, for journalists are human, too, but the goal is objectivity–a standard that has been buried by an avalanche of spin, both institutional and online.

While most of what passes for “news” focuses on national and international events, what has more direct impact on our lives is what’s happening in our city and county. These local decisions are the beat of local newspapers, who pay journalists to do the dull but important work of showing up to county council meetings, public hearings, judicial hearings, interview elected and appointed officials and their critics–all the scutwork of journalism that actually matters in our real-world lives, as opposed to the make-believe “life” we present online.

While the precise percentage of mass media ownership concentrated in the hands of a few corporations is open to debate, that most of the mass media is owned by a few corporations is not open to debate. This concentration is especially apparent in the tech monopolies in search and social media, where a cryptic Orwellian message that you’ve “violated community standards” sends you to Digital Siberia without any recourse.

The 6 Companies That Own (Almost) All Media

These global corporations have little interest in local journalism because it’s expensive and rarely profitable. Local newspapers were once supported by advertisers, classified ads and subscribers. Craigslist and similar sites dismantled classified ads, and few younger readers bother subscribing to the local newspaper because “all the news is online for free.”

Yes, all the corporate-packaged and sensationalized news is online, but local journalism dies when local newspapers go under. Investigative journalism and shoe-leather journalism are time-consuming, unglamorous and do not lend themselves to sensationalization. Few people are willing to pay for this work via direct subscriptions to journalists. Yes, there are a few superstars with thousands of paying subscribers, but local coverage attracts few subscribers. The investigative journalists I know only survive financially because their spouse has a steady job.

Self-serving special interests are delighted to fill the void when local journalism disappears. Once there’s nobody left who is paid to dig beneath the surface of press releases, then there’s no pushback when local power brokers carve up whatever’s available. The public, uninformed and clueless, is powerless.

This California city lost its daily newspapers–and is living what comes next.

Relying on stalwart volunteers to do all the work local journalists once did is not realistic. Imagining that local journalists can recruit a couple hundred people to pay them a monthly stipend is also not realistic, as the work is DBI: dull but important, and few people will pay for what they imagine is “free” online.

The best way to support local journalism is to subscribe to your local newspaper before it disappears from lack of public support. Journalism is a trade, a profession, and it’s not the same as opinion or PR-marketing-spin. We don’t seem to even miss it when it’s gone, but we are so much poorer when it’s gone, a profound poverty we don’t even recognize until it’s far too late to reverse it.

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