Good stuff. I have unsubscribed to many traditional newspapers and magazines over the last few years. I still get the Seattle Times for its local news and sports. And I detest the way that journalists and Twitter have become nearly the same thing. They've become the BrundleFly.
Thank you Sherman! Yeah, for me, a major underreported story with journalism is the narrowing of actual reporting. Sometimes I swear that there are only like 10 outlets - predominantly wire services - doing any original reporting at all, and then everybody just cribs from them or offers analysis. If I open one of the city newspapers, I'm basically just opening the AP with a smattering of local news. - Sam
This is a particularly smart take: "[W]hat the journalists of the old school think of as journalism - bureaus, ledes, nut grafs - is really just a manifestation of a particular phase of journalistic history, the phase of the mass-printed daily and the conglomerated news empires." I appreciate your conclusion that none of us ought to be ashamed of the content we're producing, but I'll admit to some unresolved conflicts on that point. The death of the local paper has led to a fixation on national news, much of it political. I'm as guilty as anyone of browsing the largely free Apple News feed, and I subscribe to the NY Times and the Washington Post, but have not yet brought myself to subscribe to the Centre Daily Times in State College, PA. I feel some guilt about that, but I also am not terribly impressed by the quality of the local news outlets. The small-town newspaper did once serve an important purpose. Some still do, if they can maintain their independence from the Gannetts, which tend to translate all content into fodder for ad revenue. Trying to read the Des Moines Register, when I lived in Iowa, required squatting away a dozen pop-ups that seemed for all the world to be trying to prevent me from actually reading anything.
I still have clippings of summer-league baseball stories from The Western News, The Montanian, The Spokesman Review, The Missoulian, and the Daily Inter Lake. It's great when high school kids get featured for winning scholarships, and the college magazine I once helped produce always sent press releases to the newspapers in our students' hometowns.
There is something of a free-for-all in news now, and part of me prefers an organization with some expert editors who can curate some of that content. But I know that you're right about the myth of their objectivity. Even the most high-minded outlets, like the PBS Newshour, have their blind spots. But they do have platforms that can rise above the noise somewhat. The great outpouring of information has created quite a lot of noise, and I'm not sure everyone has the time to sift through it all? Some unanswered questions yet for me, but this essay made me think in the best way.
Hi Joshua, Thank you for this! Thrilled to be thinking through all this. Sometimes essays like these on the Substack are almost more notes to self than any wide-ranging analysis or call to action. The point I wanted to make is that the origins of journalism have to do with a somewhat whimsical curiosity about the world, and that speaking truth-to-power and organizing news are later developments - and that there may be value in an era of destabilization to lean in to a looser, more Defoeish type of journalism. But, yes, there are all sorts of unanswered questions here! There are certain types of journalism that demand a disciplined cadre of professional reporters - and, for that, there needs to be a funding source from somewhere. And there are people who are figuring it out outside the legacy media - places like The Intercept, ProPublica, now The Free Press, all put out remarkably good reporting. Local news is a tricky one. I think, unfortunately, that communities now just aren't structured in a way that's conducive to a local newspaper - and the Centre Daily Times will struggle for a while - but that's also a blindspot for all of us and means that we all tend to be fixated on a national news bubble that we know nothing really about and miss what's going on all around us. But I have no solutions there! Thank you for the cross-post! Look forward to chatting more! - Sam
I worked in the industry for 20-plus years. The AP style book is the least of newspapers' problems. For one, the field demands a college degree and then turns around and pays fast food wages. After two decades in the business, I topped out at $24,000 a year and I was at a metro paper.
There are areas -- or there used to be -- in newspapers that spawned creativity, names sports and feature writing. A good article on a local small business can often be a fun read. I've worked with many writers of the very creative bent who complained about being stifled. The newsroom might not be the place for them.
Finally, I'm not sold on most online journalism ventures as more than 90% of them don't have editors.
Haha. You're probably right re the AP Stylebook. Lack of economic return - and low wages - are a bigger problem. What you're writing is a good reminder to me that the 'golden age' of journalism may not have been as wonderful as we remembered it. I graduated college in 2008 and print media was evaporating overnight - and, with it, there was a wave of nostalgia for the 'middle-class careers' offered by the daily newspapers. But that's a very valid point that it wasn't like it was all great and then the internet and recession came along and suddenly drove it all off a cliff. It had been a very unstable business model for a long time.
“News outlets are really more of entertainment centers. They have several functions that are completely distinct from one another but are financially synergistic. There’s the blotter of bad things happening in the world, which pretends to be usefully informative but is really meant to be addictive - as codified in the apt recent phrase ‘doomscrolling.’’
Sam, thank you for your thoughtful essay. As someone who has been both a practitioner of journalism and teacher of it, I can empathize with your ambivalences about it. I do find it sad, however, that comm students today are mostly abandoning what I was taught as "journalism" (with all its limitations) in favor of marketing, which to me deserves even more skepticism. There seem to be even fewer critical thinkers today. When asked to produce a persuasive op-ed, students will write what they feel rather than build a persuasive argument, and too often seem offended when challenged to make stronger, more persuasive arguments.
Good stuff. I have unsubscribed to many traditional newspapers and magazines over the last few years. I still get the Seattle Times for its local news and sports. And I detest the way that journalists and Twitter have become nearly the same thing. They've become the BrundleFly.
Thank you Sherman! Yeah, for me, a major underreported story with journalism is the narrowing of actual reporting. Sometimes I swear that there are only like 10 outlets - predominantly wire services - doing any original reporting at all, and then everybody just cribs from them or offers analysis. If I open one of the city newspapers, I'm basically just opening the AP with a smattering of local news. - Sam
This is a particularly smart take: "[W]hat the journalists of the old school think of as journalism - bureaus, ledes, nut grafs - is really just a manifestation of a particular phase of journalistic history, the phase of the mass-printed daily and the conglomerated news empires." I appreciate your conclusion that none of us ought to be ashamed of the content we're producing, but I'll admit to some unresolved conflicts on that point. The death of the local paper has led to a fixation on national news, much of it political. I'm as guilty as anyone of browsing the largely free Apple News feed, and I subscribe to the NY Times and the Washington Post, but have not yet brought myself to subscribe to the Centre Daily Times in State College, PA. I feel some guilt about that, but I also am not terribly impressed by the quality of the local news outlets. The small-town newspaper did once serve an important purpose. Some still do, if they can maintain their independence from the Gannetts, which tend to translate all content into fodder for ad revenue. Trying to read the Des Moines Register, when I lived in Iowa, required squatting away a dozen pop-ups that seemed for all the world to be trying to prevent me from actually reading anything.
I still have clippings of summer-league baseball stories from The Western News, The Montanian, The Spokesman Review, The Missoulian, and the Daily Inter Lake. It's great when high school kids get featured for winning scholarships, and the college magazine I once helped produce always sent press releases to the newspapers in our students' hometowns.
There is something of a free-for-all in news now, and part of me prefers an organization with some expert editors who can curate some of that content. But I know that you're right about the myth of their objectivity. Even the most high-minded outlets, like the PBS Newshour, have their blind spots. But they do have platforms that can rise above the noise somewhat. The great outpouring of information has created quite a lot of noise, and I'm not sure everyone has the time to sift through it all? Some unanswered questions yet for me, but this essay made me think in the best way.
Hi Joshua, Thank you for this! Thrilled to be thinking through all this. Sometimes essays like these on the Substack are almost more notes to self than any wide-ranging analysis or call to action. The point I wanted to make is that the origins of journalism have to do with a somewhat whimsical curiosity about the world, and that speaking truth-to-power and organizing news are later developments - and that there may be value in an era of destabilization to lean in to a looser, more Defoeish type of journalism. But, yes, there are all sorts of unanswered questions here! There are certain types of journalism that demand a disciplined cadre of professional reporters - and, for that, there needs to be a funding source from somewhere. And there are people who are figuring it out outside the legacy media - places like The Intercept, ProPublica, now The Free Press, all put out remarkably good reporting. Local news is a tricky one. I think, unfortunately, that communities now just aren't structured in a way that's conducive to a local newspaper - and the Centre Daily Times will struggle for a while - but that's also a blindspot for all of us and means that we all tend to be fixated on a national news bubble that we know nothing really about and miss what's going on all around us. But I have no solutions there! Thank you for the cross-post! Look forward to chatting more! - Sam
🫰🫰🫰
Local news is essential to a functional democracy.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/10/17/local-news-crisis-plan-fix-perry-bacon/
Thank you James. It's a beautiful vision. Think there would be enough readership/viewership to reward the investment?
❤️❤️🔥
I worked in the industry for 20-plus years. The AP style book is the least of newspapers' problems. For one, the field demands a college degree and then turns around and pays fast food wages. After two decades in the business, I topped out at $24,000 a year and I was at a metro paper.
There are areas -- or there used to be -- in newspapers that spawned creativity, names sports and feature writing. A good article on a local small business can often be a fun read. I've worked with many writers of the very creative bent who complained about being stifled. The newsroom might not be the place for them.
Finally, I'm not sold on most online journalism ventures as more than 90% of them don't have editors.
Haha. You're probably right re the AP Stylebook. Lack of economic return - and low wages - are a bigger problem. What you're writing is a good reminder to me that the 'golden age' of journalism may not have been as wonderful as we remembered it. I graduated college in 2008 and print media was evaporating overnight - and, with it, there was a wave of nostalgia for the 'middle-class careers' offered by the daily newspapers. But that's a very valid point that it wasn't like it was all great and then the internet and recession came along and suddenly drove it all off a cliff. It had been a very unstable business model for a long time.
🔥🔥❤️
“News outlets are really more of entertainment centers. They have several functions that are completely distinct from one another but are financially synergistic. There’s the blotter of bad things happening in the world, which pretends to be usefully informative but is really meant to be addictive - as codified in the apt recent phrase ‘doomscrolling.’’
Yes 🙌 🙌🙌🙌
Sam, thank you for your thoughtful essay. As someone who has been both a practitioner of journalism and teacher of it, I can empathize with your ambivalences about it. I do find it sad, however, that comm students today are mostly abandoning what I was taught as "journalism" (with all its limitations) in favor of marketing, which to me deserves even more skepticism. There seem to be even fewer critical thinkers today. When asked to produce a persuasive op-ed, students will write what they feel rather than build a persuasive argument, and too often seem offended when challenged to make stronger, more persuasive arguments.
I found that I had to approach foundational media concepts quite differently when teaching in the Middle East than in the US. https://jimbuie.substack.com/p/teaching-freedom-of-speech-the-press