I’m not entirely comfortable about where we’re going with the decline of journalism.
I’m not saying that it’ll be a worse world. But it could be.
The press has got flaws and imperfections, but modern democracy has had it around and relied on it.
Shifts like the rise of 24/7 cable news eliminating local news, social media rising, and magazines and newspapers going into serious decline are changes that could have a lot of hard-to-assess impact on society.
I think that we’ll work out fixes for some of the things. And we’ve had benefits of new media. But…I feel like maybe we could wind up seriously regretting having a lot of the press go away. It won’t be easy to rebuild if we wanted to do so.
From 2005 to 2021, about 2,200 American local print newspapers closed.[20] From 2008 to 2020, the number of American newspaper journalists fell by more than half.[20]
Where once the ability to disseminate information was restricted to those with printing presses or broadcast mechanisms, the Internet has enabled thousands of individual commentators to communicate directly with others through blogs or instant message services.[64] Even open journalism projects like Wikipedia have contributed to the reordering of the media landscape, as readers are no longer restricted to established print organs for information.[65]
With profits falling, many newspapers have cut back on their most expensive reporting projects—overseas bureaus and investigative journalism.[92] Some investigative projects often take months, with their payoff uncertain. In the past, larger newspapers often devoted a portion of their editorial budget to such efforts, but with ad dollars drying up, many papers are looking closer at the productivity of individual reporters, and judging speculative investments in investigative reports as non-essential.[83]
Observers point out that the reliability and accountability of newspapers is being replaced by a sea of anonymous bloggers, many with uncertain credentials and points of view. Where once the reader of a daily newspaper might consume reporting, for instance, by an established Cairo bureau chief for a major newspaper, today that same reader might be directed by a search engine to an anonymous blogger with cloudy allegiances, training or ability.[95]
The closure of local newspapers has created a phenomenon of news deserts. A June 2022 report estimates that approximately 70 million Americans live in a county with one or no local news organization.[97]
Decline in political neutrality
The shift from news coverage in geographical regions to online markets likely contributed to increased political polarization in the 2000s and 2010s.[106] Research has linked the closures of newspapers to declines in civic engagement of citizens,[4][5] increases in government waste,[6] and increases in political polarization.[7] The decline of local news has also been linked to the increased “nationalization” of local elections.[8][9] As citizens have fewer opportunities to read about local politics, they are attracted to national sources (such as cable news) and begin to interpret local politics via national politics.[7][107]
Yep. I was listening to NPR the other day and the journalist was mocking and deriding the interviewee. It was appalled.
How this person wasn’t fired is beyond me. But that’s the world we live in today. Even NPR has shitty reporters and reporting and their days of neutrality and fact-seeking are long gone. Many of their news programs are now just pandering bullshit reporting. It’s about making the target audience feel good above all else.
It sucks. Everything is about pushing an agenda, and there seem to be only a handful of boomer reporters left who even remotely attempt to value neutrality, and seek facts and truth. The only place I find any sort of neutrality and truth seeking is academia… and that has been eroding for well over a decade now too. Increasingly I am moving over to amateur podcasts and such because they seem to have better standards, but they lack the institutions fact-checking and legal stuff and they can’t really do a lot of primary sourcing, it’s mostly secondary sources… but they are at least open about that…
Truth is people just want to hear what they want to hear and they will pay a lot of money for it. And they won’t pay any money to hear things they don’t want to hear.
Echo chambers are a huge problem only made worse by the internet full of dysfunctional and lonely men who uphold the patriarchy and propagate that everyone is out to get you (especially all those minorities that don’t actually affect your life that much or at all) and it protects the rich due to infighting and overworking the majority of Americans. Nobody wants to be thrown in jail and risk their family not having necessities. And it just keeps escalating it seems. Something will collapse eventually and ideally everyone would have solidarity and make a difference in their local community so nobody has to worry about going without basic necessities for survival. But who knows what could happen. Best to enjoy things as much as possible in case it gets taken away.
I’m not entirely comfortable about where we’re going with the decline of journalism.
I’m not saying that it’ll be a worse world. But it could be.
The press has got flaws and imperfections, but modern democracy has had it around and relied on it.
Shifts like the rise of 24/7 cable news eliminating local news, social media rising, and magazines and newspapers going into serious decline are changes that could have a lot of hard-to-assess impact on society.
I think that we’ll work out fixes for some of the things. And we’ve had benefits of new media. But…I feel like maybe we could wind up seriously regretting having a lot of the press go away. It won’t be easy to rebuild if we wanted to do so.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decline_of_newspapers
Yep. I was listening to NPR the other day and the journalist was mocking and deriding the interviewee. It was appalled.
How this person wasn’t fired is beyond me. But that’s the world we live in today. Even NPR has shitty reporters and reporting and their days of neutrality and fact-seeking are long gone. Many of their news programs are now just pandering bullshit reporting. It’s about making the target audience feel good above all else.
It sucks. Everything is about pushing an agenda, and there seem to be only a handful of boomer reporters left who even remotely attempt to value neutrality, and seek facts and truth. The only place I find any sort of neutrality and truth seeking is academia… and that has been eroding for well over a decade now too. Increasingly I am moving over to amateur podcasts and such because they seem to have better standards, but they lack the institutions fact-checking and legal stuff and they can’t really do a lot of primary sourcing, it’s mostly secondary sources… but they are at least open about that…
Truth is people just want to hear what they want to hear and they will pay a lot of money for it. And they won’t pay any money to hear things they don’t want to hear.
Echo chambers are a huge problem only made worse by the internet full of dysfunctional and lonely men who uphold the patriarchy and propagate that everyone is out to get you (especially all those minorities that don’t actually affect your life that much or at all) and it protects the rich due to infighting and overworking the majority of Americans. Nobody wants to be thrown in jail and risk their family not having necessities. And it just keeps escalating it seems. Something will collapse eventually and ideally everyone would have solidarity and make a difference in their local community so nobody has to worry about going without basic necessities for survival. But who knows what could happen. Best to enjoy things as much as possible in case it gets taken away.