Every time I hear about another high-quality news outlet like DCist shuttering its doors, I’m transported back to the early ’90s — the heady days of daredevil and sweeps-week TV journalism:
It’s every Houstonian’s worst nightmare! Tonight — Our reporter shows you: What to do if your car drives into a bayou!
It’s every Houstonian’s worst nightmare! Tonight — Our reporter shows you: How to survive a dog attack!
Is your bra giving you cancer?! Tonight — Our team investigates.
My wife and I were living in Houston at the time, and we’d watch in smug amusement (we got the Houston Chronicle and New York Times every day) at the barrage of almost incomprehensible pitfalls and tragedies that were lurking if we dared step outside the relatively safe (not counting the potential radon) confines of our apartment.
As surrealistic as it could often be, there was an underlying reality that was actually quite depressing. At the end of each broadcast, there was an almost invisible chyron saying the station was owned by none other than one of the titans of reliable, well-researched, objective, not-trying-to-grab-eyeballs-with-sensational-headlines journalism, the Washington Post Company. Other heavy hitters like the New York Times Company and the Tribune Media Company were also in the game of TV station ownership.
Fast forward 30 years. It seems that every week another news outlet is folding, and findings by the Pew Research Center for just the daily newspaper side of the equation paint a grim picture. From a height in the 1990s, circulation has dropped like hail in a Houston thunderstorm.
As everyone left in the news business ponders, and mightily struggles against, this decline, if the industry is looking for a cause, it could start by looking in the mirror. By funding an interminable ratings race fueled by upping the volume and dumbing down the content, the legacy media moguls who traded dignity for profits taught us, like Pavlov’s dog, that there was no difference between journalism and sensationalism, and that you could get your “news” for free. Sort of like owning a premium health foods market where you make most of your money selling quinoa, and giving away ice cream out the back as a nutritious alternative.
As we see every day — despite the high-quality journalism that still hangs on in all forms — what this means is less accountability from government, less civic engagement from the public, increased polarization and, in the end, a less-informed citizenry. This reality is especially acute in small markets, where state governments and city councils no longer face the scrutiny and accountability good journalism brings.
Of course, I’m not suggesting that my take is the only reason for the sharp downturn. A journalist friend of mine is quick to point out other factors like, as he puts it, “too much profit-taking by the big chains and too little reinvestment in how to deliver good journalism in a post-literate, post-credulous society.” Then there’s the advent of Craig’s List in 1995, which severely undercut classified ad sales, a major source of newspapers’ revenue. And not to think this contagion is confined to serious outlets, tabloids have also struggled to survive in the digital age.
Can anything be done? I’m an optimist, and though I don’t believe there’s a silver bullet out there, organizations like the American Journalism Project and innovative rethinking of business strategies like nonprofit models — DCist a noted exception — show promise.
Whatever the combination of solutions that, hopefully, starts to turn the tide, at the end of the day it comes down to this: Since the Great Depression, through World War II and the turbulent 1960s, Americans have never had to weather tumultuous times like the present without good journalism. Now’s no time to find out what happens.
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