When My Prints Won’t Come

Today, there are very few daily “papers” which can compete effectively for advertising dollars. Eyeballs are more easily attracted to search engines and targeted social media. Given the dominance of smartphones in mass communications, the notion of buying a sheaf of paper to receive “news” seems so old world. Very few periodicals seem to merit a monthly subscription, and in recent years neighborhood papers have almost always been ad supported. Add the going forward addition of the new AVOD (“Advertiser” video on demand) tiers of both Netflix and Disney+. Further, the vast array of alternative information sources, driven by the ability of social media to filter out any fact that does not jibe with the relevant consumer’s biases and beliefs (however irrational they may be), mix in some wealthy conspiracy theorists willing to provide massive financing to promote their distorted vision, and the notion of keeping small, local news organizations in business fades fast.

As we are witnessing in a reconfigured America, ripped apart by polarization inflicted on the entire nation to support idolatry where leadership is based on loyalty to a cult of personality, many of us have come to realize how fragile democracy truly is. We’ve learned that it is acceptable to harbor and express racist views, to discriminate against non-traditional gender realities, to deny women the right to decide how to control their own bodies, to censor contrary expressions of fact, to redistrict and cull voter rolls in order to promote minority rule and to lie so intensely and repeatedly that lies become de facto “truth” to millions and millions of Americans.

There was once a maxim, “all politics is local.” The problem is that of late “local” has fewer and fewer resources to express itself. Down-ballot candidates, once ignored by the major parties, are the new battleground for national movements. Trump endorsements have been some of the most powerful political influencers in modern history, particularly when it comes to local “control.” Indeed, democracy seems to be inversely proportional to the shift from local to highly customizable national media. A.I. bots, heavily coopted by foreign malign actors to denigrate American stability, have made a bad situation so much worse.

The accelerating movement of private equity into the “roll-up” of local papers into single ownership to apply “economies of scale” has resulted in massive layoffs of local journalists in favor of shared homogenous “news” stories generated from the new consolidated owner. Michael Hiltzik, writing for the August 29th Los Angeles Times, provides an example where even a well-intentioned effort of a roll-up of local journals went awry: “Gannett Co., the largest newspaper chain in the country, had some encouraging news for its news staff and readers in July.

“That’s when one of its top executives declared that the company remained ‘unrelenting in our commitment to the communities we serve and will continue to deliver bold and uniquely innovative reporting ... for our loyal readers.’… Fast-forward just a few weeks later, and the word wasn’t so uplifting… On Aug. 4, the company delivered a bleak earnings report for its second quarter, which ended June 30: a loss of $53.7 million on revenue of $748.7 million. That came on top of losses totaling nearly $1 billion over the prior three calendar years, on revenues of nearly $7 billion.

“Gannett’s commitment to delivering ‘bold and uniquely innovative reporting’ seemed shaken. Maribel Perez Wadsworth, the head of Gannett media, who had made that earlier commitment, was now warning that layoffs were looming… ‘In the coming days,’ she said, ‘we will … be making necessary but painful reductions to staffing, eliminating some open positions and roles that will impact valued colleagues.’

“She was as good as her word. At least 70 layoffs have occurred in Gannett newsrooms since mid-August, according to a reckoning by the Poynter Institute; the NewsGuild, which represents workers at many of those locations, counts at least 80. Gannett hasn’t confirmed any numbers...

“Gannett was long known for a hyperlocal approach that aimed to appeal to hometown readers, but after the company launched USA Today as a national publication in 1982, more features in the individual papers were shared content and the local product began to look and feel homogenized. That may have hampered its efforts to keep local readers on board.

“Red ink is not inevitable in the newspaper business. Lee Enterprises, a publicly traded company that owns 77 newspapers in midsize communities in 26 states, has been consistently profitable on an operating basis since 2014, though it hasn’t been immune to staff layoffs — partially in an apparent effort to stave off a hostile takeover attempt by Alden Global Capital, a hedge fund that is known for ruthlessly cutting staff at its newspaper properties…

“What’s important is their consequences [of media consolidation]. The effects of the spread of ‘news deserts’ on social and political cohesiveness in America, and the vacuum it has left to be filled by fringe ideologues, political mountebanks and corporate PR departments — ‘misinformation engines,’ in the words of Steve Waldman, co-founder of Report for America, an organization that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on local issues… It’s probably no coincidence that the incursion of loudmouthed extremists into our political discourse has been growing as solid, locally based news reporting has been shrinking.

“The decline was rapid before the pandemic but has picked up speed ever since. “In the 15 years leading up to 2020,” reported Penelope Muse Abernathy of the University of North Carolina that year, ‘more than one-fourth of the country’s newspapers disappeared, leaving residents in thousands of communities — inner-city neighborhoods, suburban towns and rural villages — living in vast news deserts.’… Between 2018 and 2020 alone, she calculated, ‘300 newspapers closed, another 6,000 journalists employed by newspapers vanished, and print newspaper circulation declined by 5 million.’” Making tons of money or supporting a billionaire’s heavily biased agenda have usurped genuine local journalistic integrity, as democracy screams in agony.

I’m Peter Dekom, and perhaps America has generated precisely what it deserves as it reinforces governance by a distinct minority able ruthlessly and pervasively to distort local dialog with a malign and uniform national agenda.