The collapse of journalism

Why the media needs a middle

I wrote for all campus newspapers in the mid-nineties. This included two years as the religion writer for the Daily Targum, the main publication at Rutgers. I was also employed as a stringer for the two state newspapers, the Home News and the Star Ledger. (These two eventually merged, once, then again into nj.com.)

Being a stringer required driving all over the state after classes were done. I mostly wrote human interest stories and occasional features, chatting with people like Ben, or Jerry (I can’t remember which), about their philanthropic endeavors tied to their ice cream empire. These gigs set me up for professional post-college roles—well, after a brief stint as an Olive Garden server. Turns out that a degree in comparative religion doesn’t immediately set you up for success. 🤷

For nearly two years, I worked as a beat reporter for the Monroe Sentinel and an entertainment writer for the Princeton Packet. While my tendencies lean introverted, I enjoyed—well, enjoy—the pressure of being forced to talk to people. Driving around my home state, chatting with people about why they do what they do, turned out to be a compelling career choice, one that continues in my work as a freelance writer and podcaster today.

Yet opportunities for expressing these skills are shrinking. Drastically.

At least in the middle.

As Ezra Klein writes, 

Sports Illustrated just laid off most of its staff. BuzzFeed News is gone. HuffPost has shrunk. Jezebel was shut down (then partly resurrected). Vice is on life support. Popular Science magazine is done. U.S. News & World Report shuttered its magazine and is basically a college-ranking service now. Old Gawker is gone, and so is New Gawker. FiveThirtyEight was acquired by ABC News and then had its staff and ambitions slashed. Grid News was bought out by The Messenger, which is now reportedly out of money. Fusion failed. Vox Media — my former home, where I co-founded Vox.com, and a place I love — is doing much better than most but has seen huge layoffs over the past few years.

Klein’s op-ed was published before the LA Times laid off over 20 percent of its staff and Time slashed 15% of its editorial staff. And that’s not all. Far from it. Oliver Darcy more recently reports (and by more recently, I mean four days later), 

Business Insider said it would trim its workforce by 8%. Meanwhile, hundreds of staffers at Condé Nast, Forbes, The New York Daily News, and others staged historic walkouts to protest planned cuts at the outlets.

Working for regional newspapers taught me something critically important for understanding news: reporting on news is usually boring. Most news happens out of sight. Well, mostly out of sight, because while it actually happens publicly, few people pay attention. Maybe this is part of the problem, a big part in fact, which is why journalists are necessary for the functioning of a democratic society.

Not going to lie: I was often twiddling my pen when covering zoning board, city council, and school board meetings. The irony is that the real-world impact of bureaucratic decision-making plays out during such meetings, gatherings that include maybe a dozen residents who bothered to leave their home at 7 pm to schlep down to the library or courthouse or middle school gymnasium.

I don’t want to undersell this profession, as my reporting was the literal lifeline between policy and its manifestation in those communities, but there’s a reason why politicians act in exceedingly crass and belligerent ways: they’re more concerned with trending than legislating. And the electorate—us—is part of that disastrous feedback loop, clicking on this or that idiot yelling about some culture war nonstarter instead of engaging with and enacting policies that would actually be in our interest.

Journalism was never a lucrative career, except perhaps for the owners of private equity firms that have been buying up local newspapers for a generation:

The share of newspapers owned by private equity funds has increased from about 5% in 2002 to about 23% in 2019

What we’re now experiencing isn’t due to faulty reporting or media excess; it’s predominantly due to C-suite greed. Yes, the internet made a dent, and social media reorients our understanding of priorities. These factors pale in comparison to the expectations of exceptionally wealthy men. Their appetites can never be sated; their focus on topics like DEI and transgender people help distract the public from actual boring issues (that aren’t so boring in reality) like tax breaks and zoning laws.

And so journalism will once again have to reinvent itself. This isn’t new: the profession is roughly 500 years old, nearly 200 in its modern form. Turbulence is baked into the industry. Tragically, it has nothing to do with the actual job, as Platformer founder, Casey Newton, succinctly sums up:

Klein points out that the middle is collapsing. Top-tier publications are generally doing fine—even newer publications, like the conservative yet anti-Trump The Bulwark is thriving—and independent media creators with enough of a following can cobble together a living. (Thank you if you’re a paid subscriber to this newsletter, as I’m part of this economy.)

Yet we lose something essential as a society without a middle. As Klein concludes, 

The middle can be more specific and strange and experimental than mass publications, and it can be more ambitious and reported and considered than the smaller players. The middle is where a lot of great journalists are found and trained. The middle is where local reporting happens and where culture is made rather than discovered.

While I’ve written for top publications and work as an independent media creator, I’ve mostly existed in the middle of this profession. It’s an important place. I fear what happens if it truly disappears.

I’m also confident that we can reinvent the middle. I’m just not sure what will be lost along the way, or what will replace it. That’s going to take ingenuity, drive, and an unwavering desire to not let the C-Suite win.