For over 25 years I was a weekly newspaper columnist. That doesn’t make me a journalist. Writing personal essays isn’t the same thing as reporting on the news. But I hung around with a lot of real newspaper professionals. I grew to respect them.
I also saw what’s happened everywhere. Newspaper editions got thinner, not only in number of pages, but in the width and height, too. Mainly that’s because the business model for newspapers used to be based on advertising. Now most of that has shifted to the internet. Subscriptions don’t replace the lost revenue. Smaller papers are cheaper.
Even big papers with international reputations were struggling. The Washington Post was one of them. In their case salvation came in the surprising form of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos. He bought the paper from the Graham family in 2013 for $250 million.
At first, Bezos seemed content to mostly leave it alone. In 2017, the Washington Post adopted a new slogan: “democracy dies in darkness.”
In February of this year, Bezos announced a sweeping change for the editorial page. Henceforth, he wrote to his staff, “We are going to be writing every day in support and defense of two pillars: personal liberties and free markets. We’ll cover other topics too of course, but viewpoints opposing those pillars will be left to be published by others.”
As the owner Bezos has the right and the ability to pay for whatever he likes. Since then, however, there have been allegations of suppressed stories and even cartoons. Many respected journalists have left the paper.
They’re not alone. According to research presented at muckrack.com, “Less than a quarter-century ago, the United States had about 40 journalists per 100,000 residents on average. Now, the equivalent number is 8.2 Local Journalist Equivalents, about a 75% decline.”
Let that sink in for a moment. For every four journalists then, there is only one today. There are around 3,000 counties in the US. More than 1,000 of them don’t have even that one journalist.
As muckrack explains, “If you live in a county of 10,000 people, there wouldn’t be even one full-time reporter to cover all of the schools, the town councils, the economic development projects, basketball games, environmental decisions, local businesses, and local events. There are 97,000 cities, towns, counties and other units of government. This report shows that there are the equivalent 27,000 local journalists. Most governments, most neighborhoods, and most residents are being covered poorly or not at all.” The issue affects both rural and urban communities.
That’s bad enough. But as the New York Times editorial board wrote in a July 16, 2025 piece, the White House has requested cutting $1.1 billion, Congress’s two-year appropriation for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. As many as one out of every five local public radio stations could close.
Add it all up and you can’t help but wonder what’s supposed to replace professional newshounds. Zuckerberg’s Facebook? X? But X is another case of a wealthy owner (Elon Musk) using a platform to promote his own views, not provide fact-checked and comprehensive coverage of the day’s significant events.
Oh, and let us not forget massive disinformation efforts by China and Russia (see this article), usually aided by Artificial Intelligence and audiovisual “deep fake” technology.
We need widespread and reliable reporting to run the republic and maybe slow down corruption, both public and private.
So here’s a radical notion. If no sustainable business model exists to ensure good reporting then maybe newspapers, professional newsgathering, should become a public utility.
Maybe they should move into libraries! Librarians and journalists have a lot in common. Here’s the main one: We’re supposed to cite our sources, not just make things up. Evidence matters. We’re also supposed to make a good faith effort to capture a breadth of viewpoints and pay attention to cultural changes. We believe in an informed citizenry.
I wouldn’t want to get into the actual business of printing and distributing physical editions. But we could hire journalists like we hire librarians, and publish their stories on our websites.
As I’ve written before, public libraries are among the few institutions left in the US that people trust. They already look to us for authoritative information sources. Why not the local news?
There are problems, of course. Suppose the library itself is the story, involving (for instance) embezzlement by the director. Couldn’t the library squelch coverage? But there could also be a citizen’s advisory committee to help navigate such conflicts. And there are ethical problems in advertising-based reporting too.
The late journalist Bill Moyers once wrote, “News is what people want to keep hidden and that every culture has a right to know.” The way things are going right now, pretty soon our only reporters will be bots and billionaires.
That’s bad news for the rest of us.
[This column was originally published in the July 18, 2025 edition of the Post Independent.]
I also saw what’s happened everywhere. Newspaper editions got thinner, not only in number of pages, but in the width and height, too. Mainly that’s because the business model for newspapers used to be based on advertising. Now most of that has shifted to the internet. Subscriptions don’t replace the lost revenue. Smaller papers are cheaper.
Even big papers with international reputations were struggling. The Washington Post was one of them. In their case salvation came in the surprising form of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos. He bought the paper from the Graham family in 2013 for $250 million.
At first, Bezos seemed content to mostly leave it alone. In 2017, the Washington Post adopted a new slogan: “democracy dies in darkness.”
In February of this year, Bezos announced a sweeping change for the editorial page. Henceforth, he wrote to his staff, “We are going to be writing every day in support and defense of two pillars: personal liberties and free markets. We’ll cover other topics too of course, but viewpoints opposing those pillars will be left to be published by others.”
As the owner Bezos has the right and the ability to pay for whatever he likes. Since then, however, there have been allegations of suppressed stories and even cartoons. Many respected journalists have left the paper.
They’re not alone. According to research presented at muckrack.com, “Less than a quarter-century ago, the United States had about 40 journalists per 100,000 residents on average. Now, the equivalent number is 8.2 Local Journalist Equivalents, about a 75% decline.”
Let that sink in for a moment. For every four journalists then, there is only one today. There are around 3,000 counties in the US. More than 1,000 of them don’t have even that one journalist.
As muckrack explains, “If you live in a county of 10,000 people, there wouldn’t be even one full-time reporter to cover all of the schools, the town councils, the economic development projects, basketball games, environmental decisions, local businesses, and local events. There are 97,000 cities, towns, counties and other units of government. This report shows that there are the equivalent 27,000 local journalists. Most governments, most neighborhoods, and most residents are being covered poorly or not at all.” The issue affects both rural and urban communities.
That’s bad enough. But as the New York Times editorial board wrote in a July 16, 2025 piece, the White House has requested cutting $1.1 billion, Congress’s two-year appropriation for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. As many as one out of every five local public radio stations could close.
Add it all up and you can’t help but wonder what’s supposed to replace professional newshounds. Zuckerberg’s Facebook? X? But X is another case of a wealthy owner (Elon Musk) using a platform to promote his own views, not provide fact-checked and comprehensive coverage of the day’s significant events.
Oh, and let us not forget massive disinformation efforts by China and Russia (see this article), usually aided by Artificial Intelligence and audiovisual “deep fake” technology.
We need widespread and reliable reporting to run the republic and maybe slow down corruption, both public and private.
So here’s a radical notion. If no sustainable business model exists to ensure good reporting then maybe newspapers, professional newsgathering, should become a public utility.
Maybe they should move into libraries! Librarians and journalists have a lot in common. Here’s the main one: We’re supposed to cite our sources, not just make things up. Evidence matters. We’re also supposed to make a good faith effort to capture a breadth of viewpoints and pay attention to cultural changes. We believe in an informed citizenry.
I wouldn’t want to get into the actual business of printing and distributing physical editions. But we could hire journalists like we hire librarians, and publish their stories on our websites.
As I’ve written before, public libraries are among the few institutions left in the US that people trust. They already look to us for authoritative information sources. Why not the local news?
There are problems, of course. Suppose the library itself is the story, involving (for instance) embezzlement by the director. Couldn’t the library squelch coverage? But there could also be a citizen’s advisory committee to help navigate such conflicts. And there are ethical problems in advertising-based reporting too.
The late journalist Bill Moyers once wrote, “News is what people want to keep hidden and that every culture has a right to know.” The way things are going right now, pretty soon our only reporters will be bots and billionaires.
That’s bad news for the rest of us.
[This column was originally published in the July 18, 2025 edition of the Post Independent.]
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