The End of Newspapers and the Decline of Democracy

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[Commentary] To retain what’s left of their rapidly disappearing profitability, the newspaper industry-wide response has been to shed staff, to reduce the size of the paper itself (as well as its “news hole,” or the amount of space left in the paper for news after advertising ) and, in some cases, to not publish on certain days. America’s great newspapers have staffs that range from 50 percent to 70 percent of what they were just a few years ago. As a result of such moves, newspapers are not investing in developing the products and services that would enable them to compete with the growing number of digital competitors lusting after local advertising dollars. The result is further deterioration in the value of these properties even beyond the absolutely alarming deterioration we have already seen.

The net result is a loss of reliable news and more opportunities for liars and charlatans to sell their wares unconcerned by the likelihood that they will ever be called to account for their deception (whether deliberate or not). Is Barack Obama a Kenyan-born Muslim? Is man-made global warming a worldwide conspiracy of money-hungry climate scientists? Are excessive teachers’ salaries the primary cause of the nationwide fiscal crisis in state and local budgets? The fact that these questions are even debated seriously is, in part, a tribute to the ability of liars and lunatics to communicate their messages without concern for correction. After all, neither Google nor Facebook has a fact-checking staff, and God knows Fox News would not recognize an inconvenient truth if it arrived tied to a rock through Roger Ailes’s window. So long as our society treats the disappearance of newspapers as strictly a business matter—with no implications for the future health of our democracy—this problem will continue to worsen. Clearly the newspaper industry cannot save itself. Whether it survives at all is up to legislators, philanthropists, and other civic-minded citizens to act before it is too late. Sadly, it may already be.


The End of Newspapers and the Decline of Democracy