Fuzz Hogan

In a blink of an evolutionary eye, radio and television then give way to smartphones—all of the world’s threats in your hand, all the time. “The smartphone, especially, more than pretty much any other technology that existed before, is constant,” says Barry Glassner, a professor of sociology. “For many people, at least, notifications come and updates come pretty much nonstop. It’s a very far cry from picking up the daily paper,” let alone the town square. 

Let’s not let a good crisis in journalism go to waste. We can all beat ourselves up over how much time and energy was wasted on polling and predictions, but that noise drowns out what did not get enough time or energy, and what we can do to make it better next time. The 2016 election cycle revealed what journalism nerds have known for years: how little local reporting by local journalists working for local news organizations is being done in the United States, outside of the big, coastal cities. Can you name more than three reporters who don’t work for a news organization in a coastal state? Can you name even one?

As 2017 dawns, platforms (mainly Facebook) have proven adept at solving the short-term, but important, problems vexing journalism—namely, distribution and audience. But, they’ve done so largely at the expense of traditional forms of journalism. Leaders in the field should step back and work to solve the root difficulty of the civic information ecosystem and, in particular, the critical and difficult work of actual people asking tough questions of leadership.