I wrote abt how this crisis will engulf every aspect of society, making the need for widely-accessible information more urgent than ever. But the economic shutdown will decimate ad revenue, which could doom more digital news outlets and local newspapers. newyorker.com/news/annals-of…
The pandemic will alter the fabric of the country. Already, it has exposed the fragility of the American health-care system. It will do the same for other systems, including the media ecosystem. The question is how much of it can survive, and how it might be rebuilt.
I started mulling this piece when news broke about @benyt @lpolgreen leaving @BuzzFeedNews @HuffPost and I began thinking about free-to-read digital news and American democracy.
A robust press is an essential part of a functioning democracy. It helps keep citizens informed; it also serves as a bulwark against the rumors, half-truths, and propaganda on digital platforms. It’s a problem when majority of the highest-quality journalism is behind a paywall.
Yesterday was actually the 9th anniversary of @nytimes paywall. “This is not a bet on this year,” publisher Arthur Sulzberger told @jwpetersNYT then. “The question that remains to be answered,” Peters wrote, “is whether that bet pays off in 2015, 2020 or ever.” Clearly, it has!
But it’s easy to underestimate the information balance in America today. Between 2004 and 2018, nearly 1 in 5 American newspapers closed. Digital-native publishers employ just a fraction of the diminished number of journalists who still remain at legacy outlets,
On some level, news is a product manufactured by journalists. Fewer journalists means less news. The tributaries that feed the river of information have been drying up. There are a few mountain springs of quality journalism; most sit behind a paywall.
There’s a divide emerging among news readers in US. Those who pay for online news are significantly more likely to find it trustworthy. The disparities in trust levels, the data suggests, are likely driven by the quality of the news they are consuming.
Final note in this thread: kudos to @joshuarothman, who edited this piece and an earlier one I wrote on the quest for slower, better news. Fantastic sounding board and word editor. His best line: "Maybe you need a metaphor here." newyorker.com/culture/annals…
