Thread by @pwcdanica

I want to take a minute to write about journalism. I'm not canceling my @InsideNoVA subscription, regardless of disagreeing with the editorial page.
The institution of journalism is too important to fail. That doesn't mean though opinion writers are beyond reproach or criticism.

I filed my Shield Law (HB113) for the third year in a row in 2020 because I believe in the institution of journalism. That's my bill I'm most proud of passing.
Journalism need to be valued and protected. The public needs to trust that the government can't/won't silence reporters.

Passing that Shield Law this year marked the first time in more than three years that I felt at peace with leaving the newsroom to pursue legislating.
Passing that bill left the institution of journalism in a better place in Virginia then when I left it. Even writing that hurts.

I get asked a lot about what it's like being on the other side now. I miss it. I've got my clips that I'm proud of and I also know I could have made so much more of my time reporting. I was insatiably hungry when I started and fried when I finished. I needed the career change.

Meanwhile, the collapse of the industry is of unimaginable proportions, especially at the local level.
You've got these vultures and money men who don't give a damn about journalism, buying up these local outlets and bleeding them dry. That hurts the workers & their communities.

The money people have to understand that what sells newspapers is quality investigative journalism. When you dismantle the core function of a newspaper, you dismantle the very reason someone has for picking it up in the first place.
When a news outlet closes, what replaces it?

We talk about food deserts frequently and we need to: a lot of people can't afford healthy food if there isn't any near them.
News deserts are real too. There's a giant void for vetted facts across the country that's being filled by people without a sense of journalistic mission.

Meanwhile, you often now in community after community have as few as one full-time staff writer left reporting the news while the editorial team *maybe* hires some stringers here and there. There are damn-good freelance reporters but they'll tell you it's tough to make a living.

When you're a stringer, you don't have health care, dental, retirement, etc. You're responsible for your own taxes too. And a lot of these local outlets are paying $25-$75 a story. That might sound so bad until you realize it's all you're bringing home that day, before taxes.

The thing is, a lot of good freelancers with great clips who can move will go to places that truly value them. The people who are left in a community earning that $25-$75 a story... what incentive do they have to spend days, weeks or months working on an investigative piece?

Those freelancers who do pitch the story idea ahead of time, asking either for an advance or full-pay up front so they have time to work.
But who's paying?
Good luck in local journalism with a 67/33, 70/30 or even 80/20 ad/news split for a weekly paper getting that upfront money.

That leaves people to go online w/o a print product -- something finite that can't be hacked, altered or changed. I've personally on two occasions b/w two different news organizations seen my entire digital portfolio evaporate. If I didn't save my print copies, I'd have nothing.

I could rattle off a list of newspapers whose owners absolutely could have afforded to invest big dollars into their papers that would have completely turned everything around but closed them anyway.
And then you have paper after paper with a staff being told quantity > quality.

More and more and more often, you have reporters who are earning somewhere between squat and squat-and-a-half being told to report 200-400 words on a whole bunch of stories so everything can be covered instead of 1,500 words or an entire damn series in order to do it right.

You have reporters being told they can't be taken off all of their other beats in order to focus on one thing long-term because there won't be a product before that investigative piece is finished. There won't be any news.
So what happens?
The usual.
8-18 inches of text.
Move on.

Here's the thing though:

There are still good reporters out there. Lots of good reporters. They're not driven by money. They're driven by mission and purpose.

While it's not fair, it's reality: they'll get the story, whether or not they get the paycheck they deserve.

There are some college reporters out there right now -- and even some high school reporters -- who are as thorough and steel-spined as you get. There are newly graduated reporters who aren't getting paid squat but they're pouring their hearts into what they're doing.

And you even still have crusty old editors who've been around for forever and a half, who could have left their local outlet forever and a quarter ago, still doing it because they care, even if they're the last ones still there.
Good reporters will find a way. There's hope there.

The reason The Boston Globe could have a "Spotlight" team like the one that unveiled the cover-ups of pedophilia in the Catholic Church is b/c the money was there to support truly driven reporters and editors.
That wouldn't be possible w/o subscriptions.
Newspapers need support.

All of that is to say that whether they're major papers like the Globe, WaPo, NYT, etc., or our local folks, we need to invest in journalism.
We need to support the people who work in it and the work they do because when their communities care, they can afford thorough reporting.

That's why I subscribe to both of my local newspapers and three other news outlets.
Even if I'm on the other side, I still care about the reporters who are there, regardless of the publishers & opinion writers, and the journalism they produce.
Their work matters for all of us.