Obama’s COOl Can Hillary run sEamus HEanEy, ExplainEd THE WOrld? CiTizEn-pOET michelle Cottle Michael Crowley Adam Kirsch The New r E publimarch 4, 2009 •C $4.95 The end of The Press democracy Loses Its Best friend PauL sTarr, The edITors WhaT’s Politico doIng To journaLIsm? gaBrIeL sherman The anchorman In WInTer mIchaeL schaffer Paul Starr Goodbye to the Age of Newspapers (Hello to a new era of corruption) Why American politics and society are about to be changed for the worse.

I. the bone.” And highly leveraged media the development of other media, the fact e take newspapers for companies are not the only ones that are is that newspapers in recent years have granted. They have been retrenching. At the largest daily in New continued to field the majority of report- so integral a part of daily Jersey, The Star-Ledger, 45 percent of the ers and to produce most of the original life in America, so cen- editorial staff took buyouts in October news stories in cities across the country. tral to politics and cul- when the owner, Advance Publications, Drawing on studies conducted by the ture and business, and so powerful and threatened to sell the paper if its targets Pew Research Center’s Project for Ex- Wprofitable in their own right, that it is for cuts were not met. cellence in Journalism, Tom Rosenstiel, easy to forget what a remarkable histor- Newspapers are also shrinking in the project’s director, says that as of 2006 ical invention they are. Public goods are numbers of pages, breadth of news cov- a typical metropolitan paper ran sev- notoriously under-produced in the mar- erage, features of various kinds, and enty stories a day, counting the national, ketplace, and news is a public good—and home delivery of print editions. All over local, and business sections (adding in yet, since the mid-nineteenth century, America, as newspaper revenues plum- the sports and style sections would bring newspapers have produced news in met—by the end of 2008, ad sales were the total closer to a hundred), whereas abundance at a cheap price to read- down about 25 percent from three years a half-hour of television news included ers and without need of direct subsidy. earlier—publishers cannot seem to shed only ten to twelve. And while local TV More than any other medium, newspa- editors, reporters, and sections of their news typically emphasizes crime, fires, pers have been our eyes on the state, our papers fast enough. And there is more and traffic tie-ups, newspapers provide check on private abuses, our civic alarm pain to come. According to a December most of the original coverage of public systems. It is true that they have often forecast by Barclays Capital, advertising affairs. Studies of newspaper and broad- failed to perform those functions as well revenue will drop another 17 percent cast journalism have repeatedly shown as they should have done. But whether in 2009 and 7.5 percent more the year that broadcast news follows the agenda they can continue to perform them at all after. Even The New York Times, which set by newspapers, often repeating the is now in doubt. has seen its cash reserves fall and its same items, albeit with less depth. Even before the recession hit, the debt downgraded, is unlikely to escape Online there is certainly a great pro- newspaper industry was facing a mortal the massive contraction now accelerat- fusion of opinion, but there is little re- threat from the rise of the Internet, fall- ing throughout the industry. porting, and still less of it subject to any ing circulation and advertising revenue, rigorous fact-checking or editorial scru- and a long-term decline in readership, as hould we care? Some observers, tiny. Other than news aggregators such the habit of buying a daily paper dwin- confident of the blessings of tech- as Google News—which link to articles dled from one generation to the next. nology, refuse to shed any tears for from publications that still derive most The recession has intensified these diffi- Sthe traditional giants of journalism, on of their revenue from print—the most culties, plunging newspapers into a tail- the grounds that their troubles are of successful news sites are oriented to spe- spin from which some may not recover their own making and of little conse- cialized audiences. No online enterprise and others will emerge only as a shadow quence to the general welfare. In this has yet generated a stream of revenue to of their former selves. The devastation view, regardless of whether newspapers support original reporting for the general is already substantial. At the Los Ange- successfully adapt to the Internet, new public comparable to the revenue stream les Times, the cumulative effect of cut- and better sources of news will continue that newspapers have generated in print. backs has been to reduce its newsroom developing online, and they will fill what- Whether the Internet will ever support by one-half—and that was before its par- ever void newspapers leave. Others are general-interest journalism at a level com- ent company, Tribune, declared bank- so angry at the mainstream media—the parable to newspapers, it would be fool- ruptcy. Another company weighed down reviled “MSM”—that they see the eco- ish to predict. The reality is that resources by debt, the McClatchy chain, which in- nomic misery of the press as a deserved for journalism are now disappearing from cludes The Sacramento Bee, The Miami comeuppance. Let the bastards suffer. the old media faster than new media can Herald, and twenty-eight other dailies, These reactions fail to take into ac- develop them. The financial crisis of the has laid off one-quarter of its workforce count the immediate realities and the press may thereby compound the media’s in the past year; according to one exec- full ramifications of the crisis threat- crisis of legitimacy. Already under fero- utive, the editorial downsizing is under ening newspaper journalism. This is cious attack from both left and right for a 20 percent but is now cutting “close to no time for Internet triumphalism: the multitude of sins, real and imagined, the stakes are too high. Nearly all other press is going to find its job even more Paul Starr is Stuart professor of commu- news media, except for online news, are difficult to do under economic duress. nications and public affairs at the Wood- also retrenching, and—particularly at And as it retrenches in the face of finan- row Wilson School at Princeton University the metropolitan, regional, and state lev- cial pressures, Rosenstiel says, “More of and the author most recently of Freedom’s els—the online growth is not close to off- American life will occur in shadows. We Power (Basic Books). setting the decline elsewhere. Despite all won’t know what we won’t know.”

28 March 4, 2009 The New Republic ne danger of reduced news ruption of government and business—it is Although the rise of broadcast jour- coverage is to the integrity of also more corruption of journalism itself. nalism changed the newspaper busi- government. It is not just a spec- ness, radio and television did not kill it Oulative proposition that corruption is II. because newspapers retained their local more likely to flourish when those in hese developments raise practi- advantages in providing information to power have less reason to fear exposure. cal questions for anyone concerned readers and connecting advertisers and The World Bank produces an annual about the future of American de- consumers in a city. A diverse and highly index of political corruption around the Tmocracy. If the traditional ways of sus- competitive industry as of the early 1900s, world, based on surveys of people who taining professional journalism are newspapers consolidated through the do business in each country. In a study insufficient, what models are there to middle decades of the twentieth century; published in 2003 in The Journal of Law, support the genuinely vital public func- and though many papers disappeared, Economics, and Organization, Alicia Ad- tions that the press has traditionally per- the surviving ones became hugely prof- serà, Carles Boix, and Mark Payne exam- formed? How do these alternatives fit itable. No one has explained why news- ine the relationship between corruption into the new digital environment? To an- papers became so lucrative better than and “free circulation of daily newspapers swer those practical questions, it is nec- the investor Warren Buffett. In his an- per person” (a measure of both news essary first to ponder a more theoretical nual letter to Berkshire Hathaway stock- circulation and freedom of the press). one. Along with other new technology, holders in 2006, Buffett wrote that until Controlling for economic development, the Internet was supposed to bring us a the Internet, newspapers had been type of legal system, and other factors, cornucopia of information, and in many they find a very strong association: the respects it has done so. But if one of its as easy a way to make huge returns as lower the free circulation of newspa- effects is to shrink the production of pro- existed in America. As one not-too- pers in a country, the higher it stands fessionally reported news, perhaps we bright publisher famously said, “I owe on the corruption index. Using different need to understand the emerging frame- my fortune to two great American insti- measures, they also find a similar rela- work of post-industrial society and poli- tutions: monopoly and nepotism.” No tionship across states within the United tics somewhat differently. paper in a one-paper city, however bad States: the lower the news circulation, the For the past three hundred years, the product or however inept the man- greater the corruption. Another analysis newspapers have been able to develop agement, could avoid gushing profits. published in 2006, a historical account and flourish partly because their read- The industry’s staggering returns by the economists Matthew Gentzkow, ers have almost never paid the full cost could be simply explained. For most Edward L. Glaeser, and Claudia Goldin, of production. From the eighteenth cen- of the twentieth century, newspapers suggests that the growth of a more tury to the middle of the nineteenth cen- were the primary source of information information-oriented press may have tury, many newspapers were politically for the American public. Whether the been a factor in reducing government subsidized, directly by governments or subject was sports, finance, or politics, corruption in the United States between through political parties. Then, as con- newspapers reigned supreme. Just as the Gilded Age and the Progressive Era. sumer markets expanded, newspapers important, their ads were the easiest Such studies cannot prove a causal increasingly sold not just news to read- way to find job opportunities or to connection, or predict the effects of di- ers, but also readers to advertisers. And learn the price of groceries at your minished news coverage in the future— the more advertisers they gained, the less town’s supermarkets. but there are other grounds for concern. dependent they were on any single one. The great majority of families there- Newspapers are cutting bureaus and staff The key to the rise of independent fore felt the need for a paper every day, that enable the public to monitor govern- and powerful newspapers in the United but understandably most didn’t wish ment as well as business, and some pa- States in the nineteenth and early twen- to pay for two. Advertisers preferred pers are laying off veteran reporters who tieth centuries was their role as market the paper with the most circulation, have exposed major scandals. When intermediaries—that is, in connecting and readers tended to want the paper they were financially strong, newspa- large numbers of sellers (advertisers) and with the most ads and news pages. pers were better able not only to invest buyers in a local area. That role required This circularity led to a law of the news- in long-term investigative projects but changes in content, language, and design, paper jungle: Survival of the Fattest. also to stand up against pressure from so as to appeal to a wider public that in- Thus, when two or more papers politicians and industries to suppress un- cluded women, working-class, and im- existed in a major city (which was favorable stories. As imperfect as they migrant readers. Instead of narrowly almost universally the case a century have been, newspapers have been the focusing on politics and business, news- ago), the one that pulled ahead usually leading institutions sustaining the val- papers now had an interest in presenting emerged as the stand-alone winner. ues of professional journalism. A finan- a wider range of stories. The result was After competition disappeared, the cially compromised press is more likely a succession of editorial innovations in paper’s pricing power in both adver- to be ethically compromised. the coverage of sports, crime, entertain- tising and circulation was unleashed. And while the new digital environment ment, and community life, and the addi- Typically, rates for both advertisers is more open to “citizen journalism” and tion of such features as interviews, comics, and readers would be raised annually— the free expression of opinions, it is also and gossip columns. The coverage of pol- and the profits rolled in. For owners, more open to bias, and to journalism for itics and business changed, too, as news- this was economic heaven. hire. Online there are few clear markers to papers increasingly presented more color, distinguish blogs and other sites that are context, and analysis instead of reprint- If there is one overriding factor behind being financed to promote a viewpoint ing long speeches by politicians or merely the current financial crisis of the press, from news sites operated independently chronicling events—a shift that intensified it is simply that the Internet has under- on the basis of professional rules of report- once radio and later television took over mined the newspaper’s role as market ing. So the danger is not just more cor- much of the business of breaking news. intermediary. Advertisers do not need to

The New Republic March 4, 2009 29 piggyback on the news to reach consum- As if these trends are not bad enough, renstein Center at Harvard’s Kennedy ers, and consumers have other ways to newspapers have been in the midst of an School of Government, traffic at many find out about products and sales. News- accelerating slide in circulation and read- of their websites has been flat. papers also cannot possibly duplicate on- ership. During the past half-century, the And yet, for all their troubles, most line the monopoly position that they have share of the public following the news in newspapers continued to make money in enjoyed in print during recent decades as any medium has fallen, and newspapers the past year. In the first nine months of the sole surviving papers in their metro- have been hit especially hard. The per- 2008, according to the American Journal- politan area, and so they no longer have centage of Americans who buy a news- ism Review’s John Morton, newspapers’ the pricing power for ads that Buffett de- paper is half what it was in 1945, and the average operating profit margins were scribes as “economic heaven.” Craigslist, absolute number of papers sold has been running at 11.5 percent. That is down eBay, and many other sites provide alter- declining since the mid-1980s. According from a peak of 22.3 percent in 2002, but natives—and none of them bears any cost to the Audit Bureau of Circulations, after it is still quite respectable. of news production. falling about 2 percent annually, news- To read the news, moreover, consum- paper circulation in mid-2008 was down ome critics of the companies ers do not need to pay for it online. News- nearly 5 percent compared to the previ- wonder why they cannot adjust papers have been able to make money ous year. A study by the Pew Research to lower profits and make do. The from their print editions at both ends: Center for People and the Press finds Strouble is that the declines in print cir- by charging advertisers for eyeballs, and that from 2006 to 2008 the proportion culation and advertising are virtually cer- by charging the eyeballs, too. But online of Americans who say they read a news- tain to continue, and if newspapers try to there are other news sources such as sites paper the previous day in print alone (or maintain the size and the scope of their run by TV and radio stations, which have both in print and online) dropped sharply, operations, they may not be able make never charged their viewers or listeners. from 38 percent to 30 percent. The addi- any profit even when the recession is So, for newspapers, there goes circula- tional Web-only readers did not make up over. Nor is it clear that they can cut tion as well as advertising income. the difference. Altogether, print and on- deep enough fast enough while retain- To be sure, more newspaper websites line readership combined still fell from ing enough readers to be profitable. could follow the example of The Wall 43 percent to 40 percent of the public. Unsatisfied that the industry has any Street Journal and charge for premium answer, investors drove down the stocks content. But sources of financial news III. of newspaper companies in the past year have always been able to set higher prices f course, a medium that 40 by more than 80 percent on average. In than other news media because of the percent of the public still claim to some cases management bears a large value that business readers derive from read should not be pronounced share of blame, because the companies reliable, up-to-the-minute information. Odead yet. The situation is also a bit more borrowed heavily to make acquisitions The problem for most newspapers is that complicated, and more hopeful, than despite all the signs of trouble ahead. restricting access to their websites would these trends suggest. Total readership of There are certainly some made-to-order not only cost them ad revenue but poten- news that originates from newspapers has villains: the real-estate mogul Sam Zell tially allow another news organization to probably at least stabilized. Online, many bought and wrecked the Tribune Com- seize their role online. Either way, by giv- people read news items on blogs and pany in remarkably little time. But the ing away their content or limiting access, other sites that take items from the press, collapse extends across the entire indus- they may be digging their own graves. and the news junkies among us are read- try, and many papers are now for sale at The implications of these develop- ing more news from more papers than rock-bottom prices without any takers. ments for the public role of newspapers they did before the Internet made the Among many journalists as well as in- are dire. Think of the newspaper as a col- sampling of multiple publications so easy. vestors, the hope has vanished that news- lection of different lines of business rep- And some newspapers are clearly gain- papers as we have known them can make resented by its various sections, from ing wider reach online. Now that they are the transition to a world of hybrid print- the news pages to the classifieds. Inso- available to readers throughout the United online publication. Like network TV news far as newspapers have upheld a public- States and all over the world, the leading and weekly newsmagazines, newspa- service vision, they have been engaged in national papers such as The New York pers have been living off aging audiences cross-subsidy, using their profitable lines Times are more widely read than ever. Al- that acquired their media habits in ear- of business, such as the classifieds, to pay though they have not yet figured out how lier decades. A few years ago, it seemed for news coverage that probably would to monetize all that increased readership, that they could rely on that aging print have been hard to justify on a narrower at least they have a prospect of ultimately readership to tide them over until reve- view of return on investment. Espe- surviving the transition to the Web. nue began gushing from the Web. But on- cially in recent decades, when newspa- At the other end of the scale, some line ads still account for only 8 percent pers were cash cows, their owners could small community newspapers are also of ad sales, and their growth has stalled afford to pursue public-service journal- in relatively good shape, mainly be- just as earnings from print have tumbled. ism, and some of them did (others just cause print still has advantages for very The result is that newspapers are shrink- milked their papers for all they were locally targeted small-business advertis- ing not just physically or in labor power, worth). In addition, Buffett’s law of the ing. The newspapers that seem most en- but in the most important dimension of newspaper jungle, the “survival of the fat- dangered by current trends are the ones all—their editorial mission. test,” favored a broad conception of the in the middle—metros that do not draw The predominant response in the in- purview of the newspaper, attentive to a substantial numbers of readers from be- dustry to rising financial pressures has wide variety of human interests. Now the yond their regions. Some of them have been to concentrate editorial resources incentives are working in the opposite been losing print circulation at a stag- close to home. At many papers, foreign direction, pushing newspapers toward a gering rate—10 percent in the past year; coverage was one of the first things to more constricted view of their role. and according to a study from the Sho- go: the number of American newspaper

30 March 4, 2009 The New Republic correspondents abroad dropped 30 per- level, where no one else is likely to step in newspapers are losing the local knowl- cent between 2002 and 2006. In 2004, a when newspapers cut back. Consider my edge and relationships with trusted study by the Pew Project on Excellence in home state of New Jersey. With thirteen sources that those reporters had built Journalism found that front-page stories full-time reporters in Trenton, the state up, which enabled them to break impor- about foreign affairs accounted for “the capital, Newark’s Star-Ledger in 2000 tant stories. The reporters that were let lowest total in any year we have ever stud- had the largest statehouse bureau of any go by The Star-Ledger—as one of them, ied.” In a new Pew study in 2008, based on newspaper in the country. That commit- Dunstan McNichol, recently recalled for a large survey of news executives, two- ment of resources reflected the paper’s me—had been involved in exposing mal- thirds said their papers had reduced statewide circulation-building strategy, feasance in the state’s school construction space for foreign coverage in the previous and it fulfilled a public-service mission. finance agency, a state medical school, three years. During that same period, The “It seemed to us, or it did to me,” Jim and the privatization of the state’s motor Philadelphia Inquirer, The Baltimore Sun, Willse, the paper’s editor, told the Amer- vehicle inspection system. In November, and The Boston Globe shuttered their last ican Journalism Review in 2000, “that I was talking with a group of state judges foreign bureaus. Meanwhile, network TV it’s a very important role for a statewide about the potential ramifications of the news divisions have also closed bureaus newspaper to look at how public money newspaper crisis when one of them ob- abroad—CBS, which once had twenty- is spent, how departments are function- served ruefully that the reporter from The four foreign bureaus, now has six— ing, because nobody else is doing it.” Star-Ledger who had covered the courts further shrinking the number of Ameri- But after its 45 percent cut in staff last for two decades, and done an excellent can sources for foreign news. October, The Star-Ledger had just four job of it, had taken a buyout. “She knows Some may say not to worry. After all, reporters in Trenton instead of thirteen. where all the bodies are buried,” the judge even as American newspapers and TV Several weeks later, Gannett, which has said, no doubt intending the phrase as a networks eliminate foreign correspon- six papers in New Jersey, reduced its metaphor, though in some places in New dents, the Internet provides easy access statehouse reporters from six to two. The Jersey he might have had to think twice to foreign news media such as the BBC New York Times had already eliminated about being taken literally. and the websites of international orga- its three-person Trenton bureau. Alto- nizations. But availability is not tanta- gether, according to the governor’s of- esides cutting back foreign, mount to exposure. The average reader fice, the number of full-time statehouse national, and state coverage, news- who might have learned about world reporters in New Jersey has fallen from papers are also reducing space de- events in a local paper or on the evening more than fifty to fifteen in the past de- Bvoted to science and the arts, and laying news is probably not going to search out cade. That is a lot fewer pairs of eyes to off science and medical reporters, music foreign news sites on the Internet. And keep watch over state agencies. critics, and book reviewers. But there it cannot be a good thing that at a time Other states have seen the same trend. is one type of coverage that newspa- when America’s economic and security In the annals of corruption, Illinois has pers have tried to protect, at least in the interests are so entangled with the rest lately been giving New Jersey some tough early phases of cutbacks. According to of the world, America’s news media are competition, but, according to Tom the 2008 Pew survey of news executives, withdrawing from it. Massey, secretary of the Capitol Press they have devoted more resources to Newspapers around the United States Room in Springfield, the number of full- local news. The case for “hyperlocalism,” are also pulling back their coverage of time statehouse reporters in Illinois has as it is known, is that newspapers enjoy Washington. The Newhouse and Copley dropped from thirty-two to twenty-four comparative advantage as sources of in- bureaus have closed, and McClatchy has in the past three years. A national survey formation about their immediate com- cut the number of its Washington re- in 2000 counted 543 reporters covering munities. But this strategy may not work porters in half. When the Tribune Com- state governments as a full-time job. By commercially if it means moving down- pany combined the Washington bureaus 2007, according to Capitolbeat, the as- market. The less coverage of the wider of the Los Angeles Times, the Chicago sociation of state capitol reporters, that world and cultural life that newspapers Tribune, and its other papers, it reduced number was down to 407—and it “will provide, the more they stand to lose the total editorial staff by two thirds. Cox be drastically lower” in a new survey readership among the relatively affluent Newspapers, which used to have thirty currently under way, Tiffany Shackelford, who have those interests, and the less reporters in the capital for The Atlanta executive director of Capitolbeat, pre- attractive newspapers will be to many Journal-Constitution and its sixteen dicts. “I’m bracing for the worst. Out of advertisers. Hyperlocalism may be just a other papers, is shutting down its Wash- our fourteen-member board, three have short step from hollowing out the news- ington bureau in April. lost their jobs in the last four months.” Just as there are other sources for in- Nor is it likely that for-profit online news ternational news, so there are other will soon fill the gap in statehouse cover- sources of Washington coverage—but age. The Politicker Network of state news journalists from regional papers per- sites was shut down by its owner, Jared form a special service for their readers, Kushner’s Observer Media Group, in monitoring their representatives in Con- December and January. gress and reporting on federal programs The concern about statehouse cover- from a local angle. Washington reporters age—indeed, about newspaper retrench- for The San Diego Union-Tribune won a ment in general—is not just the declining Pulitzer Prize in 2006 for exposing the number of reporters, but deterioration in corruption of Rep. Randall (“Duke”) the quality of journalism. As the edito- Cunningham. That bureau is now shut. rial ranks are thinned, internal checks on The watchdog role of the regional accuracy are being sacrificed. As report- press is even more critical at the state ers with years of experience are laid off,

The New Republic March 4, 2009 31 room to the point where most newspa- vide general community news, but those a smaller number, perhaps one of every pers come to resemble the free tabloids websites probably will not have as exten- ten, began watching more news and po- distributed at supermarkets rather than sive coverage or as broad an audience as litical discussion now that they had access the newspapers of the past. the daily paper used to have. to Fox News, CNN, and MSNBC. Newspapers are also adopting other This process is also likely to play out in The result, Prior’s data shows, has been desperate measures, despite their clear cities where newspapers survive but can an increased disparity in political knowl- potential for creating a self-reinforcing no longer operate at their former scale or edge between the news drop-outs and cycle of decline. In a highly publicized scope. Many of the functions that were the news junkies. Moreover, the char- move, Detroit’s two newspapers, which bundled together in the newspaper are acter of the public changed. The view- are operated jointly, have cut home deliv- being unbundled online. But if the emerg- ers who gave up news for entertainment ery to Thursday, Friday, and Sunday; on ing media environment favors niche tended to have little or no attachment the other four days a week, besides being journalism, how will public-service jour- to party, while the news junkies tended online, the newspapers now appear in a nalism be able to reach and influence the to be strong partisans—and so the audi- slimmed-down edition available only at broad public that newspapers have had? ence for news has become more partisan newsstands. This seems a good way to There is no going back to the way things than it used to be. Cable news programs push many regular print subscribers to used to be. If independent news media with a sharp ideological slant have go online for news, where they may find capable of holding government account- responded to this shift, and perhaps con- alternatives to the local papers and never able are going to flourish, they are going tributed to it. come back. Advertisers, too, will get a to have to do so in the new world of the The decline of newspapers and the nudge toward using other alternatives. news, not the one that used to exist. growth of the Internet as a source of Still, other “daily papers” may also stop news may have a similar impact. On the publishing daily on paper, and the week- IV. one hand, there is likely to be less inci- end may become the last stand of print. fter the dot-com bust, the effu- dental learning among those with low Perhaps it is a sign of things to come that sive talk about the miracles of the political interest. Like the entertainment- The New York Times is now promoting a information revolution thankfully oriented TV viewers who learned about weekend-only home subscription. Awent out of style. But the social transfor- the world because they had no alterna- For nearly all newspapers, eliminating mation under way—and there ought to tive except to sit through the national the print edition entirely and appear- be no doubt that one is indeed under- network news, many people who have ing solely online would be suicidal at way—is breaking up old monopolies of bought a paper for the sports, the reci- this point. According to calculations by communication and power and creating pes, the comics, or the crossword puz- Pew’s Rosenstiel, they might save 40 per- new possibilities for free expression and zle have nonetheless learned something cent of their costs, but they would lose democratic politics. As in any upheaval, about the wider world because they have more than 90 percent of their income. As some effects are unanticipated, and not been likely at least to scan the front page. a last resort, some could stop publishing all of them are positive, and what is per- Online, by contrast, they do not neces- in print and maintain a skeletal presence haps most confusing, the good and bad sarily see what would be front-page news on the Web, but most have such heavy are often intertwined. in their city, and so they are likely to be- debts, pension obligations, and other leg- By vastly increasing the options for di- come less informed about news and pol- acy costs that they probably cannot take version as well as information, the Internet itics as the reading of newspapers drops. that step, except through bankruptcy. has extended a process that had already On the other hand, just as more parti- One newspaper, The Christian Science begun when cable began increasing the san viewers have more to watch on cable Monitor, has dropped its print edition number of TV channels. And if the po- than on network television, so partisans and is now available only online, but the litical scientist Markus Prior is right, that have more to read and to discuss online Monitor is a special case—it has no local expansion of choice is partly responsible than in the typical local newspaper. As a market, and it is financed by a church. for one of the most worrisome trends in result, to the extent that the Internet re- Newspaper closures in the twentieth American life: diminished attention to the places newspapers as a source of news, it century left monopolies city by city. In news and reduced engagement in civic life may add to the tendencies that Prior has some metropolitan areas that still have among a significant part of the public. identified—greater disparities in knowl- second or third dailies, that process is In the early decades of television up to edge between news dropouts and news likely to play out again—in Denver, for the 1970s, as Prior reminds us in his book junkies, as well as greater ideological po- example, where the Rocky Mountain Post-Broadcast Democracy, the three net- larization in both the news-attentive pub- News is widely expected to be shut down works virtually had a captive audience lic and the news media. this spring, and in Seattle, where the Se- when they broadcast the evening news But there is another side to the story. attle Post-Intelligencer may soon have at the same time. Although many peo- As Yochai Benkler argues in his brilliant its final edition. But not long from now, ple coming home from work might have book The Wealth of Networks: How So- some major cities will lose their last daily, preferred entertainment, they watched cial Production Transforms Markets and and no one knows what the effects will the national news with Walter Cronkite Freedom, the new “networked informa- be. The sites that develop online prob- or Chet Huntley and David Brinkley tion economy” has some critical advan- ably will not look like the “fat” metros and they learned something about poli- tages for realizing democratic values. The that have brought together so many di- tics and world events. As cable and then old “industrial model” mass media have verse interests in a single publication. satellite television developed, however, required large investments of capital and More likely a variety of specialized on- viewers were able to make choices that provided a platform to speak to the pub- line sites will cater to different inter- corresponded more closely to their pref- lic for a relatively small number of people, ests. If there is no online successor to erences. According to Prior, a large group, but now the falling costs of computers the old daily paper, perhaps the websites perhaps three out of ten viewers, fled the and communication have “placed the ma- for local TV or radio stations will pro- news for entertainment programs, while terial means of information and cultural

32 March 4, 2009 The New Republic production in the hands of a significant service journalism. The lush profits that new social media add value when they fraction of the world’s population—on enabled them to produce news as a pub- are a supplement to professional journal- the order of a billion people around the lic good are disappearing. ism. To the extent that they supplant it, globe.” Instead of being confined to a pas- however, the wildfires of rumor and mal- sive role, ordinary people can talk back ews distributed to the pub- ice will be harder to check. to the media or circumvent them entirely lic is a public good in two respects. Nearly a century ago, in Liberty and and enter the public conversation. First, from a political standpoint, the News, Walter Lippmann wrote: The new public sphere, in Benkler’s Nnews contributes to a well-functioning view, is also developing mechanisms for society inasmuch as it enables the pub- The news of the day as it reaches the filtering information for reliability and lic to hold government and other institu- newspaper office is an incredible med- relevance, organizing it into easily navi- tions accountable for their performance. ley of fact, propaganda, rumor, suspi- gated paths, and raising it to higher levels Second, news is a public good in the sense cion, clues, hopes, and fears, and the of public debate, contrary to critics who economists use that concept. When some- task of selecting and ordering that news have worried that the Internet would be one consumes a box of chocolates, no one is one of the truly sacred and priestly a chaotic Babel or a polarized system of else can have them, but that is not true of offices in a democracy. For the news- “echo chambers” (as Cass Sunstein argued news. The news itself is never really “con- paper is in all literalness the bible of in his book Republic.com). And, unlike the sumed” at all, which is why anyone can democracy, the book out of which a old mass media, the new digital environ- pass on news to those who have not paid people determines its conduct. It is the ment facilitates decentralized individual for it—and in the digital environment, in- only serious book most people read. It and cooperative action, often organized formation is so easily and instantly passed is the only book they read every day. on an open and voluntary basis. Benkler on that news is, in a sense, even more of a invests a great deal of hope in this type of public good than it has ever been. (Copy- Of course, the day is long gone when any- non-market collaborative production— right protects only the form of expression, one would seriously claim the newspa- the kind that has generated new social not the information itself.) per was the bible of democracy or that media such as Wikipedia, which, amaz- Markets under-produce public goods their editors exercise a priestly power. ingly, despite being an encyclopedia, has because private incentives are insuffi- But the job of separating rumor from also become an important news medium cient to generate as much production of fact remains just as vital as it ever was. because it is so rapidly updated. those goods as there would be if all those Although daily journalism may be losing Of course, some of these innova- who derived a benefit from them had to its economic foundation, it has not lost tions are mixed blessings: people can pay. Still, for a long time, thanks largely its justification. now share their misinformation as well to their role as market intermediaries, as their knowledge. Viral email, Twit- newspapers have been able to produce V. ter, and social network sites can be used this particular public good—newswor- nd this returns us to the to spread rumors and malice through thy information, necessary to hold gov- central problem. If newspa- channels hidden from the wider pub- ernment accountable—on a commercial pers are no longer able to cross- lic and insulated from criticism. Ben- basis. And that way of getting around the Asubsidize public-service journalism and kler is right about the many important problem of financing news for the gen- if the de-centralized, non-market forms gains from new technology, but he does eral public is now coming to an end. of collaboration cannot provide an ade- not adequately balance the gains against The non-market collaborative networks quate substitute, how is that work going the losses that the emerging networked on the Web celebrated by Benkler repre- to be paid for? The answer, insofar as economy is also bringing about—among sent an alternative way of producing infor- there is one, is that we are going to need them the problems that Prior identifies, mation as a public good. Before Wikipedia much more philanthropic support for such as the diminished share of the pub- was created, hardly anyone supposed it journalism than we have ever had in the lic following the news, and perhaps most would work as well as it has. But it has se- United States. important, the toll on the institutions of vere limitations as a source of knowledge. When a society requires public goods, professional journalism. Its entries, including news items, are re- the solution is often to use government Until recently, the Internet seemed pri- written from other sources, and it does to subsidize them or to produce them di- marily to be additive, vastly enlarging the not purport to offer original research or rectly. But if we want a press that is inde- opportunities for self-expression and pub- original reporting. The blogosphere and pendent of political control, we cannot lic debate, while newspapers and other the news aggregators are also largely par- have government sponsoring or bail- old media continued serving their old asitic: they feed off the conventional news ing out specific papers. In the late eigh- functions, such as financing the bulk of media. Citizen journalists contribute re- teenth and nineteenth centuries, besides original reporting for the general public. ports from the scene of far-flung events, using printing contracts to subsidize fa- That assumption of a happy complemen- but the reports may just be the propa- vored party organs, the federal govern- tarity no longer holds. By superseding the ganda of self-interested parties. ment supported the press in what First role of the newspaper as a local market Voluntary networks cannot easily du- Amendment lawyers today would call a intermediary, the Internet has undercut plicate certain critical advantages that “viewpoint-neutral” way—through cheap the economic foundations of the press. large-scale and professionally run media postal rates that were available to all No doubt this is a gain in efficiency, be- have had—the financial wherewithal to newspapers. And since the 1960s, both cause advertisers no longer have to pay invest in trained reporters and editors the federal and state governments have monopoly prices to newspapers and can and to assign them to beats and long aided public broadcasting, which has now use cheaper alternatives like free ads projects, and a well-established system enabled public TV and radio stations to on Craigslist. But there is also a cost to of professional norms that has been a become important sources of news. democratic values, as newspapers lose source of conscientious motivation and Public radio has been a particularly their ability to cross-subsidize public- restraint in the reporting of news. The notable success. In a period when com-

The New Republic March 4, 2009 33 mercial radio stations have abandoned last time, the owners of some declining The notion that the digital medium all but headline news, National Pub- newspapers may try to convert them requires a more inclusive relationship lic Radio has become the last refuge of into non-profits in the hope of raising with the “people formerly called the au- original reporting on the dial. But as contributions to keep them in opera- dience” is a common theme among on- Charles Lewis, a long-time leader in in- tion. I would not be surprised if some line journalists. Joshua Micah Marshall, vestigative reporting, has pointed out in papers do have a devoted core of read- the founder of TalkingPointsMemo.com, the Columbia Journalism Review, pub- ers who would be willing to give more which runs on a commercial basis, says lic radio stations, for all their excellent in tax-deductible contributions than that many of the stories on his site grow work, have not done a lot of investigative they currently pay in subscriptions. But out of ideas and tips supplied by readers stories. The dependence of many local no paper has yet tested whether this op- in thousands of emails daily. Any news stations on state government funding tion could raise enough money to stay operation has information flowing in makes them vulnerable to political pres- in business. and out; an online publication can pro- sure and unlikely to fill the void left by Besides full non-profit operation of a ductively open up this process to anyone the decline in newspaper coverage of the newspaper, a second approach is philan- who is able and prepared to help. Sto- states. Virtually any proposal for govern- thropic support of specific kinds of jour- ries develop online incrementally, often ment subsidies of the press today would nalism, available through multiple outlets, through participation in a collaborative likely fail on just these grounds: funding whether they are commercial or non- network, rather than being written be- by the federal government or the states profit. The best-known example of this hind the scenes and released only when has too much potential for political ma- solution is ProPublica, which describes checked and finished. This is entirely dif- nipulation. Elsewhere governments are itself as “an independent, non-profit ferent from “citizen journalism,” and has subsidizing the press. In an effort to aid newsroom that produces investigative the potential to be just as rigorous as tra- newspapers in France, President Nicolas journalism in the public interest.” Pub- ditional journalistic practices. Sarkozy recently announced a program lishing online as of last June, ProPublica In cities around the country, journal- to give eighteen-year-olds a free year- also works in partnership on some stories ists are experimenting with a variety of long subscription to a daily paper of their with newspapers such as The New York strategies for building up Web-only news choice. In America this would be a joke, Times. The partnerships enable newspa- sites to make up for the shrinking news- though depending on how many teen- pers to keep down the costs of investi- rooms of local papers. MinnPost.com in agers chose one of our racier tabloids, it gative stories, and they give ProPublica Minneapolis-St. Paul, the most substan- could give added meaning to the concept access to mass distribution as well as a tial of these ventures, hopes to attract a of a “stimulus package.” check on quality. Similarly, the Kaiser wide range of readers and sponsors with The other standard means of support- Family Foundation, which focuses on news coverage of relatively broad scope, ing the production of public goods is health policy, announced last fall that it according to its CEO and editor Joel through private non-profit organization. would begin directly employing report- Kramer. But its annual budget of $1.3 In fact, non-profit support of journalism ers to create a health policy news service. million cannot support an operation on has recently been increasing. But much According to Drew Altman, Kaiser’s pres- the scale of a metropolitan daily; with of the discussion about non-profit jour- ident, besides making some stories freely only seven full-time staff,MinnPost.com nalism has failed to recognize that it can available to newspapers and online, the relies primarily on freelancers, many of mean at least three different things. The news service will establish partnerships them journalists who have left St. Paul’s first, though not necessarily the most with newspapers for specific stories, Pioneer Press or Minneapolis’s Star-Tri- relevant, is the conversion of newspapers which the papers will then have the right bune (which in January filed for bank- from commercial to non-profit status to release first. Some other foundations ruptcy protection despite having cut its as a way of preserving their public-ser- that focus on specific areas of policy may editorial staff by 25 percent). Another vice role. Florida’s St. Petersburg Times, follow this approach as a way to promote non-profit online metropolitan news site, which is owned by a journalism school, public awareness of their concerns. the VoiceofSanDiego.org, developed as a the Poynter Institute for Media Studies, Both the non-profit operation of response to scandals in the city and has is often mistakenly cited as a model for newspapers and the philanthropic sub- specialized in investigative stories. Like this approach. In fact, the Times itself sidy of particular types of reporting are public radio, these ventures raise money has been run at a profit, which has been aimed at fostering forms of public-ser- through individual membership contri- used to build up the Poynter Institute vice journalism that would otherwise be butions and grants from local founda- into a major center for training in jour- in jeopardy. But there is yet a third use tions, though not from government. nalism. Today, however, the question of non-profits—and it is for underwrit- Doubtful that they can ever achieve is not whether to use a money-making ing new models of journalism in the on- the scale of the big metros, Rosenstiel newspaper to support philanthropy, but line environment. A good example of this compares the Web-based city news whether non-profit organizations can approach is the Center for Independent sites to aggressive city magazines. If one sustain newspapers that may be losing Media, which, according to its direc- major concern is keeping government money. Britain’s Guardian Media Group, tor David Bennahum, receives about $4 accountable, that kind of aggressive re- owned by the Scott Trust, comes closer million annually from seventy funders to porting is certainly a valuable function to present demands. The trust uses prof- support online political news sites in five and well worth supporting. But owing to its from its money-making media sub- states as well as one for national news, their more limited economic basis, the sidiaries to ensure the survival of the The Washington Independent. Bennahum non-profit news sites are unlikely to be daily Guardian, which has lost money says that “the narrative voice of newspa- able to offer the coverage, or to exert the in recent years. But the Guardian model pers is not what [online] readers want” influence, of a daily newspaper read by depends on having profitable subsidi- and that the sites his center finances are half the people in a city. The great met- aries to offset losses in a daily paper. instead doing a kind of journalism that ros did not emerge just because cities Before stopping the presses for the brings readers into dialogue. needed newspapers to inform citizens—

34 March 4, 2009 The New Republic after all, cities need lots of things that Another form of likely news-media pleased with. Instead of being limited they are never able to develop. News- concentration has no precedent or paral- to a local paper, such readers already papers flourished at the metropolitan lel. Online, the old divisions among types enjoy access to a broader range of pub- level because their role as local market of media are breaking down. Instead of lications and discussions than ever be- intermediaries enabled them to generate just offering text, newspapers have begun fore. But without a local newspaper or substantial advertising as well as circu- providing audio and video, and—de- even with a shrunken one, many other lation income and thereby to become spite current federal regulations limiting people will learn less about what is going strong and independent. Non-profit cross-ownership—it seems just a matter on in the world. As of now, moreover, no news sites that lack a strong advertising of time before there are full-fledged com- source in any medium seems willing and base depend on donors for their survival binations of newspapers and the news able to pay for the general-interest re- and are at risk of being destroyed by a divisions of broadcast networks and sta- porting that newspapers are abandoning. single lawsuit, and so they are unlikely tions. Even if we call some of these com- Philanthropy can help to offset some of to be able to match the traditional power binations “newspapers,” they will be an these cutbacks, but it is unlikely to make of the press. entirely different species. up fully for what we are losing. Yet the emerging news media also News coverage is not all that newspa- any people have been ex- seem likely to become more fragmented pers have given us. They have lent the pecting the successors of news- by interest and partisanship. Just as the public a powerful means of leverage papers to emerge on the Web. national press of European countries is over the state, and this leverage is now MBut there may be no successor, at least typically split along ideological lines, so at risk. If we take seriously the notion of none like the papers we have known. our emerging national media are taking newspapers as a fourth estate or a fourth The metropolitan daily may be a pecu- on distinct ideological profiles. And as branch of government, the end of the age liar historical invention whose time is many traditional functions of newspapers of newspapers implies a change in our passing. We may be approaching not are hived off into specialized sites, more political system itself. Newspapers have the end of newspapers, but the end of of the news we read will be the work of helped to control corrupt tendencies in the age of newspapers—the long phase decentralized networks rather than sin- both government and business. If we are in history when newspapers published gle, large-scale news organizations. to avoid a new era of corruption, we are in major cities throughout the United For those with the skills and inter- going to have to summon that power in States have been central to both the est to take advantage of this new world other ways. Our new technologies do not production of news and the life of their of news, there should be much to be retire our old responsibilities. d metropolitan regions. Metropolitan newspapers have dom- inated news gathering, set the public agenda, served as the focal point of con- Adam Kirsch troversy, and credibly represented them- selves as symbolizing and speaking for In the Word-Hoard the cities whose names they have carried. They have tried to be everyone’s source of news, appealing across the ideological Stepping Stones: small but teeming field of Irish poetry, spectrum, and to be comprehensive, pro- Interviews with Seamus Heaney and for the past forty years Heaney has viding their readers with whatever was of By Dennis O’Driscoll led the richly burdened existence of the daily interest to them. Some newspapers, (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 522 pp., $32) responsible artist. a smaller number than exist today, will “What I’ve said before, only half in joke, survive the transition to the Web, but emote on the one hand is that everybody in Ireland is famous,” they probably will not possess the cen- from the banal, on the other Heaney modestly remarks in Stepping trality, the scope, or the authoritative from the eccentric, his ge- Stones. “Or, maybe better say everybody is voice—much less the monopolies on nius was calculated to win familiar. Since I was a schoolboy, I’ve been metropolitan advertising—that news- at once the adhesion of the used to being recognized on the road by papers have had. general public and the admiration, both old and young, and being bantered with The news media emerging in the dig- ‘sympatheticR and stimulating, of the con- and indeed being taunted.” But of course ital environment seem likely to be more noisseur.” So writes Thomas Mann about few people in Ireland are as familiar with concentrated in some respects and more Gustav von Aschenbach, great writer and fame as Heaney; and few poets, in an age fragmented in others. Readership is al- national institution, in Death in Venice; when poetry is benignly neglected across ready becoming concentrated in a na- and the description applies unexpectedly the English-speaking world, have so con- tional press. The New York Times, The well to Seamus Heaney. Heaney is in ob- scientiously integrated their public and Wall Street Journal, and The Washing- vious ways unlike Mann’s Apollonian aes- poetic selves. Near the end of the book, ton Post seem well-positioned to capital- thete, but he too has managed to win the Dennis O’Driscoll—an excellent poet and ize on the abandonment of international, love of the many and the esteem of the critic, and a deeply informed and probing national, and cultural coverage by re- few, in a way that no American poet since interviewer of his longtime friend—asks gional newspapers. The likely closing of Frost has managed. As Heaney observes Heaney about the publication history of some papers, or their retreat from daily in this important book-length interview, “Anything Can Happen,” a post–Septem- to weekend print publication, should designed to serve in lieu of a memoir, “In ber 11 poem based on a Horatian ode. only intensify this shift. In Europe, the the United States, there’s a great crop of Before it was included in his most recent press has long been dominated by na- ripe, waving poetry—but there’s no mon- book, District and Circle, the poem “ap- tional papers; now American newspa- ster hogweed sticking up out of it.” But peared first in The Irish Times; then you pers are moving in that direction. he has always been that hogweed in the introduced it in a lecture to the Royal

The New Republic March 4, 2009 35