If you’re reading this, thank you.
You might be reading because you agree with many of the positions I take. Or you’re interested in possibly learning something new. Or maybe you don’t like what I write, you disagree with me often, but you still want to know what I have to report. Or you just stumbled upon this column while reading something else and thought, “Let’s see where this goes.”
Whatever compels you to read these words, the fact that you are means that at least some small part of you is still invested in a free press — what’s left of it, at any rate.
So thank you.
This is a scary time for journalism. The freedom guaranteed under the 1st Amendment to the Constitution is under constant attack. Journalists doing their darnedest to report factually are repeatedly vilified and frozen out. Media outlets are subjected to enormous pressure to edit their content to please those in power — a surefire recipe for lost liberty for the nation at large.
What’s more, this is all occurring at a time of disintegrating finances at news organizations across the country. The traditional financial model for print journalism — by “print” I refer to those outlets devoted primarily to the written word — is no longer viable. Although many newer initiatives, including upstart digital sites, have emerged to try to fill the vacuum, most are barely surviving.
Although these are industry-wide issues, the collapsing state of local news — no matter if these smaller publications are independent or owned by large corporations — is particularly acute.
The Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University has for the past few years tracked the local news industry, and its findings are alarming.
From 2005 through 2024, more than 3,200 newspapers vanished, and they continue to disappear at the rate of two per week. Many of those that remain in operation are severely diminished, with scant original reporting in the communities they serve.
A few years ago, Medill predicted that by the end of this year, the nation will have lost one-third of its print newspapers.
They were wrong. We’ve already blown through that threshold. Now there are “news deserts” in many areas of the country, where people are deprived of the information they need to make informed decisions.
That means there are far too many locales in which residents have no reliable source of news about the places where they live. No coverage of city hall, school boards, police activity, local sports, businesses and nonprofits, and no contextualizing of the impact that national developments have on specific communities.
Such information is vital to maintaining well-informed and well-functioning communities. Social media, plagued by rampant disinformation campaigns, rumor-mongering, and conspiracy theories, are a dangerous replacement.
The publications that have survived so far do so with dwindling staffs that put in a Herculean effort day in and day out while they hang by their fingertips to a fast-crumbling cliff. I salute their commitment and fortitude as they watch colleagues depart and other news outlets fall silent.
Keep in mind that no one goes into journalism seeking money or fame — not if they are in their right mind. They do it because they want to be part of something important, and because they truly love and value the work. There’s nothing quite like the satisfaction that comes from, as the oft-quoted phrase goes, “writing the first draft of history.”
From the earliest days of our republic, a robust independent press was considered essential.
In the Federalist Papers, for example, Alexander Hamilton wrote that “the liberty of the press shall be inviolably preserved.” And Thomas Jefferson repeatedly championed press freedoms. Among the many such quotes attributed to him: “Our liberty depends on the freedom of the press, and that cannot be limited without being lost.”
They and other founders were emphatic in their insistence on formalizing that promise by enshrining it in the 1st Amendment.
It’s true that this isn’t the first time in our nation’s history that this commitment has been sorely tested.
Indeed, it was tested right from the start, with the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798, which sought to punish those who uttered or published “false, scandalous, and malicious” writings against the government. Three years later the law expired and then-President Jefferson pardoned everyone convicted under it.
Again in the early 20th century another sedition act forbade spoken or printed criticism of the U.S. government, but that was repealed two years later.
And on and on throughout our history we’ve had a push-and-pull dynamic between those in power and those who hold power to account, all while the press has undergone an often fitful and flawed evolution.
Yet so far we have managed to cling to our ideals regarding press freedoms.
But it’s a particularly fraught moment we find ourselves in, unlike any I have previously witnessed in my lifetime. The continual assaults on journalists’ abilities to do their jobs unhindered by outside influence and intimidation, at a time when crushing financial pressures are making publications extremely vulnerable, aren’t just troubling developments.
They are a threat to our democracy. Absent a thriving free press, none of us are truly free.
So if you’ve read this far, thank you again. I don’t know what the answers are, but as long as I can still write this column, and someone reads it, I have hope.