Pleading for a business sector that died a long time ago

Great insight into the mind of the establishment mainstream media. As an industry, they are in their death throes. Debilitated by tech companies seizing the ad revenue which used to go to newspapers and TV stations, overtaken by loss of talent and replacement by Woke junior journalists who know nothing.

In my household, based on the loss of factual reporting and epistemic integrity, we are down to two papers from six. And the remaining two are knife-edge.

From Don’t Cancel That Newspaper Subscription by Margaret Renkl. She starts out with an inspiring tale from 66 years ago about a journalist. Kind of telling, and distressing, that she has to go back that far for an heroic journalist tale.

She acknowledges the bad ship of the industry.

A staggering 7,800 journalists lost their jobs in 2019, according to Business Insider. Once the pandemic hit, another 36,000 media-company employees got the pink slip. And all these disasters came on top of continuing losses that collectively cost American newsrooms half their journalists between 2008 and 2019.

This in context of a perceived mis-step by the Tennessean.

I remind you of all this — the decades-old history of a newspaper known for advancing progressive causes and the recent history of a media company in thrall to corporate investors — to provide some context for an appalling advertisement that ran in The Tennessean on June 21.

The full-page, full-color ad featured images of Donald Trump, Pope Francis and burning American flags, as well as a long, incoherent, biblically illiterate warning that “Islam is going to detonate a nuclear device in Nashville, Tennessee” and thereby launch a “Third World War.”

Sounds in poor taste, but most advertising is in poor taste. Within the pages, whether advertising or in the reporting or editorializing, it is easy to find similar levels of ignorance, bad taste, and presumed bias. I don't know whether the advertising breached any of the terms or guidelines of the paper, but I am presuming not. It sounds like the objection is to the message rather than to any breach of contract.

And that is the first tell. Renkl is not pointing out rule-breaking or anything of the sort. She is a Social Justice warrior, not a Classical Liberal. She objects to the free speech that allows a message she doesn't like. It is one of the great ironies of the age that those most in opposition to free speech are in the industry whose very existence depends on free speech.

Renkl is not making any principled argument about the nature of advertising. She is trying to stem the financial body blow from the Woke subscribers.

Public outcry began early and spread swiftly. Especially given the recent history of vandalism and violent threats against Muslims in Middle Tennessee, “A huge target was placed on our community,” said Sabina Mohyuddin, executive director of the American Muslim Advisory Council, a Nashville-based advocacy group. Public calls to unsubscribe from the paper flew around Twitter.

Renkl takes pains to demonstrate that the Tennessean is as worthily woke as ever.

Tennessean editor Michael A. Anastasi called the ad “inconsistent with everything The Tennessean as an institution stands and has stood for and with the journalism we have produced.”

Mr. Anastasi wasn’t referencing merely his newspaper’s storied history. In the same print edition of the paper that carried the unforgivable ad, The Tennessean published articles on the “violence interrupters” of Gideon’s Army, a grass-roots organization that works as a successful alternative to police intervention; Nashville’s Juneteenth protest; an interview with the mother of Ashanti Posey, an African-American teenager shot to death in April; and two op-ed columns on racism and policing. The issue also included a number of wire reports about hate crimes legislation in Georgia, the removal of Confederate statues in North Carolina, NASCAR’s decision to prohibit the display of Confederate flags, and worries by civil rights leaders that the 2020 census is undercounting minority populations.

You can argue that The Tennessean is now so short of journalists it can’t possibly cover the full range of challenges facing this city, and you would be right. You can argue that the statewide focus of Gannett’s “USA Today Network — Tennessee” is just a fancy way of ignoring smaller-city news, and you would be right about that, too. But you can’t argue that the journalists who actually cover this town are indifferent to the plights of the communities they cover. Tennessean reporters were as appalled by that ad as everyone else.

The journalists and editors made a mistake by straying from the woke straight-and-narrow. Please don't punish them by cancelling your subscriptions. They can't afford to lose more revenue. That's her message.

As the “first rough draft of history,” journalism will always be prone to mistakes, no matter how assiduously reporters and editors try to prevent them. But canceling your newspaper subscription because of one ad, no matter how hideous — or because of one deeply offensive headline, or one flagrantly dangerous op-ed — will not cure journalism of what ails it.

The only thing canceling your subscription to a newspaper will do is hasten the death of journalism itself. It will leave your community with even fewer full-time reporters to tell you what local leaders were up to while you weren’t paying attention. It will leave you with a far poorer understanding of the place where you live.

It comes down this. The opinion in the NYT is written by a fully paid up member of the Mandarin Class, comfortable acknowledging that her preferred media is sharply at odds with the public and surviving only by subscriptions from the most left-leaning of readers. She is not making an argument, she is making a plea. Don't hurt us more. We will be more woke.

But that she pitches her argument in the context of the value to the community is kind of astonishing. Again:

It will leave your community with even fewer full-time reporters to tell you what local leaders were up to while you weren’t paying attention.

We are already there. Most local papers have thin staff, dramatically fewer pages, almost no original content reporting. My local paper, the Atlanta Journal and Constitution with a storied history, hardly reports on the city at all. Very little about crime because it offends some readers. Very little about endemic corruption because it offends some financial interests. Very little about city incompetence because it offends the establishment. Almost nothing about local politician scandals because it would offend the politician and the paper would lose what little access it has.

The upshot is that it provide almost nothing of value to local readers. The AJC will never champion citizens/residents over the commercial establishment and political power structure. It hardly reports on news as it is happening.

A couple of days ago, there was a massive pipe collapse near Georgia Tech with consequent flooding. Most the City is without water and much the rest is on a boil-water-alert.

I find out about the problem via Twitter (dramatic video footage) and on NextDoor (useful links to the Department of Watershed Management).

Seems like we continue to have these kind of problems every four to eight months.

By 2004, it became obvious that Atlanta water infrastructure was being outpaced by development. Politicians and Commercial Interests circled the wagons and lobbied intensely to get the public to take on some additional bonds to fix the water infrastructure. Sixteen years and $2 billion dollars later, we still have frequent boil-water-alerts.

The infrastructure is still a mess. The Department of Watershed Management is still notoriously corrupt and incompetent. But you learn that by being a good neighbor fixing local problems and interacting with the City government. And through social media platforms. You won't read about the problems in the AJC.

Instead you will read the apocalyptic forecasts from the paper as to what will happen if citizens don't cough up more taxes for a further $2 billion in investments.

The ship Renkl is pleading for, a local paper reporting factual useful news to local citizens to help them make informed decisions? Gone. A few pages of opinion and Social Justice/Critical theory reporting with no knowledge or context is about all that is left. When social media platforms are providing more timely, better trusted, and more fact-based reporting than the newspaper, you know the sector is in a death spiral.