@darnell brought attention to a Politico piece re: the state of American journalism. Here’s another: https://www.cnn.com/2024/01/25/media/news-industry-future/index.html
Jay Rosen (professor of journalism at NYU) is quoted in the piece and has long been someone worth following regarding what good journalism looks like, the current travails of news as a business, and the consequences for democracy when journalism is done poorly or not at all.
@darnell My concern re: the dismantling of American journalism by private equity, hedge funds, & oligarchs comes not just from consuming a lot of print and radio news over the decades but having been a tech intern and part-time employee at The Washington Post, and a tech contractor for NPR and PBS. These orgs in particular (and journalism in general) are far less robust now than they were in the late-90s and early aughts—but even more important to an accountable, functioning democracy.
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American Journalism should have never been a for-profit venture to begin with.
A for-profit company by its very nature must pursue profit above other priorities, namely the truth. A for-profit journalist therefore has an obligation to lean into hype and fear mongering to get viewers and audience rather than telling the truth, boring or as offensive as it may be to the majority.
There has always been non-profit news, and non-profit news has been the only place you could find any shred of journalist integrity for many years now.
