State of the Press

At a crucial moment for America, journalism is at a crossroads. Can it be saved?

By Tim Stevens ’03

o experiment can be more interesting than that we are now trying, and which we trust will end in establishing the fact that man may be governed by reason and truth. Our first object should therefore be to leave open to him all the avenues to truth. The most effectual hitherto found is the freedom of the press.

—Thomas Jefferson

It has not been a stellar year for journalism. In January, the Los Angeles Times fell into what the Daily Beast labeled a death spiral, dismissing at least 115 employees from its newsroom. That same week, Business Insider terminated 8% of its newsroom and TIME magazine laid off roughly 15% of its unionized workforce.

Even specialized fields once thought untouchable found themselves brutalized by the tide. Massive layoffs in February gutted Sports Illustrated, once the premier voice in sports journalism. This came only five years after SI dismissed 30% of its staff following the magazine’s purchase by the brand-management firm Authentic Brands Group. Pitchfork, previously one of the most successful internet-native publications, halved its staff as it was folded into GQ by parent company Condé Nast.

Near the end of February, Columbia Journalism Review called out the early months of 2024 as an incredibly dark time in journalism’s history. It cited the loss of more than 800 reporter jobs, including 300 in one swipe with the shuttering of The Messenger. The cutbacks didn’t stop there, either. In mid-August, Axios laid off around 50 employees. At the same time, Slate cut several, including Joel Anderson, a writer and podcaster who scored a “Best Podcast of the Year” Ambie for the outlet only five months earlier. That’s all on the heels of “over 2,500 layoffs in broadcast, print and digital news media” in 2023, according to Columbia.

And yet, in the midst of an election campaign that many argue could determine the future of the American democratic experiment, the need for reliable, accurate reporting has never been greater.

At this pivotal juncture, CC Magazine asked alumni journalists and experts: Can journalism be saved?

Not Business As Usual

The advent of the internet sent a fledgling Information Age into overdrive. No longer did Americans have to wait for news to leave the printing press and ride on a truck or in the basket of a bicycle to their front porches. News was more accessible than ever before in human history.

But news organizations, which had long relied on advertising dollars, saw their business models in peril. eBay quickly killed the classified ad. Traditional advertisers were slower to make the switch, but 31 years after the launch of the World Wide Web, the impact on the industry is abundantly clear.

“As tech behemoths like Google and Facebook have taken more and more of the advertising dollars that used to fund a robust lineup of reporting in print, television and online, many outlets have failed,” says Joshua Green ’94, Bloomberg Businessweek’s senior national correspondent and political reporter. “Or [they’ve] been acquired by rapacious private equity companies with no sense of civic obligation or responsibility, which have bled them dry or reduced them to a shell of what they once were.”

That’s exactly what happened to the Standard-Times of New Bedford, Massachusetts, says Daniella Melo ’04, founder and board member of the independent nonprofit publication The New Bedford Light.

“It was bought and sold several times, first by News Corp, then by a private equity firm [Fortress Investment Group]. Each time, progressively more people are fired and the paper gets smaller. The coverage lessens. Soon, there was very little investigative reporting happening,” Melo says. “And that has happened to a lot of papers across the United States.”

Freelance reporter Tara Law ’14 says the pressure on those who remain is immense.

“There’s a sense that we’re always racing. There’s pressure to publish much faster. Junior reporters have fewer opportunities to build up a place in a field now because they’re expected to be generalists. It makes it harder to publish truly in-depth pieces that are much more important for readers,” she says.

Martha Joynt Kumar ’63, an emeritus professor of political science at Towson University and director of the White House Transition Project, has spent decades recording and analyzing the relationship between journalists and the White House. A scholar of the presidency and the press, she’s gravely concerned about the degradation of news at the local level—and its impact on the national level.

“So many newspapers have gone out of business, leaving many areas important to citizens uncovered: budgeting at the local level, actions of the citizen council that people are asked to vote for,” she says.

“At the same time, the Associated Press is so important to bringing national news to the local level, but with fewer and fewer papers, it makes it more difficult for them to operate. We’re having a paucity of information that’s critical in a democratic society.”

The biggest change in my field of political journalism—by a factor of 10—has been the rise, fall and possible resurrection of Donald Trump.

— Bloomberg Businessweek senior national correspondent Joshua Green ’94

The ‘Trump Bump’

Since the heyday of Yellow Journalism in the late 1800s, when New York newspaper tycoons William Randolph Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer locked themselves into an epic circulation battle, one thing has been clear: sensationalism sells.

In the modern era, there’s one particular catalyst who has sent shock waves through the industry.

“The biggest change in my field of political journalism—by a factor of 10—has been the rise, fall and possible resurrection of Donald Trump,” says Bloomberg’s Green, who is also the author of the New York Times bestseller Devil’s Bargain: Steve Bannon, Donald Trump and the Storming of the Presidency.

“For reasons I still can’t fully comprehend, he’s an object of endless fascination and controversy for tens of millions of Americans across the political spectrum.”

That fascination translated into what Law refers to as the “Trump Bump” for the journalism industry, with the former president’s first two campaigns and time in office driving people to online publications and social media in record numbers.

There were positive effects, including a greater public interest in political journalism and the inner workings of government and skyrocketing participation in elections, Green says. But the news wasn’t all good.

“It had plenty of negative effects, too, including, on the journalistic front, a diminution of interest and support for local and non-Trump national journalism.”

The COVID pandemic coincided with the 2020 election cycle, further driving interest in national news. But as life slowly began to return to normal and President Joe Biden officially assumed office in 2021, there was a noticeable shift in public attention.

“You had a lot of people following what Trump was doing, but I think people also became exhausted,” Joynt Kumar says. “When Biden came into office, they were just less interested in following the news. You can see that in the difficulties he’s had as president getting coverage of what he was doing.”

Law, who covered the pandemic for TIME, says that outcome isn’t wholly surprising.

“Each time there’s a bump, a down period follows,” she notes. “Publications struggle to get the same numbers of readers online. There was also a concern about a possible impending economic downturn triggering a loss of advertisers for publications; that led to another contraction. Then, it becomes a scramble to hold on to readers by seizing on to big news events.”

Unprecedented Election

Trump becoming a known quantity and thus more predictable—insofar as that term can ever be applied to him—seems to have blunted the “bump” this cycle. Democrats, on the other hand, have provided plenty of surprises. Biden announced he was ending his re-election campaign on July 21, following a poorly received debate performance and intense speculation about how his age, at 81, might impede his ability to do the job. Vice President Kamala Harris’s rapid ascension to the nomination and the subsequent selection of Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as her running mate provided more fodder for journalists.

Christopher Devine ’06, an associate professor of political science at the University of Dayton and author of Do Running Mates Matter? The Influence of Vice Presidential Candidates in Presidential Elections, says Biden’s exit from the race marked a shift in media coverage.

“Instead of talking about policy, records and credentials, so much of the conversation was bogged down by this debate about Biden’s ability to serve—‘Is he going to get out? When is he going to get out? Should he get out?’ I think a lot of people were exhausted by it,” he points out.

“So, strange as it sounds, when Harris took over, there was the chance for a more ‘normal’ campaign. It wasn’t just about if someone was too old to serve in the role. Although that conversation can still be had about Donald Trump, it’s just not being discussed at the same level as it was when Biden was a candidate.”

Despite the unprecedented nature of Harris’s candidacy, Devine says the media fell into a familiar trap as she worked to select a running mate.

“We did see a lot of media focus on who could deliver a swing state. And one thing I’ve been very critical about when it comes to the vice presidential selection process is—and this is based on data—the media talk a lot more about the electoral angles than they do about governing credentials, about whether this person is actually qualified to be the vice president of the United States and potentially the president. That’s problematic for a number of reasons.”

Still, there are bright spots. “Election coverage is still something that news organizations are willing to put the money into,” Joynt Kumar argues.

“I think ProPublica has been an example of success in a world that otherwise has brought us a lot of bad news. Their pieces on Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, for instance, kicked off an interest in ethics and the Supreme Court that is still being debated and discussed all this time later.”

Law agrees. “I still think there is great journalism being published right now—at local publications, nonprofit news sites, even larger papers like The New York Times.”

Tipping Point

Regardless of how the media rise to the occasion—or don’t—for the 2024 election cycle, the news won’t stop with the counting of electoral college votes and the challenges will remain. Are there paths to improving the journalistic landscape? Is it possible to maintain journalistic ethics in the face of economic and political pressures?

Melo thinks so. “There is an understanding that there’s been a tipping point in the industry and new models are necessary,” she says. That’s what drove her to work with other members of her community to launch The New Bedford Light, a free, nonprofit, nonpartisan digital news outlet dedicated to community-based coverage of important local issues and funded through individual contributions, foundation grants, sponsorships, underwriting and partnerships with other local media outlets.

“We got tired of just complaining and so we tried to do something about it. And we’ve been quite successful in becoming part of this … revolution of local news coverage. It’s incredibly gratifying,” she says.

“Starting at the local level makes the most sense. That ensures reporters are part of the community and makes it easier to hold them accountable. That helps us build trust. We have a board that is completely separate from our newsroom. We go to great pains to maintain that journalistic independence, first and foremost.”

While The Light’s model is just one way of operating, Joynt Kumar and Law agree that it is essential to move away from outlet ownership by “hedge funds that want to see a 20% profit” year over year.

“I think the nonprofit model, at least for smaller publications, is the future,” says Law. “I’d like to see billionaires create endowments for journalism instead of just buying publications. I think this sense that publications need to be for-profit is shortsighted. For our country to get the level of news coverage it needs for the long-term, it’s going to be hard in a for-profit model.”