(This story has been updated to include a section on a recent Washington Post op-ed about the decline of journalism.)

Journalism is facing an existential crisis — despite a century’s worth of innovative tools bequeathed to them by technological advances. I think we can save it, though I’m unsure exactly how.

First, I will head off a possible semantic issue, then I will detail what I perceive as the crisis — including what’s to blame and possible solutions.

Semantic Issue

Different people mean different things by words like “journalism”, “news”, “the press”, and others. To clarify, by “journalism” I do not refer to everything that masquerades as news today. I mean — and I hope this isn’t woefully eccentric — the acts of discovering, collecting, and interpreting information important to the public, combined with the delivery of that information to the public. This includes traditional “press” — the written word — but also various audio and video formats, whether on radio, TV, or internet.

Today there is no shortage of “news” sources; we have access to more outlets than our ancestors ever did. But many of these sources aren’t engaged in journalism in the sense I described above.

The Crisis

Multiple overlapping trends are converging to all but doom journalism.

One is the oft-mentioned decline in readership. This Pew survey from 2016 shows very few Americans get their news from newspapers or online news sites, and most of those who do are well over 50 years old. Almost no young people are reading newspapers. While admittedly some journalism takes place on TV (57%), almost all TV news is brief and shallow, and many of the hours on “news” channels are devoted to programs that aren’t actually journalism. They did break down “online news” by source, with disappointing results: most is from “family and friends” rather than “news organizations”.

The second trend is the demise of newspapers themselves. According to a study (.pdf, 894kb) by the Brookings Institute, not only has circulation per capita declined steadily since the 1940s, but so has the number of newspapers per capita. (And the total number of newspapers has declined steadily since the 1980s.)

A third trend is seen at newspapers that remain: drastic cutting of staff, something that also happens to online news organizations. In the first month of this year, more than 2,100 people lost media jobs — this includes 250 at Vice Media, 450 from McClatchy (which operates newspapers around the country), and 400 at Gannett — which owns hundreds of newspapers. The Washington Post reported this week on hedge fund subsidiaries going around the country to buy up newspapers and their properties, and then slashing staff to turn a profit. The same company is now eyeing Gannett — which owns USA Today among other papers, and offered $1.3 billion for it. A few years ago, stories all over the country looked like this one, in which the Chicago Sun laid off all full-time photographers, deciding instead to depend on photos from wire services or reporters with iPhones. Newsroom employment has dropped by 25% since I was a child.

Fourth is the weakening of the wall between reporting and editorializing. Though many newspapers clearly label “Opinion” pages and reputable websites use “Opinion” or “Editorial” labels, this distinction is lost on television. Some “news” channels broadcast hours of editorial content each day. And quite a few online “news” sources are in fact partisans/activists rather than journalists. So we have people today who say they “watched the news” but in fact were watching hours of opinions from talking heads.

Fifth is the buying up of small newspapers. Readers long turned to their small-town papers for local issues ignored by nearby TV markets. A couple of generations ago, most were family-owned. Now almost all of them are owned by “collector” corporations, companies that buy up hundreds of small dailies and weeklies. This can mean perks like centralized top-notch presses and more sophisticated web software, but also downsides like loss of local control and perspective. Staff cuts are common. Many small papers now depend on text and photo submissions from readers rather than using experienced reporters.

Sixth, many of the online-only news sources replacing the traditional press are notoriously either heavily partisan or severely lacking in quality — or both. While some were begun by actual journalists and hold themselves to high standards, not every news consumer is willing to discriminate.

The Importance Of The Press

As a regular news consumer, I have often complained of the way news is delivered — particularly about poor reporting on science and bigoted portrayals of atheists. I’ve complained about fake news (2016) and tried to help (2014) distinguish between trustworthy sites and trash. But as is common with me, when I criticize something, it’s because I want it to be better. I firmly believe that things rarely improve if no one points out problems.

The idea of a free and unfettered press is foundational to our republic. Without going into the myriad ways that the press has failed to live up to expectations throughout its entire history, I think most of us here in the U.S. agree that it’s better to have a free press than to not have it. I have, on at least one occasion, asserted that the freedom of the press is our “most important freedom”. But no matter how free it is from government censorship, if the press itself goes down the proverbial drain, then its relative freeness becomes moot.

My imagination is active and acute, but I have trouble picturing our nation without a functioning, free, and feisty cadre of journalists. In my dystopian nightmare of a world lacking good journalism, we would get our information about products solely from advertisements and our information about government solely from the government. TV news would consist entirely of a confused-looking Wolf Blitzer pacing a gynasium-sized studio and speculating on a variety of topics but with no actual sources or information. Whistleblowers would have no one to hear and broadcast their whistling. Any whispers of government scandal or corporate malfeasance would depend entirely on word-of-mouth.

Corporations have in my lifetime proved in dire need of both the press and the government to hold them accountable. And government has proved throughout history to need a vigorous watchdog working on behalf of the people. So it pains me to see journalism taking so many hits from so many different directions.

Who’s To Blame?

Multiple factors are at play.

Consumers are part of it: we hear of a few mistaken (or wholly fabricated) stories and somehow extrapolate “the news media can’t be trusted”. We grow accustomed to not paying for the news — over-the-air TV, complimentary newspapers in hotel rooms, most early news websites — and then feel put-upon when asked to pay for it now. I admit I fell into this trap in my early days of online news consumption. As a group, we demand our information in smaller chunks, with quicker delivery, and more partisanship.

Ownership corporations must bear some of the blame too. Often with no experience (or even interest) in journalism, they force decisions on subsidiaries that result in lower standards and reduced quality. This in turn erodes the public trust and destroys morale among the journalists who work for them. I also question management decisions when it comes to revenue-seeking, especially online. We’ve all seen the creep of “sponsored content” on major news sites, which are advertisements designed to look like news stories. Experiments with ever-stricter paywalls have left readers gun-shy and cynical. Autoplay video ads might be the worst of all. Popup ads trained entire generations to install defensive software. But if we won’t pay for the news, it’s going to look for ways to pay for itself. And those ways are often ugly and irritating. And compromising.

Certain media — especially TV, radio, and social media — have taught us to consume news lazily and passively so we get readers block when confronted with an actual news article. And our habits, in turn, have taught media companies to invest less in quality journalists and more in tactics to hook and keep readers (clickbait headlines, data-mining, push notifications, etc.)

I can’t put much of the blame on journalists — reporters, writers, editors, photographers — as a group, though certainly some individuals aren’t holding up their end of the bargain.

All this is a self-reinforcing downward spiral. We want news quickly, without cost, and without effort. When we get what we asked for, it’s of such reduced quality that we grow more cynical and less likely to pay for it. In the end, it means fewer good sources for news and more poor sources.

Politicians are somewhat responsible also. In my lifetime multiple presidents and their lackeys have prosecuted journalists, failed to protect whistleblowers, and — at least in the most recent years — called them “the enemy of the people” repeatedly.

What’s The Solution?

There probably are solutions for these multiple problems, but I don’t know what all of them are.

One thing we can do is stop voting for pro-monopoly Republicans, because they appoint FCC board members who prop up regional media monopolies — allowing companies like Sinclair Broadcast Group to own all the TV stations and other news outlets in certain markets.

Another thing we can do is actually pay for our news — at least some of it. Most of us can’t afford to pay for much, but none of us can afford what will happen if none of us pay for any of it. I recommend choosing one national source and one local/regional source of news for your subscription dollars. I do understand there can be problems with this. For example, do I keep paying my subscription to The Washington Post, which is owned by Jeff Bezos, who also owns Amazon (which not only advertises on alt-right Brietbart, but actually publishes white nationalist books)? Do I pay $60 a year for online access to my city newspaper, which contains almost nothing in which I’m interested?

On the local/regional level, experiments like Patch come and go, but usually result in lower quality when the news outlet “assigns a single journalist to cover multiple towns” and “those reporters then generate five to 10 stories a day”. Patch is also “encouraging readers to create their own posts and updates”, which means you have people with zero training in the principles of journalism doing the work. Which sounds even worse than hundreds of struggling local newspapers.

Two writers at The Nation have suggested that government subsidies might save journalism, since the market won’t. A Forbes writer agrees, calling it a “domestic Marshall Plan for journalism, in which substantial new resources are invested to save traditional newspapers and journalism.”

A researcher in Kansas thinks “civility” might help, though I found her argument unconvincing.

Non-newspaper CNBC wondered if benevolent billionaires buying ink barrels will save journalism. A decade ago, Time implied that “computer nerds” (by which they meant programmers) could save the day. My wife helpfully suggested more scholarships for journalism degrees.

Perhaps there is some combination of the above that will lead to the survival of quality journalism.

I know none of them will happen if we keep electing presidents who insult journalists (“the enemy of the people”). And it doesn’t help that MAGAists physically assault journalists (less than a week ago). It doesn’t help when alt-right trolls harass and threaten journalists on social media, nor does it help when those social media platforms pretty much ignore the issue.

Personally, I will continue doing what I’ve been doing for years (mentioned in 2012): fact-check before rebroadcasting an idea or information, link to primary sources, avoid clickbait, report false news when I see it, avoid interacting with memes in any way, and so on. I will continue paying for quality journalism when it’s within my means.

Myths About The Decline Of Newspapers

In a recent op-ed called “Five Myths About Journalism” in The Washington Post, which should have been called “Five Myths About the Decline Of Newspapers”, Jeremy Littau clarifies a few misunderstandings about the industry. I think it’s relevant to understanding the problem, even if it doesn’t offer any solutions.