The Decline of Local News is Solvable

the so called duopoly of Facebook and Google. Bell kightening and budget cutting have reduced the quantity and quality of local reporting, and all over the country news operations have been closing up shop. This isn't just a problem for journalists themselves. Margaret Sullivan thinks there's something much larger at risk when reporters who expose wrongdoing by government and business

don't have the backing of successful news organizations. You know, it's a lot easier to ignore a gadfly citizen, as these folks might be seen, rather than a big institution that's powerful. Democracy depends on citizens paying attention. Strong local news operations help citizens stay in form and hold officials accountable. Without good local journalism, corruption flourishes and citizens become more vulnerable. Margaret Sullivan is ringing alarm bells, and she's hopeful. I

think that the decline of local news is solvable. Margaret Sullivan is the media columnist for The Washington Post and formerly the public editor of The New York Times. Her new book is called Ghosting the News, Local Journalism and the Crisis of American Democracy. I talked with her about the scale and serious the collapse of local news and what can be done to fix it. Well, Margaret, thanks for joining us. Unsolvable and let's talk first about the

dimensions of this problem. There's no question that we are losing local newspapers. I think something close to two thousand if I read that right in your book, have gone out of business in the past fifteen years. And the ones that remain aren't exactly thriving. And of course that matters a lot to us journalists. Those are our friends. That's the system we came up in. But why does this matter so much? As you say in the title

of your book, to American democracy? It matters because while newspapers are certainly not the only way that people are informed about their communities and their public officials they have been over time, perhaps the key way that people get information about how their local governments are functioning and how communities have a base of facts from which to operate. They may disagree on the facts or what to do about them, but they sort of have this shared substance

that makes sense to everybody. As that has dwindled away largely because of the dissolution of the underlying business model based on print advertising, largely, people are less informed, people are less civically engaged, and it hurts the underlying the underpinnings of the way our society and our government is supposed to function. So it's primarily an accountability problem, right If simply put, if the press isn't watching government officials

can get away with more corruption, more mismanagement. I think you said it exactly right, Jacob. It is primarily an accountability problem. But I see another aspect to a two which I just like to mention, which is has nothing to do with really watchdog journalism or that accountability, which is that newspapers have traditionally been a way that communities helped knit themselves together, whether it's about coverage of concerts or restaurants or theater or interesting people or obituaries. It's

sort of a village square for the community. That has nothing to do with whether the town council or the city council is mismanaging your tax dollars. But it does have to do with sort of cohesion within the community. So it's both of those things and probably a bunch of others too. But why is it important that it's news organizations versus you know, bloggers or people posting smartphone videos or tweeting about what's going on in their town

or community. Why isn't citizen journalism the replacement for all this? Citizen journalism, if that's what we want to call it, is part of the solution. One of the things it can't do very well, though, is publicized to the same degree that a front page headline or a big homepage treatment can from the Chicago Tribune or the Sometimes, you know, it's a lot easier to ignore a gadfly citizen, as these folks might be seen, rather than a big institution

that's powerful. This has now become a problem of democracy, and not just in the United States, of course, It's going on around the world. So the question is why is it happening? Is it mainly just that the ad dollars that used to support local news now go mainly to Google and Facebook. That's a huge part of it. It is, I would say, if you had to identify one reason for this, it does have to do with advertising.

So you know, in the old days, which aren't that long ago, the way newspapers supported themselves and their staffs was sort of two thirds advertising and one third subscriptions. Now, interestingly, at places like the New York Times, which are doing well and are going to make it, they are able to get enough digital subscribers to you know, really support

the business. But for local newspapers, including the big regionals, there isn't enough, you know, there may not be enough audience there to buy those subscriptions to make up for the loss of ad dollars. And the ad dollars went away in part because print faded so much and digital advertising never measured up in the way that we hoped it would. You know, people talked about eventually when they figured it out, they started talking about print dollars and

digital dimes. And that's the case. And also a lot of those dimes are going to the so called duopoly of Facebook and Google, as you say so, Margaret. The top national news organizations seemed to be doing pretty well, the New York Times where it used to be the public editor, or the Washington Post where you're the media critic now, but a few years ago things look pretty bleak for them too. So what can the next level of metropolitan news organizations learn from their turnaround? Their success?

Because the Times in the Post are adding journalists and increasing their journalistic footprint even as the papers and cities a little smaller than that are drastically shrinking. Absolutely right. And these are both interesting examples because both the New York Times and the Washington Post had some pretty rough years and not so long ago, but they have started concentrating on something new, not entirely new, but concentrating more deeply on digital subscribers, people who are going to pay

money to get their journalism. And so rather than concentrate on you know, sort of this is the lay person's

way to say it, but clicks. Rather than concentrate on clicks, which is a little bit more oriented towards the advertising end of things, now the emphasis is on really deepening a loyalty to the audience, the readership, the view or whatever you want to call it so that there's this sense of, Yes, I really appreciate this work, and I'm going to put it on a renewable thing on my credit card so that I keep getting the New York

Times of the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal. It is more challenging for the local and the regional outlets because they have a smaller, you know, sort of universe to appeal to. The Times in the Post and the Wall Street Journal can you know, be marketing themselves really globally. The Buffalo News, the Chicago Tribune and sometimes probably aren't going to be able to do that because the content that they have that's that's different, that makes them indispensable

is going to be local. Um. You know, So there's just you know, there's a there's a smaller sort of um, there's a smaller universe of possible subscribers out there. But you know, the Boston Globe has made real progress on this, The La Times has made real progress on this, and there is reason to hope. Don't they all just need

to get together in some way. I mean, on a a given day, I may want to read a story in Cleveland or in Buffalo, or in LA in Chicago, but I don't go to those sites often enough that it would make sense for me, living in New York to subscribe to any of them. But I'd gladly pay for a speed pass that let me gave me access to all newspapers in the country and shared the shared the revenue with all of them. That seems like a good idea.

I haven't seen that developed, but I think it has promise, and I know a lot of people would feel the same way. It's like, I don't really want to subscribe to, you know, the Toledo Blade, but there's this story I really want to read, so I'll use my past, you know. I mean, I think that's worth exploring, and maybe it

has been explored. I have seen sort of the system of micropayments, you know, you pay a tiny amount for this one story you want to read, sort of like you would with a music app that has not seemed to do well or be very helpful. Let's talk about some of the other solutions and things you talk about in the book. One that a lot of people are

very interested in is nonprofit models and philanthropic support. I think one of the most successful new news organizations in the country is a Texas Tribune, which is based in Austin and probably covers government and politics in Texas better than the newspapers ever did in their heyday. And that's a nonprofit. So is that kind of model the solution

to it. It's a solution without a doubt. The Texas Tribune, and now the Texas Tribune is working with pro Publica, which is another great digital investigative site that has more of a national point of view. And we do see them in many other communities. There's the Voice of San Diego, there's Minpost in Minneapolis, the one I mentioned in Buffalo. It is, you know, it is difficult to make them scale to the point that newspapers were able to, you know,

to that level. I don't think that there probably will be the opportunity to put a nonprofit based on philanthropic or membership dollars in every small town that's lost a weekly. So scale is a real problem and a real issue there. But where they do work, they're great, and they also tend to be more nimble and sometimes more aggressive, less hide bound, less willing to sort of cowtow to the

local powers that be. They can really do some great work, and they do it's good not to be dependent on advertising, right You don't have to think what the big local advertiser is going to think about your story. I mean, the money has to come from somewhere, but if it comes from donors and foundations who care about the community, it's less likely that any one of them is going

to try to exert a lot of control. Maybe. I mean, donors are human beings as well, and and sometimes in a community, the big donors are the same people that you might want to write a big investigative piece about. So, you know, and are you going to pull your punches because you don't want to mess with your you know,

your biggest contributor. It did. It certainly was the case at newspapers and may still be that, you know, you didn't really want to get the biggest car dealership in town very mad at you because they were, you know, they were contributing so much to the bottom line. But there always was a real separation between advertising and editorial in Buffalo. We never saw an you know, for a long time, it would be unheard of for an advertising

salesman to you know, even be in the newsroom. Now I think there's you know, there's less of a separation between the money side and the journalism side. And I'm not suggesting that there's an integrity problem in these news organizations. I don't know of one, but I you know, I think that's something that has to be thought about. Yeah, I mean, what I've observed about the best of the nonprofits, the Texas Tribune and as you say, nationally ProPublica is

that they're really entrepreneurial. So they managed to be both nonprofit and be able to raise money and tax deductible money, but they also actually think like entrepreneurial businesses. That's great solution in a few cases, but that's very hard to scale. It's very hard to have and as you say, compounded by the problem of smallness with these really local sites, you know, how can they be enterprising businesses and raise philanthropic money and do their primary job of covering government

and covering the news, right? I mean, I have talked with one founder of a nonprofit who told me that they have had to fundraise to meet payroll at times, and that's pretty scary when you're trying to do journalism. Then you have to kind of run out and make sure you can pay your reporters. That week or next month. That's a tough thing. But you know, speaking of the

entrepreneurial spirit that you mentioned, absolutely true. The other thing that is happening more of necessity is collaboration between news organizations. You know. So now with state house coverage on the decline, there's an outfit in Pennsylvania called Spotlight PA that has gotten a bunch of different news organizations, not just newspapers, but broadcast and radio together to combine and produce state

house coverage that they can all use. These are places that probably would have been you know, scoop happy with each other trying to come pete in the past, and now they're trying to collaborate. It goes a little bit against the journalistic DNA I think should be so nice to the guy that used to be your competitor. But I think that's really an important part of what has

to happen, Margaret. People talk about the idea of giving news organizations an antitrust exemption, which I understand to mean that they'd be allowed to all get together or make a deal among themselves and then say to Google and Facebook, here's the deal with all of us, or you get a deal with none of us. It's like, you know, a union sort of for organizations in a way baseball has an antitrust exemption. There are lots of examples of

antitrust exemptions. Does that make sense to you, Yes, it does. I mean it actually has to do with sort of the power in numbers. Instead of just this little organization trying to go up against these massive social media platforms or search engines, huge companies worldwide. It gives them some

some solidarity and some ability to get together. Yeah. I mean, Facebook and Google are always making all this noise about how they want to support local journalism, and they're you know, they seem to feel kind of guilty about accidentally destroying it. They didn't destroy it on purpose, it was it was

a side effect of building their businesses. But did they And thinking again about philanthropic solutions, I mean, as they're separate from the idea of an antitrust exemption, you know, is there a way that they can be prevailed upon to support all this journalism which they really need to exist.

Google is a lot worse if all the newspapers go out of business, if they are forced to, they will you know, the things that they've done that have been voluntary, which I think are useful, good and relatively small scale, you know, have happened, you know, out of a sense of you know, kind of managing the pr around it, I think, and maybe wanting to do the right thing. The Google News initiative has helped a bunch of different newspapers figure out how to get digital subscriptions, and that's

very positive. Facebook has changed its algorithms so that it features local news more and does reimburse some of them more. You know, I don't think it's at the point that's going to save anything right now, Margaret, What about the idea of direct government support. I mean, that's an idea that we journalist sort have just hated, you know, a couple of decades ago, but there doesn't seem to be

a great alternative to it now. So the idea of direct government support is one that, as you say, you know, has been sort of a third rail for journalists. We just don't want to ever compromise our independence or our idea of our own independence by taking money directly from the government. But you know, I think and others are beginning to think, because we're in a more desperate straits now that this is something that bears a closer and

a deeper look. Nicholas Lemon, they Columbia Journalism School former dean who is the CEO of the publishing house that published my book, Columbia Global Reports, is farther along on this spectrum than i am. And he really believes that safeguards and guardrails can be built in so that independence would be preserved. It has to do with how it is set up and the extent to which there is true independence built in. At the Voice of America, the

Trump administration has really intruded there. It is worrisome. I mean there, you know, there's a political pointee who's just been put in charge, replacing a woman named Amanda Bennett, who was the editor of the Philadelphia Inquirer, had a distinguished news career. You know, these are the kinds of things that can happen when there's government control. You go, you go, in a blink of an eye from journalism to propaganda. Looks like it's what's going to happen at

Voice of America. Yes, so that's a real worry, and that's something that clearly needs to be foreseen and prevented. Yeah, So, which of these solutions do you really want to place your bets on. I mean, this is an urgent problem. We're losing local news organizations every week. So I'm well aware that this is a solutions oriented effort we're doing here, But I cannot say that I think there's one one

most promising solution. I think whatever happens, and it has to be a combination of things, and they don't really go together. It's got to be kind of a patchwork in which we encourage and support the nonprofits, in which people in communities recognize that they've got to support their

newspaper if they wanted to continue public policy answers. So, you know, a lot of different things, and certainly the nurturing of nonprofits, both as these digital startups and also as newspapers begin in a very small way to start turning themselves into nonprofits, as the Salt Lake Tribune just did you know, that has to be fostered and encouraged as well. So a bunch of different things and a lot of crossed fingers, and maybe some prayers to Saint

Francis de Sales, the patron saint of journalists. Well beyond prayers, you know, I wonder what people listening who are concerned about this problem, as I very much am can do. I think you're probably going to say that the first thing is to support your local news organization, But how can people do that, and what else can they do? Well? They can support their local news organization, most simply by subscribing, by saying, yeah, I wish it was better, it used

to be thicker. I liked it more when ex columnist was there. But I'm still going to subscribe. So that's a really basic thing. And then I think to engage with it, to write a letter to the editor, to call the city editor and say, hey, you know, when you covered my town board meeting, you got this wrong. And then you similarly, to be in touch with your local representatives in Congress and possibly at the state level, to say, hey, local journalism really matters a lot to me,

what are you doing about it? So I think all those things can be helpful. Margaret, thanks for joining us Unsolvable. Thanks for having me. I appreciate it. That was Margaret Sullivan. Her new book is Ghosting the News, Local Journalism, and the Crisis of American Democracy. Remember to check out our show notes for links to the suggestions our guests make about ways that you can get involved. Next week, my co host Ann Applebaum talks with the linguist John mcwarter.

He's someone who is attentive to the complexities of the spoken word, and he has some straightforward ideas about how to solve cancel culture. Please join us. Solvable is brought to you by Pushkin Industries. Our show is produced by Camille Baptista, Senior producer Jocelyn Frank. Catherine Girardou is our managing producer, and our executive producer is Mia Lobell. Special thanks to Heather Fame, Eric Sandler, Carley Mgmuiori, and Kadija Holland. I'm Jacob Weisberg.