This ought to be a golden age for people who care about the news – that is, anybody who doesn’t choose to be helplessly hobbled by ignorance – because there’s a lot of news and a lot of ways to keep up with it. As a guy who ran newsrooms for three decades, I’m kind of an expert on the challenge of keeping up, and helping news consumers to find what’s important to them. It’s always been a tough task: The newspapers I wrote for and edited never had enough space to print all the news, even when American newspapers were financially healthy and fat with page after page, ready to be filled with advertising and reporting.
Now, of course, in the digital information ecosystem, you’d think journalism would be boundless. I mean, you don’t run out of space on the internet. Yet new data shows that people aren’t getting the news they care most about. It seems that a lot of what we need to know gets lost in a cacophony of content.
Here’s the data: A study released last week explored what information voters care most about, and what information they’re actually able to get. It revealed that Americans are finding that it’s easier to get the national and international news they want than news about their neighborhoods, their towns and their cities. The nonprofit that funded the survey, Civic News Company, called it the “proximity paradox.” About 44 percent of Americans say it’s hard to get information about their neighborhood. Only about a quarter say they can’t get information about the nation, and about one-third say international news is what they’re missing. So the closer news is to home, the harder it is to find it.
This isn’t surprising, in a way. One-third of the newspapers that were published in the United States in 2005 have closed since then – that is, about 3,500 newspapers are gone, most of them small weeklies that served communities that aren’t covered by big news organizations. Regional newspapers, and radio and TV stations, can’t cover all the news that was once the lifeblood of those small news organizations. So people don’t know what’s going on just beyond their own back yards.
But that’s not the only priority challenge facing journalism. The administration of Donald Trump routinely creates so much uncertainty – so many departures from what’s long been considered the norm in our society – that we news consumers get inured to it all: We simply don’t notice what once would have demanded our attention.
You know, just a couple of months ago, it was huge news that U.S. forces had attacked small boats off the coast of Venezuela and killed people that Trump claims were part of an international drug racket targeting our cities. But when did you last think about that? In fact, the attacks are still going on: So far, 121 people have been killed by American forces – with no declaration of war by Congress, incidentally, meaning that those killings are probably war crimes, committed in our name. We ought to be paying attention.
But that’s not the only big news that escapes our notice. A year ago, a lot of pundits fretted about what would happen if the president simply disregarded court orders. Federal judges’ rulings have always been honored by the legislative and executive branches of government. But not now: The system of checks and balances so carefully structured by our nation’s founders is breaking down. Politico reported this this last week: “With increasing frequency, judges say the administration has been skirting, delaying or straight-up flouting their orders.” This, people, is a constitutional crisis. Are we even aware of it?
There are two sets of responsibilities here that we must confront.
First, for journalists, the challenge is to aggressively and clearly cover the news in a way that can reach people. This requires new storytelling techniques on every platform – like vertical video on social media. You can’t do effective journalism on the cheap, so we need committed publishers who will take a lower profit margin in the nation’s interest, or even turn over their enterprises to nonprofit ownership, as the Philadelphia Inquirer and the Salt Lake Tribune have, for example.
Second, for news consumers, there’s this truth: Information may be free, but reporting it is expensive. You must support news organizations that are doing their part, and pay attention to their reporting. Donate to public broadcasting, subscribe to your local newspaper, be a backer of the fine nonprofit newsrooms that are emerging across the country, even in small communities.
Obviously, in the digital age and with a national administration that frequently and flagrantly flouts the facts and attacks the truth-tellers, this is a challenging time for both news reporters and news consumers. But this remains true: citizens need information, and information sources need citizen support. So don’t place yourself among the masses helplessly hobbled by a lack of knowledge. Be, always, a smart and supportive news consumer.
The views expressed by commentators are solely those of the authors. They do not necessarily reflect the views of this station or its management.
