A post on the Recommended List today lamented that the mainstream media (MSM) isn’t calling for Trump’s resignation because his actions are what drives their viewership. I started writing a comment, but it started to get so long that I decided to turn it into a post.
Plenty of newspapers have called for Trump to resign. The trouble is: Newspapers don’t mean anything in today’s TV- and internet-driven media landscape. They no longer qualify as the MSM.
I have worked in newspapers for most of my adult life, dating back to a paper route at age 14, editor of my high school paper, seven years as an Army photojournalist/public affairs specialist, and 20 years working for a major newspaper. Now I drive for Uber. Why? Because the industry I love didn’t adapt to the technological and social change quick enough; nor did they effectively counter the attack by the right-wing agenda, which sought to remove them as an influence.
Those of you who remember reading a physical newspaper: Have you noticed how small your local paper has gotten over the past decade? Has your newspaper gone to reduced publication dates, or disappeared entirely?
It wasn’t any bleating by Trump about “Fake News” that killed the newspaper industry. That’s just window dressing. When the epitaph for newspapers is written, it will be titled, “Killed by smartphones, WordPress, Craigslist/eBay and Facebook.”
Newspapers didn’t survive on subscriptions; they survived on advertising. And their three biggest sources of revenue were always:
- Real estate
- Grocery stores
- Car dealerships
When those three businesses discovered that they could set up a website that showcased their entire inventory, not just what would fit on a few pages of newsprint, for the cost of just one weekend’s worth of Sunday ads, the death knell had begun. Craigslist and eBay took care of the local classifieds section, both for personal sales and for dating. And even the Business section took a hit as the stock pages were replaced by business websites where a customized report could be had in a few clicks.
The evolution of the smartphone means that you no longer have to buy a physical paper; all the news you want to read is just a few taps away on a device that fits in your pocket. The local papers tried to adapt by creating their own websites, complete with paywalls to try and recapture the lost revenue (and pay their reporters!). However, there are enough competing free sources of information that most people don’t feel the need to subscribe to a newspaper’s site to find out what they want to know. They may click on a link to a story that sounds interesting, but as soon as the pop-up appears asking them to subscribe, or turn off their ad-blocker, they go elsewhere.
The volatile mix that is the right-wing echo chamber has flourished on the internet. The left wing also embraced the new medium (DailyKos is a prime example), but not to the degree that the right wing did. The availability of blogging software (WordPress, etc.) allowed for the masses to create their own newsletters tailored to their own tastes, not that of a newspaper editorial board. The newspapers were then demonized as being too liberal and out of touch with their communities, which resulted in lowered subscription rates, which heterodyned into the removal of their ability to influence the daily politic. The First Amendment may have guaranteed the freedom of the press, but there’s nothing in there that says the powerful couldn’t actively work for its destruction.
The right wing also discovered that the short attention span of the public wouldn’t respond to lengthy editorials, but would respond to email blasts, memes and angry Facebook posts. For every “Occupy Democrats” meme that comes on the average Facebook feed, there are five (or more!) memes from right-wing (and foreign-based sources such as Russia) that counter it. They also count on the fact that it’s extremely easy to share a post, but not as easy to fact-check it.
Most people who don’t follow politics might skip over the posts, but just glancing at them lodges a tiny niche in their brains. If it feeds into their general opinions, then it makes an even stronger impression. Soon, it develops into full-blown right-wing entrenchment. If you doubt this, think about how many stories of friends and relatives who have gone from being fairly reasonable on political issues to being full-on Fox News/Dittoheads have appeared on this site? Why are there always posts on how to deal with your right-wing relative at Thanksgiving/Christmas this year?
Another inherent disadvantage that newspapers have is the 24-hour news cycle. It used to be that as events happened, there was time to get the story right for the next day’s newspaper headlines. But now the rush for ratings and advertisers means that breaking news is rushed onto the screen without any analysis or context, even on newspaper websites. When the real facts come out, it’s usually too late, because the focus has shifted to the next story.
Corporate consolidation hasn’t helped the traditional newspaper, either. Many independent newspapers were purchased by media conglomerates in the 1970s and 1980s. This development that many major cities that had competing newspapers found themselves reduced to just one with corporate backing. But as the focus shifted from print to TV and the internet, those newspapers saw their budgets shrink in favor of their parent company’s other properties: TV and broadcasting networks, business information companies and internet assets.
The demise of newspapers isn’t just tragic at the national level; the Fourth Estate also kept a check on state-wide and local politicians with imperial ambitions. Nixon resigned because of the reporting of Woodward and Bernstein; plenty of local newspapers have influenced their city’s political makeup with the front and editorial pages. But with so many of them gone or reduced to mere shadows of their former selves, the politicians can build their empires with little to no oversight.
Newspaper people are like teachers. We didn’t get into our profession because we expected high pay and prestige. We entered it because we felt the need to serve the public good. As with any profession, those noble sentiments sometimes gave way to less honorable examples, but on the whole the professionals who work in the news media are committed to reporting the news honestly and fairly. We realize that there will always be those who will accuse us of bias, of “spin,” of manipulating opinion to suit our agenda. But we’ve learned to check the motivations of those who accuse us of such.
The older ones among us have all heard the saying, attributed to various Soviet politicians, “When the time comes to hang the capitalist West, the American businessman will sell us the rope.” It may have taken longer than they planned, but they finally got their businessman: Donald Trump.
There are plenty of things that Trump has done that should have ended his political career before it even started; all of which have been chronicled here and elsewhere. One problem is that there are so many of them that Americans have grown inured to them. They come so fast and furious that people can’t sustain enough outrage; fatigue has set in.
The other is that the MSM as it exists today has embraced the chaos, because it gets ratings, which get advertisers, which means money. News divisions now answer to the finance departments, because it’s now just a business, not a revered institution dedicated to shining lights on places that powerful interests would prefer to keep dark.
The founding member of the MSM is no longer in the club. Even the last big-name-recognition papers – the New York Times, the Washington Post – are dismissed as credible news sources, and not just by Trump and the right-wing media. Newspapers didn’t or couldn’t adapt to the rapidly changing face of news.
Our society has embraced the quick video edit, the soundbite, the one-minute news story. We have so much information to assimilate that we don’t take the time to analyze it as we should, and that leaves room for the professional manipulators to frame the message to their advantage, not to the truth.
Print is dead. Long live print.