I think it’s a good moral principle not to be a free-rider. I want to pay my fair share of upkeep for whatever I use. If you agree, then this John Oliver segment on the decline of print news is essential:
This is something I’ve been concerned about for a long time. It’s no accident that freedom of the press is written into the First Amendment, making it as foundational as freedom of speech or religion. But that vitally important right is empty if there’s no one to exercise it. And in the U.S., media of all kinds, especially newspapers, have been suffering a drawn-out decline for years.
Part of the problem is local papers and TV channels getting bought up by corporate mega-conglomerates who view the news as just another revenue stream, and relentlessly slash costs in the name of that goal.
But a bigger part of the problem is the internet. Just as it’s done with music, books and everything else that can be turned into bits, it’s reduced the perceived value of information to near-zero. Experience and expertise don’t seem to matter as much when legitimate, qualified outlets are swamped by a sea of loudmouth opinions and junk science. In that environment, it’s harder to see why you should pay one company for what thousands of people are giving away for free. Ironically, it’s never been easier to communicate with millions of people, yet it’s never been harder to turn that into a sustainable enterprise.
That’s not to say you can draw a bright line between legitimate journalists and amateur hacks. We’ve always been plagued by bad or biased reporting: political outlets that only report the truth through a partisan lens, government propaganda that serves the interests of the state, business subsidiaries that stifle stories which would embarrass their corporate parents. Even major, respectable outlets suffer from the false-balance fallacy, pay-to-play access, and other sins of journalism.
A diverse media ecosystem can overcome these problems. The more outlets we have, the more competition there is, and the more chance we have for the truth to get out despite any one player’s interests. It also allows the industry to stand strong against litigious billionaires. You can’t silence the truth by suing one outlet (or buying it out) if others stand ready to report on it.
But to attain this ideal, journalism has to pay. More accurately, we have to pay for it.
If the media has to support itself through advertising, then it has to focus on maximizing traffic rather than writing thoughtful and informative stories that take time to absorb. That means more clickbait, celebrity gossip, salacious crime and sex stories, and other empty-calorie content: things that people want to hear, not what they need to hear. Worse, a purely ad-supported media outlet will be a captive of its sponsors. This is already the case for some companies, like Vice Media, which has an apparent policy of quashing any story that might offend its advertisers.
We need a media that’s not afraid to take jabs at vested interests or to upset the privileged and powerful. Where would we be without the Boston Globe investigative team that blew the lid off priestly pedophilia? And how many more stories like this are there that we haven’t heard about yet, and never will if there aren’t the people and the resources to bring them to light?
Journalism won’t fulfill its function if it becomes a hobby of the rich. If we want good journalists who do serious, in-depth, shoe-leather reporting, it has to be possible for them to make a living at it.
This is best exemplified by Mother Jones’ undercover report on private prisons and the abuses of the for-profit justice system, which I wrote about last month. This week, the Department of Justice, probably as a result of this story, announced plans to stop using private prisons. This is a huge, huge impact, probably bigger than any of the reporters could have hoped for, and deserves to be celebrated – but the expose, which cost $350,000 to produce and attracted enormous readership and attention, only brought in $5,000 of banner-ad revenue.
The only solution is to change the free-media norm. We have to get reaccustomed to paying for the information we consume. My suggestion is, if you depend on it, if you’re informed by it, consider paying for it. Subscribe to a newspaper, give to a pledge drive, sign up to a reporter’s Patreon. Even if it’s just a few dollars, it helps. I try to subscribe to media sites that I read often. Like charitable giving, I consider it an investment in the world I want to see. If you have the means, I hope you’ll do likewise.
Disclaimer: I admit, I’m not a wholly disinterested party. I make a small amount of money from writing here at Patheos and other outlets, and it would be nice for that to continue. But I have a day job; I’ll be fine whatever happens. There are real journalists who need your financial support far more than I do.