Very good points, Chris. Even though I have been looking to minimize my cash outlay these days (I retired in October and am still trying to determine what this next year will look like financially), I am still a paid subscriber to many Substack writers (yours being the first but now also Bulwark, Joyce Vance, Jay Kuo, Judd Legum, Aaron Rupar, etc.).
One small almost side-point that you highlighted with one of the charts: the decline in those that “closely follow the news”. Though I’d like to see the percentages of years BEFORE 2016 to be absolutely certain of the thesis I’m going to posit, isn’t it interesting that the decline seems to follow Trump entering our everyday world and making American politics FAR more divisive than it’s been in quite awhile? I can definitely see people choosing to “tune out”, in some ways to simply maintain their basic sanity! I am a news junkie, and yet, there are days when I just can’t bear to read about it and have to give myself a “mental health break” and look at art or play games instead.
While I would acknowledge that there are many and varied reasons for people following the news less closely now, I think that this being “The Trump Era” in news has had a substantial impact.
There was just an article in the Post last week about how staffers at the Baltimore Sun clashed with the new "Sinclair" owner who practically boasted about never reading the newspaper. Like watching a slow motion car crash -- powerless to do anything about it, but can't turn away...
Well written post, Chris, as always. I'm so accustomed to ad revenue paying for the journalism that comes to me for "free", that making the switch to paying for journalism is quite an adjustment. But, I absolutely agree that you are right that we consumers need to pay for it to keep it alive (and it needs to be kept alive). Some change comes gradually enough that we adjust to it easily. Some change comes so gradually that we don't see it coming before it's too late to adjust. But, when a sea change happens around us, and we DO see it coming, it feels cataclysmic as we try to anticipate and accept the end game. I will confess that I'm not paying for enough of the journalism that I care about. But, I'm starting. Paying for your Substack is one step on my journey.
Chris - I cannot help but think the decline in journalism also is directly related to the increase in authoritarian tendencies. Dictators/authoritarians rely both on misinformation, and that their subjects have limited access to accurate and objective information to counter the misinformation. Another related truism, dictators reigns often end when they commit to and provide educational opportunities to their subjects. As soon as they are exposed to other viewpoints, they tend to overthrow their dictators.
Just the other day, Joyce Vance referenced in her Substack a conversation with an under 30 year old workout companion, who claimed to not know who Rudy Giuliani was, and confirmed she only gets her news from TikTok, and only on the topics she has set up the algorithm to report on, which did not include politics or current events. I do not think this is unusual for younger people. My sense is for news to survive, journalism will need to ensure it is delivered to where people are consuming information, and get into those algorithms. Not sure how this happens, however, if it does not, those of us who grew up with “Uncle” Walter Cronkite and others will soon be without all together - it will not just be newsprint which will run out of money and readership/viewership.
Chris - this also makes me quite sad. My Dad was in the newspaper business until he passed, and LOVED journalism. He loved investigative journalism, and he loved finding humour in everyday life. His first photo from his first week on the job at the Hartford Times was of him supposedly interviewing a horse (key witness to a story), with his notepad and pencil at the ready. So, it feels like a little more of him is dying away as journalism appears to shrink.
We need to find a solution to the lack of objective news - as the Washington Post Post says, Democracy dies in darkness!
My husband and I still subscribe to our small hometown newspaper, though, frankly, I don't read it anymore. I'm too busy with national-level news like the WaPo and NYT, as well as four Substack subscriptions, and many independent podcasts. I support every one of them financially because, as Chris says, these aren't non-profits. I'm in a position to do that, fortunately, so I see it as a responsibility and a social good.
My dad read The Detroit News and the Macomb Daily every day. Along with NBC Nightly News, every evening, he knew what the hell was going on in the world. He knew all the candidates locally, statewide, and nationwide. I learned from him that it is my duty to vote and stay informed. Having honest journalists and media outlets is the only way to have that in our society. I'm afraid that itself is part of the political problem in that people do not want that anymore. They only want media that makes them happy.
We used to love to receive an actual newspaper, our local paper. We’d enjoy a cup of coffee on a Sunday, reading the paper. We subscribed to during the week & weekends until the paper became so thin, it wasn’t worth it. Growing up, it was one of the only means of reading about local and national news. My parents watched the local news & national news but something about reading the paper was tradition. Growing up, our local paper was delivered in the afternoon, delivered before dinner. Things started changing when the internet started and so many people started paying to read online. I resisted as I still liked the feel of the actual paper. Once we stopped getting the local paper, we had the internet and cable. News was so easy to get 24/7 and the need for the newspaper just didn’t matter. Now, with such proliferation of news sources, I feel overwhelmed by it all. We subscribe to what we want (Chris, yours is up there!), for the most part. There are some things I would like to subscribe to but just don’t have that many hours in the day to keep up with it all. Technology, seems to be a double edged sword, we have the world at our fingertips and yet, IIt’s not all good. Journalism is very important but with so many avenues to get news, it has become very hard to keep up. Technology has helped to promote the disinformation, the misinformation, the lies, the conspiracy theories, which is all the bad things. Yet, we also have very talented journalists now being able to present their views and writings to many more people.
Lest we continue to become a nation of "trump van winkles" living in fear and willfully subjecting ourselves to the bullying of "you know who" and his "kool aid kids", we must support a free press and the brave men and women who comprise it!
What the internet has taught us, along with the old-school cable model, is that news is basically free, is a civic right, and is provided as a public service by the organizations involved. As streaming is notoriously hard to monitize, consumers are fleeing to "free" social media for their news, which is unregulated, without standards, and largely comprised of partisan opinion, promoting mostly urban myths and rumours.
Trump's 30,000 lies do not matter, as many people completely ignore fact-checkers and vastly prefer their preferred prophets on the net. The sad reality is that celebrity fandom is rapidly replacing critical thinking skills, not only allowing bald-faced liars like Trump to exist but also to prosper.
An old Bible adage comes to mind: "You reap what you sow."
The apparent end of Sports Illustrated hits close to home. I haven’t been an SI subscriber in a few years (which is part of the publication’s problem, I guess, because I’m certain that I’m not the only one), but I did have a continuous subscription for over 35 years. Especially as a teenager and well into my twenties, I would rush to get the mail early in the week, with the expectation/hope that that week’s issue of Sports Illustrated was waiting for me. Reading one of the brilliant writers, be it Frank DeFord, Peter King, Steve Rushin, whoever (and who can forget George Plimpton’s “Sidd Finch” prank on the entire sports world?), I was always enthralled. If this is truly the end for this Sports Illustrated, as seems to be the case, I want to thank it and the many who contributed to it for their contribution to my life. I wouldn’t be the sports fan I am without it.
After retiring from a long career in healthcare, I am freelancing for magazines and newspapers. I was trained as a journalist and chose not to stay in the field (post-Watergate, there were many trained journalists and Carter's recession caused lots of two-newspaper towns to move to one) but now write as a part-time gig. What happens in the newsrooms slides down to freelancers who are now offered less or the same as I made as a freelancer 25 years ago. One major employer for freelancers announced recently a 25 percent cutback in the per piece rate. I see my young friends who make their entire living this way, and one cannot survive on $200 per piece. And aside from the economic issues for journalists, the free press is needed to support democracy. Our 24/7 social media/online news culture doesn't quite have the spirit of Woodward and Bernstein, does it? So incredibly sad.
I mourn the loss of local journalism. Even though it costs a fortune, I still subscribe to the San Francisco Chronicle and read it every morning. It is a shadow of what it once was—reduced coverage of everything because, I assume, sports, entertainment, national news, editorial writers, etc—can be found on the internet. I used to love spending the day with the newspaper reading everything I could soak up. My children, intelligent, thoughtful and in their 30s, have no such experience with a newspaper. If we’re going to survive this election year, and maybe more if trump wins the election, we need a stronger and more vibrant press to keep us informed and vigilant.
By the time i was 7 or 8, i was inducted into my family of news junkies by my grandfather who insisted i pick 1 national or world story and 1 local story to discuss with him on daily walks. During dinner each night the whole family watched national news. And dissected stories as we cleaned up.
In grammar school students were required to cut out one news story each week and write about it. In those days there was no cost for national tv news, but we did pay for our newspapers and a few magazines, which also came with adverts. There was a newspaper on every lawn in my lower middle class neighbourhood. I can not imagine being an informed citizen without them!
As a programmer since the early 80s, i understand how the Internet /web changed news delivery, but i did not understand how it could be sustainable without a subscription model. New was free or cheap. When greater charges were finally imposed for digitally delivered news, many readers seemed to balk. Well, we get what we pay for, not what we don't. And uninformed, we get authoritarians to boot.
On the other hand, there is a limit to what readers can afford when we must pay for each writer. And we still need local news (because we must be able to hold accountable our local government). It adds up quickly. If only there was a way to get an entire group of writers to join together under some umbrella ☔, like a personalized newspaper but at an affordable monthly cost. Perhaps the umbrella could hire factcheckers. Hmmm. Five "substacks" for $25, or 10 writers for $40, add in an advert or two...
Very good points, Chris. Even though I have been looking to minimize my cash outlay these days (I retired in October and am still trying to determine what this next year will look like financially), I am still a paid subscriber to many Substack writers (yours being the first but now also Bulwark, Joyce Vance, Jay Kuo, Judd Legum, Aaron Rupar, etc.).
One small almost side-point that you highlighted with one of the charts: the decline in those that “closely follow the news”. Though I’d like to see the percentages of years BEFORE 2016 to be absolutely certain of the thesis I’m going to posit, isn’t it interesting that the decline seems to follow Trump entering our everyday world and making American politics FAR more divisive than it’s been in quite awhile? I can definitely see people choosing to “tune out”, in some ways to simply maintain their basic sanity! I am a news junkie, and yet, there are days when I just can’t bear to read about it and have to give myself a “mental health break” and look at art or play games instead.
While I would acknowledge that there are many and varied reasons for people following the news less closely now, I think that this being “The Trump Era” in news has had a substantial impact.
There was just an article in the Post last week about how staffers at the Baltimore Sun clashed with the new "Sinclair" owner who practically boasted about never reading the newspaper. Like watching a slow motion car crash -- powerless to do anything about it, but can't turn away...
Well written post, Chris, as always. I'm so accustomed to ad revenue paying for the journalism that comes to me for "free", that making the switch to paying for journalism is quite an adjustment. But, I absolutely agree that you are right that we consumers need to pay for it to keep it alive (and it needs to be kept alive). Some change comes gradually enough that we adjust to it easily. Some change comes so gradually that we don't see it coming before it's too late to adjust. But, when a sea change happens around us, and we DO see it coming, it feels cataclysmic as we try to anticipate and accept the end game. I will confess that I'm not paying for enough of the journalism that I care about. But, I'm starting. Paying for your Substack is one step on my journey.
Chris - I cannot help but think the decline in journalism also is directly related to the increase in authoritarian tendencies. Dictators/authoritarians rely both on misinformation, and that their subjects have limited access to accurate and objective information to counter the misinformation. Another related truism, dictators reigns often end when they commit to and provide educational opportunities to their subjects. As soon as they are exposed to other viewpoints, they tend to overthrow their dictators.
Just the other day, Joyce Vance referenced in her Substack a conversation with an under 30 year old workout companion, who claimed to not know who Rudy Giuliani was, and confirmed she only gets her news from TikTok, and only on the topics she has set up the algorithm to report on, which did not include politics or current events. I do not think this is unusual for younger people. My sense is for news to survive, journalism will need to ensure it is delivered to where people are consuming information, and get into those algorithms. Not sure how this happens, however, if it does not, those of us who grew up with “Uncle” Walter Cronkite and others will soon be without all together - it will not just be newsprint which will run out of money and readership/viewership.
Chris - this also makes me quite sad. My Dad was in the newspaper business until he passed, and LOVED journalism. He loved investigative journalism, and he loved finding humour in everyday life. His first photo from his first week on the job at the Hartford Times was of him supposedly interviewing a horse (key witness to a story), with his notepad and pencil at the ready. So, it feels like a little more of him is dying away as journalism appears to shrink.
We need to find a solution to the lack of objective news - as the Washington Post Post says, Democracy dies in darkness!
My husband and I still subscribe to our small hometown newspaper, though, frankly, I don't read it anymore. I'm too busy with national-level news like the WaPo and NYT, as well as four Substack subscriptions, and many independent podcasts. I support every one of them financially because, as Chris says, these aren't non-profits. I'm in a position to do that, fortunately, so I see it as a responsibility and a social good.
My dad read The Detroit News and the Macomb Daily every day. Along with NBC Nightly News, every evening, he knew what the hell was going on in the world. He knew all the candidates locally, statewide, and nationwide. I learned from him that it is my duty to vote and stay informed. Having honest journalists and media outlets is the only way to have that in our society. I'm afraid that itself is part of the political problem in that people do not want that anymore. They only want media that makes them happy.
We used to love to receive an actual newspaper, our local paper. We’d enjoy a cup of coffee on a Sunday, reading the paper. We subscribed to during the week & weekends until the paper became so thin, it wasn’t worth it. Growing up, it was one of the only means of reading about local and national news. My parents watched the local news & national news but something about reading the paper was tradition. Growing up, our local paper was delivered in the afternoon, delivered before dinner. Things started changing when the internet started and so many people started paying to read online. I resisted as I still liked the feel of the actual paper. Once we stopped getting the local paper, we had the internet and cable. News was so easy to get 24/7 and the need for the newspaper just didn’t matter. Now, with such proliferation of news sources, I feel overwhelmed by it all. We subscribe to what we want (Chris, yours is up there!), for the most part. There are some things I would like to subscribe to but just don’t have that many hours in the day to keep up with it all. Technology, seems to be a double edged sword, we have the world at our fingertips and yet, IIt’s not all good. Journalism is very important but with so many avenues to get news, it has become very hard to keep up. Technology has helped to promote the disinformation, the misinformation, the lies, the conspiracy theories, which is all the bad things. Yet, we also have very talented journalists now being able to present their views and writings to many more people.
Lest we continue to become a nation of "trump van winkles" living in fear and willfully subjecting ourselves to the bullying of "you know who" and his "kool aid kids", we must support a free press and the brave men and women who comprise it!
What the internet has taught us, along with the old-school cable model, is that news is basically free, is a civic right, and is provided as a public service by the organizations involved. As streaming is notoriously hard to monitize, consumers are fleeing to "free" social media for their news, which is unregulated, without standards, and largely comprised of partisan opinion, promoting mostly urban myths and rumours.
Trump's 30,000 lies do not matter, as many people completely ignore fact-checkers and vastly prefer their preferred prophets on the net. The sad reality is that celebrity fandom is rapidly replacing critical thinking skills, not only allowing bald-faced liars like Trump to exist but also to prosper.
An old Bible adage comes to mind: "You reap what you sow."
The apparent end of Sports Illustrated hits close to home. I haven’t been an SI subscriber in a few years (which is part of the publication’s problem, I guess, because I’m certain that I’m not the only one), but I did have a continuous subscription for over 35 years. Especially as a teenager and well into my twenties, I would rush to get the mail early in the week, with the expectation/hope that that week’s issue of Sports Illustrated was waiting for me. Reading one of the brilliant writers, be it Frank DeFord, Peter King, Steve Rushin, whoever (and who can forget George Plimpton’s “Sidd Finch” prank on the entire sports world?), I was always enthralled. If this is truly the end for this Sports Illustrated, as seems to be the case, I want to thank it and the many who contributed to it for their contribution to my life. I wouldn’t be the sports fan I am without it.
After retiring from a long career in healthcare, I am freelancing for magazines and newspapers. I was trained as a journalist and chose not to stay in the field (post-Watergate, there were many trained journalists and Carter's recession caused lots of two-newspaper towns to move to one) but now write as a part-time gig. What happens in the newsrooms slides down to freelancers who are now offered less or the same as I made as a freelancer 25 years ago. One major employer for freelancers announced recently a 25 percent cutback in the per piece rate. I see my young friends who make their entire living this way, and one cannot survive on $200 per piece. And aside from the economic issues for journalists, the free press is needed to support democracy. Our 24/7 social media/online news culture doesn't quite have the spirit of Woodward and Bernstein, does it? So incredibly sad.
I mourn the loss of local journalism. Even though it costs a fortune, I still subscribe to the San Francisco Chronicle and read it every morning. It is a shadow of what it once was—reduced coverage of everything because, I assume, sports, entertainment, national news, editorial writers, etc—can be found on the internet. I used to love spending the day with the newspaper reading everything I could soak up. My children, intelligent, thoughtful and in their 30s, have no such experience with a newspaper. If we’re going to survive this election year, and maybe more if trump wins the election, we need a stronger and more vibrant press to keep us informed and vigilant.
By the time i was 7 or 8, i was inducted into my family of news junkies by my grandfather who insisted i pick 1 national or world story and 1 local story to discuss with him on daily walks. During dinner each night the whole family watched national news. And dissected stories as we cleaned up.
In grammar school students were required to cut out one news story each week and write about it. In those days there was no cost for national tv news, but we did pay for our newspapers and a few magazines, which also came with adverts. There was a newspaper on every lawn in my lower middle class neighbourhood. I can not imagine being an informed citizen without them!
As a programmer since the early 80s, i understand how the Internet /web changed news delivery, but i did not understand how it could be sustainable without a subscription model. New was free or cheap. When greater charges were finally imposed for digitally delivered news, many readers seemed to balk. Well, we get what we pay for, not what we don't. And uninformed, we get authoritarians to boot.
On the other hand, there is a limit to what readers can afford when we must pay for each writer. And we still need local news (because we must be able to hold accountable our local government). It adds up quickly. If only there was a way to get an entire group of writers to join together under some umbrella ☔, like a personalized newspaper but at an affordable monthly cost. Perhaps the umbrella could hire factcheckers. Hmmm. Five "substacks" for $25, or 10 writers for $40, add in an advert or two...
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
"You Gotta Pay the Band." Abbie Lincoln
I'm starting to think my print journalism degree was a mistake.