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The Hidden Costs of Losing Your City's Newspaper (1 Viewer)

P

Plorfu

Footballguy
This deals a lot with media consolidation and newspaper closures that aren't necessarily related to partisanship, but with one of two major parties constantly beating the "fake news" drum and demonizing journalists, I decided to post this here. Obviously, the main issue is newspapers won't exist if they constantly lose money, but without local newspapers, we don't have adversarial journalists questioning officials' actions. In any event, I thought it was just worth sharing.

According to a new working paper, local news deserts lose out financially, too. Cities where newspapers closed up shop saw increases in government costs as a result of the lack of scrutiny over local deals, say researchers who tracked the decline of local news outlets between 1996 and 2015. Disruptions in local news coverage are soon followed by higher long-term borrowing costs for cities. Costs for bonds can rise as much as 11 basis points after the closure of a local newspaper—a finding that can’t be attributed to other underlying economic conditions, the authors say. Those civic watchdogs make a difference to the bottom line.

 
I would really love to see the data for this. I get it is a working paper so not published yet, but what makes me very skeptical is that there is no mention of botched projects. The assumption is that losing a watchdog makes government run less efficiently so then this damages their credit rating because people dont have as much confidence that they will be spending properly. So they have to pay a higher yield when they issue bonds. Certainly sounds logical, but I would think that there would be some examples of cities that had some spending issues that ran amok. 

Anyway, thanks for posting, will be interesting to follow up on when everything comes out.  

 
I read my local/national/international news coverage online, think the paper part is anachronistic.  

 
Da Guru said:
A few weeks ago I bought the Sunday newspaper for the first time in 7-8 years...did not realize how much I missed having some coffee and spreading the paper out on the kitchen table. Really enjoyed it.
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My wife and I just talked about this. We both prefer to read actual paper, but are too cheap to buy it and probably have already heard most of it one way or another before we would get the chance. 

 
Funny that we live in a time where there are more people than ever writing about the news, but also there's also a real lack of local news coverage and international news reporting sucks in the US. How many people do we need writing about Trump or Obama?

 
I’ve just meaning to reply to this because it’s a subject near and dear to me. The Picayune here in NO is 150+ years old. It was the organ of record for generations. The archives were amazingly detailed. It survived competition from maybe 10 competitors, including some in French and German, and came to be an investigative beacon. The reporters for the Picayune drew lancets through corrupt politicians, reported on hidden deeds, and provided safe harbor for anonymous whistleblowers. For a while it offered forums and comments features that were some of the best places for reporters and citizens alike to read about the inner workings of local government and the famous and infamous alike.

Then one day the paper, which was a part of a national conglomerate, a little detail no one had noticed since it happened in the 80s or so, because the family that everyone thought owned it and which was a source of local pride, which it didn’t, shriveled up. Printers, reporters, staff were fired. The office was moved from its rambling behemoth location on I-10 to ritzy boutique offices in a first class site overlooking the river. Ultimately printing was moved out of town, the size shrank to mere ad-tabloid size, the quantity became a few pages, circulation was cut back to 3 days, and the news itself was often largely off the internet and 2-3 days old. It’s immensely sad to me. Not only because of the loss of tradition but also because there’s a black hole in our local democracy. Our city and state governments have often been hollowed out by corruption. It’s stunning in many ways, but we’re flying blind now. The investigative work has died off and we have lost much. Unfortunately though its form exists still to me the Picayune is dead.

 
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SaintsInDome2006 said:
I’ve just meaning to reply to this because it’s a subject near and dear to me. The Picayune here in NO is 150+ years old. It was the organ of record for generations. The archives were amazingly detailed. It survived competition from maybe 10 competitors, including some in French and German, and came to be an investigative beacon. The reporters for the Picayune drew lancets through corrupt politicians, reported on hidden deeds, and provided safe harbor for anonymous whistleblowers. For a while it offered forums and comments features that were some of the best places for reporters and citizens alike to read about the inner workings of local government and the famous and infamous alike.

Then one day the paper, which was a part of a national conglomerate, a little detail no one had noticed since it happened in the 80s or so, because the family that everyone thought owned it and which was a source of local pride, which it didn’t, shriveled up. Printers, reporters, staff were fired. The office was moved from its rambling behemoth location on I-10 to ritzy boutique offices in a first class site overlooking the river. Ultimately printing was moved out of town, the size shrank to mere ad-tabloid size, the quantity became a few pages, circulation was cut back to 3 days, and the news itself was often largely off the internet and 2-3 days old. It’s immensely sad to me. Not only because of the loss of tradition but also because there’s a black hole in our local democracy. Our city and state governments have often been hollowed out by corruption. It’s stunning in many ways, but we’re flying blind now. The investigative work has died off and we have lost much. Unfortunately though its form exists still to me the Picayune is dead.
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Sounds like the same thing that happened to The Orlando Sentinel.

 
SaintsInDome2006 said:
I’ve just meaning to reply to this because it’s a subject near and dear to me. The Picayune here in NO is 150+ years old. It was the organ of record for generations. The archives were amazingly detailed. It survived competition from maybe 10 competitors, including some in French and German, and came to be an investigative beacon. The reporters for the Picayune drew lancets through corrupt politicians, reported on hidden deeds, and provided safe harbor for anonymous whistleblowers. For a while it offered forums and comments features that were some of the best places for reporters and citizens alike to read about the inner workings of local government and the famous and infamous alike.

Then one day the paper, which was a part of a national conglomerate, a little detail no one had noticed since it happened in the 80s or so, because the family that everyone thought owned it and which was a source of local pride, which it didn’t, shriveled up. Printers, reporters, staff were fired. The office was moved from its rambling behemoth location on I-10 to ritzy boutique offices in a first class site overlooking the river. Ultimately printing was moved out of town, the size shrank to mere ad-tabloid size, the quantity became a few pages, circulation was cut back to 3 days, and the news itself was often largely off the internet and 2-3 days old. It’s immensely sad to me. Not only because of the loss of tradition but also because there’s a black hole in our local democracy. Our city and state governments have often been hollowed out by corruption. It’s stunning in many ways, but we’re flying blind now. The investigative work has died off and we have lost much. Unfortunately though its form exists still to me the Picayune is dead.
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I liked this post but don't like it. It seems like back in the '90s, when things went corporate, we lost a ton of investigative work being done by the media. Now, the online portion and free notion of news were seismic changes, but there were other things that sped the process of paper deserts up.

Anyway, my two cents are that municipalities are large, and need rigorous watchdogs, just like FEDGOV does. I've seen it happen in cities as small in New Haven. Lots of local decisions affect lots of local inhabitants/dwellers/citizens/etc.  

 
Also, there's the issue of the independent weeklies dying out. Those often exposed right-wing (yes, it's a political forum) and centrist left-wing corruption at municipal levels. That the Village Voice and others are dying or clickbait shambles can't be unspoken. 

We need to speak for the speakers!  

 
Ilov80s said:
Happened everywhere really. Profit over purpose. 
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Isn't this mostly the fault of the population, not the media?

Just based on commentary in this forum russian intervention in our world is a huge problem. I avoid banner and pop up ads like the plague but obviously people must read them a ton. If they are reading those stories, they are likely not reading something else. 

I am not even sure our population wants actual unbiased coverage. People might say that, but I am not so sure I believe it. Stay truly unbiased all the way through and you risk losing a large % of your audience. Pick a side and you risk losing 50% of your audience. 

 
parasaurolophus said:
Isn't this mostly the fault of the population, not the media?

Just based on commentary in this forum russian intervention in our world is a huge problem. I avoid banner and pop up ads like the plague but obviously people must read them a ton. If they are reading those stories, they are likely not reading something else. 

I am not even sure our population wants actual unbiased coverage. People might say that, but I am not so sure I believe it. Stay truly unbiased all the way through and you risk losing a large % of your audience. Pick a side and you risk losing 50% of your audience. 
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Yes and no. It is the fault of the population for their own willful ignorance, attraction to lcd news and lack of interest in real local stories. However when papers are ran journalists, they are more likely to run important stories and make the public care. When papers are ran by inventors than they will just serve the people the fries and dessert that are easy to sell. 

 
Ilov80s said:
Yes and no. It is the fault of the population for their own willful ignorance, attraction to lcd news and lack of interest in real local stories. However when papers are ran journalists, they are more likely to run important stories and make the public care. When papers are ran by inventors than they will just serve the people the fries and dessert that are easy to sell. 
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Didnt investors end up involved because the ones run by journalists were going belly up?

 
parasaurolophus said:
Didnt investors end up involved because the ones run by journalists were going belly up?
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I don't think so. The family papers went corporate even with large, large endowments and inheritances. I think of the Graham family and the WaPo in D.C.

And I'm no lefty or averse to profits, but the family-owned papers were run better than the slick stuff we have now. Plus, the families gave to the weeklies, too.  

 
Yeah, nobody's really denying that "real" newspapers and "real" news end up being money-losers a lot. The question is: how do we keep real news afloat despite the fact that people, by and large, don't want to eat their vegetables? One way might be to view local investigative journalism as a public good, like clean air or parks. As a for-profit venture, journalism isn't going to give you the results that journalism should give you. I think the BBC seems to operate, at least partially, under this definition, but of course people here would (and do) go absolutely nuts if news outlets received public funding. It's almost like we need the Gates Foundation or someone similar to just fund it without the profit motive.

 
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parasaurolophus said:
Didnt investors end up involved because the ones run by journalists were going belly up?
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Some went corportate thinking more money would mean better staff, better stories and a bigger readership. Others were belly up and had to sell to survive. Many just didn't survive. So I do think I agree with you that the ultimate fault is with the citizens. We don't want quality news. 

 
Well, 11 basis points is literally .11%.  I wouldn't say those findings are Earth shattering. 

 
Media consolidation is part of the problem. Another part is these papers being bought, then leveraged to the hilt, then pricing goes through the roof while content plummets so "investors" can gut them for their own gain and leave the carcass to rot. The mafia does this to but it's illegal when they do it.

 
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NCCommish said:
Media consolidation is part of the problem. Another part is these papers being bought, then leveraged to the hilt, then pricing goes through the roof while content plummets so "investors" can gut them for their own gain and leave the carcass to rot. The mafia does this to but it's illegal when they do it.
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Private equity is a popular target, but those papers are almost always in real trouble before private equity gets involved.

 
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