A question few want to answer is exactly how many well-paid full-time professional writers does our society truly need or want? One of the best things about writing is that many people can do it whenever they want, but it's also what makes professionalization of it so vulnerable to things like costless mass production (like with the internet).
My friends, some of whom are writers (but not professional ones), and I often shake at our heads at people who think it's a tragedy that there's no path to a solidly middle-class life with traditional white-collar security via a employer like Buzzfeed when their insights and writings are often much worse than stuff you can find for free on people's blogs. There's a sense of entitlement to the best of both worlds in terms of having a creative vs. corporate job, just for having gone to the right schools, belonging to the right social circles, and having the right political and cultural beliefs.
I think this is right. The truth is a lot of people want the best of both worlds. To do art, in most cases historically, has meant having some sort of day job. It can be healthy to have that separation, to write while doing something unrelated to writing and to gain life experience that way. One thing I didn't really touch on is that journalists enjoy their clout. They like the byline, the twitter following, the (very micro) fame - how you can feel important.
Social prestige is a big thing. People often complain about money snobbery in social gatherings. But I've personally experienced more snobbery based on how supposedly cool your job is vs. how big your bank account is (though, of course, the two things are often closely tied together).
The prestige of writing for big outlets, for a lot of people in media, can make up for a lousy or middling paycheck. It's an easy way to snobbery. No one has heard of X hedge fund but you can impress them if you've appeared on MSNBC. Not all journalists are in it for that reason, but there's a tendency to wrap your identity around a job and want to stay in the industry as a way to maintain that identity.
I'm a bit of a hypocrite here because I've really only wanted to do something with writing for living. To do it, I've had to hustle a lot, and that isn't for everyone.
I'm ok with people who are proud of doing something because they think it is important when they have chosen that career over one that made more money.
Maybe we don't need so many writers, but real investigative journalism is valuable to society. I don't see much of that on substack. This is a place where information gets digested. It still needs to be generated somewhere.
Most journalism is shit because the journalist has no real knowledge of the subject they are covering. They are writers first, any expertise in what they cover is incidental and shallow.
Yglesias has never worked as anything other than a blogger or writer, yet he writes in the tone of an expert or profound thinker on an endless array of subjects. He would of course deny this if confronted and say that is not his intention, he's just writing for our entertainment or intellectual debate.
He reads and knows just enough to seem smarter than someone who has read little to nothing about a subject. The problem is he doesn't really know enough about something to know what he doesn't know and doesn't really seem to care to find out since he just moves on to the next click-generating outrage of the day.
He also co-founded Vox Media, one of the classic examples of this phenomenon, where complex issues or questions are reduced to "explainers" of maximum 2500 words.
While I take your point, I would argue that a) this issue is much more widespread and extends to (frankly) the majority of political journalists and b) Yglesias is genuinely better than almost all of his contemporaries in this case, as he seems to be a pretty intelligent guy who corroborates his claims with subject-matter experts before he makes them.
They say you should judge the veracity and reliability of journalists with wide-ranging subject matters by means of a sort of anti-Gell-Mann amnesia — that is, you should take careful notice when the journalist in question touches on a subject you, the reader, have expertise in, so that you can see how well or how poorly the intricacies and fine details of something you know very well are explained.
I work (and got my degree) in the field of Econ, and I’ve been disappointed by most political journalists, at some point or another, for promoting an understanding of economic policy that lies somewhere between grossly distorted and simply untrue. Yglesias, on the other hand, has a gift for taking a complicated topic in economics and explaining it effectively, without making a hash of the finer points and leaving the reader misinformed. He’s not perfect, by any means, but I feel far more confident in his standing on economic topics than I do for other notable heavyweights who communicate on economic policy far more inaccurately, or dishonestly (Gladwell, Matthew Desmond, and Robert Reich come to mind).
Perhaps you are a domain-level expert in a different area and have had a different experience.
It's interesting you cite his knowledge of economics as valuable, given that most mainstream economics should be regarded as little more than religion. It's an extremely self-referential field that attempts to legitimatize pure ideology via math. And by "not perfect" must I remind you of his paragraph long misunderstanding of basis points?
That you think Yglesias is good in comparison to the rest of the field only shows how dire the state of journalism truly is.
You did however major in English twice and have never held a job that didn't involve writing (at least according to your Linkedin), so I would argue the point stands that you're a writer first (and a damn fine one at that).
There's a difference between having to think about something as a writer or as doer of that thing. Writers also frequently delude themselves into thinking that reading is a replacement for doing.
Please don't misconstrue any of these comments as a personal attack - we all operate within systems that create incentives and outcomes which are incredibly difficult to overcome, or even perceive.
I can't help but think that if the mass media aligned itself with the working/middle classes, rather than grovelling for access, they would have plenty of subscribers.
But they function mostly as propaganda outfits for the ruling class.
More and more I find myself not bothering to read the New York Times, which I have subscribed to for almost 20 years.
If I have to read one more essay from the once amazing Paul Krugman trying to convince me that everyone is doing great! actually, and that those of us who are aware that half of Americans are $400 away from financial catastrophe, that it's impossible to find a reasonably priced home, and that college is insanely unaffordable are just secret Russian agents, I might actually do it.
My wife would miss the Wordle, maybe.
If the MSM afflicted the comfortable. And comforted the afflicted, they would be doing fine.
Watching them get scoop repeatedly by places like Pro Publica, WikiLeaks, the Intercept, Matt Stoller, matt Taibbi, Glenn Greenwald, Consortium News, and others, I am not surprised they are losing readers.
I mean, they employ Brett Stephens, for Christ's sake.
I've been a writer since the 80's. I've had good years and bad, freelance and staff positions. It's not great out there now. But I always tell young writers/journalists that there's no shame in having a "regular" job that pays the bills while you also write (and the joke answer I always give that is actually a little true: find a significant other who has a good job!). It could be temporary or it could be permanent. I mean, why not? The media/publishing biz isn't exactly stable.
Last year I actually quit freelancing after 35+ years and wrote about it, if you'd like to take a look.
“But I do think what is lost, in situations like these, is that the tragedy is not the disappearance of stable employment in the journalism industry. The actual tragedy is what cutbacks like these do to local communities.”
Such a good point, and so easy for me to lose sight of this!
On the other hand I also feel like we all get the media (and the politicians) we deserve.
I grew up reading news magazines cover-to-cover, wanting to become one of the writers to fill their pages some day. But I left journalism after 5 years because of the economic reality and toxic workplaces.
Having worked in tech building big platforms for the last decade though, I'd disagree that news orgs should be learning from tech companies; IMO whats led them astray has been chasing tech business models and losing sight of their unique public interest mission. The tech platforms think of "content" as levers to derive revenue-- even Substack, no matter how much they claim to be for writers. Therefore, they're incentivized to create & promote low quality bait-y content (to optimize for eye balls for ads), and to aggregate a range of entertainment content to keep you re-subscribing (eg. BuzzFeed News couldn't exist without BuzzFeed listicles.) Tech platforms need to continue meeting the growth and engagement expectations of investors and shareholders; whereas news organizations *should* continue meeting the civic needs of citizens. The problem is readers don't value this endeavor in dollar terms and expect all content to be free. And even Substack is facing financial challenges. If you care about high quality writing and reporting, you should subscribe to your local paper if one still exists, or become a sustaining member for your local public media outlet.
"The actual tragedy is what cutbacks like these do to local communities. It’s the loss of human beings and institutions who can convey reliable information to the public and hold political and business elites accountable."
Definitely. But maybe they stopped doing this and that's why the public no longer supports them. To me there's very little point in continuing a subscription to, say, The Washington Post - which I subscribed to for years - when they clearly are willing to make truth and accuracy a low priority in favor of political advocacy.
Substack is terrific - at least we can select journalists for honesty - but it isn't a substitute for a solid newspaper. It can't be. The greater media needs to reevaluate how they approach journalism.
I had a subscription to newspapers.com for research on my first book. The LA Times was my most common source. It's really a trip to read the 70's edition of that paper: page after page of ads, with one inch of story across the top. They had a monopoly on Southern California.
All true. I'll read your piece and I agree Substack cannot make your rich. It's best viewed as a side hustle, but it's the sort of thing that can be invested in over time, a way to grow an audience and make money writing. Nothing will replace the collapse of large newspapers and magazines. My point was more, some place like WaPo bleeding traffic should ask itself why so much energy and interest now is elsewhere.
The LA Times seems a victim of the nationalization of news as well, of people in SoCal now just having NY Times subscriptions.
The LA Times needed to be far more focused on what's happening in southern California. Instead they brought in a well regarded editor from Washington who had no ties to the region or state. They had no shortage of left wing columnists with opinions on national politics or cultural issues but as you say, you didn't need the LAT for that.
Southern California, and Los Angeles in particular, are declining economically and socially. I had hoped that the current owner with his long term ties to the area would be the sort of businessman/philanthropist who could focus the paper on the region's needs while running the paper on a breakeven basis. Instead, he seems to have invested little of himself, instead throwing money at the problem until he finally said no mas. Kind of like Bezos and the Post, except that Bezos never really had a commitment to Washington other than to put money in at the outset and hope that that would be enough to turn things around.
I don't agree with this. I moved to Los Angeles in 2003 and immediately initiated a daily home-delivery subscription to the L.A. Times. It was absolutely essential in terms of getting to know the culture, geography, politics and lifestyle of the new city I was living in. I had many peers who had also relocated to L.A., and they never seemed to know anything about what was going on in town beyond the few fashionable areas they frequented. And they had no idea who was in local or state government (and I'm talking about highly educated professionals).
I read the L.A. Times essentially cover-to-cover every day for 20 years. I finally ended my subscription at the end of 2022 because the print edition had been so drastically downsized at the beginning of the pandemic, and the price had escalated to where it was going to cost over $1,300 a year for a paper that was a shell of what it had been as recently as February 2020. But, even then, the L.A. Times is covering Southern California. In fact, when they had ownership of the San Diego Union-Tribune, there might have been too much coverage of Southern California, because there was a lot of San Diego news that wasn't particularly interesting or relevant to Angelenos.
I think L.A. suffers from a lack of civic pride among its many transplant denizens. (I was born and raised in inner-city Brooklyn, but I love L.A. and am not shy about saying so.) It's like they think they'll be viewed as soft or something by the friends and family they left behind in New York or Boston or Chicago if they admit that they actually like living in L.A. (which they definitely do). I think this weird desire not to identify themselves as Angelenos leads a lot of them to shun institutions like the L.A. Times. At this point, I don't blame them because the paper is so hollowed out. (They stopped printing the Business section, which was Section C, when the pandemic hit, and the Sports section, which was Section D, is only a standalone section one or two days a week now, but they still persist on calling the Calendar section Section E. That Calendar section used to have reviews of every film released in the L.A. market. Now it's typically six pages, two of which are devoted to the comics, crossword and Sudoku, and there might be three film reviews a week. And, of course, they sold their printing plant which means they now have a ridiculous 7 p.m. deadline that prompted them to stop printing a lot of the sports information that is a huge reason why many people subscribe. If I hadn't already cancelled at the end of 2022, I would have certainly cancelled in mid-2023 when they effectively eliminated the sports section.)
People love to blame the media market contraction on newspapers “going woke” rather than on them giving away their content for free for a decade (at the behest of the libertarian tech industry consensus, I might add).
You’re right to observe the pressure from wealthy owners (and also private equity companies) that continues to degrade journalism. But to describe the collapse of that profession without observing the failures of its practitioners is both one-sided and oblivious.
Journalists in the U.S. have repeatedly reduced themselves to sources of disinformation and propaganda, particularly any time the Washington and Wall Street axis is implicated. I wrote about this pattern a few months ago at https://shahidbuttar.substack.com/p/they-call-that-news
Does Substack still do Pro deals? It seems to be to be wise for Substack to become more “macro-cultural” by finding whoever they feel like is the most talented and prolific writer that was just laid off, and offering them a Pro deal. Or even inviting laid off people to apply to get a Pro deal. I suspect many would be willing to write 3-4x a week (or whatever amount Substack asks of them) in exchange for 60-100k. Freddie and Matt Y both came from Pro deals, and it’s not clear to me that either would have without such deals. Seems low-risk, high-reward--you can put whatever you want in the contract (as you say, these people are desperate to retain a career in non fiction writing) and you don’t have to pay much, and if it works out, you’ll get a full-time and successful substack writer who can vouch for it to their MSM friends
I don't think they're still doing them. My guess is from Substack's perspective Pro was hit-and-miss. Freddy and Matt Y and Sullivan were homeruns. There were other writers they invested in where they lost money. For Substack itself, they're probably not in a financial position to keep recruiting people and taking risks. From their standpoint, it's easier to sit back and see success stories happen. I agree, more Pro deals would be nice.
"The newspaper business is extraordinarily difficult and there’s a strong argument to be made that public subsidies will be required to keep local media from vanishing entirely."
Perhaps, but what a minefield that would be. The British right is too small and feeble to counter the BBC's woke biases effectively. That would not be the case in the US.
Assuming you're conservative/anti-woke, you should want the survival of more local media. That's the little irony here. The media is "woke" because now the only wealthy or successful outlets are in NY or a few other cities. If you had stronger media outlets throughout America, you'd get a lot of ideological diversity. A strong Southern paper hiring locals would employ more Republican reporters, etc.
Perhaps, but if we're just talking about local media then there are other questions about how effective state and local reporters can be at investigating the politicians who fund them.
I grew up reading news magazines cover-to-cover, wanting to become one of the writers to fill their pages some day. But I left journalism after 5 years because of the economic reality and toxic workplaces.
Having worked in tech building big platforms for the last decade though, I'd disagree that news orgs should be learning from tech companies; IMO whats led them astray has been chasing tech business models and losing sight of their unique public interest mission. The tech platforms think of "content" as levers to derive revenue-- even Substack, no matter how much they claim to be for writers. Therefore, they're incentivized to create & promote low quality bait-y content (to optimize for eye balls for ads), and to aggregate a range of entertainment content to keep you re-subscribing (eg. BuzzFeed News couldn't exist without BuzzFeed listicles.) Tech platforms need to continue meeting the growth and engagement expectations of investors and shareholders; whereas news organizations *should* continue meeting the civic needs of citizens. The problem is readers don't value this endeavor in dollar terms and expect all content to be free. And even Substack is facing financial challenges. If you care about high quality writing and reporting, you should subscribe to your local paper if one still exists, or become a sustaining member for your local public media outlet.
A question few want to answer is exactly how many well-paid full-time professional writers does our society truly need or want? One of the best things about writing is that many people can do it whenever they want, but it's also what makes professionalization of it so vulnerable to things like costless mass production (like with the internet).
My friends, some of whom are writers (but not professional ones), and I often shake at our heads at people who think it's a tragedy that there's no path to a solidly middle-class life with traditional white-collar security via a employer like Buzzfeed when their insights and writings are often much worse than stuff you can find for free on people's blogs. There's a sense of entitlement to the best of both worlds in terms of having a creative vs. corporate job, just for having gone to the right schools, belonging to the right social circles, and having the right political and cultural beliefs.
I think this is right. The truth is a lot of people want the best of both worlds. To do art, in most cases historically, has meant having some sort of day job. It can be healthy to have that separation, to write while doing something unrelated to writing and to gain life experience that way. One thing I didn't really touch on is that journalists enjoy their clout. They like the byline, the twitter following, the (very micro) fame - how you can feel important.
Social prestige is a big thing. People often complain about money snobbery in social gatherings. But I've personally experienced more snobbery based on how supposedly cool your job is vs. how big your bank account is (though, of course, the two things are often closely tied together).
The prestige of writing for big outlets, for a lot of people in media, can make up for a lousy or middling paycheck. It's an easy way to snobbery. No one has heard of X hedge fund but you can impress them if you've appeared on MSNBC. Not all journalists are in it for that reason, but there's a tendency to wrap your identity around a job and want to stay in the industry as a way to maintain that identity.
I'm a bit of a hypocrite here because I've really only wanted to do something with writing for living. To do it, I've had to hustle a lot, and that isn't for everyone.
I'm ok with people who are proud of doing something because they think it is important when they have chosen that career over one that made more money.
Maybe we don't need so many writers, but real investigative journalism is valuable to society. I don't see much of that on substack. This is a place where information gets digested. It still needs to be generated somewhere.
Agreed. There isn't much reporting here.
Most journalism is shit because the journalist has no real knowledge of the subject they are covering. They are writers first, any expertise in what they cover is incidental and shallow.
Matt Yglesias syndrome.
Isn’t this almost like reverse MattY syndrome? I’m confused about the name.
Yglesias has never worked as anything other than a blogger or writer, yet he writes in the tone of an expert or profound thinker on an endless array of subjects. He would of course deny this if confronted and say that is not his intention, he's just writing for our entertainment or intellectual debate.
He reads and knows just enough to seem smarter than someone who has read little to nothing about a subject. The problem is he doesn't really know enough about something to know what he doesn't know and doesn't really seem to care to find out since he just moves on to the next click-generating outrage of the day.
He also co-founded Vox Media, one of the classic examples of this phenomenon, where complex issues or questions are reduced to "explainers" of maximum 2500 words.
While I take your point, I would argue that a) this issue is much more widespread and extends to (frankly) the majority of political journalists and b) Yglesias is genuinely better than almost all of his contemporaries in this case, as he seems to be a pretty intelligent guy who corroborates his claims with subject-matter experts before he makes them.
They say you should judge the veracity and reliability of journalists with wide-ranging subject matters by means of a sort of anti-Gell-Mann amnesia — that is, you should take careful notice when the journalist in question touches on a subject you, the reader, have expertise in, so that you can see how well or how poorly the intricacies and fine details of something you know very well are explained.
I work (and got my degree) in the field of Econ, and I’ve been disappointed by most political journalists, at some point or another, for promoting an understanding of economic policy that lies somewhere between grossly distorted and simply untrue. Yglesias, on the other hand, has a gift for taking a complicated topic in economics and explaining it effectively, without making a hash of the finer points and leaving the reader misinformed. He’s not perfect, by any means, but I feel far more confident in his standing on economic topics than I do for other notable heavyweights who communicate on economic policy far more inaccurately, or dishonestly (Gladwell, Matthew Desmond, and Robert Reich come to mind).
Perhaps you are a domain-level expert in a different area and have had a different experience.
It's interesting you cite his knowledge of economics as valuable, given that most mainstream economics should be regarded as little more than religion. It's an extremely self-referential field that attempts to legitimatize pure ideology via math. And by "not perfect" must I remind you of his paragraph long misunderstanding of basis points?
That you think Yglesias is good in comparison to the rest of the field only shows how dire the state of journalism truly is.
I tend to agree with this. Too many journalists and writers come out of journalism schools, with little to no world experience.
A lot of journalists do not go to j-school. I know a lot more who didn't (including me) than those who did.
You did however major in English twice and have never held a job that didn't involve writing (at least according to your Linkedin), so I would argue the point stands that you're a writer first (and a damn fine one at that).
There's a difference between having to think about something as a writer or as doer of that thing. Writers also frequently delude themselves into thinking that reading is a replacement for doing.
Please don't misconstrue any of these comments as a personal attack - we all operate within systems that create incentives and outcomes which are incredibly difficult to overcome, or even perceive.
Would you say that about the top-tier journalists in the mainstream press? Just curious.
That's who I'm talking about
I can't help but think that if the mass media aligned itself with the working/middle classes, rather than grovelling for access, they would have plenty of subscribers.
But they function mostly as propaganda outfits for the ruling class.
More and more I find myself not bothering to read the New York Times, which I have subscribed to for almost 20 years.
If I have to read one more essay from the once amazing Paul Krugman trying to convince me that everyone is doing great! actually, and that those of us who are aware that half of Americans are $400 away from financial catastrophe, that it's impossible to find a reasonably priced home, and that college is insanely unaffordable are just secret Russian agents, I might actually do it.
My wife would miss the Wordle, maybe.
If the MSM afflicted the comfortable. And comforted the afflicted, they would be doing fine.
Watching them get scoop repeatedly by places like Pro Publica, WikiLeaks, the Intercept, Matt Stoller, matt Taibbi, Glenn Greenwald, Consortium News, and others, I am not surprised they are losing readers.
I mean, they employ Brett Stephens, for Christ's sake.
I've been a writer since the 80's. I've had good years and bad, freelance and staff positions. It's not great out there now. But I always tell young writers/journalists that there's no shame in having a "regular" job that pays the bills while you also write (and the joke answer I always give that is actually a little true: find a significant other who has a good job!). It could be temporary or it could be permanent. I mean, why not? The media/publishing biz isn't exactly stable.
Last year I actually quit freelancing after 35+ years and wrote about it, if you'd like to take a look.
https://sassone.wordpress.com/2023/11/19/goodbye-freelancing/
Yes, I actually had read the piece earlier! I thought it was very good
“But I do think what is lost, in situations like these, is that the tragedy is not the disappearance of stable employment in the journalism industry. The actual tragedy is what cutbacks like these do to local communities.”
Such a good point, and so easy for me to lose sight of this!
On the other hand I also feel like we all get the media (and the politicians) we deserve.
I don't want them to learn. I want them to disappear. Vile, regime apparatchiks.
I grew up reading news magazines cover-to-cover, wanting to become one of the writers to fill their pages some day. But I left journalism after 5 years because of the economic reality and toxic workplaces.
Having worked in tech building big platforms for the last decade though, I'd disagree that news orgs should be learning from tech companies; IMO whats led them astray has been chasing tech business models and losing sight of their unique public interest mission. The tech platforms think of "content" as levers to derive revenue-- even Substack, no matter how much they claim to be for writers. Therefore, they're incentivized to create & promote low quality bait-y content (to optimize for eye balls for ads), and to aggregate a range of entertainment content to keep you re-subscribing (eg. BuzzFeed News couldn't exist without BuzzFeed listicles.) Tech platforms need to continue meeting the growth and engagement expectations of investors and shareholders; whereas news organizations *should* continue meeting the civic needs of citizens. The problem is readers don't value this endeavor in dollar terms and expect all content to be free. And even Substack is facing financial challenges. If you care about high quality writing and reporting, you should subscribe to your local paper if one still exists, or become a sustaining member for your local public media outlet.
"The actual tragedy is what cutbacks like these do to local communities. It’s the loss of human beings and institutions who can convey reliable information to the public and hold political and business elites accountable."
Definitely. But maybe they stopped doing this and that's why the public no longer supports them. To me there's very little point in continuing a subscription to, say, The Washington Post - which I subscribed to for years - when they clearly are willing to make truth and accuracy a low priority in favor of political advocacy.
Substack is terrific - at least we can select journalists for honesty - but it isn't a substitute for a solid newspaper. It can't be. The greater media needs to reevaluate how they approach journalism.
I had a subscription to newspapers.com for research on my first book. The LA Times was my most common source. It's really a trip to read the 70's edition of that paper: page after page of ads, with one inch of story across the top. They had a monopoly on Southern California.
"Substack newsletters, as a whole, surpassed 30 million subscribers": I wrote about that for writers with $$$ in their eyes. https://albertcory50.substack.com/p/substack-wont-make-you-rich
All true. I'll read your piece and I agree Substack cannot make your rich. It's best viewed as a side hustle, but it's the sort of thing that can be invested in over time, a way to grow an audience and make money writing. Nothing will replace the collapse of large newspapers and magazines. My point was more, some place like WaPo bleeding traffic should ask itself why so much energy and interest now is elsewhere.
The LA Times seems a victim of the nationalization of news as well, of people in SoCal now just having NY Times subscriptions.
The LA Times needed to be far more focused on what's happening in southern California. Instead they brought in a well regarded editor from Washington who had no ties to the region or state. They had no shortage of left wing columnists with opinions on national politics or cultural issues but as you say, you didn't need the LAT for that.
Southern California, and Los Angeles in particular, are declining economically and socially. I had hoped that the current owner with his long term ties to the area would be the sort of businessman/philanthropist who could focus the paper on the region's needs while running the paper on a breakeven basis. Instead, he seems to have invested little of himself, instead throwing money at the problem until he finally said no mas. Kind of like Bezos and the Post, except that Bezos never really had a commitment to Washington other than to put money in at the outset and hope that that would be enough to turn things around.
I don't agree with this. I moved to Los Angeles in 2003 and immediately initiated a daily home-delivery subscription to the L.A. Times. It was absolutely essential in terms of getting to know the culture, geography, politics and lifestyle of the new city I was living in. I had many peers who had also relocated to L.A., and they never seemed to know anything about what was going on in town beyond the few fashionable areas they frequented. And they had no idea who was in local or state government (and I'm talking about highly educated professionals).
I read the L.A. Times essentially cover-to-cover every day for 20 years. I finally ended my subscription at the end of 2022 because the print edition had been so drastically downsized at the beginning of the pandemic, and the price had escalated to where it was going to cost over $1,300 a year for a paper that was a shell of what it had been as recently as February 2020. But, even then, the L.A. Times is covering Southern California. In fact, when they had ownership of the San Diego Union-Tribune, there might have been too much coverage of Southern California, because there was a lot of San Diego news that wasn't particularly interesting or relevant to Angelenos.
I think L.A. suffers from a lack of civic pride among its many transplant denizens. (I was born and raised in inner-city Brooklyn, but I love L.A. and am not shy about saying so.) It's like they think they'll be viewed as soft or something by the friends and family they left behind in New York or Boston or Chicago if they admit that they actually like living in L.A. (which they definitely do). I think this weird desire not to identify themselves as Angelenos leads a lot of them to shun institutions like the L.A. Times. At this point, I don't blame them because the paper is so hollowed out. (They stopped printing the Business section, which was Section C, when the pandemic hit, and the Sports section, which was Section D, is only a standalone section one or two days a week now, but they still persist on calling the Calendar section Section E. That Calendar section used to have reviews of every film released in the L.A. market. Now it's typically six pages, two of which are devoted to the comics, crossword and Sudoku, and there might be three film reviews a week. And, of course, they sold their printing plant which means they now have a ridiculous 7 p.m. deadline that prompted them to stop printing a lot of the sports information that is a huge reason why many people subscribe. If I hadn't already cancelled at the end of 2022, I would have certainly cancelled in mid-2023 when they effectively eliminated the sports section.)
People love to blame the media market contraction on newspapers “going woke” rather than on them giving away their content for free for a decade (at the behest of the libertarian tech industry consensus, I might add).
You’re right to observe the pressure from wealthy owners (and also private equity companies) that continues to degrade journalism. But to describe the collapse of that profession without observing the failures of its practitioners is both one-sided and oblivious.
Journalists in the U.S. have repeatedly reduced themselves to sources of disinformation and propaganda, particularly any time the Washington and Wall Street axis is implicated. I wrote about this pattern a few months ago at https://shahidbuttar.substack.com/p/they-call-that-news
Does Substack still do Pro deals? It seems to be to be wise for Substack to become more “macro-cultural” by finding whoever they feel like is the most talented and prolific writer that was just laid off, and offering them a Pro deal. Or even inviting laid off people to apply to get a Pro deal. I suspect many would be willing to write 3-4x a week (or whatever amount Substack asks of them) in exchange for 60-100k. Freddie and Matt Y both came from Pro deals, and it’s not clear to me that either would have without such deals. Seems low-risk, high-reward--you can put whatever you want in the contract (as you say, these people are desperate to retain a career in non fiction writing) and you don’t have to pay much, and if it works out, you’ll get a full-time and successful substack writer who can vouch for it to their MSM friends
I don't think they're still doing them. My guess is from Substack's perspective Pro was hit-and-miss. Freddy and Matt Y and Sullivan were homeruns. There were other writers they invested in where they lost money. For Substack itself, they're probably not in a financial position to keep recruiting people and taking risks. From their standpoint, it's easier to sit back and see success stories happen. I agree, more Pro deals would be nice.
"The newspaper business is extraordinarily difficult and there’s a strong argument to be made that public subsidies will be required to keep local media from vanishing entirely."
Perhaps, but what a minefield that would be. The British right is too small and feeble to counter the BBC's woke biases effectively. That would not be the case in the US.
Assuming you're conservative/anti-woke, you should want the survival of more local media. That's the little irony here. The media is "woke" because now the only wealthy or successful outlets are in NY or a few other cities. If you had stronger media outlets throughout America, you'd get a lot of ideological diversity. A strong Southern paper hiring locals would employ more Republican reporters, etc.
Perhaps, but if we're just talking about local media then there are other questions about how effective state and local reporters can be at investigating the politicians who fund them.
Yup. Traditional media in my view is a goner. Honestly, I get my best news from drivers on my Uber and Lyft rides.
I grew up reading news magazines cover-to-cover, wanting to become one of the writers to fill their pages some day. But I left journalism after 5 years because of the economic reality and toxic workplaces.
Having worked in tech building big platforms for the last decade though, I'd disagree that news orgs should be learning from tech companies; IMO whats led them astray has been chasing tech business models and losing sight of their unique public interest mission. The tech platforms think of "content" as levers to derive revenue-- even Substack, no matter how much they claim to be for writers. Therefore, they're incentivized to create & promote low quality bait-y content (to optimize for eye balls for ads), and to aggregate a range of entertainment content to keep you re-subscribing (eg. BuzzFeed News couldn't exist without BuzzFeed listicles.) Tech platforms need to continue meeting the growth and engagement expectations of investors and shareholders; whereas news organizations *should* continue meeting the civic needs of citizens. The problem is readers don't value this endeavor in dollar terms and expect all content to be free. And even Substack is facing financial challenges. If you care about high quality writing and reporting, you should subscribe to your local paper if one still exists, or become a sustaining member for your local public media outlet.