Wither(ing) Journalism?

July 1, 2014 — The journalism crisis continues. Yet, as so often happens when social problems require structural reform, once the alarm bells fell silent—as they did after the sudden 2008–2009 downturn—our sense of urgency subsided. As with the broader financial system, whose collapse accelerated the fourth estate’s decline, the status quo has reasserted itself after being jolted. Previous warnings now seem hyperbolic and ideas for bold reforms have faded from view. Meanwhile, the number of newspaper journalists in the US has fallen by approximately a third since 2000, and continues to drop. All this transpires at a time of historic inequality and pending environmental collapse when a strong press is desperately needed to expose problems, their causes, and their solutions.

Simultaneously, there’s a growing exuberance around new digital experiments. Exhibit A for promising new models is The Intercept, launched by Glenn Greenwald, Laura Poitras, and Jeremy Scahill. The Intercept is the first project of First Look Media, a 501(c)3 nonprofit funded by eBay founder Pierre Omidyar, who has promised to invest $250 million in the venture. Committed to editorial independence, First Look’s expanding network of digital magazines will provide “the kind of autonomy that is too often undermined by the demands of advertisers and investors.” Although it will aggressively seek out revenues to sustain its work, its not-for-profit model offers a structural alternative, one that privileges journalism over profit imperatives while focusing on hard-hitting investigative reporting. Other for-profit ventures—sometimes grouped together as “personal-brand journalism”—are Nate Silver’s FiveThirtyEight (owned by ESPN) and Ezra Klein’s Vox (owned by Vox Media). No doubt even more initiatives like these will emerge, promoting data-driven explanatory journalism. But even if we agree that these new experiments are most welcome, will they suffice? Can new digital start-ups fill the journalism vacuum?

[For the rest of the essay: http://www.publicbooks.org/nonfiction/withering-journalism ]