The Outstater
Newspapers for Sale — Cheap
NEITHER THE INDIANAPOLIS STAR nor any other Gannett newspaper will be making an endorsement in this presidential election. Corporate headquarters says it is to protect journalistic integrity and independence. (You can stop laughing now).
More interesting is Jeff Bezo’s frank and honest explanation of why his Washington Post will no longer endorse. It is a practical response to a historic decline in public trust in mass media, newspapers in particular and including the one he owns:
“Something we are doing is clearly not working. Let me give an analogy. Voting machines must meet two requirements. They must count the vote accurately, and people must believe they count the vote accurately. The second requirement is distinct from and just as important as the first. Likewise with newspapers. We must be accurate, and we must be believed to be accurate. It’s a bitter pill to swallow, paying scant attention to reality, and those who fight reality lose. Reality is an undefeated champion.”
This is amazing stuff. Not, though, all that unpredictable. The Washington Post, you see, is owned by an individual, not a widely held corporation such as Gannett Inc. Mass media, with their unique and intrinsic ties to the Constitution, are meant to be owned by individual souls, individual citizens, not national corporations. Sooner or later, as the data and logic began to pile up on Bezo’s desk, he would do what any business owner would do: adjust to market signals.
No such thing is happening across town at the palatial Gannett building in high-rent Rosslyn. Dozens of conflicting agendas are fighting for personal short-term gains that have nothing to do with journalism ethics or reader preference — or, for that matter, nothing to do with revenue or influence. To use Bezo’s phrase, Gannett is allowing its media properties “to run on autopilot and fade into irrelevance.” For despite the decline in readership and advertising they can’t help themselves. It’s a structural thing.
So here is what’s going to happen. The Washington Post will become a great newspaper again. Perhaps the New York Times, also individually owned, will follow. Gannett and other chain newspapers, however, will continue their preachy, advocacy journalism until outside interests (individual proprietors or limited partnerships) buy them piece by piece at a fire sale and then monetize their suppressed value — that is, return the newsrooms to the important job of gathering the news and telling the truth as carefully as humanely possible.
The beautiful thing, the wonder of the market, is that this will happen without the need for ruinous investment or upheaval. All Bezos will have to do is transfer to oblivion the few titled reprobates who have been manipulating the news far too long.
And may the door hit them on their way out. — tcl
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