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Newspapers' Self-Inflicted Blows
At Northwestern University in the mid-1990s, the journalism professor with the most devoted student following was an understated teacher who said that substantive writing and reporting isn't everything, it's the only thing. Alternately despondent and sanguine, he reminded me of Grady from the book "Wonder Boys" when he told us that he spent weekends drinking in his closet and that he corrected papers in green ink because "green is the color of hope."
Professor Kupetz has since left Northwestern, and journalism is today running dangerously low on his emerald-hued optimism. Judging by the fatalistic declarations after this month's collapse of newspapers in Denver and Seattle, the industry is morosely drinking in its closet, wondering what went wrong.
Most newspaper post-mortems insist that decreased ad revenues brought on by the Internet and the recession caused journalism's problems, not self-inflicted wounds. If that was entirely accurate, then readers might lament newspapers' decline as a loss of must-read content. Instead, Pew polls find "many Americans wouldn't care a lot if local papers folded."
In light of that, allow me to use these dwindling column inches to float an alternate hypothesis: While technological and economic forces certainly battered newspapers, journalism also delivered a one-two punch to its own jaw.
First, financially strapped newspapers undermined their comparative advantage by replacing audience-attracting local exclusives with cheaper national content. Then, the providers of that national content diverted resources from tough-to-report investigative journalism that builds loyal readership and into paparazzi-like birdcage liner that unconvincingly portrays politicians, CEOs and their minions as celebrities.
"In place of comprehensive, complex and idiosyncratic coverage, readers of even the most serious newspapers were offered celebrity and scandal, humor and light provocation," says journalist-turned-director David Simon, whose HBO series "The Wire" examined this trend.
The most preventable tragedy was the deterioration of quality. Downsized local publications were all but forced to rely on more national content, but that content didn't have to become so vapid.
Beltway scribes didn't have to miss the Iraq war lies or the predictive signs of the Wall Street meltdown. Election correspondents weren't compelled to devote four times the coverage to the tactical insignifica of campaigns than to candidates' positions and records, as the Project for Excellence in Journalism found. Business reporters didn't need to give corporate spokespeople twice the space in articles as they did workers and unions, as a Center for American Progress report documents. National editors weren't obligated to focus on "elevat(ing) the most banal doings" in the White House to "breaking news," as the New York Times recently noted.
But that's what happened. Rather than investing in the valuable steel and concrete of hard reporting, national news outlets began printing the most worthless kind of commercial paper - rumors, personality profiles and other such speculative derivatives that consumers could find elsewhere. News, in short, mimicked finance: Just as Wall Street made bets on bets with credit default swaps and then watched investors bolt, print journalism mass produced gossip about gossip, and now sees its audience flee.
Can we blame readers? If local news is gone and national news aims to celebrify Washington, can we really fault Americans for paying attention to chatter about Hollywood hardbodies rather than about D.C.'s paunchy pocket protectors?
I'd say no. If it's a choice between a Filmdrunk.com scoop on Vin Diesel's latest movie and a local reprint of the Washington Post's A1 cliche on the "hard-charging approach" and dating strategy of mid-level Obama aide Jim Messina, most of us will (understandably) tune into the B-movie star, not the bureaucrat - and neither Google nor AIG have anything to do with that decision. Until the news industry acknowledges that truth - until it relearns Professor Kupetz's lessons - no rationalization, green ink or private benders will save journalism.
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45 Comments so far
Show AllLook at it this way...a chance for new newspapers to start and maybe actually report news and investigate to find the truth? Since that's so rare now, I imagine any upstart would quickly gain a large market share.
All too true. Take a look at a newspaper of as little as two decades ago to see the vast difference between then and now. And if you really want to start drinking in a closet, read a Victorian newspaper to see just how far we have fallen, not only in substantive writing and reporting but in the literacy (in all ways) of the audience. Perhaps, like Detroit, the newspaper has sunk to the level of its buyers.
I have read that most national newspapers, the 'elite', write their articles so that they're comprehensible to an 8th or 10th grader, I forget which...while the USA Today is supposed to be comprehensible by a 6th grader. I don't remember exactly, it was a while ago. Where can I find an example of such an old newspaper?
"read a Victorian newspaper to see just how far we have fallen."
I'm not sure which Victorian newspapers you are talking about, but the one's I have seen have been unabashed propaganda for the ruling class. Yes, it's true, they did address more pertinent issues than today's press, but with few exceptions, as far as I can see, there has only been a small window of good journalism in this country—from about 1970 to 1990.
------
Elohi Gadugi Journal
"And if you really want to start drinking in a closet, read a Victorian newspaper to see just how far we have fallen, not only in substantive writing and reporting but in the literacy (in all ways) of the audience. Perhaps, like Detroit, the newspaper has sunk to the level of its buyers."
*sigh*. Blaming the readers again.
Notice that readers are NOT buying the papers. If the papers are at the level of the readers, they would not be going bankrupt left and right.
The newspapers betrayed their purpose when they ran propaganda for the Bush war regime.
You wanted it scumbag media, you got it: DIE.
Newspapers betrayed their purpose when more than ten million people around the world marched in opposition to the impending war of aggression against Iraq, and none of it was deemed "fit to print" (feel free to name other examples).
Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of weeklies still cover issues of local import, and are supported by local advertisers. This is still a viable business model, unless your goal is to be as rich as Scrooge McDuck, as well as a valuable community resource.
Yes. Repeated incidents like that are the major reason we cancelled our subscription to the New York Times. I agree with those who say that our inane printed papers are mostly a terrible waste of trees. But I do miss the paper media morning fix that makes the commute more tolerable. It is too hard to take the computer on the subway!
Joe
unless protected by a vigorous system of source anonymity, agressive detective work and just prosecution for criminal behavior, investigative journalism inevitably reaches the point of life-threatening danger for the journalist\publisher...the general attitudes toward murder and corruption that has destroyed our economic and ecologic systems has also infected our legal, penal and juornalistic systems...safer and smarter to be a semblance of a thing than the thing itself, and often more profitable...it comes down to who's willing to harm who...the harmers win over the non-harmer whistleblowers, investigators, editorializers and prosecutors...
"green is the color of hope."
It's also the color of money. And in the United States of today, money is the root of almost all evil. The rest can be divvied up between superstition and stupidity. That goes for newspapers too. They became part of the amusement industry and the institutionalization of governmental lying, driven solely by the desire to make money and peddle the superstition and stupidity of a nation made by people like Ronald Raygun and George Wanker Bush. Aside from using newspapers to housebreak your puppy, they are almost utterly worthless.
Newspapers are also great for starting fires and make good fishwrappers!
They also make very good packing material (once it's been shredded). The NRA will tell you that the best place to clean and oil your guns is on newspaper. When Luca Brasi was murdered in "The Godfather", the fish sent to the Corleone Family was wrapped in a newspaper. And the United States, like Luca Brasi, now "sleeps with the fishes."
Mordechai Shiblikov March 27th, 2009 1:21 pm, as much as I agree with your general points, one small correction: the fish sent to Sonny Corleone in 'The Godfather' arrived wrapped in Luca Brasi's bulletproof vest, not a newspaper. But, you're correct -- the American printed news media does 'sleep with the fishes,' mainly because it is ruled by accountants and marketers with the mental acumen of Fredo.
One of the main reasons newspapers have fallen by the wayside is that they are a media form that is too dependent on a lowest common denominator paradigm: they have to appeal to a wide audience in order to be economically viable. Once the internet came about, they lost a captive audience as it fled them to find news of specific interest to them that the newspapers did not cover because it did not meet the aforementioned lowest common denominator test. For me, I fled my city's newspaper for a variety of reasons, the most glaring being their dearth of coverage of my favorite sport, soccer. When they "saw the light," it was already too late. That scenario has been repeated ad infinitum to the point where news print is dying on the vine.
there are also the issues of the duration and tone of 'news'...the word itself promotes recency...many of the important topics in our world, however, are neither recent, nor particularly positive, with the exception of incredibly rare actual development or change, and will never be so...that leaves little of uplifting substance that falls into the 'recent' category...cracking down on corruption would provide, but, again, becomes isolating\dangerous when working within a web of deceit and corruption...
YES! Magazine seems to be full of positive stories...or at least the few of their articles that have been posted on here.
Print and electronic media contributed to their own decline by ignoring the foundation of their legitimacy. Beginning with the moon landing, the media became enamored with "math and science," increasingly ignoring the humanities and social sciences, focused on theoretical natural science. Beginning with the '80s, obsession continued, but focused on applied science in service to business. Coverage of SAT "math and science" performance has become standard fare, lamented even as it continuously increased until leveling three years ago. Concurrently, coverage of SAT verbal performance disappeared, even as it continuously decreased until slightly increasing three years ago. Social science performance has disappeared, except for periodic calls for introducing applied economics education in the high school curriculum. Verbal ability being essential to the print media, and social scientific knowledge essential to print and electronic media, indifference to both by the media constitutes an act of suicide.
That is brilliantly perceptive, Philandrel, and the first time I'd seen it layed out like that. But I remember, when I first came to this country some decades ago, being astonished that the largest (and most desirable to students) university departments were those of engineering and, later, those of Business Administration (a subject unknown at the time in Europe). The attraction was, of course, money to be made in such careers. The most popular departments in European universities were philosophy, history, classics, mathematics, modern languages and the pure sciences; it was common knowledge that any idiot could secure a place in engineering but to get a place in philosophy required excellent high-school achievement.
Of course, the concept of university education was quite different. There it was to give the student an immersion in "culture" which would sustain him/her throughout life. Here it was to provide the corporations with ready-made workers.
Personally, I would rather the corporations trained their workers themselves, at their own expense, and left the universities to educate well-rounded citizens.
Rainborowe
Sorry, but have the both of you actually read newspapers?
The math and science coverage in most newspapers is abysmal, and often unscientific in the extreme, because the writers often have no idea, at all, about the subject they are writing about; so, to be "balanced and fair", they get "opposing" views, even if the opposing views are utter crap.
Granted, the coverage of the arts, books, literature, in the papers is equally abysmal.
"The most popular departments in European universities were philosophy, history, classics, mathematics, modern languages and the pure sciences
"
Also, philandrel is criticising what he perceives as the media bias towards math and the theoretical sciences, ie the pure sciences.
Sort of agree with you. Actually, coverage of "science" has evolved beyond the applied science of the '80s and '90s to medicine. Robert Bazell, listed as "Chief Science Correspondent" at NBC Network News, has become almost exclusively a medical reporter. Why so is indicated by the heavy advertising representation for adult diapers and geriatric medications on all the network news programs. As for coverage of "real science," you are correct. Little is covered but for applied science, especially as it affects business and medicine. This still does not negate my central claim. However narrow natural science coverage, social science is nearly nonexistent, and the humanities are limited to film and book reviews. Indeed, about a month ago, Congressional Republicans attacked a measly forty some odd MILLION dollar increased appropriation for the National Endowment for the Humanities in Obama's current budget request as PORK. This while the NSF was budgeted for a multi-BILLION dollar increase. Certainly the media found nothing wrong here. In what other country is the study of humanity considered nothing more than fat? At issue is democracy. To understand human values and behavior is essential to democratic participation. Media abandonment of this concern is an abrogation of democracy. Democracy being justification of media news, as indicated by the First Amendment, they have rendered themselves redundant.
Well, the coverage of the applied sciences in the papers, such as medicine and issues related to medicine and health, is also abysmal. Just because they are covering something, doesn't mean that they are doing it well. Again, as with the pure sciences, writers often aren't sure of the issues they are covering, and are too lazy to do any research; so, they resort to a throwing a hodgepodge of opinions at the wall, to be "fair and balanced".
Most papers certainly do cover the arts, literature, the humanities.
My point is that the problem isn't so much lack of coverage; it is that the coverage is crap, of anything, whether it be the sciences, the arts, literature, the humanities, politics, is crap. So, people are moving to other sources.
Take a look at Lee Siegel, "A national crisis used to inspire the best in our country’s cultural elite. Why, then, has the financial meltdown left our intellectuals speechless?" To what Siegel's argument comes is,
"What we never hear about in the popular media—where intellectual discussion once took place—is debate over fundamental meanings, or essential definitions, or connections between seemingly unrelated phenomena. Those are the elements of an idea, which is the challenge consciousness makes to concrete reality."
This as much applies to the natural sciences as to the social sciences and humanities.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2009-03-25/the-intellectual-crash-of-2009/
His comment applies to pretty much anything involving ideas. Including the applied sciences that you disdain.
Rainborowe March 27th, 2009 1:44 pm, how true. At one time in this country, a major goal of receiving a college education was to be a well-rounded individual able to appreciate and enjoy more than just earning a buck. (They even called it -- gasp! -- a 'liberal arts' education, two terms that are anathema to the right-wingers.) Art, literature, science, comparative religion, ethics, philosophy, and history were all part of the curriculae.
Unfortunately, for the Karl Rove's of the GOP, this sort of education led to a reduction of fear of other cultures and ideas that is required for Republicans such as the Bushes to squeeze into office; it also promoted an expansion of compassion for other people that tended to help Democrats; made you more resistant to religious extremism, and instilled a skepticism of the claims of politicians and a basic knowledge of the workings of propaganda. As Karl himself said, when people get too much education, they become liberal Democrats.
Better to have our colleges and universities pump out arrogant, narrow-minded morons with business degrees, ignorant and dismissive of the world around them. That that situation is partially responsible for the current financial mess we're in is something you'll never hear Karl and his colleagues ever admit, but it's true nonetheless.
Better educated folks than the Raging Bulls and Blundering Bears on Wall Street would have had sufficient knowledge of history and ethics, and the price paid by those who ignore either, to stop the doomed credit-default swap, hedge fund, derivative showboat before it left the dock. To any well-rounded person with a lick of common sense, it was obvious these tranchy traps to short-term gain would result, like any Ponzi scheme, in an eventual dearth of suckers willing to buy the bad paper, and then the whole fetid heap would be hellbound in a handbasket. (Mike Whitney and Dean Baker, among others, warned of these scams years ago and correctly predicted the current collapse.)
As Stephen Colbert said, "reality has a well known liberal bias."
To think that the 'Masters of the Universe' could have learned that in any decent liberal arts college just 30 years ago.
Science has obscured History in High Schools. History in High Schools is taught by coaches, not historians. Coaches are not academics but athletes, therefore, history does not get taught well. Math and Science are generally speaking not taught by coaches, but by Science and Math teachers. It simply reinforces your conclusions.
As others below have mentioned, math, science and health reporting is often abysmal. Nine times out of ten* they equate a correlation with a causality. They often parrot releases from sources like drug companies without a critical commentary. By critical I mean showing understanding of the issue and of research.
I think it is part of an overall dumbing down and decontextualization that passes for reporting.
Joe
*Unsubstantiated percentage, just like the ones they use.
More myths about our glorious lost innocence and the "free" press. Unfortunately the hacks and their owners, the infamous press barons, the Murdochian killers of truth "The news...the news damn it is what I say it is." can't have it both ways. They dumbed the mainline masses down with Hollyweird mush and Main St garbage, a constant drip of slush from the media sewer pipe owned by the chosen racers and now they are bitchin that the reality show generation don't want to read their crap anymore. The reality show generation can barely text for chriisake let alone read..."watch my lips" as daddy Bush explained it to them.
The media has finally made the masses too dumb to pick up their screedy tabloids with all the "news" that fits to print. The rest of the undead can for the moment still get their infoniblets and soundbites untainted at least by the protocols tribe from other sources. Let the hacks die and the sooner the better. The whole debate about the place of the press is a total crock when I remember the freak who gave us the yellow brick road and the poison he was publishing almost a 100 years ago!
L. Frank Baum's "GENOCIDE" Editorials
"Having wronged them for centuries we had better, in order to protect our civilization, follow it up by one more wrong and wipe these untamed and untamable creatures from the face of the earth. In this lies future safety for our settlers and the soldiers who are under incompetent commands. Otherwise, we may expect future years to be as full of trouble with the redskins as those have been in the past."
http://www.operationmorningstar.org/Wizard%20of%20Oz%20is%20a%20incognito%20Nazi.htm
Yah, good luck trying to get the American Genocide published in the Jewish Press where the only genocide ever perpetrated was the Jewish Holocaust, and the same for National Public Radio.
When I was very young during the Vietnam war I started to be brainwashed by the newspapers and being very naive, I believed the Communist menace was true, that is until my next door neighbor got killed in Vietnam and I started to think for myself and realized the newspapers were part of the corruption and were nothing more than propaganda for the war machine. Now it looks like they are reaping what they have sowed.
Publishers and editors certainly have contributed to the present state of decline that the newspaper industry has found itself in. Their lack of imagination and integrity has resulted in a product so poor in quality that many Americans no longer consider their local newspaper an essential.
This a time of true opportunity. The newspapers that were underperforming can be replaced by new publications that emphasize quality in reporting and writing. Integrity can be returned to journalism.
Local entrepreneurs vested in their community can fund these new publications. Large publishing companies can be allowed to dismantle, while communities regain control of their local papers.
Conventional coverage of school board meetings can be supplemented with creative pieces on government, politics, environmentalism, culture and the arts. Commentary sections featuring local opinion about important social, economic and environmental issues will be valued.
Let's take this opportunity to best serve our communities by creating new newspapers. We are better off without the poor reporting sold to us as news presently.
Exactly :-)
There a few other never-discussed factors as well. First, newspapers started to change in response to a decline in readership, not the other way around. Second, Gens X and Y see "the newspaper" as an "old" thing, as their "parents" thing, like polka music and 60 Minutes - the best reporting in the world won't convince them to read a rag daily. And, third, Gens X and Y have pretty much surrendered to the idea that, no matter what, the "powers that be" will do whatever the f@#k they want, hard-hitting journalism or not, so why bother getting your fingers dirty?
Right, always blame the young(er) generation.
Do Gens X and Y also see books as an "old" thing, as their "parents" thing? No they do not.
Maybe, instead of blaming the young(er) generation, newspapers should actually start producing a high quality product.
I hope every newspaper in the U.S. reads your article. You state the apparently not so obvious to some in the industry.
I also see papers suffering from the same malady as other corporations have. Somewhere along the way we shifted from companies who were “customer” oriented to “profit” oriented corporations.
There is nothing wrong with profit, but if it does not include a genuine desire to provide something to, rather than get something from the customer, it sets itself upside down and will ultimately tumble.
Let me explain. I worked for a paper recently who is in the same shape and following the same methods as you outline above. Here are some of the steps they took. They booted a key member of the staff with ties to the community and paper. To replace that position, someone was put in from another state. The first thing that person did, was fire all of the people who brought in and sustained business through long standing community relationships. Those positions were replaced by young attractive women with no experience and willing to work for any pay offered.
I have friends around the country such as one in Las Vegas who tells me that the corporations come and buy entities of which they have little or no knowledge and they replace the key people who have spent a lifetime in the industry with, well, someone who isn’t.
Money does not replace experience or skill. Is it any wonder that not just newspapers, but our economy is failing?
The process you describe has been happening up and down the economy. Employees are not valued for work. In fact work is not valued. Appearances, re-branding, quick profits and weasel words win the day.
I had a discussion several years ago with a waitress in a Washington state diner. A chain had bought the diner. They were in the process of firing all the old waitresses who had benefits and long relationships with customers and bringing in kids to replace them at lower pay.
Management tried to replace almost all IT in a medical place where I worked with coverage from India. I was one of the few gringos left in place. Smart as the new techies were, they had no experience with the industry, the structures, the norms, or even the pecking order in which doctors were the ultimate authority. Doctors forced the management to abandon that plan and re-hire many of those laid off. (If things are not done correctly, people can die - and more importantly, sue.)
Joe
The simple reason as to why I no longer read newspapers, is they publish spin rather then the truth.
Wht would anyone want to get NEWS from the New York times as example given their cheerleading of the war on Iraq? How can you ever take them seriously and not feel you are being fed only what they want you to be fed?
I gave it up. Its distortions raised my blood pressure. I found myself yelling at newsprint.
Joe
The Eugene, Oregon Register-Guard, a mildly liberal paper, covers some local news, but very little state news. If you want to know what the state legislature is doing about health care, you'll have to look elsewhere.
It's national and international news comes mostly from the New York Times, Washington Post and Associated Press, all of which promote the establishment view. Articles about Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan include words like "insurgent" and "extremist," meaning anyone who opposes U.S. interests. Legal or moral issues about wars are not raised. The unspoken assumption is that we're right and they're wrong.
Most of the op-ed columns are also by NYT & WP writers. I really don't care what Thomas Friedman or David Brooks think, not to mention the columnists to their right.
Anything said by a high government official is considered news, so we are treated to an endless series of articles about how Iran is going to get the bomb, and we should be very afraid. Thus preparing the way for the next war. These articles never mention that the U.S. has 5,736 nuclear weapons (Andrew J. Bacevich, "The Limits of Power," p. 179). It is simply assumed that only rich nations have any right to own the Bomb.
Because they have to please a wide variety of readers and advertisers, and because they come from the same professional middle-class background whose view of the world they're promoting, they tell just enough truth to make readers feel knowledgable, and not enough to challenge any of their basic assumptions. So the readers can continue living in their comfortable dream world denial.
And they didn't publish my last two letters to the editor.
So I've mostly quit reading the paper. I don't want to support their propaganda machine, and I learn a lot more by reading books -- right now, "The Shock Doctrine" by Naomi Klein -- and online essays.
Mass media news doesn't work anymore, if it ever did. We need to find our own reporters, and financially support them.
Why is no one mentioning that the corporate media is controlled by seven corporations with conservative boards which dictate what news will be printed or reported? Evidence: if you haven't read or heard about the Downing Street memo; that the Iraq action was an illegal invasion and occupation which violated the Geneva Conventions, the principles of the United Nations, and Article VI of the US Constitution; that Osama bin Laden is not wanted by the FBI for 9/11 because it says it has no evidence against him; that World Trade Center Building #7, one block away from the other Trade Center buildings went down in its own footprints in only one second more than the other buildings and was NOT hit by a plane--these and more show that the news has been restricted and censored. We should fight to break up the monopoly that the media has become so that the public can make educated decisions. The evidence of a vigorous democracy is a free press. We do not have that.
"national news outlets began printing the most worthless kind of commercial paper"
And paper should be the number one reason we stop printing and buying newspapers. It is a colossal waste of paper. My recent city paper offered me a free two week subscription. I didn't want it but the first two issues were lying outside my door first thing in the morning - and 60% of the paper was real estate, everything from high rise apartments to luxury villas. What a waste. I anyone is interested in buying real estate are they really going to slog through page after page of 'ooh aah' rhetoric and colored ink? The next morning I got up very early and handed them back to the startling pre-dawn delivery man.
Waste.
There is still a place for great journalism, in fact several places, the radio, tv, internet, etc.
And Common Dreams.
Advertising revenues be damned!
Let us not forget the longer history of the newspapers' failures and crimes: hearst newspapers' yellow journalism cheerleading us into imperial adventures, for example; or in the 1970's, the failure to report on US complicity in the East Timor massacres, or in the 1980's, Reagan administration's crimes against central America. Newspapers' monopoly on a "common narrative" is a profoundly dangerous model for maintaining an informed public. Their huge megaphone shouts down dissenting voices and inconvenient facts.
The man who reads nothing at all is better educated than the man who reads nothing, but newspapers.
Thomas Jefferson
Early in life I had noticed that no event is ever correctly reported in a newspaper.
George Orwell
I keep reading between the lies.
Goodman Ace
“I often wonder what future historians will say about us. One sentence will suffice to describe modern man: he fornicated and he read newspapers.”
Albert Camus
“Newspapers are unable, seemingly to discriminate between a bicycle accident and the collapse of civilization”
George Bernard Shaw
I no longer get a paper because of the LIES, and the one sided PROPAGANDA. The lies take many forms, and one of the most powerful is completely ignoring the data that refutes the official line.
The most obvious kettle of lies, of course is those pushing for the invasion of Iraq. To list all of the lies that they pushed then would require quite a long article. It is sufficient to say that on the basis of NO SUBSTANTIAL EVIDENCE AT ALL they made out that Iraq was a threat to the world because it was amassing WMD. By "substantial", I mean evidence that can withstand scrutiny. In the small windows that they permitted dissent, the dissenters were dismissed as traitors and idiots.
But Iraq is not all, not by any means. For example, if you did not catch the massacre in Ossetia by the Serbian military in the first day, then you missed it altogether, and what you got instead was US and Israeli propaganda. For other examples, just follow the coverage verses reality for the Israeli invasions of Gaza or in Lebanon.
Did you ever question why the word "terrorism" is NEVER used to refer to US actions in Iraq, Afghanistan or Pakistan, when a view of the standard definitions of terrorism reveals that terrorism is still terrorism even when committed fighter jets.
It is my hope that people are turning off the corporate media because of the LIES and PROPAGANDA, and because there are now other sources of media available.
After holding a subscription to a fine major newspaper for more than 40 years, we regretfully cancelled it when the editorial lineup just became so belittling to read. The papers dramatic intellectual turn began when it changed ownership and then began to spew out such insulting right wing drivel. We protested by withdrawing our support and funds. Recently, this paper filed bankruptcy.
Congratulations. I would call it well done.