Media Closures, Layoffs and Democracy

Today's big news is local.  The Seattle PI, a Hearst owned newspaper, is going to either be sold or shut down.  We'll know more in 60 days.  However, as they say in the media business, sources say the likelihood of sale is nil, therefore the PI as we know it is essentially gone.

The PI is now in line with other venerable media outlets, such as the Detroit Free Press which recently announced it was scaling back it's home delivery of a physical newspaper, and media giants like CNN who laid off almost all of it's environmental reporting staff.   And of course, there were the huge layoffs from National Public Radio.  Just goes to show a huge endowment from Joan Kroc didn't insulate NPR from the economy!

Among media folks, there is a lot of speculation, blaming, and frustration over the demise of newspapers and news media in general.  Much of the finger pointing goes toward the Internet and the so-called democratization of "news."  Blogs such as Huffington Post, Daily Kos, Politico, which are essentially news aggregators, are believed to be the enemy of institutions such as The New York Times and yes, even the Seattle PI.  

Seattle has always thought of itself as a big city, and went through significant teeth-grinding when it thought the PI was going under in the early 1980s.  Backroom deals were hashed out by city fathers (think lots of cigar smoke and cognac at the Rainier Club) to keep both newspapers in business.  It was felt that having two newspapers reflected a sophistication, a sense that Seattle was a cosmopolitan city.  

While I have not been a big fan of either newspaper, and was ecstatic when I realized I could read both of them on-line for free, I do think this epidemic of layoffs, newspaper closures, and scale backs is, well, not a good sign for America or democracy.

Ok, here is my second qualification: I am also not a big fan of what has been termed "mainstream media."  Oh, I read a lot of it, listen to NPR, rarely watch TV news, but I do all of that with a large dose of cynicism.  I have not been a fan for a long time.  I suppose because having been involved in politics and being around reporters who, being frank here, are the best drinking buddies with politicians, the idea there is "objective" mainstream media is a crock.  And the so-called paper wall between income and reporting?  I can give you dozens, if not more, examples where that wall is a figment of someone's imagination.  

But, having said that, I am very concerned about the demise of these institutions.  I don't think  I need to go through the litany of great things much of the mainstream media has done: Pentagon Papers, Watergate, Arms for Hostages, current reporting on the economic melt down....think about this and add to this list yourself.  Quite frankly, Huffington Post  can not even begin to think about providing us those kinds of journalistic bomb-shells.  For whatever mainstream media has gotten wrong (the run-up to the Iraq war for instance) there have been hundreds of events they have gotten right, or close enough to right that we were able to peek into the abyss and see the muck.  

At a time when government is about to go through a huge expansion of it's role as well as it's power, even greater than with President Bush, when corporations are forced to consolidate, when financial chicanery impacts each of us, we need more watchdogs not less.  We need people who are not afraid to ask, probe, make nuisances of themselves, not accept a press release or former colleague who took a high paying job telling them what is up.  We need scientists, economists, psychologists, poets, willing to examine and write about the world around them.  And we need news not just from the glamourous capitals of the world, but from down the street, the next state, or a small town in the Midwest.  

There is a lot of fear right now.  No one knows if they are going to lose their job.  Boeing, the Seattle PI,  Aloca, Washington Mutual, the list goes on of layoffs, reductions, hiring freezes.  Now, more than ever, we need courage, a willingness to write, to report, to explain.  We need fearlessness, an ability to withstand the anger people share in the comment sections (have you ever noticed the vitriolic crap that gets written in the comment sections of these web sites?  Scary).  Most of all we need an understanding that abandoning news, or allowing media to write it's own obituary, is the worst thing for democracy.  Our information then becomes a battle between garbage fed by government, corporations, or some publicist versus someone like Ariana Huffington deciding whether she wants to argue with the press release or not.  It become superficial and all about ego and power.  And no one other than those well connected people participate.  That is not democracy.

So, if the PI goes down, I say we all take up pens and paper, make press credentials, and hit the streets.  It's our duty.