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Chris Judge
Hello and welcome to the Providence College podcast. This week, we wanted to share an episode of Beyond Your News Feed understanding contemporary politics from the PC Political Science Department. Professors Andrew McDonnell and Matt Cardinale join host Bill Hudson for a conversation about the dire straits of local newspapers and that impact on American democracy.

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Chris Judge
You can download Beyond your News Feed wherever you listen to podcasts.

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Bill Hudson
Welcome to Beyond Your News Feed! Understanding Contemporary Politics, a podcast of the Providence College Political Science Department. My name is William Hudson, Professor Emeritus of Political Science and host of this podcast. Today, we are going to explore the fate of local news.

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Bill Hudson
Over the past couple of decades, local newspapers across the country have begun to disappear. Battered by huge revenue losses from declining advertising and circulation, newspaper owners have sought to reduce cost in a variety of ways, including selling off newspaper buildings, outsourcing, printing and other tasks, but mostly by firing and firing reporters, depriving the paper of the very

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Bill Hudson
journalism that makes newspapers valuable to the community. The strategy obviously has meant newspapers are thinner, with less news for their readers and less able to monitor what is happening in the local community. The obvious result is even more declines in circulation and revenues.

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Bill Hudson
This decline in local news has affected every city in America and some of its most venerable prize winning papers, such as the Chicago Tribune, the Philadelphia Inquirer, The Baltimore Sun and The Providence Journal. In a recent article in The Atlantic monthly entitled The Men Who are Killing America's Newspapers, McKay Coppins describes how wealthy hedge funds have found

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Bill Hudson
ways to profit from the decline of local news, even while accelerating that decline. Coppins focuses on one hedge fund, Alden Global Capital, that has perfected a strategy of buying up struggling newspapers and drastically cutting costs by selling off real estate that the paper's own firing staff while raising subscription prices.

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Bill Hudson
While the strategy is devastating for the newspapers in the long run, in the short run, the hedge fund owners can bleed off substantial profits. These venture capitalists, according to Coppins, are to blame for the decline of local news even more than the other market challenges facing local newspapers.

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Bill Hudson
Provides some perspective on the decline of local news and the provocative thesis of the recent Atlantic article we have with us today, two media experts from the Providence College Faculty, Associate Professor of Political Science Matt Gordio and Associate Professor of Communication Andrea MacDonald.

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Bill Hudson
But we'll be focusing on the decline of local print media in this conversation. Our guests are well qualified to comment on the prospects of broadcast and social media, filling the gaps left by the decline of local newspapers. Listeners should be well acquainted with Professor Gaudio, who has been a Beyond Your News Feed guest several times to discuss

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Bill Hudson
elections and the role of media in American politics. Matt has published numerous articles on the media and politics and is the author of Framing Inequality, News Media, Public Opinion and the Neoliberal Turn in US Public Policy, published in 2019 by Oxford University Press.

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Bill Hudson
He recently received a grant from the Russell Sage Foundation to study public opinion about immigration and the role the media has played in forming those opinions. This is an exciting project done in collaboration with our former Providence College colleague Jeff Pugh, who is now at the University of Massachusetts Boston.

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Bill Hudson
Down the road, we're going to have a podcast episode on this project. Once Matt and Jeff have gathered in more data for the project, Matt is also serving as assistant political science department chair. I'm especially happy to welcome our second guess to be on your News Feed.

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Bill Hudson
Professor Andrea MacDonald is our newest colleague and the political science department, starting just this academic year as director of Providence College's brand new communication program. After earning a B.A. at Vassar College, Professor McDonnell matriculated at the University of Michigan, where she earned her Ph.D. in Communication Studies in 2012.

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Bill Hudson
Before coming to PC, Andrea taught at Emmanuel College as associate professor of communications and media studies. She has published numerous articles primarily on the role of celebrity gossip in American culture and its impact on our politics. Her book, Reading Celebrity Gossip Magazines, was published in 2014 by Paul Lee Press.

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Bill Hudson
Her coauthored work, Celebrity A History.

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Bill Hudson
Of Fall.

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Bill Hudson
Of Fame, written with S.J. Douglas, was published by New York University Press in 2019. She currently is working on an edited volume entitled.

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Bill Hudson
A.

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Bill Hudson
Gossip Politik, forthcoming from Paul Grave next year. Professors MacDonald and Gordita, Welcome to beyond your News Feed!

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Matt Guardino
Thanks, Bill. It's great to be here.

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Andrea McDonnell
Thank you for having me, Bill.

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Bill Hudson
OK, look forward to a very interesting conversation about this really important.

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Bill Hudson
Topic.

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Bill Hudson
To start out. I wonder if both of you could give your view on exactly why we should be concerned about local news. Why does local news matter?

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Matt Guardino
I can start with that. So it's there's a large and growing body of research that kind of concludes with the same general point that the loss of local news really undermines democracy, both in terms of local politics and public issues, but also even in terms of national politics.

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Matt Guardino
So really, the conditions for accountability in government, in politics and also government responsiveness really declined when when local news diminishes. So just a couple of kind of specific pieces from that research. The public has less political knowledge of just what's going on factually on when local news declined.

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Matt Guardino
Studies have shown voter turnout declines actually even levels of corruption in government increase in local government when local news diminishes. And there there's other research in that same vein and just on the national level, just for a minute, it's important to realize that traditionally local newspapers, you know, via the AP, The Associated Press, as well as even

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Matt Guardino
local television stations, have been an important conduit for national information to many audiences through, you know, providing so information from the kind of networks through the local stations. And there is research as well that shows when local news declines, polarization in the community increases and even misinformation.

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Matt Guardino
And citizens often begin to see local issues and events through a national lens, which is often a. More polarized lens. So those are just a few things to think about.

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Bill Hudson
Yeah, that latter point, Matt, I think we've been seeing that with the controversy over so-called critical race theory, which probably would not.

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Bill Hudson
Be.

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Bill Hudson
Raised in a local school board meeting, except for the fact that people in the local community are hearing about this from national news sources.

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Bill Hudson
Correct?

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Matt Guardino
Yeah, I think that's a great example and you know, we can think about. I spent many years, for example, covering school board meetings for local newspapers, and it's typically been this, you know, kind of in many ways, a boring affair.

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Matt Guardino
But, you know, often important information decisions are made there. But we're losing reporters, right? Locally based reporters who are professionals who are who are covering these things. And so a kind of counterbalance to some of the national narratives.

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Matt Guardino
We're not necessarily getting in a lot of these places, which I think adds to misinformation and polarization.

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Bill Hudson
Andrew, can you what could you add to what Matt has had to say here?

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Andrea McDonnell
Sure. When I think about local news, I think about the minutia, the granular details of everyday life and people's communities, and those are the issues that affect people in a real and tangible way. And so being able for the public to feel like there is a buy in to what's going on and to feel like they have

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Andrea McDonnell
a voice, someone in the public sphere who's able to represent their interests and concerns. I think that helps to mitigate some of the feelings of polarization, sometimes resentment that we've seen. Proliferate, and I think about this also in the context of social media and digital culture with sites like neighborhood and Facebook and community groups then pop up

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Andrea McDonnell
to not not replace but sort of fill the gap in a way, and those sites tend to be more individually focused, more and more divided along lines of race and class. And so I think again, to Matt's point, that shuts down opportunities for dialog and to emphasize one of Matt's earlier points out as well.

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Andrea McDonnell
Having journalists who know the community who they themselves are members of the community who have perhaps known the area in great detail for many years. Those are the kinds of knowledge knowledgeable individuals that we really need to have to be able to voice their concerns to truly understand what's going on in the community.

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Andrea McDonnell
So in all of those ways, I think the public function, the important good that local journalism does really can't be overstated.

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Bill Hudson
So what you said, I mean, I guess we're going from sort of.

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Bill Hudson
The.

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Bill Hudson
Abstract and sort of profound concerns for things like democracy, the responsiveness of government to and I find it very interesting that you mentioned some of the the nitty gritty local concerns that that people might have on their minds and are worried about, but but can't really address those in the absence of of good professional journalism in a

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Bill Hudson
local newspaper. Could you say a little more about that? Like what kinds of things might a person in the community be frustrated.

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Bill Hudson
By.

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Bill Hudson
Because of this, even with the availability, as you say, these these online neighborhood sites and the like?

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Andrea McDonnell
Sure. Well, I'll speak from a personal point of view. I'm a resident of Pawtucket, and one of the conversations that I have all the time with my husband and our neighbors is about trash in the neighborhood. And that's just such a seemingly banal topic of conversation.

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Andrea McDonnell
But whether or not the garbage collection picks up certain kinds of trash and whether or not the local businesses are responsible for trash on the sidewalk, that is, as my earlier pointed out, in some ways deeply boring. But in other ways it really does truly affect the quality of life in the neighborhood, the way that people feel

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Andrea McDonnell
about their community, the sense of pride that they have. So this is not a glamorous topic. It's not something that is going to get picked up by the national news media, but it it's something that's on people's minds as they move about in their community.

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Andrea McDonnell
And that's the kind of thing that local news can address in a way that other kinds of media perhaps cannot.

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Bill Hudson
Yeah, that strikes me as the kind of frustration that can can result in.

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Bill Hudson
A.

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Bill Hudson
Reaction of maybe, you know, anger that might be focused on even national issues. But it's really kind of stemming out of frustration.

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Bill Hudson
With.

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Bill Hudson
My local community is just not operating the way I want. And there's I don't feel like there's anything I can do about it. It's interesting. You mention I lived across the line from Pawtucket in Providence. And as you're probably aware, Andrea, there's been all this work on water systems and natural gas systems in the neighborhoods, the trucks

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Bill Hudson
digging up the streets constantly, and it's impossible to get information about exactly when is this going to happen? Why is it happening? When are the streets ever going to get repaired? And I think, you know, in the past, our local newspaper, the Province Journal, would have provided information about that, but it no longer does that kind of

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Bill Hudson
. You know.

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Bill Hudson
Local reporting, as far as I can tell anyway.

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Matt Guardino
So these these are all excellent examples of these kind of granular issues and events, and they kind of bring me back to my days again as a local reporter for newspapers actually in upstate New York and just kind of remembering how, you know, there's journalism, which is extremely important and, you know, also covering government and decisions that

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Matt Guardino
are made about things like trash collection budgets, right? That might have effects on people's everyday lives. But they're also really simple things like providing information about what days that, you know, yard waste is going to be picked up or when different streets will be closed for for work.

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Matt Guardino
And these that were traditionally provided in a kind of reliable way and in an authoritative way, right through local news sources where people could really turn to those things. And now that it's less less available and more scattered, for sure.

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Matt Guardino
I wanted to also pick up quickly on something else, Andrea said a little while ago about class and race divisions. You know, local news has traditionally attracted a bit of a demographically broader audience than a lot of other types of news outlets to some extent in terms of age, but especially in terms of race and class.

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Matt Guardino
And so with the loss of local news and the dwindling of right, those those mechanisms. And, you know, also less educated folks, we're getting, you know, an issue here for political and social equality, right? Because, you know, political engagement, the availability and accessibility of information across these lines is is diminishing, I think.

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Bill Hudson
So let's talk a little bit about why this has happened. Why have local newspapers gotten in trouble? Why isn't there as much local news as there used to be? I mentioned the the article in The Atlantic monthly earlier.

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Bill Hudson
But but before we get into that specific thesis, what are the kinds of things that experts point to when they talk about.

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Bill Hudson
Why.

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Bill Hudson
Local newspapers have have declined in the last couple of decades? Andre, you want to start us off for that?

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Andrea McDonnell
Sure. So one of the most prominent loss of revenue for newspapers comes with the loss of revenue from classified ads, and this is especially true for local news. And we can look back to the early 2000. I mean, it's kind of funny to even think about Craigslist now because it's sort of been in many ways supplanted by

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Andrea McDonnell
other social media sites. But Craigslist first and then other market spaces and advertising spaces online drew revenue away from that primary source of income. Advertiser sales also in the last two decades to newspapers as well as print readership and print subscriptions, declined.

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Andrea McDonnell
So too did advertiser revenue being brought into the print marketplace. And then we can also, of course, think about the rise of digital and free news media content as a critical component of this. So once folks realized that they could get free news online, many people getting news through social media that drew customers away, so to speak

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Andrea McDonnell
. I think that can sometimes be overemphasized because I do think it's important to look at the kind of multiple revenue bases that newspapers operate from. Not just to say, well, readers can get news free. So they're so they're leaving because I don't think that's the entire picture.

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Andrea McDonnell
People still do get content online, and some people still do subscribe to newspapers. But taken together, those factors certainly contributed to a financial loss for the industry.

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Bill Hudson
Yeah. Could we talk a little bit more about the decline in subscribers, the fact that people are purchasing newspapers less? Why? Why is that want to pick up on what Andrea has said? Matt is there.

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Matt Guardino
So this is a long and complex and tangled story, but just to pick up on the subscriber aspect of it with greater availability of information, you know, really even predating the internet with kind of the expansion of television and cable television and then of course, the internet and social media and the ability for people to meet their

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Matt Guardino
information needs and our entertainment needs in a variety of ways, in very personalized ways. That's in, to some extent, reduce the demand for getting information from a sort of sort of curated kind of packaged product like a newspaper, because newspapers have traditionally attracted people by giving them a range of things, some of which appeals to certain segments

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Matt Guardino
of the community, more and others other to other segments. Community and so sports, lifestyle, news, entertainment, culture, local government, national, et cetera, et cetera. And. In a way, you know, subscribing to the newspaper was a way to kind of subsidize the production of a broader range of content that could then, you know, fund journalists and other workers

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Matt Guardino
there. And advertising as well subsidize the operation. But now, with the competition for ad dollars and with people turning elsewhere, the the base rate the base of funding is is really frankly, I would say it's collapsing.

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Bill Hudson
Yeah.

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Bill Hudson
Yeah. Even the loss of classified ads, a newspaper make it less valuable to a lot of people. But I remember as a kid, I used to deliver newspapers and we used to get a sales pitch talks from the higher ups in the newspaper because part of what we did also was to try to get new subscribers, the

00;20;05;27 - 00;20;20;14
Bill Hudson
newspaper. And they would always emphasize we'll tell people that about the classified ads and that they can look for jobs and and automobiles and things in the classified ad. So that was always a big selling point. Along with sports.

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Bill Hudson
So did you say map without those things as an incentive for people to buy the paper, people simply don't, don't buy it. But there seems to be a spiral that happens here as well that that as the paper loses revenue, it's able to deliver less valuable content, which makes it even less valuable to subscribers.

00;20;46;09 - 00;20;46;20
Bill Hudson
Right?

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Matt Guardino
Yeah, I think that's exactly true. I just wanted without going too far, deeply into the weeds here. I want to dial back a little bit and make the point that although the rise of digital technology and the internet has been critical in this whole story, it really predates that.

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Matt Guardino
And there are reasons to to and there's evidence to suggest that local newspapers especially were left entirely unprepared for the rise of digital because of decades of of media consolidation, you know, increasingly bought up by national chains and then later multinational corporations that were looking to squeeze profits out of them by cutting journalists and and also by

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Matt Guardino
softening news content. And when when digital came along, they were really in a poor competitive position in many cases and that this kind of spiral that you're talking about, Bell really sort of took off because owners want profits and they typically generally become more focused on not just making a profit, but making a large and growing profit

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Matt Guardino
and doing so and seeing those more short term returns. And that is incompatible really with, I argue, at least with providing the kind of content that will attract a large enough subscriber base and therefore enough ad dollars to make the operation sustainable, both economically but also in a community and in a democracy sense.

00;22;20;29 - 00;22;30;22
Matt Guardino
Because more subscribers flee, then the product gets worse and more subscribers flee. And it's been a long story that's really only accelerated in recent years.

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Bill Hudson
Right. So, Matt, you're saying that the story that that the Carbon tells in this Atlantic article, which he implies is a recent kind of development with venture capitalists to buy him newspapers? You're saying it really goes back decades?

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Matt Guardino
Yeah. I don't want to. I don't want to make it a complete equivalence because I think that the venture capital story is just kind of the newest and most predatory form of this, because many of these chains were were focused on media as a business and many of the people running them had media and even journalism background

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Matt Guardino
. So that makes a difference in the sort of earlier stages. However, the basic logic of, you know, using these properties to, you know, wring profits out has has this this pedigree, if you will, that predates the more predatory forms of it.

00;23;27;01 - 00;23;27;11
Bill Hudson
Right.

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Bill Hudson
Andrew, you want to add anything to that?

00;23;31;26 - 00;24;03;17
Andrea McDonnell
Yeah, I mean, I've I've I teach about an example of other other ways, actually a couple of key examples I'm teaching right now in my class, the film Nobody Speak, which looks at other ways in which large. Corporate entities and individuals, billionaires have influenced or attempted to influence journalists by either filing lawsuits intended to bankrupt news media

00;24;03;17 - 00;24;37;17
Andrea McDonnell
organizations or purchasing newspapers in order to control the kind of content that comes out of the newsroom. So to Matt's point, this I think what's described in the piece in the Atlantic is another iteration of practices that have been employed for some time, with various levels of pernicious intent, either profit seeking or designed to control, shape or

00;24;37;17 - 00;25;10;26
Andrea McDonnell
otherwise influence the kind of reporting that we see. I think that also works in conjunction with the kind of. Shift in the national landscape to broader tabloid is the ocean of news content, because when we have a readership that's primed to expect softer news news that is more celebrity sports scandal focused and less about adversarial journalism there

00;25;11;00 - 00;25;25;01
Andrea McDonnell
, that dividing line or the kind of line of what audiences expect to see. It may help to shield some of the shift away from the kind of adversarial reporting that is being under threat here.

00;25;26;05 - 00;25;40;20
Bill Hudson
So you're suggesting that these developments have even changed citizens expectations of what they're going to get from the news so that those citizens might have thought, Oh, I'm going to learn something about what government is doing or what's happening in my local community.

00;25;41;28 - 00;25;49;14
Bill Hudson
They're now seeing the news as simply a place where they can learn about the latest on the Kardashians as a. Is that what you're suggesting.

00;25;50;00 - 00;26;11;09
Andrea McDonnell
That may be a bit of a stretch, but I don't think it's entirely out of place, as as Matt mentioned, really, this goes back quite a ways to the entertainment influence in cable television. We can trace it back even to the 1970s and the Rise of People magazine Entertainment Tonight.

00;26;11;18 - 00;26;31;07
Andrea McDonnell
These kinds of these kinds of outlets, which blended and blurred the line between news and entertainment. And so I think for many years now, we've seen an audience where people go to media outlets to be informed, but also to be entertained.

00;26;31;19 - 00;26;57;03
Andrea McDonnell
Am I getting information from the View or from last week, tonight or Saturday Night Live? I'm getting some amount of news, but I'm also being entertained. And when I go to then read about, quote unquote hard news or watch it on TV, a lot of times on CNN, for instance, I can learn about what I should be

00;26;57;03 - 00;27;21;26
Andrea McDonnell
buying for the holidays or how to make an Apple Spice drink. And possibly about the Kardashians. But at the same time, I might rely upon that site for free news and information about what's going on in Congress. So I do think there's a way in which the public has become accustomed to understanding news, what we've historically thought

00;27;21;26 - 00;27;32;05
Andrea McDonnell
of as hard news in conjunction with more entertainment focused content. That expectation is kind of baked into the cake at this point.

00;27;32;28 - 00;27;45;14
Bill Hudson
Right? Actually, as you were talking, I was thinking about the Today show, which I'm old enough that I remember the Today show back in the 1960s. And uh, and how.

00;27;45;27 - 00;27;46;13
Bill Hudson
You know.

00;27;46;22 - 00;28;00;24
Bill Hudson
In those days you actually got some hard news from the Today show compared to now, and it seems to be almost totally absent. Maybe five minutes or three minutes, the beginning of.

00;28;00;24 - 00;28;03;16
Bill Hudson
The of the of the of the hour.

00;28;04;00 - 00;28;05;07
Bill Hudson
And then it's on to.

00;28;05;07 - 00;28;06;08
Bill Hudson
The the.

00;28;06;20 - 00;28;08;25
Bill Hudson
Pumpkin pie recipes and whatever.

00;28;09;14 - 00;28;31;07
Matt Guardino
So I watched the Today show this morning, actually, and that was exactly my my impression that typically use every day. So just to piggyback really quickly on Andrea's important point about sort of infotainment, I think that it raises this bigger question about what really shapes the operation of media and what the content of media.

00;28;31;07 - 00;28;49;12
Matt Guardino
And so in the kind of textbook free market economic vision, demand shapes supply. Right. But it's much more complicated than that. And sometimes supply shapes demand over time and especially in media markets, because consumers, certainly with television and the internet.

00;28;49;19 - 00;29;13;16
Matt Guardino
And then even to a great degree with newspapers news, consumers are not really the main sort of customers of media outlets. The main customers are essentially advertisers of one sort or another. And so media is as much in the business of sort of constructing and cultivating a kind of audience that is going to be going to draw

00;29;13;16 - 00;29;32;18
Matt Guardino
ad dollars than it is in necessarily directly serving content that people want. And so you get these sorts of situations where our tastes and habits and expectations can be really shaped right by what people are provided on a consistent basis.

00;29;34;02 - 00;29;54;05
Bill Hudson
So could we take a closer look at the Coppins article for a moment? This thesis, maybe both of you could maybe elaborate. I gave a kind of short, quick summary at the beginning of the podcast. Could the two of you kind of elaborate on what Carpenter is talking about?

00;29;54;05 - 00;30;17;16
Bill Hudson
I know he's not the only person who's written about this phenomenon. So could you maybe fill in exactly what, what, what's going on here with the profit seeking goals of venture capitalists and how that's affecting newspapers? And I'd like your opinion on how serious you think this is at this moment for the future of local newspapers.

00;30;21;12 - 00;30;40;03
Matt Guardino
So I can start here, and, you know, so one thing that is kind of goes back what we were talking earlier about, that this is a kind of new iteration of a long term trend. But one thing that's new about this situation is that these are these are entities whose.

00;30;41;11 - 00;31;00;21
Matt Guardino
Very purpose is to wring money out of failing business enterprises, right, and and to. And often it's framed as well. Buying up newspapers and saving them by injecting a bunch of capital into them and making a healthy profit in the process.

00;31;01;04 - 00;31;21;26
Matt Guardino
But the reality and practice has at least often been not saving newspapers, but actually placing them on unsustainable financial footings in order to make as much profit as quickly as possible, with really little or no concern right for the viability of the organization going forward.

00;31;22;07 - 00;31;35;23
Matt Guardino
And so that this kind of predatory aspect and we're seeing that more and more and all that is just one example of several several venture capital funds that have have followed this practice.

00;31;38;02 - 00;32;08;11
Andrea McDonnell
It struck me that this phenomenon is not necessarily specific or unique to news, either. It reminded me of stories that I've been hearing in the last few months about venture capitalists involvement in the housing market and the ways in which these very wealthy entities and corporations are sort of swooping in to purchase or finance loans in areas

00;32;08;11 - 00;32;30;26
Andrea McDonnell
where the housing market already has volatility. And so. In this way, further exacerbating inequalities in the marketplace, when we think about that applied to journalism, surely the consequences of that go beyond just the financial solvency of an individual paper.

00;32;31;04 - 00;33;02;05
Andrea McDonnell
But also we've we've already talked about the potential implications of that for the communities in which those papers existed, the communities those journalists served. So I see it also as part of a broader conversation about wealth distribution and the financial power that these organizations have to really shift marketplaces and shift shift power truly within the landscape.

00;33;02;29 - 00;33;17;10
Andrea McDonnell
It raises a question of sort of, can you buy influence? Can you buy public sentiment if you simply have enough capital? And I think that's that's something that we're seeing, unfortunately, in in various spaces.

00;33;18;06 - 00;33;34;21
Bill Hudson
And these newspapers owners are so detached from the local communities served by these newspapers they purchase, unlike the old days when usually local newspapers were owned by people who lived locally in the community, right? Often a prominent family who would.

00;33;35;10 - 00;33;43;16
Bill Hudson
I'm trying to think of names of prominent families that own newspapers, that they're not coming to me right now, but.

00;33;44;18 - 00;33;59;29
Matt Guardino
That that's a really important point and a point that is, I don't think actually gets enough attention. And so this is not to glorify, you know, the 1950, 1960 1970 story because there were there are many right in severe flaws in media and journalism then.

00;34;00;13 - 00;34;25;12
Matt Guardino
However, there is a huge difference between even owning a regional or local chain of news of media organizations and news outlets. And, you know, wanting to make a healthy and hopefully growing profit and being a businessperson, but also being rooted in the community and being able to more to better balance civic concerns.

00;34;25;21 - 00;34;43;11
Matt Guardino
Even concerns about local reputation, which is really important on the one hand versus this sort of newer, nationalized multinational corporations and now venture capitalists coming in who don't face the even the it's more of an, in a sense, an amoral enterprise, right?

00;34;44;05 - 00;34;56;15
Matt Guardino
They don't. And they don't even face the reputational incentives to want to, you know, be seen positively right in a civic sense in their community because they're not rooted there.

00;34;56;15 - 00;35;00;19
Bill Hudson
Right? Actually, my wife and I have in terms of that.

00;35;00;20 - 00;35;00;26
Bill Hudson
The.

00;35;01;10 - 00;35;18;17
Bill Hudson
Perceived positively. We've had that reaction to the Providence Journal, which we've read for decades now. And we used to be take some pride in the Providence Journal. We subscribe to The Providence Journal. It was in the 1970s, won four Pulitzer Prizes.

00;35;19;04 - 00;35;37;22
Bill Hudson
We knew we were getting quality news and information out of it. And it's really been frustrating, particularly in the last decade or so to see how that newspaper just shrank and my wife would get it every morning. And she would she would, would would scream.

00;35;37;22 - 00;36;01;18
Bill Hudson
Sometimes there's only two pages to this newspaper, but this is not a newspaper anymore. And we also got very frustrated because in spite of the fact that the content was diminishing, they kept raising prices. And finally, a couple of months ago, we got another letter from the journal saying they were going to raise our prices.

00;36;02;05 - 00;36;02;17
Bill Hudson
And.

00;36;03;09 - 00;36;20;18
Bill Hudson
We'd like probably lots of other subscribers simply canceled. We said no more. We're not going to subscribe even to this newspaper that we for many years admired. If they're going to just complete, keep demanding more money for less and less.

00;36;21;01 - 00;36;33;23
Bill Hudson
And I think that's the phenomena that these outside owners can easily promote in order to make some profits. But it certainly is not is devastating the.

00;36;34;05 - 00;36;34;10
Bill Hudson
The.

00;36;34;10 - 00;36;35;29
Bill Hudson
Reputation of the papers and.

00;36;36;19 - 00;36;55;15
Matt Guardino
Not to overplay this point. But just one other aspect of that is if there is a sense in which this older model is part of a broader model of capitalism that you know, really is gone. And a lot of ways, which is where there was a bit more of a of a of a sense of I don't

00;36;55;15 - 00;37;10;11
Matt Guardino
like this term, but a sort of the honor as a stakeholder in the community who has responsibilities to employees and workers and consumers that are at least going to be, you know, included in the calculation right along with responsibilities to their own profits.

00;37;10;17 - 00;37;30;00
Matt Guardino
And and in the ownership right and a sense of, I mean, I work. For an organization that where there is a longtime family and owned a small chain of newspapers where there was a real concern for the people who worked there and including for the journalists and the quality of the journalism, as much as the family was

00;37;30;00 - 00;37;43;06
Matt Guardino
very interested in efficiency and and frankly, maybe not paying us as well as many of us would have liked to be paid. And so that model of capitalism, I think is is is one that we're seeing diminished overall.

00;37;43;06 - 00;37;45;12
Matt Guardino
But in the news media in particular.

00;37;47;25 - 00;38;11;09
Bill Hudson
So what about digital newspapers sort of filling the gap here? Is that an adequate substitute? Do you think I know the Providence Journal has a digital edition and. All major newspapers seem to know, what do you think about that, Andrea?

00;38;12;18 - 00;38;34;15
Andrea McDonnell
I think in some ways, digital editions have an important role to play for readers who may not subscribe to a traditional print paper, especially thinking about younger consumers of news who may be more apt to go online to get news content.

00;38;34;15 - 00;38;53;25
Andrea McDonnell
So to be able to have a subscription model, it does afford an opportunity to have news and information that's very current to publish immediately, which is something that readers are often seeking now because we've become so accustomed to the online first model.

00;38;55;06 - 00;39;17;18
Andrea McDonnell
At the same time, I think that users in general are not. They're not sitting down with our content in the same way that folks would sit down with the morning paper. Their content is still in competition with and in conversation with a plethora of other content online.

00;39;17;19 - 00;39;40;28
Andrea McDonnell
So when you're looking at your digital content, for instance, in the Wall Street Journal or in the New York Times, and then you're scrolling through Twitter and you're looking at other content that you might intentionally seek out across the web, there is a sense of a lack of the coherent see the the curated package that Matt mentioned

00;39;41;20 - 00;40;05;27
Andrea McDonnell
, the voice. I think of journalists are come through when you have a kind of longitudinal relationship with the newspaper. I think that level of trust and to some extent, accountability when it's, you know, there's there's there's something to be said, I think for the medium itself here, for the tangibility of print, for the kind of feeling of

00;40;06;27 - 00;40;26;00
Andrea McDonnell
continuity that that has historically offered. When we start to see as we start to see the generations who are accustomed to having the newspaper delivered every day age out of the market, it will be interesting to see what happens then.

00;40;26;05 - 00;40;30;07
Andrea McDonnell
Where do younger consumers go? How do they navigate that?

00;40;32;09 - 00;40;51;16
Bill Hudson
Yeah. Well, thanks, Audrey, you just validated the feeling I have as a as one of these older newspaper consumers that likes to have the print newspaper in front of me as I drink my coffee every morning and and then in very unhappy with reading a paper digitally in comparison.

00;40;51;25 - 00;40;56;11
Bill Hudson
I'm glad you validated that there's something to that physical presence of the paper that.

00;40;56;11 - 00;40;56;19
Bill Hudson
I.

00;40;57;01 - 00;41;02;28
Bill Hudson
That I value so much. It's not just a crazy oddity.

00;41;03;21 - 00;41;18;29
Andrea McDonnell
Would, if I could add also, I think it contributes to our sense of willingness to engage in longer form content when we sit with the newspaper as the act of reading, which is something that I'm very interested in.

00;41;19;08 - 00;41;40;29
Andrea McDonnell
The act of reading something in print is fundamentally a different act than reading something on your phone or tablet or even on a laptop. And so when we think about digital reading, a lot of it, even if it's not from a digital subscription, but much of what we're attuned to do online is to read quickly.

00;41;41;10 - 00;42;01;22
Andrea McDonnell
I find, even for myself to get the information as quickly as possible. And when we're thinking about context and we're thinking about nuance and we're thinking about historical placement of information, I think that's something that we may be more primed for as readers when we sit down with that newspaper rather than we're, you know, we're in the

00;42;01;22 - 00;42;09;01
Andrea McDonnell
middle of our morning commute or we're killing time before a doctor's appointment. It's not the same type of reading experience.

00;42;09;07 - 00;42;09;16
Bill Hudson
Yeah.

00;42;09;26 - 00;42;33;18
Bill Hudson
That that intellectual fragmentation is it's really so common with digital media. I know I've discovered that in the sites encourage that right. They the way they present things is they actually encourage you to jump from one thing to the other very quickly with prompts on the side and the advertising that's coming up and all of that.

00;42;34;18 - 00;42;39;29
Bill Hudson
And I find that that affects the way that I read the morning newspaper even.

00;42;40;14 - 00;42;41;09
Bill Hudson
And I.

00;42;41;12 - 00;42;42;24
Bill Hudson
It sometimes bothers me that.

00;42;42;24 - 00;42;43;00
Bill Hudson
I.

00;42;43;21 - 00;42;52;04
Bill Hudson
That I'm that I'm jumping around even too much in that print newspaper because I've been affected by this digital reading.

00;42;52;16 - 00;43;06;25
Matt Guardino
So just to make a couple of points off of what you've all said, so one is just this fragmentation that you're talking about. Bill is is as well. Is it just the latest iteration and particularly intense ways of something that started really with television?

00;43;07;03 - 00;43;21;14
Matt Guardino
So we need to kind of realize that that that's a that's a long term trend, but really quickly on the economics of that. And Andrea made really important points about the practice of reading and the social and cultural elements, but purely on the economics of local digital news.

00;43;21;26 - 00;43;41;17
Matt Guardino
The situation is is very, very dire. There is really no evidence that local newspaper the online versions of local newspapers can be economically, financially viable in the online space. And certainly, that can run on subscription models the way that, say, the New York Times, The Wall Street Journal can.

00;43;41;29 - 00;44;08;12
Matt Guardino
And you know, the competition for ad dollars is is fierce. The the availability of other things to look at is really is really a major factor. And also the the just the traffic right that finds its way to local news has been a lot of systematic research on this online is is really minuscule and the future looks

00;44;08;28 - 00;44;15;15
Matt Guardino
not very bright there without some pretty fundamental changes in the political economy of that whole situation.

00;44;16;27 - 00;44;34;21
Bill Hudson
So 63 kind of a dire situation. I mean, we started out talking about the value of local news for democracy that citizens need to have news about their local communities and obtain information about even national news from local sources.

00;44;36;03 - 00;44;48;27
Bill Hudson
But we're now described a picture where that is almost totally absent now. That strikes me, as, you know, a fundamental challenge to the survival.

00;44;49;12 - 00;44;49;17
Bill Hudson
Of.

00;44;49;17 - 00;45;06;19
Bill Hudson
Democracy if, in fact, local news is so important. OK, Matt and Andrea, we started off this conversation talking about the importance of local news for democracy, but we've been spending the last few minutes talking about the demise of local news.

00;45;07;14 - 00;45;31;08
Bill Hudson
And so I'm wondering, you know, if a local is so important for democracy, we we need to find some kind of solution to this problem. And I'm wondering what might be some ways of revitalizing, particularly local newspapers? And 11 idea that I've read about is the notion of rather than rapacious billionaires like the venture capitalists benevolent.

00;45;31;13 - 00;45;54;28
Bill Hudson
Billionaires buying up local newspapers and investing in them and providing capital so that they could produce more news. I guess this is the Jeff Bezos model basis, of course. The CEO of Amazon, who purchased The Washington Post a number of years ago and in fact did invest a lot into the Post and revived it at a time

00;45;54;28 - 00;46;06;12
Bill Hudson
when it was in financial difficulty. So what do you think about that as a model for reviving local newspapers? The the action of a benevolent, benevolent billionaires.

00;46;07;20 - 00;46;07;29
Bill Hudson
That.

00;46;07;29 - 00;46;09;15
Bill Hudson
You want to take that first?

00;46;10;23 - 00;46;32;27
Matt Guardino
Sure, bill. So I'll start off by saying that this idea, I think, has positive elements to it. And there are examples of of a so-called benevolent billionaires coming in and actually being able to inject capital and improving the news product and and kind of adding, I guess I wouldn't call it a solution, but sort of making things

00;46;32;27 - 00;46;51;16
Matt Guardino
better. Right? But as a long term or, you know, sufficient solution to the crisis, I think it falls way short. And I think there are a couple of reasons for that. one is that just purely in terms of what I would suggest is the need out there, in other words, just the just the need for capital, especially

00;46;51;16 - 00;47;15;17
Matt Guardino
for for local, for local newspapers. It's hard to imagine there ever being enough willing billionaires, let alone willing benevolent billionaires out there to put that kind of money in. And the second thing is just that, you know, it raises questions about, you know, even the most well-meaning billionaires are civic spirited billionaires having control.

00;47;16;21 - 00;47;38;08
Matt Guardino
Both over the over, the sort of financial elements of news operations in a broad sense, but also potentially, you know, their issue priorities, for example, shaping what the news covers, even if not in a direct sense. I mean, that raises fundamental questions about, you know, news as a public good right in a democracy.

00;47;38;08 - 00;47;44;20
Matt Guardino
And I think we need to think about more sustainable and sort of more democratic models.

00;47;45;14 - 00;47;53;02
Bill Hudson
Yeah, that issue of conflict of interests have actually come up at the post, right? With some concern about the Post's coverage of Amazon.

00;47;54;00 - 00;47;54;12
Bill Hudson
I know.

00;47;54;12 - 00;47;59;27
Bill Hudson
That they try to be objective, but evidently there have been worries about.

00;47;59;27 - 00;48;00;06
Bill Hudson
That.

00;48;01;17 - 00;48;20;04
Matt Guardino
And I think that asking those kinds of questions are really important, right? And that is really important. Even though, you know, the evidence for sort of direct effects on coverage is is is thin at this point. I think that even the possibility of that occurring is is problematic.

00;48;20;05 - 00;48;21;16
Matt Guardino
We need to take that seriously.

00;48;22;11 - 00;48;24;01
Bill Hudson
Andrea, you have any thoughts about this?

00;48;24;29 - 00;48;57;13
Andrea McDonnell
Yeah, I agree with Matt's points. When we think about journalism as a public good, as a kind of watchdog of the powerful and of politicians of corporations to have a society and culture with such stratified wealth where we can see individuals in this in this model having control of financial control, if not editorial control over what is

00;48;57;13 - 00;49;19;24
Andrea McDonnell
presented to the public, it certainly puts journalists in a difficult position of not necessarily having clarity on whose interests they are serving. And it also puts the public, I think, at a disadvantage to even raise the question of whether or not this coverage is influenced by ownership.

00;49;20;15 - 00;49;51;09
Andrea McDonnell
It contributes to a public culture where people may not have a sense of trust in journalism, and it allows for some of those seeds of doubt that contribute to a disinformation environment to be planted. So I think that this model, where to Matt's point, may be helpful and sometimes even necessary to save these resources for the public

00;49;51;19 - 00;50;01;00
Andrea McDonnell
. It also opens up more doors of of challenges and potential questions and problems for the ethical side of things.

00;50;01;19 - 00;50;08;25
Bill Hudson
Yeah, and that might even be very devastating in an era when there's so much skepticism about the media and about.

00;50;09;09 - 00;50;11;23
Bill Hudson
About about about that.

00;50;12;21 - 00;50;20;07
Bill Hudson
OK, well, what are the symptoms? Sometimes people talk about municipal ownership of newspapers. We have a long tradition in America.

00;50;20;07 - 00;50;20;17
Bill Hudson
Of.

00;50;21;00 - 00;50;42;00
Bill Hudson
Municipal ownership of utilities, water systems, electricity. one might argue that newspapers are a kind of utility, some kind of infrastructure. That's particularly when it comes to democracy, as I've argued, that is necessary for democracy to function. So could that work?

00;50;42;03 - 00;50;48;21
Bill Hudson
Could various cities essentially finance their local newspapers?

00;50;50;08 - 00;51;09;16
Matt Guardino
I think that's a promising model again. I don't think any of these models are on their own sufficient right to meet the scale of the crisis, but I think that the fear is always, of course, with any type of government ownership or even government funding that there will be political manipulation and lack of political independence and potentially

00;51;09;16 - 00;51;35;04
Matt Guardino
censorship. The research shows, however, that in those situations, and we can look abroad for models here, say in Europe, where we have heavy public subsidies, public ownership and often decentralized or partially centralized but decentralized in terms of operation, what we find is actually those news outlets tend to be very independent and very autonomous when it comes to

00;51;35;04 - 00;51;53;12
Matt Guardino
their editorial decisions and their coverage. And so there are ways to put in political firewalls to to, you know, ensure or at least maximize that independence. And newspapers are utility. As far as I'm concerned, the media system overall is a kind of infrastructure.

00;51;53;18 - 00;52;09;26
Matt Guardino
We don't often think of it that way, but it has many of the qualities of of of a physical infrastructure in terms of connecting people, helping society and the economy and the political system operate effectively in a public sense.

00;52;09;27 - 00;52;24;29
Matt Guardino
And it's something that arguably is not easily supported or well supported purely through private sources. Similarly to, you know, electric and other utilities and also roads and bridges. So I think that's a promising idea.

00;52;25;27 - 00;52;26;03
Bill Hudson
Yeah.

00;52;26;04 - 00;52;40;00
Bill Hudson
Andrea, what do you think about? Do you think municipal ownership could be insulated from political influence, especially in light of what you just said about concerns about the public's skepticism about, say, a billionaire owning a station.

00;52;40;15 - 00;52;40;27
Andrea McDonnell
Of.

00;52;41;15 - 00;52;44;03
Bill Hudson
What's the what's the balance there.

00;52;44;03 - 00;52;44;17
Bill Hudson
Do you think?

00;52;45;02 - 00;53;09;26
Andrea McDonnell
Yeah, I think it's a careful balance. On the one hand, in our current political moment where we see a lot of partizanship, a high, a high skepticism, high level of skepticism of some of the public towards news media, that there will be questions raised in that model about political influence and undue influence.

00;53;10;27 - 00;53;32;19
Andrea McDonnell
But at the same time, I do think that such a model can help provide a sense of public buy in for news, a sense of public investment, a sense of even public ownership over the news that can help revitalize some of that feeling of goodwill and trust.

00;53;33;02 - 00;53;50;26
Andrea McDonnell
And so while there are certainly things to look out for potential challenges, I think that it's also a model which could re-envision for the public what it means to have a sense of connection to journalism and the value of that.

00;53;51;27 - 00;54;10;11
Bill Hudson
And surely, this model would reinforce kind of the importance of newspapers as a democratic institution that that they're so important that the public itself has to own the newspaper and and be the ultimate party responsible for the future of the newspaper.

00;54;11;01 - 00;54;26;06
Bill Hudson
So what other ideas besides some of these two that I've thrown out might might help us revitalize local newspapers? Sandra, do you have any ideas on this?

00;54;27;01 - 00;54;49;18
Andrea McDonnell
It strikes me that there could be a kind of cooperative model when you think about cooperatives of journalists kind of working together to have profit from and also have financial investment in a process. I think that's a model that could potentially work for that industry.

00;54;50;12 - 00;55;05;12
Bill Hudson
So if I could interrupt this? So by Co-operative, you mean groups of journalists getting together and say, OK, we're we're journalists. Do we want to create a newspaper that we're going to? We're going to work on, but we're also going to be the owners of the newspaper?

00;55;05;20 - 00;55;31;07
Andrea McDonnell
Yes. Yeah. So thinking about, for instance, in a previous town I lived in, there was a food cooperative. So the people that worked there also owned stake in the company. And that kind of model certainly puts more pressure, I think, on the employees and also can potentially raise ethical questions again about ownership.

00;55;31;17 - 00;55;38;08
Andrea McDonnell
But it can also be a way of circumventing some of these outside financial interests.

00;55;40;03 - 00;56;07;07
Matt Guardino
All right. I think that's also very, very sort of promising direction, and there are some examples, I think far too few at this point, but but in the last, say, five to ten years, oftentimes reporters and journalists at news newspapers that are going, you know, suffering major cuts are going under financially, pooling resources and and getting loans

00;56;07;07 - 00;56;24;08
Matt Guardino
to buy the newspaper and take it over. And so one of the things that does is that it it puts more of the control in the hands of the professionals who are trained and socialized to care about the quantity and the quality of news.

00;56;24;25 - 00;56;43;27
Matt Guardino
And it doesn't mean that they're going to necessarily think there are different models. There are there are ways to do that sort of with sort of more nonprofit basis, but also for profit. But either way, they have a material as well as a sort of ideological incentive not to cut the news product down to the bone, not

00;56;43;27 - 00;56;55;07
Matt Guardino
to make the kinds of compromises that are often made when you have top-down ownership and private top-down ownership. And so I think that is definitely a piece of the solution.

00;56;56;04 - 00;57;07;08
Bill Hudson
OK, that's very interesting. So we talked about three alternatives. Anything else that you could? You'd want to suggest.

00;57;07;22 - 00;57;22;17
Matt Guardino
I would just jump in really quickly and make a broader point that I think applies to all of the alternatives, although not so much to the to the benevolent billionaire model, but to the others, is that government in my mind needs to play a substantial role here of one sort or another.

00;57;23;00 - 00;57;46;13
Matt Guardino
And in stepping in encouraging, incentivizing directly or indirectly a lot of these things. And so there are all kinds of ideas for tax incentives for, for example, for for worker ownership or even, you know, we have a long history in this country of of of indirect subsidy of the price system.

00;57;46;13 - 00;57;58;05
Matt Guardino
And so we used to have low subsidized postal rates for periodicals. And so, you know, broader based incentives like that could be part of the solution, too.

00;57;58;28 - 00;58;09;09
Bill Hudson
Yeah. And we do have, you know, a national public television network can be PBS and NPR. one could imagine spinning off a newspaper.

00;58;09;17 - 00;58;09;19
Bill Hudson
As.

00;58;10;08 - 00;58;22;04
Bill Hudson
Part of the sort of overall public news infrastructure that could provide some government funding, or at least maybe start up grants for some of these cooperative efforts. Things like that.

00;58;24;23 - 00;58;25;09
Bill Hudson
You know. Well.

00;58;26;04 - 00;58;34;12
Bill Hudson
That sounds very promising to me. OK. Well, thanks so much, Andrea and Matt, for a very interesting discussion.

00;58;34;12 - 00;58;34;22
Bill Hudson
About.

00;58;35;27 - 00;58;42;13
Bill Hudson
Local newspapers. We did talk a little bit about broadcast and social media. Maybe someday in the future we.

00;58;42;13 - 00;58;43;18
Bill Hudson
Can have a.

00;58;44;02 - 00;59;01;01
Bill Hudson
Podcast that will take a deep dove into those media sources and their effect on democracy. But I think we did a nice job today covering sort of the challenges facing, you know, local newspapers, the value of local newspapers for democracy.

00;59;01;01 - 00;59;27;08
Bill Hudson
And in this last discussion about alternatives really makes me more hopeful about the survival of the the local newspaper. So thanks so much for being with us. And thanks also to our intrepid producer Isabel Fernandez, who has kept the technology running here and to our other student producers, Sienna Strickland.

00;59;28;01 - 00;59;31;09
Bill Hudson
Also, thanks again to Chris Judge of the Providence.

00;59;31;26 - 00;59;32;02
Bill Hudson
Of.

00;59;32;02 - 00;59;40;02
Bill Hudson
Marketing Communications Office. And thanks to all of our listeners. Please tell four friends about Beyond Your News Feed.