I know I'm old, but what I miss most about the newspaper was how it could be swapped around. Go into the barber shop and there a couple sitting around. I go into a restaurant with the newspaper to eat lunch and I leave it on the table for the next guy. Those days are sadly gone. Great article Bill, keep on chugging...
I'm older than you, Jeffrey, but I remember those days with fondness too. I would buy two or three newspapers and enjoy a great lunch all by myself - and then leave the paper for the next diner.
The demise of newspapers and local journalism - that did the job the right way - is a very sad story.
However, those were the days when newspapers had something of value to share. Where one might (shocker!) actually read “NEWS”! Newspapers today are relegated to the bottom of the birdcage (figuratively speaking, of course, since I can’t be bothered to waste my time reading one!)
Agree completely. Staff writers were writing about local news and sports that represented the heartbeat of the community, not just stories from the AP wire.
Edit: I added this sentence, because I shouldn't have omitted Jeffrey Tucker and Brownstone ...
Jeffrey Tucker, who has held at least a dozen jobs in his life, found his true life’s calling by starting an organization that tries to recruit and support as many talented, liberty-protecting writers as possible, The Brownstone Institute.
I can report that I get a monthly stipend from Brownstone that alleviated much of the tremendous stress I was under before I was approved as a Brownstone fellow - which is really a program to support writers who aren't making enough $ to provide for their families.
Jeffrey Tucker started that program. He didn't have to, but he did.
Like the bit of love to my adopted home state and George Thorogood.
"The professional journalists don’t have to do this." Well, really they do, but instead of a website it was a newspaper or magazine they wanted you to donate to their cause for (i.e. purchase) so they could transfer advertising from them to you, the reader. But shrinking advertising dollars sent to print media contributed mightily to their demise - in fact, at my work we used to get several free publications sent to us simply because they were selling the advertising to the target market (architects/engineers.) Now we tell them don't bother because no one reads them.
Notice Substacks are subscription-based but not advertiser-based. However, I will say that I invested a small sum into the Substack IPO awhile back, so I have a modest investment in it.
And don't forget the government largesse factor - how many media people were supported by grants?
As expected Wikipedia has removed the category "Substack writers." Here is the list before it was removed:
A Kareem Abdul-Jabbar Jim Acosta Sherman Alexie Emily Atkin Jami Attenberg B Krystal Ball Ross Barkan Josh Barro Jack Baruth W. Kamau Bell Alex Berenson Julie Bindel Peter Boghossian Nellie Bowles Ryan Broderick Elizabeth Bruenig Robert Bryce (writer) C Sophie Campbell E. Jean Carroll Neko Case Chris Cillizza Nick Cohen Anita Coleman Dominic Cummings D Richard Dawkins Fredrik deBoer The Democratic Coalition Junot Díaz E Jonn Elledge Paul Embery Erick Erickson F Lee Fang Kmele Foster Dominic Frisby Stephen Fry G Emma Gannon Timothy Garton Ash Roxane Gay Nikita Gill Ryan Grim Chris Guillebeau Jen Gunter H Richard Hanania Mehdi Hasan Juliana Hatfield Chris Hedges Rob K. Henderson Seymour Hersh Hugh Hewitt I Soren Iverson K Garrison Keillor Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Etgar Keret Paul Kingsnorth Walter Kirn Konstantin Kisin Austin Kleon Ken Klippenstein Jessica Reed Kraus Bill Kristol Paul Krugman L Daniel M. Lavery Judd Legum Helen Lewis (journalist) Sarah Longwell Taylor Lorenz Glenn Loury M Wendy MacNaughton Winston Marshall Aaron Maté Courtney Maum Kathleen de la Peña McCook Michael McFaul Bill McKibben John McWhorter Colin Meloy Tim Miller (political strategist) Michael Moore N Ralph Nader Blake Nelson Carrie Newcomer Eric Newcomer Casey Newton O The Orwell Foundation Emily Oster Pádraig Ó Tuama Kelly Oxford P Chuck Palahniuk Anne Helen Petersen Roger A. Pielke Jr. Gerald Posner R Dan Rather Robert Reich Heather Cox Richardson Hannah Ritchie Christopher Rufo Salman Rushdie S George Saunders Jeremy Scahill Michael Shellenberger Nate Silver Maggie Smith (poet) Noah Smith (writer) Patti Smith Edward Snowden Timothy Snyder Andrew Ross Sorkin Tim Spector Jeff Stein (author) Marc Stein (reporter) Matt Stoller Emma Straub Cheryl Strayed Andrew Sullivan Charlie Sykes T Matt Taibbi Ruy Teixeira Adam Tooze Jeff Tweedy V Joyce Vance Jesse Ventura W Esmé Weijun Wang S. J. Watson Waxahatchee Bari Weiss Matt Welch Paul Wells Marianne Williamson Y Matthew Yglesias Skottie Young
Some people have raised the issue of sustainability for the citizen journalist field. It's true that there's only so much disposable income that content consumers are willing to spend on subscriptions. I propose a federated model where like-minded substackers form umbrella groups that share subscription revenues. If I follow 63 substacks I'm not going to be able to upgrade to paid subscriptions for most of them. It's simple economics.
A great tribute to citizen journalists, which I am trying on as a descriptor like a new haircut (ever since my first piece came out within a week of Justin Trudeau's invocation of the Emergencies Act to crush a peaceful protest in Ottawa, Canada, in February 2022). The A-list you highlight are the one who write daily, weekly. There are others like me who don't write on Substack, and just on a request basis to a few alt media outlets between appearances on podcasts. The free "work" gets mixed in with the rest of life - but now getting a pension helps to devote time to the cause. My sample of late: https://www.westernstandard.news/opinion/mcginnis-for-carney-is-everything-to-be-an-emergency/62309
Thank you for your important witness in these times.
I was in and around the Denver media market when it was a two major newspaper town, the Rocky Mountain News and Denver Post. Both competed in the same market for share. RMN had a reputation for a more conservative perspective, DP a more liberal one. There was fierce competition to gain both subscriber and advertising advantage. The biggest accounts would play one's rates against the other to negotiate better rates.
The papers, trying to gain advantage to charge higher rates would offer deep discounts to subscribers, practically giving the papers away. So they could sell the idea of more readership equaled higher ad rates. This unhealthy competition model was first blamed on declining revenues for both newspapers. They couldn't collude, but they needed some type of agreement to keep the downward spiral from consuming them both. They eventually entered a JOA, consolidating business operations under one roof so they could ostensibly get back to providing news coverage worth paying for.
Many subscribers like myself began to notice that the RMN was no longer providing a conservative perspective. Yet the DP was getting more liberal. The liberal was beginning to infect the RMN's reporting, too. Perhaps there was a belief that liberal perspective news had a bigger subscriber base. This was around the same time that the internet was gaining steam and news consumers were finding other media outlets that were free. And offered more varieties of perspective. It wasn't long before RMN closed. It had become liberal-lite.
There was little need for the JOA anymore, but DP made assurances to readers it inherited from RMN that they would provide fair, balanced coverage. And proceeded to do no such thing. Any conservative perspectives were few. And the liberal bias infected the news pages. The national sources like AP, UPI, and international like Reuters and APF by then were reliably liberal and the supposed "straight" local reporter's biases were worn on their sleeves. Subscriptions continued to plummet. Aside from the core liberal base that liked the steady diet of stories that comported with their own world view and the "independent thinkers" who believed getting a newspaper delivered to the home every morning was the sign of an intelligent civic-minded person there subscribers dwindled.
The internet taking away readers excuse was convenient. Yes, it took away many readers who desired its convenience, not having to call in to report undelivered papers. But the biggest factor they failed to identify was subscribers didn't want to read a steady steam of leftist propaganda. They'd have been fine receiving a daily newspaper at their door if it didn't always attack their values and their minds. They sought out news on the internet precisely because the content wasn't available in their local paper.
The DP still exists, small thin format as you describe. Probably as few or fewer reporters as you describe. But to this observer they did it to themselves. The same as national MSM has done. And citizen journalists have filled the void they left by embracing one-sided perspective infected news. Aka propaganda. There's nothing in the skeletal remains of the newspaper industry but propagandists pumping out the latest narrative they enjoy the pretense of reporting as erudite. Investigation is merely "gotcha" stories attacking political enemies.
Was it suicide? Directed by masters above or chosen by local concerns? Who knows. But they surely killed themselves. When I was in business school my Integrative Finance class took Harvard Case Studies and went through several examples during the semesters. Harvard's studies would examine a well-known corporation as it faced a crossroads in its future. Unknown to them in real time the magnitude of the decisions they were making. The studies would begin by presenting the world the corporation was operating in, markets, technology, competitors, external factors. As well as mission, managing principals, personalities, goals. Possessing only the information they had at the time, no crystal ball they would make decisions. Evaluating all of the possibilities they could see. And every subsequent decision that flowed downstream from those initial decisions. Possibilities they never considered arose. Worst case scenarios manifested, at least in the case studies that eventually resulted in failure. Sometime best case scenarios arose, pure luck, in the case studies that eventually resulted in success.
The exercise of the Harvard Case Studies was very valuable. I'm not sure if they still do them or not. This was before Social Justice and Good Corporate Citizenship had a place in board rooms. But behind every big failure and every big success is a series of decisions that led to an outcome that few crystal balls could've predicted. The common thread among successful decisions were having an accurate read of the market and environment in real time, no biases or filters clouding information. And nimbleness, observing shifts in real time that they could react quickly to for advantage when other corporate competitors were slow-footed when reacting. The corporations that had made bad decisions but realized early enough they were bad and cut their losses and lived to fight another day. The corporate leaders who were bull-headed and were so sure of their infallibility oversaw disasters and the complete ruin of their corporations.
The newspaper and media industry must be providing much source material for Harvard Case Studies today. RMN, DP among them. If they ever decide to do a real dissection of what's gone wrong, that is. I have my doubts about Harvard being capable of doing that today. Social Justice, Good Corporate Citizen values infect that business school. No doubt they'll say it's all worth it to "protect democracy" and "our shared values." What's a little destruction of media corporations here and there when the destruction serves a higher purpose? Oh, I long to see a Harvard Case Study about the media when this infection of our society and businesses is cured.
I know I'm old, but what I miss most about the newspaper was how it could be swapped around. Go into the barber shop and there a couple sitting around. I go into a restaurant with the newspaper to eat lunch and I leave it on the table for the next guy. Those days are sadly gone. Great article Bill, keep on chugging...
I'm older than you, Jeffrey, but I remember those days with fondness too. I would buy two or three newspapers and enjoy a great lunch all by myself - and then leave the paper for the next diner.
The demise of newspapers and local journalism - that did the job the right way - is a very sad story.
However, those were the days when newspapers had something of value to share. Where one might (shocker!) actually read “NEWS”! Newspapers today are relegated to the bottom of the birdcage (figuratively speaking, of course, since I can’t be bothered to waste my time reading one!)
Agree completely. Staff writers were writing about local news and sports that represented the heartbeat of the community, not just stories from the AP wire.
Edit: I added this sentence, because I shouldn't have omitted Jeffrey Tucker and Brownstone ...
Jeffrey Tucker, who has held at least a dozen jobs in his life, found his true life’s calling by starting an organization that tries to recruit and support as many talented, liberty-protecting writers as possible, The Brownstone Institute.
If anyone wants to make a donation to Brownstone they can do so via this link:
https://brownstone.org/donate/
I can report that I get a monthly stipend from Brownstone that alleviated much of the tremendous stress I was under before I was approved as a Brownstone fellow - which is really a program to support writers who aren't making enough $ to provide for their families.
Jeffrey Tucker started that program. He didn't have to, but he did.
Like the bit of love to my adopted home state and George Thorogood.
"The professional journalists don’t have to do this." Well, really they do, but instead of a website it was a newspaper or magazine they wanted you to donate to their cause for (i.e. purchase) so they could transfer advertising from them to you, the reader. But shrinking advertising dollars sent to print media contributed mightily to their demise - in fact, at my work we used to get several free publications sent to us simply because they were selling the advertising to the target market (architects/engineers.) Now we tell them don't bother because no one reads them.
Notice Substacks are subscription-based but not advertiser-based. However, I will say that I invested a small sum into the Substack IPO awhile back, so I have a modest investment in it.
And don't forget the government largesse factor - how many media people were supported by grants?
Jeff Childers, you mean.
Dang, I apologize to Jeff and his many readers. I must have had other lawyers, including Mark Oshinskie, on my brain.
This citizen journalist needs a copy-editor.
Thanks for pointing out the error, which I've now corrected.
Excellent article.
This needs our citizen journalists to start digging.
@IanCarrollShow ,@_whitneywebb , @RealCandaceO, @ClayClark. @DoctorDaveJanda,@Dan Bongino,@GlenBeck
@AmazingPolly, @MelKShow .
We need answers!
Sincerely ,Ken Curtis .
@Simplestone333
Freedom to speak 🗣️ 🆙 means freedom to be persecuted; speak as followers of I AM we must or it's a sin of omission.
http://www.crossroad.to/Persecution/persecution.htm
http://www.crossroad.to/Persecution/Polycarp.html
Job 19:25
25 I know that my redeemer lives,
and that in the end he will stand on the earth.
<*}}}< John 17; Romans 8; Hebrews 11; Acts 17:11; Colossians 3:1-17; 2 Timothy 2:12; James 5; Revelation 20-22
https://watchmenonthewall.locals.com/post/3578546/the-task-of-a-watchman
As expected Wikipedia has removed the category "Substack writers." Here is the list before it was removed:
A Kareem Abdul-Jabbar Jim Acosta Sherman Alexie Emily Atkin Jami Attenberg B Krystal Ball Ross Barkan Josh Barro Jack Baruth W. Kamau Bell Alex Berenson Julie Bindel Peter Boghossian Nellie Bowles Ryan Broderick Elizabeth Bruenig Robert Bryce (writer) C Sophie Campbell E. Jean Carroll Neko Case Chris Cillizza Nick Cohen Anita Coleman Dominic Cummings D Richard Dawkins Fredrik deBoer The Democratic Coalition Junot Díaz E Jonn Elledge Paul Embery Erick Erickson F Lee Fang Kmele Foster Dominic Frisby Stephen Fry G Emma Gannon Timothy Garton Ash Roxane Gay Nikita Gill Ryan Grim Chris Guillebeau Jen Gunter H Richard Hanania Mehdi Hasan Juliana Hatfield Chris Hedges Rob K. Henderson Seymour Hersh Hugh Hewitt I Soren Iverson K Garrison Keillor Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Etgar Keret Paul Kingsnorth Walter Kirn Konstantin Kisin Austin Kleon Ken Klippenstein Jessica Reed Kraus Bill Kristol Paul Krugman L Daniel M. Lavery Judd Legum Helen Lewis (journalist) Sarah Longwell Taylor Lorenz Glenn Loury M Wendy MacNaughton Winston Marshall Aaron Maté Courtney Maum Kathleen de la Peña McCook Michael McFaul Bill McKibben John McWhorter Colin Meloy Tim Miller (political strategist) Michael Moore N Ralph Nader Blake Nelson Carrie Newcomer Eric Newcomer Casey Newton O The Orwell Foundation Emily Oster Pádraig Ó Tuama Kelly Oxford P Chuck Palahniuk Anne Helen Petersen Roger A. Pielke Jr. Gerald Posner R Dan Rather Robert Reich Heather Cox Richardson Hannah Ritchie Christopher Rufo Salman Rushdie S George Saunders Jeremy Scahill Michael Shellenberger Nate Silver Maggie Smith (poet) Noah Smith (writer) Patti Smith Edward Snowden Timothy Snyder Andrew Ross Sorkin Tim Spector Jeff Stein (author) Marc Stein (reporter) Matt Stoller Emma Straub Cheryl Strayed Andrew Sullivan Charlie Sykes T Matt Taibbi Ruy Teixeira Adam Tooze Jeff Tweedy V Joyce Vance Jesse Ventura W Esmé Weijun Wang S. J. Watson Waxahatchee Bari Weiss Matt Welch Paul Wells Marianne Williamson Y Matthew Yglesias Skottie Young
Some people have raised the issue of sustainability for the citizen journalist field. It's true that there's only so much disposable income that content consumers are willing to spend on subscriptions. I propose a federated model where like-minded substackers form umbrella groups that share subscription revenues. If I follow 63 substacks I'm not going to be able to upgrade to paid subscriptions for most of them. It's simple economics.
Thank God for citizen journalists such as yourself. Great job!
A great tribute to citizen journalists, which I am trying on as a descriptor like a new haircut (ever since my first piece came out within a week of Justin Trudeau's invocation of the Emergencies Act to crush a peaceful protest in Ottawa, Canada, in February 2022). The A-list you highlight are the one who write daily, weekly. There are others like me who don't write on Substack, and just on a request basis to a few alt media outlets between appearances on podcasts. The free "work" gets mixed in with the rest of life - but now getting a pension helps to devote time to the cause. My sample of late: https://www.westernstandard.news/opinion/mcginnis-for-carney-is-everything-to-be-an-emergency/62309
Thank you for your important witness in these times.
Great, fun read, Bill!
I was in and around the Denver media market when it was a two major newspaper town, the Rocky Mountain News and Denver Post. Both competed in the same market for share. RMN had a reputation for a more conservative perspective, DP a more liberal one. There was fierce competition to gain both subscriber and advertising advantage. The biggest accounts would play one's rates against the other to negotiate better rates.
The papers, trying to gain advantage to charge higher rates would offer deep discounts to subscribers, practically giving the papers away. So they could sell the idea of more readership equaled higher ad rates. This unhealthy competition model was first blamed on declining revenues for both newspapers. They couldn't collude, but they needed some type of agreement to keep the downward spiral from consuming them both. They eventually entered a JOA, consolidating business operations under one roof so they could ostensibly get back to providing news coverage worth paying for.
Many subscribers like myself began to notice that the RMN was no longer providing a conservative perspective. Yet the DP was getting more liberal. The liberal was beginning to infect the RMN's reporting, too. Perhaps there was a belief that liberal perspective news had a bigger subscriber base. This was around the same time that the internet was gaining steam and news consumers were finding other media outlets that were free. And offered more varieties of perspective. It wasn't long before RMN closed. It had become liberal-lite.
There was little need for the JOA anymore, but DP made assurances to readers it inherited from RMN that they would provide fair, balanced coverage. And proceeded to do no such thing. Any conservative perspectives were few. And the liberal bias infected the news pages. The national sources like AP, UPI, and international like Reuters and APF by then were reliably liberal and the supposed "straight" local reporter's biases were worn on their sleeves. Subscriptions continued to plummet. Aside from the core liberal base that liked the steady diet of stories that comported with their own world view and the "independent thinkers" who believed getting a newspaper delivered to the home every morning was the sign of an intelligent civic-minded person there subscribers dwindled.
The internet taking away readers excuse was convenient. Yes, it took away many readers who desired its convenience, not having to call in to report undelivered papers. But the biggest factor they failed to identify was subscribers didn't want to read a steady steam of leftist propaganda. They'd have been fine receiving a daily newspaper at their door if it didn't always attack their values and their minds. They sought out news on the internet precisely because the content wasn't available in their local paper.
The DP still exists, small thin format as you describe. Probably as few or fewer reporters as you describe. But to this observer they did it to themselves. The same as national MSM has done. And citizen journalists have filled the void they left by embracing one-sided perspective infected news. Aka propaganda. There's nothing in the skeletal remains of the newspaper industry but propagandists pumping out the latest narrative they enjoy the pretense of reporting as erudite. Investigation is merely "gotcha" stories attacking political enemies.
Was it suicide? Directed by masters above or chosen by local concerns? Who knows. But they surely killed themselves. When I was in business school my Integrative Finance class took Harvard Case Studies and went through several examples during the semesters. Harvard's studies would examine a well-known corporation as it faced a crossroads in its future. Unknown to them in real time the magnitude of the decisions they were making. The studies would begin by presenting the world the corporation was operating in, markets, technology, competitors, external factors. As well as mission, managing principals, personalities, goals. Possessing only the information they had at the time, no crystal ball they would make decisions. Evaluating all of the possibilities they could see. And every subsequent decision that flowed downstream from those initial decisions. Possibilities they never considered arose. Worst case scenarios manifested, at least in the case studies that eventually resulted in failure. Sometime best case scenarios arose, pure luck, in the case studies that eventually resulted in success.
The exercise of the Harvard Case Studies was very valuable. I'm not sure if they still do them or not. This was before Social Justice and Good Corporate Citizenship had a place in board rooms. But behind every big failure and every big success is a series of decisions that led to an outcome that few crystal balls could've predicted. The common thread among successful decisions were having an accurate read of the market and environment in real time, no biases or filters clouding information. And nimbleness, observing shifts in real time that they could react quickly to for advantage when other corporate competitors were slow-footed when reacting. The corporations that had made bad decisions but realized early enough they were bad and cut their losses and lived to fight another day. The corporate leaders who were bull-headed and were so sure of their infallibility oversaw disasters and the complete ruin of their corporations.
The newspaper and media industry must be providing much source material for Harvard Case Studies today. RMN, DP among them. If they ever decide to do a real dissection of what's gone wrong, that is. I have my doubts about Harvard being capable of doing that today. Social Justice, Good Corporate Citizen values infect that business school. No doubt they'll say it's all worth it to "protect democracy" and "our shared values." What's a little destruction of media corporations here and there when the destruction serves a higher purpose? Oh, I long to see a Harvard Case Study about the media when this infection of our society and businesses is cured.