From the Editors: A functioning republic needs a functioning news media

Readers of a certain age will no doubt recall the opening monologue to Woody Allen’s film, Annie Hall: 

“There’s an old joke: Two elderly women are at a Catskills mountain resort, and one of ’em says: ‘Boy, the food at this place is really terrible.’ The other one says, ‘Yeah, I know, and such small portions.’ Well, that’s essentially how I feel about life. Full of loneliness and misery and suffering and unhappiness, and it’s all over much too quickly.”

Today the joke would still carry if describing the relationship most Americans have with the  media if you took out the word “food” and replaced it with “news.”

That’s essentially how today’s public feels about news — they think it’s terrible, lacks context, is under-researched and biased, and yet they can’t get enough of it.

The announcement this week that the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette will cease publication in four months is the latest example of this trend — and a seriously damaging one for our state. Formed in 1927 after a series of mergers of Pittsburgh newspapers, the Post-Gazette’s antecedents dated back even farther — to 1786, when the Pittsburgh Gazette was the first newspaper published west of the Alleghenies. Since the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review went all-digital in 2016, the Post-Gazette has been the only print newspaper in the city. The news scene has changed over the years, but Pittsburgh has always had at least one reliable source of print journalism — until now.

Print, as a technological medium, may be dying. You’ll notice that this editorial is not coming to you on a sheet of newsprint. But some sort of daily publication is needed to reach the masses, whether on their phones, their computers, or their front stoops. The written word — whether in ink or in pixels — delivers a thoroughness and a seriousness that video cannot replace. 

The Post-Gazette’s financial problems were not only the result of the times. Management decisions about how to deal with labor strife played a role. So, too, did city politicians’ refusal to speak with the paper during the standoff. In a statement, the paper’s owner, Block Communications Inc. claimed it lost more than $350 million in cash while operating it.  But whomever you blame, the fact remains that western Pennsylvania will now be worse off when it comes to news.

Conservatives and Republicans love to say, “if you think you don’t like [X product] now, wait until it’s free.” They say this because they inherently understand that adding the profit motive to the equation makes a better, more responsible product. That means tough choices by management and labor on how money is spent, and it also requires a commitment by the readership to pay for the product. Using ad blockers or pirating content gives you something for free — until everyone does it and the whole thing collapses.

Journalism institutions like Pew could help by exploring what the public estimates internet advertising pays. Our anecdotal information suggests that even media savvy people wildly overestimate how much 1,000 views to a story pays. When that’s the case, the information gap provides a permission structure to avoid being part of the revenue stream by refusing subscriptions and by using ad-blocking browsers and more. After all, if the paper is making $50 for every thousand clicks, it’s probably flush, right?

We all have a part to play — publishers, writers, photographers, editors, and — yes — readers. In a republic, the people rule themselves. They cannot do so without reliable news to tell them about the world. Republican governance in Pittsburgh — and all of western Pennsylvania — will now be worse off.