One night, after exposing a prominent ... but also proof that someone cared enough about what was printed in the paper to lash out. My work, however minor, had made a dent in the local fabric. Today, in too many towns, that fabric is fraying....
One night, after exposing a prominent local figure’s embarrassing brush with petty crime, I found my car keyed in retaliation. It was petty vengeance, but also proof that someone cared enough about what was printed in the paper to lash out. My work, however minor, had made a dent in the local fabric. Today, in too many towns, that fabric is fraying.Of the roughly 6,000 papers left, most are published weekly, not daily. Large swaths of the country now exist in what researchers call “news deserts.” Today, at least 200 counties in America have no local news outlet at all, and more than half have either no paper or only one.Years ago, I coined the term pink-slime journalism to describe Journatic, a company I once worked for that secretly outsourced local news to low-paid freelancers overseas, who strung together news releases and website copy into something meant to resemble actual news. Today, the slime has taken on new forms, such as AI-generated copy spun up to pad out hollowed mastheads. In many places, the filler has vanished entirely, leaving nothing but silence. “Even in places that still have papers, the reporters are vanishing.”NBC’s new sitcom The Paper, a spinoff of The Office, marries the same kind of gallows humour about the state of community journalism with a well-worn workplace comedy setup. The show is set at The Truth Teller, a faltering small-town daily in Toledo, Ohio.
