Tom's Tidbits- To fight misinformation with information, we should narrow our focus

Greetings,

It’s all too easy to get swept up in the lurid swamp of national and international politics and all too easy to see why. War, death, and corruption affect us all, so it’s not surprising we’d care about such things! Our sources of information on these big issues are facile and fragmentary, mostly coming either from a ‘mainstream’ media controlled by 6 companies or from an increasingly delusional echo chamber of right-wing propaganda. On the bright side, if our information is bad at least we can’t do much about it. Our power on a national level is limited to casting an almost negligible vote every four years and on international matters our power matters even less.

The situation changes the closer we get closer to home. The President or your US Senator may not give a damn about you, but your State Representative does and your Mayor or City Councilor cares even more. Your neighborhood associations, local business owners, and your neighbors care so much they may even know your name or ask your opinion. Yet the information you need to offer informed opinion on local issues to any of them is inadequate and getting worse.

If you aren’t aware of the collapse of local news around the country you should be. The rise of the Internet has destroyed the subscription-and-ads model local papers have relied on for centuries with about the outcome you’d expect. Newspaper ad revenue has dropped to about half of its 1956 levels. The US has lost one third of its newspapers and two thirds of its newspaper reporters since 2005. An average of 2 newspapers closed each week in 2022, which increased to 2.5 each week in 2023.

Newspapers are one thing, but over-the-air sources are suffering too. Companies like Sinclair Broadcasting are snapping up independent local TV stations, resulting in a situation where, as of 2016, 5 companies (including Sinclair) owned 37% of all full-power local TV stations in the country. We felt the sting of radio consolidation in 2012 when Bane Capital silenced the Progressive voice of KPOJ along with many other Progressive radio stations in the Western states.

If the consolidation of these local assets only meant the money went to Corporate Overlords in New York that would be bad enough but the editorial positions and priorities change too. These stations are most profitably fed by a single automated feed, slashing the useless overhead of local reporters and editors. The priorities change from concern over local issues and abuses to either a hyper-partisan overconcern with trivialities or a tailored feed of bland pablum designed not to concern anyone at all.

This starvation of local information doesn’t need to happen. Several excellent stories from Jim Hightower our ‘Digging Deeper’ section below show some of the ways local media is fighting back, but whatever the creative solutions, the basic problem is stark… media companies aren’t getting enough money to stay afloat. Unless you’re a billionaire you’re unlikely to be able to save them by yourself, but by standing alongside others in the reality-based community you can still make a difference.

As a news consumer and as a citizen, ask yourself where you get your information. Ask yourself how valuable that information is to you, then put a price on it and GIVE IT TO THE MEDIA YOU CARE ABOUT. Oregonians can subscribe, digitally or in print, to the Oregonian. Portlanders whose info comes from newspapers should read AND SUBSCRIBE to the Sellwood Bee or Willamette Week. If you’re constantly tuned to the radio for news then write down the call letters and donate during their pledge drive. OPB is the prime model for this. Our favorite XRAY.FM just finished up their Spring Drive but their sister station KXRY in Vancouver is doing theirs now, and either or both would appreciate a couple bucks from you as they expand their footprints in the Northwest. KBOO, the world’s oldest listener-supported community radio station, has only reached 50 years through people like you. Or, if you have to, pick an online source and subscribe to them. For all of these sources, the smaller they are the farther your dollars will go to help them survive.

I like to think I’m an informed news consumer, and I like to think I’m talking to informed news consumers. We’re all avid users of journalism but as with any other product, it isn’t produced for free and we should pay our fair share. There’s an old episode of The Simpsons where Homer mocks Marge for pledging to public TV when it comes for free and no one will ever ‘make’ them pay. It’s not as sexy as national news, but it’d more important to our personal daily lives. Let’s not take independent, healthy, local media for granted. Let’s not be Homer.

Make a great day,