Journalism In America Is Dead, But Also, Long Live Journalism

Constant layoffs, the destruction of DEI, a broken revenue model, nobody reading anything anymore, the end of SEO, cable's continued death spiral, the firing of journalists for spurious reasons, and the capitulation of corporate media have me wondering — "Can journalism survive this?"

It was a question I was asking myself yesterday when I participated in an intimate panel of women media leaders in New York on Tuesday. The talk of the room was our Dear Leader threatening yet another media outlet, this time The New York Times, with a $15 billion lawsuit over nothing.

Because it's not about the merits (or lack thereof) of the suit, but the wasted time, money, and resources that The Times will have to put into it to fight it as the administration tries to intimidate the press.

The Times knows this lawsuit has no merit and has publicly said as much, just as The Wall Street Journal did when the administration threatened them over negative stories about ties between the president and dead, disgraced, pedophile financier and private island aficionado, Jeffrey Epstein. And it's a good thing that the storied publication has the funds to protect itself from such frivolity. However, many corporate mainstream media outlets flush with cash and legal teams have chosen to cower and capitulate rather than fight what would have been easily won lawsuits (i.e., what happened to Paramount, CBS News, and its flagship show, 60 Minutes), which is why I question if the media, in its present form, will make it.

Journalism (as a whole) isn't entirely an innocent little lamb in this. Some of my peers prefer to "both sides" the apocalypse rather than team up to protect themselves. And for decades, the press allowed one side to paint them as the amoral antichrist "liberal media," thinking the work would speak for itself, not understanding that nobody cares about "the truth" when we're in the age of misinformation and disinformation. The news is now about "vibes," or as Stephen Colbert used to say, "truthiness." We have entire news networks more dedicated to pushing an agenda than faithfully reporting the facts. We have one side, the so-called mainstream, that has a lot of rules on how to conduct business. And on the other, we have a lot of bad-faith actors in so-called fringe media (podcasts, YouTube, Newsmax, etc.) that have no rules like the Yellow journalism of old that are now, to be frank, the real mainstream as their viewerships eclipse fact-based enterprises that are often hidden behind a paywall.

Democracy didn't die in darkness. It died in broad daylight, as a rapid shift took place. Today, getting an op-ed in The Times is tired. But getting on Joe Rogan to pontificate for three hours? Wired! News lost to "news influencers." And now those same "news influencers," aka "podcasters" and former Fox News hosts, are running our government.

It's not so much that the inmates are running the asylum, it's more like no one is running the asylum as the inmates and their insane leaders run amok, chasing trends, trashing things, lying, obfuscating, stealing anything not nailed down, and having their own version of "gang wars," as they pillor each other with conservative litmus tests, some even (possibly) dying over it.

It's gang warfare dressed up in a three-piece suit and called "politics." It's Game of Thrones with nothing but "King" Joffreys, Ramsey Boltons, and Sersi Lannisters. It's a kleptocracy and a kakistocracy shaking hands while the world burns.

To quote Nicky Santoro in Casino: "God forbid they should make a mistake and forget to steal."

But when the media tries to report this, they're often reporting to silohs and voids, as social media has cut off the spigot to news outlets looking to promote their stories; Google cannibalizes the news with AI summaries, sending no traffic to news sites; and paywalls mean most people get their news from the same social media outlets that have stopped elevating legitimate news.

When I was editor-in-chief of HuffPost, people would ask me, "Is HuffPost a left-leaning outlet?" I would often respond that HuffPost is a "reality-based news outlet," as in, we dealt with the reality of things. We were not cheerleaders for the Democratic Party (much to their chagrin). We criticized both sides when they screwed up. We reported the mistakes, problems, and controversies of the left. We didn't pretend they didn't exist. What was perceived as "lefty" was that we felt all people, regardless of background, deserved to be treated as humans. That the humanity of Black people, immigrants, women, and trans people is not up for debate. We were pro-democracy, pro-free speech, pro-fact, pro-truth, pro-science, and pro-journalism, and that has not changed since I left in January.

Journalism is about four decades too late in fighting back against the slander that ruined our profession. But that's not surprising. The industry has been in turmoil since I joined it in 2001 as a reporter in Texas. We've gone from crisis to crisis without much time to think about the bigger picture. And while we were fighting over print versus digital, free versus paywalls, both-sidesism versus ending impartiality, the right was building a disinformation empire, which finally bore fruit when the current White House occupant was elected for the first time in 2016, leading to a conservative Supreme Court, a conservative Congress, and now a government where the Republicans control every branch.

And yet, no one, not even conservatives, is happy. They want more. More what? I don't know. Pain and destruction? The U.S. actually becoming Gilead? (We're almost there!) All of us dead of diseases nobody gets anymore? It's hard to tell what the endgame is. Unless it's what it's always been — capitalism and white supremacy forming Voltron to create new kings and queens served by AI-powered robots while the rest of us get the plague and die as subsistence farmers.

(Shhh. With a few exceptions, no one tell them what happened to the royal rulers of old. Or the Third Reich. Or the French Aristocracy during the revolution. Or what's happening in Nepal, right now.)

But there is a group that is poised to help stop this.

It's the same group that's under threat — journalists. People are risking their lives and limbs to leak information to the press to expose what's happening to our country. If journalists can just — not die — or end up in prison, and continue to report the facts at great risk to themselves and their livelihoods, we might make it. People need reliable, factual information on every level, from local to state to national. If there is any way to save us, journalism has an important role to play, which is why it is under attack. We're the last line of defense in the death of our democracy. Kill us, and you kill the truth. Kill the truth, and you can control the populace with lies. If the populace doesn't know who or what to believe anymore, cynicism and despair sets in. And after that, it's a wrap. We're the new Venezuela. Some could argue we're already there, but I'm still writing this freely on the Internet for you to read, so we're not quite there yet. There's still a chance to turn this ship around, but the window is rapidly closing.

Journalism needs to survive this moment because all our lives depend on its survival. Journalism needs to adapt or die, yet again. Nobody cares if journalists are tired and have been tired since the late 1990s. It's time to suit up and get out there.

Because it's not about whether journalism survives this — it's about how journalism has to survive this. Because once we're gone? It's just AI slop and lies 24/7.

So if you see a news org acting in good faith, support it. Click. Subscribe. Go to their homepage. Share. Until we figure out how we're going to make it long-term, we still need those traditional paths to keep us afloat.